TO DRAG

Mar 28

Marines assigned to the Mobile Reconnaissance Company, 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, work with their counterparts aboard a Swedish fast patrol craft to deploy an RQ-20 Puma tactical unmanned aerial system during Exercise Archipelago Endeavor 2022 at Berga Naval Base, Sweden. The UAV works in tandem with the SIMRAD navigation/surveillance radar, top right, to provide a positive identification of threat vessels. (Photo by Lance Cpl. Adam Scalin)

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.

You can just read the word “Simrad” on the radar dome sitting under camouflage on top of a barrel. (U.S. Marine Corps photo)

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 Scoot

As Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt wrote in their Jan. 24 story in the Times:

Lt. Gen. Frank Donovan, now the vice commander of United States Special Operations Command, noticed what the Houthis were doing with the radar back when he was leading a Fifth Fleet amphibious task force operating in the southern Red Sea. Trying to figure out how the Houthis were targeting ships, General Donovan soon realized the Houthis were mounting off-the-shelf radars on vehicles on the shore and moving them around.
He challenged his Second Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion to develop a similar system.

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 Recalibrates

Meanwhile, 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.

Marines in a joint exercise with Philipine troops in November assemble a tower topped with a Halo24 dome radar. Height is the key to range over the water.

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.

A U.S. marine trains to use an ordinary Dell laptop to interface with a Simrad Halo24 radar, using software from Cambridge Pixel. (U.S. Marine Corps photo)

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

Cambridge Pixel’s SPx Server radar tracking software receives radar video from the onboard radars, typically Navico’s Simrad 4G or Halo radars. The processing of video to detect targets of interest uses adaptive algorithms to accommodate a wide range of operating conditions. Initially, plots are extracted as detections from the radar that exceed a background level. These plots are then correlated to differentiate clutter from true targets.
Once the target has passed a confidence test, a provisional track becomes established and is subsequently tracked from scan to scan with a multi-hypothesis, multi-model tracker. Navigation data from the ship is used to compensate for own-ship motion. The output from the tracking server is combined with AIS targets, using the SPx fusion software, and the resultant fused track is provided as a standard ASTERIX or TTM message into ASV’s control software.

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.

This USA Today graphic shows the tactical environment as shipping through the Red Sea must first pass through a 20-mile gap before a gradual widening as they move northward.

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:

Simrad’s designers understood that short pulses provide good minimum range, but poor long range performance. At the same time—you guessed it—long pulses work well at long range but don’t do so well up close. In layman’s terms, Simrad decided to transmit waves of a variety of frequencies every time, so the system will be effective over its full range, which the company says stretches from 20 feet to 72 nautical miles out (for Halo-6). The idea is that the radar will work just as well in close as far away.

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 Domain

For 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 Connection

Simrad 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…

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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Mar 29, 2026by: Curtis Hoff No Comments 26.456,-81.95039999
Cruiser Appreciation Day – April 12, Fort Myers Beach, FL

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Few Floridian communities are as welcoming to the cruising community as CRUISERS NET SPONSOR, Fort Myers Beach! This is a town that knows how to treat cruisers.

Click Here To View the Western Florida Cruisers Net Anchorage Directory Listing For the Fort Myers Beach Mooring Field
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Mar 27, 2026by: Curtis Hoff No Comments
Cruisers’ Net Weekly Newsletter – March 27, 2026
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Mar 25, 2026by: Curtis Hoff No Comments

Born To Race, Built To Fail – Loose Cannon

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When all else fails, try journalism.

Born To Race, Built To Fail

How a Beneteau’s Glued-Together Construction Nearly Killed Its Delivery Crew

James Evenson

Mar 23

∙

Guest post

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 Build

This 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.

This image shows one area where the bond between hull and grid 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 Words

Every 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.”

The U.S. Coast Guard took this photo of the overturned *Cheeki Rafiki.*

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.

MAIB Report on the Loss of Cheeki Rafiki

7.35MB ∙ PDF file

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The Question

Beneteau 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.

Rescuing a Dismasted Crew Mid-Pacific and Documenting It Too

October 29, 2023

Read full story

Q&A: New Manual Like ‘Chapman’ But With Attitude

November 9, 2025

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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.

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Mar 24, 2026by: Curtis Hoff No Comments

Lin Pardey Is Back at Sea (and She Has Joined the Cannon Crew) – Loose Cannon

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When all else fails, try journalism.

Lin Pardey Is Back at Sea (and She Has Joined the Cannon Crew)

Agrees With Solo-Sailor Coverage

Mar 22

Lin Pardey has gone to sea again, and she has signed up for Loose Cannon.

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:

The reason I paid you for a sub was so I could send you a note—so will repeat here—I so so agreed with your post about the legal pitfalls of singlehanding. I have often wanted to write something similar, but several of my best friends crossed oceans on their own for various reasons, and my current partner did the same before we met so…Keep up the good work. And wish me luck as I begin my Substack journey. So far getting a nice number of readers. I am not good about asking for money, but hope more folks will add to my cruising kitty.

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 Cult of the Solo-Sailor

Mar 9

Read full story

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:

She lives life with a grace and enthusiasm that the years have not dimmed. Her laughter is infectious and all that personality comes through in her writing. For any writer who wants to understand “voice,” just read Lin’s work.

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.

Sailing Memoir Recasts Larry Pardey as a Bit of a Bully

February 13, 2025

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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.)

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Mar 23, 2026by: Curtis Hoff No Comments

A Message from Commodore David Russo, Royal Marsh Harbor Yacht Club, Abacos, Bahamas

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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Dear Members and Friends of the Royal Marsh Harbour Yacht Club,

As Commodore, I would like to extend my sincere thanks to all of you for your enthusiastic participation in this year’s events in the Bahamas. It has truly been a wonderful and active season, filled with great camaraderie, memorable moments, and plenty of fun. While doing all that we also donated funds to several local organizations that support the yachting community.

We were especially fortunate to enjoy such beautiful weather—certainly a welcome contrast to much of what was experienced back in the United States.

While it is always bittersweet to see everyone depart, whether heading back home or continuing on to other parts of the Bahamas, we take comfort in knowing we will gather again next season. I look forward to welcoming you all back next year.

I would also like to express my deep appreciation to our Bridge members and committee chairs for their dedication and hard work. Your efforts made this season a great success.

Wishing each of you safe travels and a pleasant journey ahead.

Warm regards,

Dave Russo

Royal Marsh Harbor YC

commodore@rmhyc.com

Follow us on Facebook. If you are not in the Royal Marsh Harbour Yacht Club Facebook group, click the link below and request to join. Don’t forget to answer the questions!

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Mar 23, 2026by: Curtis Hoff No Comments

TAKING A BOW – Janice Anne Wheeler, Sparring With Mother Nature

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What an honor to have all of you aboard. Please, stay, enjoy, learn and share.

If you just found our engaging little community, please read SPARS & SPARRING, .….it introduces my wonders and my wanders. ~J

TAKING A BOW

And making it better

Janice Anne Wheeler

Mar 22

Share SPARRING WITH MOTHER NATURE

I received a dozen tornado watch notifications while still trying to revel in the magic of a hundreds-strong pod of dolphins on the equator. When the afternoon blizzard stuck, completely blocking my view of the building next door (I shit you not), I couldn’t resist my favorite sarcasm of the season, “Nice ladder-climbing weather,” because, of course, that is what we have to do to do what we have to do.

Reality set in, I doubled up my Smartwool socks and headed out. Later on it was cold but we had a mix of sun and clouds; the sky seemed impossibly blue as I gazed up at the rig. I deconstructed the protective winter tent/greenhouse that allowed us to smooth and beautify our bottom, and are making tremendous strides finishing the rebuild of STEADFAST’s bow.

Contemplating this week’s content, I came across this photo, which ties together everything this crew has been working toward; the crucial reconstruction project intricacies that still lie before us and what we will most certainly, most hopefully, encounter on our passages this fall and forevermore; Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphins.

Of most interest right now is the intricate, layered teak deck and the numerous rigging components, (which hasn’t looked like that in a long time); I imagine you’re as surprised to read this as I was to write it, dolphin-obsessed as I am. However, sometimes the practical things simply must capture our attention, even if we’re left-brained.(!) None of the essential topside deck or hardware is yet reattached, and none of the creatures on the left are ever guaranteed. There are no guarantees, but if you ever have this opportunity, and you lean over, dolphins will meet your eyes, which makes me tingle all over. OK, back to practicalities…

Destruction of deck August 2024; just the beginning.

The aforementioned intricacies of STEADFAST’s deck are exactly why Sailor Steve is absorbed by engineering, calculating, measuring, defining contact points, angles, strengths and the like while collecting bronze rod, oak, teak and tenacity. Importantly, this is only a third of what his boat-loving brain is processing. (foreshadowing)

Since we don’t do anything in particularly small style, STEADFAST is the recipient of an entirely new anchor system; that decision came with some difficulty and considerable financial burden but has practicality and safety on its side. Throughout the project we have insisted that all materials and a tremendous majority of the style components were original. We even reclaimed the planks from a factory built in the same era, long over a century ago.

Traditional William Hand Jr designs nearly all had a starboard bow anchor hause pipe (a channel for the anchor chain and shank that goes from the deck down to the starboard hullside near the waterline) where the anchor is stored while underway or at a dock. This system saves space on deck, is a classic design of the times and eliminates traditional bow anchor chain stress. Unfortunately and importantly it also trapped moisture and perpetrated some deterioration of her hull, as seen in the photos below. Steve’s theory, the less holes in the hull of the vessel, the better.

Whether you are experienced or not in the artful sport of using wind as propulsion, (and if you’ve read my more harrowing descriptions), you can imagine that the anchor, no matter how tightly it is restrained, can do some pretty impressive slamming on the bow as we spar with Mother Nature, borrowing her forces to propel us forward and being repelled (or additionally propelled) by what I consider the most powerful, consistent force on the planet, waves. Even tidal waves and currents are powerful and often underestimated—most of us know this simply by wading into a calm ocean on a picturesque beach; it’s impressive, surprising, and effortlessly tugs your feet from beneath you. Imagine the pressure and strength of waves that are many feet taller and pushed by not just the orbit of the moon, but winds which can be light, gusty, consistent, strong, and is nearly always unpredictable.

Right or wrong, with forgiveness asked of the famed designer William Hand Jr, Steve decided to not replace the starboard hause pipe and rather to redesign the anchor system, moving it to STEADFAST’s newly reconstructed stem and bow. No small task, and no wonder his hair has gone a little (more) Einstein.

With each rebuild, an opportunity to improve….

On STEADFAST, it is the physically smaller of the crew who manages the anchor deployment and retrieval (yep, that’s me). While that should not matter, it’s in the forefront of this relatively new sailor’s mind. Perhaps the most important thing in a boat is not how it goes forward, but how to keep it in place when necessary. After all, if we cannot do that, dangers abound close to shore, perils that can and will destroy, debilitate and least of which embarrass to no end.

It’s ironic that what is a final step in the long rebuild process, and not as grand as new planks and a glorious exotic stem, is also the most technical and essential to what we have already accomplished. The smooth new teak ridge on the left is inelegantly referred to as a ‘mud board’ which was designed to deflect dirty water from anchor retrieval back into the sea rather than down our decks. On the right is the glue-laminated oak anchor platform, which is currently being meticulously encased in teak. The new system is designed for a large primary anchor on starboard and a secondary storm anchor on port.

The top component on the left, the bitt, is the bottom component on the right.

We are STEADFASTly moving forward, and I hope warmer weather will prevail! March 20th was Equinox, so no matter if you are moving into fall or into spring, beautiful change is in the air. Until next week….thanks for staying on board; it’s crucial ballast! ~J

If you think my work is worthy, restack this baby and then, if you have time, tell me what you liked. Or not. No pressure! Glad we’re in this together.

In case you missed how we (painstakingly) found the proper planking, enjoy. Lots of other stories in the archives, too, on my home page.

MORE PRECIOUS COMMODITIES

Janice Anne Wheeler

September 22, 2024

It was remarkable. The olfactory senses took over and swept me to my childhood in the woods. As soon as the truck and trailer turned the corner, a hundred yards away, the sweet smell wafted, like a Christmas tree, when, a generation ago (or two already?), it was cut down and thawed in the living room, awaiting adornment. It’s an unmistakable memory and …

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And a harrowing experience:

OVER AND OVER AND OVER

Janice Anne Wheeler

May 9, 2024

Our 1934 56-foot Wooden Motorsailer STEADFAST casts a big shadow. She’s tall as sailing yachts go; the top of the pilothouse is nearly twelve feet above the surface of the water. On April 26th and 27th waves loomed above that level, over and over and over, opposing gravity, it seemed, passing us by when it looked like they would completely flood our ent…

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Mar 22, 2026by: Curtis Hoff No Comments 26.9291,-82.06339999
Fishermen’s Village April 2026 Calendars, Punta Gorda, FL

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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.
Fishermen’s Village APRIL Calendars of Entertainment/Events
April 2026 Sunset Beach Club Calendar April 2026 Fisherman’s Village Calendar
Kathy Burnam
Special Events & Community Relations
941.639.8721
kburnam@fishermensvillage.com
www.fishermensvillage.com
Click Here To View the Western Florida Cruisers Net Marina Directory Listing For Fishermen’s Village
Click Here To Open A Chart View Window Zoomed To the Location of Fishermen’s Village
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Mar 22, 2026by: Curtis Hoff No Comments
Historian To Share Stories Behind the Sailors, Their Ink – CoastalReview

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Mar 21, 2026by: Curtis Hoff No Comments 26.456,-81.95039999
Cruiser Appreciation Day – April 12, Fort Myers Beach, FL

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Few Floridian communities are as welcoming to the cruising community as CRUISERS NET SPONSOR, Fort Myers Beach! This is a town that knows how to treat cruisers.

Click Here To View the Western Florida Cruisers Net Anchorage Directory Listing For the Fort Myers Beach Mooring Field
Click Here To Open A Chart View Window, Zoomed To the Location of the Fort Myers Beach Mooring Field
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Mar 21, 2026by: Curtis Hoff No Comments
1,000 pounds of Flounder … – CoastalReview

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Mar 20, 2026by: Curtis Hoff No Comments
Cruisers’ Net Weekly Newsletter – March 20, 2026
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Mar 19, 2026by: Curtis Hoff No Comments
Good News for Cruisers: Top Expert Declares Cuba Hurricane-Free – Loose Cannon
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Good News for Cruisers: Top Expert Declares Cuba Hurricane-Free
Idiocy? Or Could There Be a Grain of Truth in the Latest Presidential Poop Sandwich?
Peter Swanson
Mar 18

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That time the President improved upon a National Weather Service map with a sharpie. Yeah. No. Dorian turned right and went up the coast. Now, the same man says that Cuba is “not in a hurricane zone.”
“I think Cuba, in its own way, tourism and everything else, it’s a beautiful island, great weather. They’re not in a hurricane zone, which is nice for a change, you know? They won’t be asking us for money for hurricanes every week. I do believe I’ll have the honor of taking Cuba.” —President Donald Trump, March 16, 2026
Introduction: Yes, the hapless guy with the hurricane Sharpie says Cuba—one of the most hurricane-hit places on earth—is not in a hurricane zone. This man also happens to live in Florida and yet is somehow unaware that many hurricanes that hit his state got there by crossing the Florida Straits from Cuba.
Havana, at the center of this historical NOAA track map below, is like ground zero for cyclonic mayhem.

Hurricanes over eastern Cuba since 1851.
Yet, having said that, we owe our leaders the benefit of a doubt. Maybe the Commander-in-Chief was channeling a Loose Cannon story written a couple years ago that described a section of Cuba’s North Coast as having been historically free from direct hits, while blessed with several sheltered bays. Enjoy.
The Hurricane-Hole Row That’s a No-Go
Now would be a good time to talk about how government stupidity on both sides of the Florida Straits is keeping us away from some historically proven hurricane holes, which happen to be in Cuba.
Most cruisers have heard of Luperon Bay in the Dominican Republic. Geography has made Luperon a great hurricane hole for several reasons—some obvious and some not.
A narrow entrance opens into two basins, both of which are surrounded by hills and have deep sticky muck for holding. But it has a climatological advantage as well. The best shelter in the world isn’t much good if the location itself is a hurricane magnet. The opposite is demonstrably true in the case of Luperon, which has not had a direct hit since hurricane tracking began in 1851.

The National Weather Service keeps a record of all hurricane tracks since 1851. This only shows tracks after 1880 as of 2024. The darker the color the stronger the storm winds. Tropical storm tracks were excluded from this depiction.
Luperon: Irma at Her Worst, 45-Knots
Luperon’s cruisers fretted at the approach of Irma and Maria in 2017, but the eye of each came no closer than 65 miles as they passed to the north—as usual.
Cruiser weather consultant Chris Parker noted that being on the left-hand quadrant of a hurricane is fortuitous in its own right,¹that being the orientation of Luperon vis-a-vis Irma and Maria. Then he explained the role of topography:
No location in the western North Atlantic is completely safe from hurricanes, but if we were looking for a relatively safe spot, it would lie on the north coast of a large, mountainous landmass. Almost all hurricanes move in a general westerly direction during most of their time in the tropics. Later they turn north, then northeast or east-northeast. There are exceptions, but this is the usual pattern.
If a west-moving hurricane passes along or just north of the north coast of our large mountainous landmass, then harbors along the north coast will experience the less-strong south side (left-front-quadrant) of the hurricane.
If a west-moving hurricane passes over our large mountainous landmass, dry air and tall mountains disrupt the hurricane’s structure causing rapid weakening of the entire system. If a west-moving hurricane passes south of our large mountainous landmass, then it is so far from the north coast that conditions on the north coast are mild…
In order for a west-or northwest-moving hurricane to affect Luperon, it would pass over 100-200 miles of the mountainous Dominican Republic, including several 10,000-foot-plus peaks located south of Luperon. This would severely weaken the hurricane, minimizing damage in Luperon.
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In his analysis, Parker also mentioned Puerto Vita in Cuba, which happens to be the easternmost port of entry on that country’s North Coast—same phenomenon. What he didn’t say is that—unlike the D.R.’s one-of-a-kind Luperon—Vita is just one of seven pocket bays on a 100-mile stretch of coast fronting on the Old Bahama Channel.
From West to East, they are Nuevitas Bay, Puerto Manati, Puerto Padre, Puerto Vita, Naranjo, Banes Bay and Nipe Bay. And these are just the bodies of water with marked entrance channels.
All Hurricane Tracks Since 1851

You certainly wouldn’t want to shelter in Havana or the Florida Keys, as you can see by this depiction of hurricane tracks beginning in 1851. The area outlined in black, however, shows significantly less storm-track density. Below are close-ups of adjacent areas roughly within that box. (U.S. Weather Service)

A catamaran enters the bay at Puerto Vita. (Photo by Peter Swanson)
Off Limits
But even during Obama’s second term—when we were allowed to take our boats to Cuba—we wouldn’t have been welcome at any of the places mentioned here except Puerto Vita, which is a port of entry and has a marina operated by a company that is a subsidiary of the Cuban military.
In fact, unless you were seeking refuge from a storm or experiencing a medical or mechanical emergency, there’s a high likelihood that a foreign boat arriving at the other six bays would be told to leave immediately or first thing the next morning.
No point going through all the trouble of maintaining a police state, if you’re going to let folks wander around wherever they please.

Nipe Bay is huge, and its shores are largely undeveloped. Ships come in to service the generating plant. (Photo by Peter Swanson)
There’s not a whole lot in any of these places for the cruising crowd anyway, except maybe Puerto Padre. I have not been there, but descriptions make it seem like a nice place.
Ports like Nuevitas and Manati feature crumbling commercial facilities. Some like Vita are bordered by thick mangroves. Naranjo is a base for excursion boats serving guests at a nearby resort. Nipe, a huge bay, is surrounded mostly by forest and pasture, the view dominated by a power plant at the small bayside village of Felton.
Nope, Vita aside, nobody wants us in the Cuban hurricane holes—not at the moment. But the potential…ahh, the potential.
Bay Charts, East to West, from Varied Sources (Just for Fun)

Nineteenth century depiction of Nipe Bay, which is show in a photo further up the story.

Banes Bay is more than five miles wide. (Google Earth)

These chartlets for Puerto Vita and Puerto Naranjo are taken from Waterway Guide Cuba by Addison Chan.

Here’s how Navionics depicts Puerto Padre.

Nautical author Nigel Calder made his own harbor sketches for his now outdated “Cuba: A Cruising Guide.”

And finally Navionics’ rendering of the industrial port of Nuevitas Bay.
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.
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“Prudent mariners know the right-front-quadrant (relative to its forward motion) of a hurricane is typically the most dangerous part. In the right-front-quadrant, not only do winds blow toward the path of the hurricane, but strength of wind increases by the forward speed of the hurricane, and we typically find about 90 percent of tornadoes and waterspouts and most destructive microbursts in this quadrant.
“Conversely, left-quadrant (relative to its forward motion) of a hurricane is its “navigable semicircle”. In the left-quadrant, wind blows away from the path of the hurricane, we subtract two times its forward speed from the “max sustained wind” (usually found in the right-front-quadrant), and we typically see fewer severe weather events. Let’s illustrate the difference in wind speed due simply to storm motion.
“Let’s examine a stationary Category 2 hurricane with 90 knot sustained winds. Now put the hurricane in motion at 10 knots of forward speed. The moving hurricane will support 100 knots (Category 3) winds in its right-front-quadrant, but only 80 knots (Category 1) winds in its left-front-quadrant. In addition, although hurricane structure varies, with most west-moving hurricanes along he latitude of the Northern Caribbean, the bulk of inbound tropical moisture feeds from the south into the right-front-quadrant while air feeding into the left-front-quadrant is pulled from the north (less-moist mid-latitudes).”
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G King - March 20, 2026 - 4:14 pm

I was considering subscribing to Peter's vlog… until I read the initial paragraph.
That's when I discovered that the author was into making jabs at a politician, ( I'm sure just for the effect ).
I get enough of that sort of junk from the news. I don't need it on, near or anywhere in the vicinity of a boat!
Reply to G

Mar 18, 2026by: Curtis Hoff No Comments

The Great Escape: Three ‘Trafficked’ Dolphins Make a Bid for Freedom – Loose Cannon

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The Great Escape: Three ‘Trafficked’ Dolphins Make a Bid for Freedom

Sold to a Park by Che Guevara’s Daughter in Communist Cuba

Mar 17

Ocean World is now one of the Dominican Republic’s leading tourist attractions. (Photo by Peter Swanson)

There’s a place in the Dominican Republic called Ocean World, the Dominican version of SeaWorld in America, and Sir Richard Branson doesn’t like either of them.

Back in 2019, long before he was found inhabiting the Epstein Files, Branson made news by declaring that his travel empire would no longer sell tickets to any park that kept whales and dolphins in captivity. This was considered moral high ground at the time.

Public opinion was beginning to turn against the notion of enslaving these clever marine mammals for the sole purpose of our entertainment. Maybe this will entertain you instead: A story about how a trio of dolphins gamed the system.

Once upon a time, my boat was anchored in Luperon Bay, and I was working for the tourist cats at Puerto Plata. I was skippering and maintaining the boats. At the time Ocean World was opening nearby.

Just a few miles to the east of Luperon is a fabulous little day anchorage called Cambiaso, and next to Cambiaso is this tiny little cove overlooked by rock bluffs. I heard from my friends in the tourist industry that Ocean World people had stretched a mesh fence across the mouth, and they were keeping dolphins there while the water park was being finished.

Owned by a German billionaire, Ocean World had bought three juvenile dolphins for $50,000 each from Cuba. Havana needed cash (as it always does) and was engaging in a worldwide dolphin trafficking scheme.

Cuba was the world’s leading dolphin exporter, and by the time Ocean World was coming online, it had sold more than 100 dolphins for between $30,000 and $130,000 each, according to news reports.

The dolphins-for-dollars scheme was being run by none-other than a daughter of Che Guevara—Che the Beret, Che the freedom fighter. As it happens, Celia Guevara was a veterinarian by profession and a marine mammal-monger by necessity.

Of course, Loose Cannon had to have a look. Cambiaso was so isolated back then you could hardly get there by road. True, there was a road, but it was awfully rough, so I borrowed a dirt bike. Once arrived, I dismounted and walked toward the little cove, and, behold, there it was—the Army of the Dominican Republic.

The place was cordoned off like Area 51, and a platoon of soldiers stood guard, M-16s slung over their shoulders. Dominican authorities may have been worried about animal rights protesters. Who knows?

So, I spoke to the soldiers, telling them that I was all by myself, and I wanted to go see the dolphins. “I am sorry, sir, you may not pass. No one may go further than this point.” Meanwhile a college-age woman wearing shorts and a white blouse strode right past us toward the cove. “What about her,” I asked?

“She is the Cuban woman in charge,” one soldier said. “She may pass.”

As a newspaper reporter, I had learned that sometimes there was a way around a police cordon, especially out in the country. As I was walking back to the bike, I saw a Dominican guy about my age who looked like a fisherman. “Amigo,” I said. “The Army won’t let me look at the dolphins. Is there a way around the blockade?”

There is, he said. I told him that I would take care of him, if he could get me to where I could have a good look.

The cove at Cambiaso on a calm day. The bluff at top right provided a good view of the trapped dolphins. (Photo by Peter Swanson)

We went to the shack where he lived with his family. He came out with two fishing rods, one of which he gave to me. Follow me, he said, explaining that there was a path to a good fishing spot that the Army by law cannot block—something akin to aboriginal rights. His fishing spot happened to be on a bluff overlooking the dolphin detention center. Rods in hand, we sauntered over and pretended to fish.

There they were: Three dolphins fenced in, swimming in circles. Sad—that was going to be their forever-life.

Soon after, we heard the shout, a old woman. The mighty Dominican Army couldn’t stop us, so they sent the fisherman’s mother. The jig, so to speak, was up, and at her insistence we retreated back to their humble home. I thanked my man and paid him 15 bucks for his help.

Key fact: This cove is open to the north, so it’s got protection from the prevailing easterlies, but when a frontal system rolls down from the U.S. or there’s a far-off storm over the ocean, waves will roll right down its throat. Apparently, according to my tourist industry friends, Ocean World had been warned about this but didn’t listen.

One very fine northerly day that’s exactly what happened. The waves rolled in, each time completely submerging the fence. And that allowed $150,000 worth of teenage dolphins to get inside those waves and swim over the fence and away from the cove, never to be corralled again.

They lived happily ever after.

The end?

Not quite. Ocean World had to go back to Cuba and buy some more. The dolphin show must go on.

A dolphin performs at Ocean World. (Photo by Peter Swanson)