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The author is a cruiser, boating writer and retired chemical engineer who describes his life as “one big science project.” He lives and tinkers in Virginia’s Delmarva Peninsula and sails an F-24 trimaran. By DREW FRYEWinter is boring so I decided to play with anchors. I built a bunch of miniature fluke anchors and played with them in a tub filled with saturated sand from one of my favorite day anchorages. Clean, fun for testing and easy. A nice low standard deviation.¹ I learned a few things. The idea was spawned by having a number of Mantus M1 dinghy anchors left over from testing. They are modular, coming apart quickly for storage under the seat of your jet ski. But even larger anchors by many brands have transitioned to bolt-together constructions to reduce shipping costs. Interestingly, the 4-ounce anchor holding in test sand scaled within about 10 percent of testing I have done with full-scale anchors on the same sand, when using a formula of hold = constant x mass^0.9. That’s a scale factor of 160:1. That won’t hold for some crusty bottoms, but for uniform sand and mud, it’s pretty amazing. But 4 ounces is too small for real testing on real bottoms. Good for trialing and eliminating bad ideas, though; a few styles did not move through to the next scale. That FormulaFor any given anchor design, constructed to proportional strength (metal thickness increases with load) in a consistent, saturated soil (no layering):
Back to the experiment: I cut and welded five flukes, three shanks, two roll bars and some wings, all designed to be fully interchangeable. The thickness and weight scale accurately to my Mantus M1 reference anchor. Combined with variable crown attachments, shims to adjust fluke angles, and bottoms ranging from fine sand to super-soft trashy mud, this gave me more than 100 possible combinations. Considering it takes at least five pulls and a few veers to develop any statistics on a combination, testing everything could take 1,000 pulls or more. I’ve only explored a small corner of the possibilities, but as the weather warms, I will test more, and I’ll probably add a few more components. Oh dear, I already have:
(I have no bias toward or away from the Mantus M1. I chose it as the reference because it is well-known. I had several. And it is modular, so that I could mix and match components with ease. In fact, most of the combinations tested contain no actual Mantus parts. I do not, in fact, use a Mantus on my boat. No particular reason, it just didn’t end up that way. I have lots of very good anchors.) I’ve learned a few things. The standard deviation of anchor testing is huge, typically 15-60 percent, depending on how homogeneous the bottom is. Thirty-five percent SD is about average, with a 50-70 percent range. I knew this from prior testing. If you look at other test programs, you will see how true this is, and that publishing the “max hold” is a bad joke. The low end of holding that felt like a set is more relevant, but it’s still all over the place.
(I have not tested toe ballast. Maybe later.) My question: Is the elimination of the roll bar a holy grail of anchor design, or do people favor the robust obviousness of roll bar function, even if it feels a bit like a cludge? BTW, I’ve cruised with high-end roll bar and non-roll bar anchors. Once they disappeared below the water, honestly, it was hard to guess what was on the chain by behavior. They were very good, and much better than their pivoting fluke or plow predecessors, which I have also used. There are several arguments against roll bars. They’re ugly (IMO function is beautiful). They collect trash (no, I have not seen this—the fouling was always on the toe). They don’t fit (if that is your case, good point). If I fit the high shank to any test fluke and mount wings on the heel of the fluke, they all roll over and set fine (some variability—I’m not pretending there was not—but that will take more testing) without adding toe ballast. Which performed better? I don’t have enough data yet, but I’ve seen examples go both ways, both in this testing program and with full scale anchors.
What was the biggest problem, across all anchors? Clogging with sticky mud near the toe. The huge ball would not release and could inhibit resetting. My question: Is the elimination of the roll bar a holy grail of anchor design, or do people favor the robust obviousness of roll bar function, even if it feels a bit like a cludge? Chesapeake BayA few thoughts specific to Chesapeake soft mud. It is layered.
The reason for the weird Chesapeake bottom is the detritus that comes from the leaf fall from the woods and the marshes. There is an upper layers that is a very light soup of super fine compost, that is too light to consolidate into anything. Under that is firm clay, with oyster shells and sticks in between. It can be challenging, but if you get the anchor into the clay, it is actually good most places. Want More Science?
LOOSE CANNON covers hard news, technical issues and nautical history. Every so often he tries to be funny. Subscribe for free to support the work. If you’ve been reading for a while—and you like it—consider upgrading to paid.
1 Standard deviation measures how spread out data points are around a mean. A low value indicates data is close to the average, while a high value indicates significant dispersion. |
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Kerry Maveus
kmaveus@hunter-pr.com | www.hunter-pr.com
mobile: 831-917-2878
P.O. Box 1049 | Pebble Beach, CA | 93953
Fred Pickhardt’s Substack is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Fred Pickhardt’s Substack that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won’t be charged unless they enable payments.
For the first time in over 30 years, we are seeing evidence that the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) might be heading into its negative (cool) phase. If this shift is real, it could fundamentally change our weather patterns for the next two decades. The “Horseshoe” EmergesThe hallmark of a negative AMO is a distinct “C-shaped” or horseshoe pattern of cool water stretching across the North Atlantic. Looking at current sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies, we are seeing exactly that: a crescent of cooler water running from the UK down to the Canary Islands, paired with a persistent cold pool south of Greenland. The cold “blob” south of Greenland is particularly telling. It’s often noted as a byproduct of a slowing AMOC (the ocean’s “conveyor belt”) and is also closely linked to a negative phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO).
North Atlantic SST Anomaly (topicaltidbits.com) A Cooling Tropical AtlanticThe biggest hurdle for a negative AMO phase recently has been the Atlantic Main Development Region (MDR). In recent years, the tropics have remained stubbornly warm. However, as of March 2026, we are seeing widespread neutral to cool anomalies in the MDR. This makes the case for a phase shift significantly stronger than it was just twelve months ago.
Atlantic MDR SST Anomaly (Tropicaltidbits.com) Real Shift or False Start?The AMO is a marathon, not a sprint. History is full of “false starts” where the ocean cools for a year or two before the warm cycle resumes. Current cooling in the eastern Atlantic could simply be a temporary reaction to atmospheric triggers, like a strong Positive North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) phase. To confirm a true regime shift, these cool anomalies need to persist and expand for several consecutive years. We aren’t ready to declare the “Warm Era” over just yet, but the needle is moving. What This Means for the FutureIf this pattern holds through the 2026 hurricane season and into 2027, the implications are significant. A sustained negative AMO phase typically brings:
We are watching the Atlantic closely. If the 1995–2025 warm cycle is indeed ending, the next 20 years of weather will look different from the last. You’re currently a free subscriber to Fred Pickhardt’s Substack. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
© 2026 Fred Pickhardt
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Harbour Town Yacht Basin, A CRUISERS NET SPONSOR, is ready for your reservation with newly renovated docks, upgraded electrical service and onSpot WiFi, also a CRUISERS NET SPONSOR. And, as always, numerous activities at the Sea Pines Resort are offered for your enjoyment, as you will see in the Event Schedule below. Hilton Head Island is absolutely marvelous any time of year.
Kerry Maveus
kmaveus@hunter-pr.com | www.hunter-pr.com
mobile: 831-917-2878
P.O. Box 1049 | Pebble Beach, CA | 93953
There is always plenty to do around Charlotte Harbor. While berthed at Fishermen’s Village Marina, A CRUISERS NET SPONSOR, you are certain to enjoy visiting Western Florida’s beautiful Charlotte Harbor/Peace River.
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There is always plenty to do around Charlotte Harbor. While berthed at Fishermen’s Village Marina, A CRUISERS NET SPONSOR, you are certain to enjoy visiting Western Florida’s beautiful Charlotte Harbor/Peace River. Please consider visiting Fishermen’s Village first annual “Earth Day at the Village” event, scheduled for Wednesday, April 22nd, 2026, 10am-4 pm.
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Special Events & Community Relations
941.639.8721
Click Here To View the Western Florida Cruisers Net Marina Directory Listing For Fishermen’s Village
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Scheduled closure of the South Mills Lock for electrical repairs on April 20-22, 2026. Our thanks to Sarah Hill of the Dismal Swamp Welcome Center for this information.
Please see the USACE Norfolk District’s Notice to Navigation regarding the scheduled closure of the South Mills Lock on the Dismal Swamp Canal, April 20-22, 2026. This temporary closure is for electrical repairs to be made. The lock will reopen on April 23, 2026.
Attaching image from this week at the dock. Boaters are beginning to trickle through during this early springtime period.
Looking forward to many more in this season!
Thanks,
Sarah
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| Sarah Hill, TMP Director, Dismal Swamp Canal Welcome Center Chairperson, Camden County Tourism Development Authority 2356 US Hwy 17 North, South Mills, NC 27976
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Anchors. We’re talking anchors!
This week flew by with final edits, acoustic guitars, sketches of anchor systems and calls to Port Townsend Foundry in Washington State, one of the only remaining forges in the US. They create stunning, creative, powerful bronze vessel hardware, you can view their work here. We haven’t come to a consensus yet, but are confidant that owner Pete Langley has the talent and skill that we need to build the new, larger, system that we require. Their reputation is impeccable and the reason we chose to go to this level of quality and expenditure is because, as mentioned last week, it is very important to stay where you want to be on a vessel, especially if it is anywhere near land, shallow water or other obstacles, often other boats. The mariner’s term for this essential holding equipment is ground tackle.
Since I received more than a few comments on this topic, I decided to link a story, originally entitled DRAGGING (modified to Eclipse Interrupted by the Editor), published in SAIL magazine, 2024. Since these sort of events seem to always happen at night, this truly depicts the heart-pounding terror that grips a sailor and crew when an anchor is no longer doing what it should. You feel like your hair is on fire. All hell has broken loose along with your ground tackle. Looking back and reliving the moment, I hope it conjures a dose of adrenaline and a dose of our reality; dragging an anchor really is bolt-upright-in-bed scary stuff with the potential for both danger and destruction. It’s the reason STEADFAST is upgrading the size of the anchor as well as its deployment and retrieval system.
Between what can happen when we’re on the water and what we have had to do to get back in the water, it’s no wonder friends far and wide are convinced we’re batshit crazy. I know that description still stands, and is probably as accurate as it could be.
We are engineering, thinking, consulting, sanding, priming, painting and preparing for this crucial install. Here are our workspaces:
Right now SPARRING WITH MOTHER NATURE is mainly the weather—from 74 to 24(F) with an occasional downpour and north winds that chill to the bone…no complaints because some of this nation has had it much worse and our hearts are with them.
As always, thanks for being aboard. There’s nothing quite like STEADFAST, and nothing quite as dedicated as you, if you’ve gotten this far. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate it—-makes the whole project so much better when I can share it with the world. Wooden boats may or may not have been a topic that you would have chosen, so just remember, this mountain and desert dweller never imagined herself here, hauling anchors and meeting the eyes of dolphins. LIfe is good, if unpredictable.
All the best to you and what you are passionate about, whether it makes sense to everyone else or not! See you here next week. ~J
Thanks to SAIL magazine, I appreciated their publishing my work, here is the link:
https://sailmagazine.com/cruising/cruising-eclipse-interrupted/
Serious cruiser use anchor alarms for a reason! Sailing Vessel Roam’s Substack is interesting in regard to utilizing three alarms set simultaneously. They are currently on the other side of the planet; if you’re interested take a look, Jim is quite an informative writer!
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When all else fails, try journalism. Back in the Fight, Houthis Use Simrad Boat Radars To Hit ShipsHow Halo24 Became a Tool for Disruption of Global Commerce
The Iranian-backed Houthis of Yemen yesterday opened a new front in the U.S.-Israeli war against Tehran. This Arab tribe gave the American military a preview of how 21st century assymetrical combat works when it launched attacks against the U.S. Navy in the Red Sea a few years ago. This story was originally published on January 28, 2024. The story seems topical today. Celebrity endorsements are key to selling consumer products, but what if the celebrities themselves aren’t all that likeable? Ask Simrad, which manufactures a marine radar system that just enjoyed a big shout-out, thanks to our villains du jour, the Houthi rebels. The Houthis are an Arab tribe that is fighting for control of Yemen, a strategic hunk of territory that dominates the Red Sea route to the Suez Canal. Like the Ukranian military, the Houthis are a disciplined, nimble and resourceful force, fighting the Yemeni government and the U.S. equipped and trained forces of Saudi Arabia. Now, urged on by their sugardaddy Iran, the Houthis are disrupting world shipping traffic through the Red Sea as a way of pressuring the Israelis to back down over Gaza. What has that got to do with Simrad? Last week the New York Times published a story about Houthi resilience in the face of U.S. air strikes. The reporters gave a shout-out to a particular piece of gear that is helping to bedevil America and her allies—the Simrad Halo24 dome radar.
The Houthis began buying Halo24s as they brawled with Saudi Arabia through the later half of the last decade. As it has done during the Ukraine war, the U.S. military kept a close watch to learn how Houthis were able to keep the better equipped Saudi forces at bay for half a decade. That’s how the Halo24 came up on the Pentagon’s radar, figuratively speaking Shoot and ScootAs Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt wrote in their Jan. 24 story in the Times:
While U.S. air forces are superbly capable of neutralizing super-expensive military-grade targeting stations, they are proving less effective at hitting cheap ($3,099 at West Marine) Halo24-based systems moved around in the beds of pick-up trucks. Apparently, a Houthi fire team will raise a Halo24 dome on a pole temporarily while they fire a drone or missile and guide it toward a ship. Whether missile or drone, once it hits, misses or gets shot down, the tower is quickly lowered, disasembled and stowed, and the truck makes a getaway—shoot and scoot. Like the civil war in Yemen, the Simrad Halo24 came into being around 2015, an improvement on the so-called Broadband Radar introduced a few years earlier by Simrad’s then-parent company Navico. Traditional radar uses something called a magnetron to produce repeated bursts or pulses of radio waves. Halo and earlier Broadband radars emit variable frequencies instead of single bursts. The Corps RecalibratesMeanwhile, the Marine Corps has been reinventing itself as a force that could engage China asymetrically in a future conflict, using smaller Marine units to “fix” Chinese formations long enough for the U.S. and allies to concentrate forces and join in the fight.
Yep, the Marines adopted both Houthi insurgency tactics and the Halo24, a radar intended for the recreational marine market, most definitely not intended for military use, according to Don Korte, the Simrad product manager in charge of the Halo project. Korte said the radars were designed to work with Simrad’s proprietary multi-function displays, but the Marines have gone another route. One image released by the Marines shows a marine training with the Halo24 using a Dell laptop computer as the interface.
The laptop is in SPx server mode, software developed by the British company Cambridge Pixel, a supplier of radar display, tracking and recording sub-systems. Here’s what the company said in 2017 about its system capabilities as applied to an autonomous surface vehicle or ASV. That is, a seagoing drone
If you understand any of that, you can probably begin to see how a Halo24 with SPx or a similar software could guide an airborne suicide drone from a Yemeni beach to a passing container ship. Halo24 has a theoretical max range of 48 miles; actual range depends on both the height of the dome above sea level and the height of the target.
According to Korte, instead of the four- and six-kilowatt magnetrons of traditional pulse radar, Halo uses up to 25 watts of power and a “spread-spectrum X-band transmitter” to send out a signal using what’s called “pulse compression.” The signal burst is comprised of up to six different pulse lengths consisting of a range of frequencies, rather than just one, that upon echo return provide large amounts of data about the distance and direction of targets. Ben Ellison, founder of Panbo, a website devoted to marine electronics, wrote about Halo’s benefits when Simrad brought the technology to market about eight years ago:
Korte said the Halo radars were also an improvement over the previous Broadband 4G models because their higher power allowed better MARPA tracking of targets. MARPA stands for Mini-Automatic Radar Plotting Aid, and we civilians use it for collision avoidance. But you can see how it might also assist in vectoring a moving aerial or surface vehicle to its collision with a moving target such as a ship. Halo can track 10 MARPA targets simultaneously, 20 in dual-screen mode, Korte said. For us, one of the cool functions is the Halo24’s ability to operate displaying dual radar ranges overlaid on dual charts. “You can do chart-chart with radar on dual range and when you change chart scale, the radar will automatically follow the chart range,” Korte said. “I worked very hard to make that work good.” Masters of Their Own DomainFor the Marines, the name of the game is “maritime domain awareness,” a key mission under Force Design 2030. The Corps’ blueprint for future war-fighting includes a new “Littoral Regiment” that will “help the fleet and joint force win the reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance battle within a contested area at the leading edge of a maritime defense.” Capt. Larry Boyd, a Marine officer involved in a joint exercise with Philipines forces in November 2023, highlighted the use of off-the-shelf sensors such as Simrad Halo24s, which he said allow “for a more seamless interoperability in building the maritime-domain-awareness picture.” What he said. The Houthis are not the first bad guys to burnish the good name of a product by purchasing them in mass. The Taliban’s choice of Toyota pick-up trucks—referred to as “technicals”—as a platform for their machine guns and missile launchers is another. And the idea can be applied not just to products but services. In the war movie Full Metal Jacket the drill sergeant hilariously cites the Texas tower gunman (who killed 12 people) and Lee Harvey Oswald, both Marine veterans, as testament to the quality of the Corps’ marksmanship training. Like the Houthis, their achievements/crimes constituted an endorsement. At this point, some readers may be thinking, so what? The Houthis are shooting at ships, but they haven’t sunk anything. The allied Navies are blasting Houthi ordinance out of the sky, and the one or two hits or ships haven’t caused much damage. Alas, that argument is true, but it’s irrelevant truth. The fact that the threat exists at all has caused wholesale re-routing of world shipping. That creates delays and higher costs. Shippers’ insurance goes way up. It has been the cause of one of those supply-chain disruptions that everyone prattles on about. Brunswick ConnectionSimrad is now owned by Brunswick Corp., a $6,62 billion Fortune 500 company that absolutely dominates the market for boats, marine propulsion and boating accessories. Brunswick routinely reports to its stockholders about the potential for “acts of terrorism or civil unrest” to disrupt distribution channels or its supply chain. Brunswick has six facilities in Europe, a continent that benefits mightily from movement of goods through the Suez. European car factories have actually had to shut down for lack of components coming from the Far East. The irony is that while Brunswick is profiting from the military application of one of its recreational products, it too may be feeling a bit incovenienced by events in the Red Sea. Further deterioration might find Brunswick in the unique position of being hoist by their own petard, after first having profited from the sale of said petard.¹ Yeah, unlikely. I know. LOOSE CANNON was miscast as a boating magazine electronics editor in a previously life. Marine electronics have become boring nowadays, but every once in a while… 1 Wikipedia: Hoist by his own petard is a phrase from a speech in William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet that has become proverbial. The phrase’s meaning is that a bomb-maker is blown (“hoist”) off the ground by his own bomb (“petard”), and indicates an ironic reversal or poetic justice.
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© 2026
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When all else fails, try journalism. Born To Race, Built To FailHow a Beneteau’s Glued-Together Construction Nearly Killed Its Delivery Crew
The author has one of the few YouTube sailing channels worth watching. He’s a U.S. Navy vet who spent five years as a navigator aboard a submarine. The channel is Sailing Zingaro, named after the Oyster 485 that he later sailed with his wife. Evenson is also the author of “Be the Captain,” a book of lessons about leadership at sea. The bilge pump started coming on somewhere off Haiti. The first time, the skipper checked the obvious things, found nothing, and kept sailing. The wind was building. Thirty-five knots, gusting 45. Gale conditions on a boat designed to go fast, not far. They were triple reefed on the main and jib. By the time the crew was 150 miles from land, the pump was cycling every fifteen seconds. This was a Beneteau First 47.7. Farr-designed. High rig, nine-foot fin keel. A performance boat, beautiful to sail, the kind of thing that wins races and looks good doing it. The skipper was a professional delivery captain with thousands of offshore miles behind him. He had put together a crew and taken the job without hesitation. Bahamas to Cartagena. Routine crossing. It stopped being routine somewhere around midnight on the final night. “The floorboards were floating. We were on our knees with a vacuum cleaner, bailing a 47-foot sailboat in a gale. The pump died, so we got the shop vac,” he says. “Taking turns vacuuming water out of the bilge. Half an hour on, half an hour off. Nobody sleeping. And then the batteries died.” No autopilot. No instruments. No pump. The crew hand-steered in 40-knot winds in the dark, still bailing. What saved them was geography. The Sierra Nevada mountains blocked the wind as they rounded the Colombian headland. The water ingress slowed. They reached Cartagena at dawn. When they hauled the boat, they found out why it had been trying to sink them. The BuildThis is how the First 47.7 is built. And it is not unique to Beneteau: The hull comes first: a fibreglass shell, curved and stiff in that shape, but structurally incomplete on its own. Then a prefabricated internal grid is built separately. This is the skeleton of the boat, with the berths, bulkheads and cabinetry designed into it before it ever sees the hull. This is a cost-effective way to build boats. Efficient. Modular. You can vary the layout without retooling the hull. The grid drops into the hull. Contact surfaces get coated with methacrylate adhesive. Structural glue, aerospace-grade. The grid squishes it down and that bond is what holds the two halves of the boat together. On most production boats under 50 feet, that glue is the only connection between the grid and the hull. No fiberglass tabbing over the joins. No mechanical fasteners. Just the adhesive. For most boats, sailed as intended, it works fine. The industry builds hundreds of thousands of boats this way. The First 47.7 is not sailed as intended by most of its owners. It is a racing machine pressed into service as a cruiser. The tall rig and deep fin keel that make it fast also put the hull under loads that a typical cruising boat never sees. In heavy weather on a beam reach, the sails drive the mast sideways while the keel fights back. The hull is caught in the middle, flexing with every wave, every gust. “You can reef the sails,” the skipper says. “You cannot reef the keel.” Over 20 years, on a boat that has been raced hard, those constant small flexes add up. The methacrylate bond works a little every time the boat moves. Eventually, it stops working. On this boat, the grid had separated from the hull along most of its length, running forward from the keel area. The glue had failed.
The hull was flexing independently of the grid. The keel bolt bedding had cracked under the stress and seawater was travelling up through the penetrations from inside the structure. The hull below the waterline was completely intact. The water was coming from within. “We were lucky we didn’t lose the keel out there. If that keel comes off, 150 miles from land, in those conditions—that’s it.” Four WordsEvery delivery skipper knows the infamous case of the Cheeki Rafiki. A Beneteau First 40.7, the smaller sister ship of the boat he had just delivered. Same designer, same construction, same proportions, just seven feet shorter. In 2014, being delivered from Antigua to the U.K., the keel failed. The boat capsized. Search aircraft found the hull floating in the middle of the Atlantic, mast-down. The EPIRB had activated. A life raft was recovered. They never found the four crew. The captain’s last transmission was four words: “This is getting worse.” The skipper of the First 47.7 knew all of this. He just hadn’t been thinking about it at two in the morning with water over the floorboards and no batteries. That’s not what you think about out there. You think about the next fifteen minutes. It was only in port that he put it together. The boat he had just stepped off and the boat at the bottom of the Atlantic were essentially the same boat. “That is the exact thought I had. In that cabin. Two in the morning, batteries dead, water over the floors,” he says. “In the haul-out footage, I’m laughing,” he says. “Dark humor. Relief that we made it. When I started researching a possible remediation, I opened up the accident report and read that final transmission from the Captain…I got goosebumps. I can’t believe I hadn’t seen it before.”
An inquest followed the loss of Cheeki Rafiki. Questions were raised about the boat’s condition before departure—prior grounding damage, gaps in the pre-departure inspection. A better-maintained boat might have survived that crossing. But this failure mode did not start with Cheeki Rafiki, and it did not end there. Grid separation, adhesive degradation under sustained offshore loading, keel bolt stress working upward through the structure. It is not a freak occurrence. It is a known consequence of sailing a boat hard beyond the loads it was designed for. And the conversation about it, in this industry, has always been very quiet.
The QuestionBeneteau builds good boats for what they are designed to do. The First series is well-engineered for coastal sailing, racing, short offshore hops. The boats are great to sail, and the price point is inclusive. There is nothing wrong with that. The problem is that many of these boats are marketed as CE class A offshore and sold into a much wider world. They show up on offshore rally start lines. They are bought by cruisers planning ocean passages. And the construction method at the core of this failure is not in any brochure. Most surveyors are not specifically trained to find it. Buyers are not told to look for it. The skipper puts it charitably: “If you buy a sports car and take it off-road and the suspension fails, is that the manufacturer’s fault?” It is a reasonable question. It is also worth noting that sports cars are not advertised with images of desert crossings. If you own a production boat of this type, pull the floorboards. Look at every contact point between the grid and the hull. You are looking for cracks, gaps, or any separation at all. Check the bulkhead behind the mast for stress cracking where it meets the deck. If you are buying a used boat, do not rely on the surveyor to find this. It can be filled and painted over. You need to look yourself. The Cheeki Rafiki crew were experienced sailors. They knew what they were doing. The captain’s last words were “This is getting worse.” Don’t let that be you.
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When all else fails, try journalism.
The Grand Dame of bluewater sailing has weighed in on the controversial issue of solo sailing. And Lin Pardey put her money where he mouth is. Pardey didn’t have to subscribe to Loose Cannon to connect, but maybe she felt having paid status would help get our attention:
Yes, Pardey is voyaging again with her new beau, and she is writing about it on her Go Now! Substack newsletter. The other half of the famous partnership, her late husband Larry, died in 2020. Lin Pardey is 82. A recent pair of stories about the pitfalls of singlehanding received a lot of reader pushback, which Loose Cannon described as cult-like devotion to the notion.
The Pardey’s themselves have been controversial as they promoted their philosophy of engineless (and toiletless) ocean voyaging. Christine Kling is also on Substack with Sailingwriter. This author and friend of Loose Cannon calls herself a Pardey “fan girl.” Kling once wrote:
Then, there is a dissenting view from author and fellow Substacker J.R. Roessl (Out of Step) who once referred to Lin Pardey as “the Wicked Witch of the West,” based on her interactions with the Pardeys while cruising with her family as a teenager in the early 1970s. Her sailing memoir “Unmoored: Coming of Age in Troubled Waters” describes the Pardeys as self-righteous and nasty.
The point of all this is the not-so-subtle message that Loose Cannon covers the issues and personalities in our little world of cruising with depth and nuance. The goal is to create an online environment where readers can discuss and disagree without devolving into a cage-fight. As far as readership, free subcriptions greatly outnumber the paid, as one would expect. My goal is to keep both categories growing at the same pace. There is no paywall for the latest stories, with the hope that once people find themselves reading with regularity, they will upgrade to a paid subscription. For example, Loose Cannon has been publishing stories for more than six years, yet there are 3,087 people who signed up in 2022 and 2023 that are still reading for free. Those who read Loose Cannon a lot should consider upgrading to paid, if they can afford to do so. (If you can’t, no problem. Share the love instead. Share stories you like with others.) Also a reminder: Another free resource for the nautically minded is the Loose Cannon Facebook page, which features daily links to stories about “boats, boating and waterways,” not written by, but curated by us. (For example, did you know that Publix supermarket is opening a store on the Savannah waterfront with its own dock?) Finally, another way to support the writing is to drink more tequila, specifically from Bellagave, the distiller that bravely became Loose Cannon’s sole sponsor. (See our pitch below.) LOOSE CANNON covers hard news, technical issues and nautical history. Every so often he tries to be funny. Subscribe for free to support the work. If you’ve been reading for a while—and you like it—consider upgrading to paid. |
Members of the RMHYS enjoy special and beautiful times together in Abaco’s. Membership is open to all. ” Give ’em a shout. You will be glad you did. If you are cruising the Bahamas this winter, consider joining Royal Marsh Harbour Yacht Club, a premier yacht club in the Abacos and A CRUISERS NET SPONSOR!
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