20º45.87’N 83º 35.47’W 23-MAY-2022 – Reading the Lat and Long, most people will know we’re south of Hawaii, fewer people will know we’re west of Long Island Sound – Looking us up on a map will tell you we’re not many miles from Cuba.
Jennifer and I are together on a Leopard 46 catamaran, Desert Eagle, recently purchased by our friends Jesus and Zoe (pronounced Zoey). Along with an insurance-required delivery captain and a first mate, we’re taking Jesus’ and Zoe’s newly purchased boat home to Key Largo.
This year has been a full year, full of travel and effort to be together; money has flowed like grain from a torn sack and I’ve touched my HELOC to allow the income to catch up with the outflow.
For me, each year starts in September, like a school year, or a federal fiscal year, or, in our case, the end of our time aboard Caro Babbo. After my time aboard Zingaro II in Aruba, Jennifer and I drove from Port Townsend to Phoenix where, reluctantly, we rented out Hilary’s house.
My world, and everyone else’s, is nothing but an interleaved tangle of links. The renter along with his very much younger wife and new little boy are people I met with Brenda in Aruba. Walking through Hilary’s Phoenix neighborhood one evening Lindo called to tell us he’d like to rent the house rather than act as an agent for us.
I never did see Brenda again though she calls me on occasion, addressing me as dad; I call her daughter. She promises to come see me and, just like a real daughter, something comes up at the last minute and though she may be in town she flies off to some other city in another state or continent.
Lindo negotiated hard for what he wanted, but Jennifer knew what she wanted and had no fear of walking away. In the end, Jennifer got what she needed as did Lindo. Jennifer and I loaded a moving truck and drove 33 hours non-stop from Phoenix to Port Townsend, stayed a week, and then played Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint on a Phoenix-bound Amtrak with a bedroom car. I don’t remember whether we spoke about love on an empty stomach.*
About today’s Amtrak first class: The people are generally wonderful, food ranges from marvelous to passable and luxury is non-existent, but it was a lovely way to spend two days alone surrounded by people.
Timing to get to Homer to prep Caro Babbo for the water made ending up on Desert Eagle madcap. Across a week or so week Jennifer and I wound our way to Atlanta seeing friends and dear friends: one I hadn’t seen in forty years – the years have been kind to us both, but we are physically unrecognizable as the young men we once were; and, one I feel towards as my son for whom there is little I wouldn’t do. The friends were entirely my friends. Among the friends my age, now is the time when we can find those friends that life kept us from keeping. We can marvel at the hand that we’ve been dealt and laugh at the absurdity of being happy and safe, and never needing to work ever again.
Jennifer and I stayed in Atlanta for ten days completing only about half of what I planned: Jennifer is the distraction I’ve bet my life on. I dug trenches, installed french drains, did electrical work, climbed a tall ladder and did some painting. I did a moderate amount of pruning, only a little bit of mowing, and took another pass at fixing a gutter leak.
I repaired a leak in the inflatable mattress that in our seven-day dash back to Port Townsend we never did use. We drove to North Dakota to see my multi-engine-rated pilot niece, and worked our way again back to Port Townsend. All told, we drove over 5500 miles most of it with the top down.
A day or two later we were on Delta flying via MSP to Miami to stay with Jesus and Zoe, play tourist in Key West and visit Tiffany to scheme about fixing her boat on a budget.
American Airlines, with cabin crew who didn’t really seem to care, flew us from Miami to Grand Cayman (pronounced like the David Bowie song, Hey Man).
Jennifer and I worked a little bit with Jesus on Desert Eagle, met and dined with John and Lucy the previous owners, did a little bit of tourism and spent money – a habit we need to curtail, soon.
The Grand Cayman plan was to arrive Thursday, leave Friday.
Weather forecasting is done with a number of models. Modeling is using various factors in a way that in the past modeled a known behavior. In this case weather. The goal is to have a model that predicts forward. There are two well-regarded models: the European ECMWF and the American GFS, which are in turn used as the basis for other models – Predict Wind a widely used marine weather forecast company has its own variants, and windy.com also has a well-regarded model.
Earlier in the week, GFS predicted a powerful low-pressure zone spinning up out of the Yucatan, though no one else did. We waited until the weather models came into agreement on a more pleasing forecast. We left on Sunday as the three models coalesced into a weather prediction lighter than any of the three had previously forecast.
A delivery captain has one role: not to take you sailing but to deliver your boat from one location to another. I believe most delivery captains would prefer the owner not be on board. In the role of delivering a boat, when the wind is light the engine comes on, and here were are not 26 hours into our voyage, 25 -1/2 under power. Two engines running at 1500 rpm each give us 6.5 knots.
Jeremy had warned Jennifer and me that when the waves and wind pick up, this would become an unpleasant boat. Unlike the monohulls we are used to, on a cat each hull will rise and fall with the wave it is on. He didn’t mention the hull slap we’d heard about. As the waves and wind picked up waves slapped under the salon, the wave slap was not a slap but a slam. Each repetitive slam traveled up my spine like a hard 737 landing repeating every few seconds. Perhaps my brain floats loser in my skull than other people’s but the headache is unpleasant. By the time Jennifer and I came on watch at 3 am, this had subsided.
22º 54.91’N 84º 8.18’W 24-MAY-2022 – Jennifer and I had an early watch last night – 6 to 9 PM. There was lightning during our watch, as there was on our previous watch.
After we turned in, it rained. We closed the hatch above our bed to light sprinkles and awoke with the hatch covered in large puddles.
No crew I know of eats as much as planned in the first few days of a passage. No one ate breakfast and anyone hungry made what they liked from leftovers of marinated pulled pork. (I had never eaten Jesus’s cooking. He can stand toe-to-toe with any professional Cuban chef whose cooking I have ever eaten.)
Sometime before lunch the wind picked up enough for Captain Jeremy to unroll the Genoa and kill the engines.
Jennifer and I stay out of Jeremy’s and First Mate Brian’s way. They work well as a team and will ask for our labor when it is helpful. Lying in our cabin I heard, then saw, the mainsail go up. Jeremy did so alone from the helm station. The sail went up some small distance, then down, and then back up. Before it was completely raised, I came on deck and stood outboard of the single, starboard helm station.
The mainsail is a huge, large-roached†† affair with partial battens. The sail is so heavy that the halyard is 2:1 with a block (pulley) attached to the head (top) of the sail. Given the electric winch used to raise the main, I am surprised 2:1 is necessary.
The looped halyard had twisted, crossing twice before the block reached the top of the mast. Before Jeremy discovered the twist, he commented that the swivel in the block should be made fixed so the lines will not twist, but twist they had. Rather than untwist, Jeremy decided we’d run with a single reef in at all times.
Jeremy had hoped to get north of the rain we could see on radar before it crossed our course. After a few minutes rain started, then unpredicted and unexpected rising wind came at us.
In the cockpit, outside the salon, the sky darkened and the rain falling was visible but misleadingly there was little hint of wind. Jeremy took a reef in the genoa with me feeding reefing line into the drum. On the boat, the clutch (a type of cleat) for the reefing line is not reachable from the helm station. If there is no one to release or lock the clutch the helms-person must leave the helm.
After two reefs in the genoa and still rising wind, the Jermey called for a second reef in the main. The wind had crossed 30 knots.
Downstairs in the main salon, after I closed the forward-facing hatches I found the port seal of the main cabin window, which runs most of the 24 feet of boat width, was leaking salt water on to the settee, which is also Jeremy’s bunk.
On deck, the third mainsail reef line buffeting in the wind became a knotted tangle with the topping lift and the end of the boom. Intertwined was the second reefing line, which now ran under the boom, crossing the topping lift and jamming.
As Brian worked to release this, Jesus climbed onto the mast step to lend a hand. Jeremy shouted,‘‘Get down, I can’t have two of you up there, I can only save one.’’ Jesus returned in a few minutes wearing a PFD with a harness and jack line carabiners.
After a few minutes more, Jeremy accepted Jesus’s help. I watched and then returned to the cockpit. Jesus never clipped into the jack lines.
As we rounded the Cape of Cuba, weather and waves picked up.
Jennifer and I took the second evening watch, ending at midnight. We motored directly into a 16kn apparent wind on the nose. The motion wasn’t bad, but sitting with our butts ten feet above that water the pendulum effect when the boat rocked side-to-side is heightened and sharpened. Unlike a monohull, where the pendulum is governed by the swing of the mast (the acceleration is sinusoidal, for those who like to envision graphs), the rocking here is a teeter-totter (see-saw) slamming into the ground.
We watched a cruise liner appear on radar 24nm out, and then become visible, finally appearing on AIS: The Carnival Conquest headed to Cozumel; it seems a strange name for a vessel carrying thousands of Americans and Europeans to Mexico.
When Jeremy came up to take over, the apparent wind was slightly starboard of dead ahead. We were making 6 knots over ground. Figure 10 or eleven knots true wind speed.
After we were below a few minutes we heard Jeremy unfurling the Genoa by himself.
Continuing North to Key West, 25-MAY-2022 – At times during the night I was airborne off my bunk, but not seasick. After our alarm went off at 5:30 am Jennifer’s tablet told her we were making 10-12kn over the ground. The boat felt stable but rough. The hard 737 landings were fewer and there was little twisting or pitching.
By the time Jennifer went above the main had been doused and we were on the genoa with two reefs. Our speed had dropped to 7 knots. The motion became sickening.
On deck, I could see multiple wave trains crossing. The winds were strong at Force 7 and the water a seascape of moguls. The wind hadn’t abated but we were going much slower.
Desert Eagle returned to hard 737 landings, waves slamming the boat from underneath. The vessel would twist, yaw, roll and pitch. Jeremy started eating the Altoids he does when he’s getting seasick.
When we asked Jeremy why we’d dropped speed and sail, he said to make it an easier ride. Earlier, we had talked about reefing based on wind speed, not feel of the boat.
The ride was the worst experience on the water I have ever had. There was no rhythm to boat’s movement, Jeremy described the movement as sharp and hard.
I vomited a few times, the first time on the trip: day 4. Sea sickness should all be finished, instead, it was just starting. I spent the rest of the day flat on my back with my eyes closed. Reading a book would probably have been a better idea, instead I reviewed my life: I could only think of all the really bad, stupid, and oftentimes uncaring selfish things I’ve done. I comforted myself by realizing as the years go by fewer and fewer people are alive that know about those acts.
Waves hitting the boat splashed into the cockpit drenching anyone sitting on the outboard settees. (Me once, Jennifer once, and Zoe once. We are capable of one-trial learning.) The pilot station that one must climb up into was similarly drenched. The leopard is a surprisingly wet boat.
About 30 miles south of Key West the water shallows: less than 30 feet and then less than 20 for the last 18 nautical miles or so. The waves began to relent. A while later the wind did as well.
Jesus called around and found there was no slip available for us. We motored into Key West on quiet seas and anchored off Wisteria Island in less than 20 feet of water. Jeremy let out 95 feet of stainless steel chain and we all went to bed.
At anchor, boats point into the wind, keeping the cockpit dry and air flowing through the cabins.
It was hot in our cabin during the night, but the boat was quiet and moved little. The cabin temperature dropped with the outside air, but no breeze came in through the forward facing deck hatches. In the morning, Jeremy commented that the current is so strong in that anchorage, about two knots, the boats don’t point into the wind: they point into the current.
We ate breakfast, raised anchor, and moved to the T-head moorage the Jesus reserved for tonight: $325 per night.
Jennifer and I reserved a car for tomorrow morning, which we’ll drop off at MIA Saturday morning before flying to Seattle. Sunday night I’ll fly to Homer and start work on Caro Babbo.
Miami International Airport, Delta Airlines Lounge, May 28, 2022 – There is some sort of weather somewhere that caused Delta to cancel both flights that will take us from Miami to Seattle. We now leave three hours later and arrive about an hour earlier. We change in MSP rather than JFK. We both enjoy the topology and skyline flying into NYC and seeing the waters we sailed for seven summers.
There are two thoughts that give context to my feelings about catamarans, both tempered by the time I spent as a marketing manager for an Italian software company.
The first is the knowledge that with a good marketing budget one can make people do almost anything. The second is a Beneteau ad campaign that I have always admired because it was completely honest, something rare in marketing. The campaign, which would help any buyer of the wide range of Beneteau vessels feel good about their boat, addresses the Leopard.
“We design our boats for the way our customers use them.”
Beneteau Ad Campaign Slogan (paraphrase)
Leopard, like Beneteau, owes most of their success and growth to the Moorings bareboat charter company. Many, many early Beneteau owners learned about the brand by chartering a Beneteau from Moorings. In an interview, a member of Moorings senior management claimed credit/responsibility for manufacturers extending the widest beam of a monohull to the transom. He wanted more cabin room in these boats. Marketers found other justifications later.†
Leopard actually starts with Moorings. The two founders worked with Moorings to develop catamarans that Moorings could bareboat charter. Leopard was founded on the heels of these contracts. Years later this would lead to today’s world of floating luxury condo catamarans, ‘‘CondoMarans’’.
When we start with the understanding that today’s modern catamaran was designed to hold many people in the luxury of a condo, with all the goodness of a yacht at anchor in the Carribean and then coupled with a marketer’s need to find an unexploited market, the modern cat makes sense.
There’s no need to sell how wonderful a cat is at anchor. The Leopard 46 I was on was the three-cabin ‘‘Owners’’ model. The owner’s cabin is the starboard hull: about 35 feet of usable space about 8 feet wide: a desk and work area, a huge bath, couch and large bedroom. The port hull is divided into two cabins, each en suite.
The main salon is massive with a huge aft cockpit. It is very nice – this is a 2008 model; designers have made even greater strides in the last 14 years.
Jeremy told us these cats are designed to go downwind, they will not be pleasant going to windward.
Under power, surfing down the face of waves, there was a small fear that we’d bury the bows, but they rode up the face easily, gently. As we turned to waves abeam, the boat rocked: one hull up the wave and then as it started down the second hull would raise so the hull rocked side to side. No raised mainsail, as we might use in a monohull, will solve this problem.
A different angle wave will start the slamming. Each wave slams under the bridge deck.
A friend, John Snelson, asked whether the boat was rocking in all axises. I answered, Yes, but as I think about it, rocking isn’t quite right, the boat twisted, shimmied, and slammed. The captain called the motion violent and sharp. Random, sharp and without a rhythm is how I would describe it. Monohulls that I and my peers sail are weighted by the keel. The weight forces a rhythm to the movement. This cat had no rhythm. On Drew’s boat, I became seasick because the rhythm was not Caro Babbo’s rhythm. On Desert Eagle mal de mer struck on day four because there is no rhythm to become accustomed to.
This morning, when I sat in the MIA Delta Lounge determined to finish this post before heading off to Caro Babbo, James Evenson of Zingaro called. He’d just finished an all-boys sail to Bermuda, his jumping off place for a hop to Spain on a Bavaria 53.
We compared some notes and spoke as the friends I like to think we are.
I asked James, why did the captain slow us down like that? Why did he take us out of freight train mode? James answered without hesitation: because she was launching from the wave tops. When the seas get six or more feet in height, at that speed, the vessel is launching off the wave tops. It will damage the rig and damage the boat, it can’t take it. The captain did the right thing. It is unpleasant movement, but there is no other way.
Yesterday morning, we left Desert Eagle as Jesus, Zoe, and Captain Jeremy prepared to set off. We grabbed an Über to the car rental place, ferried Zoe’s car from Miami to Key Largo, and ate take-out Mexican from a food truck with local beer in Jesus’ and Zoe’s apartment in air conditioning watching the final season of Grace and Frankie play out. It was our first dinner alone in a while and our last until Jennifer joins me in Homer.
Jesus and Zoe must move Desert Eagle north for hurricane season. They plan to spend the summer in Chesapeake Bay on the hook, exploring and learning. It sounds difficult to me on hearing, but Jennifer and I will be doing the same thing for the next few months, looking for anchorages for the night and living aboard the vessel I have always known I would find.
Jesus and Zoe have plans that fill the summer with visiting friends and family. Jennifer and I have plans of being alone in anchorages visited by the occasional fishing boat and Sei whales who come by to learn who we might be. Our different vessels are designed for the way we use them. I can as little imagine myself aboard Desert Eagle as Zoe and Jesus can imagine themselves aboard Caro Babbo.
Jesus and Zoe, thank you so much for allowing us to join you on your first passage. May the gods bless you, your vessel and your voyages.
*In the video I posted earlier, one can watch Eva Marie Saint’s mouth say ‘‘I don’t make love on an empty stomach,’’ while the audio says, ‘‘I don’t talk about love on an empty stomach.’’ The story goes that the censors required the line to be changed. Given that the Cary Grant character clearly rapes Marni in the movie of the same name, I am skeptical. Flirting is about possibilities, not promise. The audio is a much better line, once the promise is made there is no need to continue the conversation, nor the dinner.
† Number of berths may have been what Moorings was after, but it was not what the end-user buyer was after. With the aggregation of wealth by a smaller and smaller percentage of the population in the US and world wide, buyers were looking for roomier and roomier vessels. The owners of these much larger vessels are generally older, monied couples who will use the boat mainly for day sailing and entertaining. Marketing has discovered that wide hulled monohulls with hard chines excelerate quickly and can be quite stiff.
†† The roach is the outward curve in the diagonal back edge (the leech) of many mainsails. If the edge curves inward the sail is said to have a hollow leech.
Oh man – I remember trying to sleep through nights on a cat trying to make good headway in open water around the Galapagos. Felt like we were in a pinball machine!
But thank you for this evocative narrative – you’ve somehow managed to make me simultaneous envious of your being on the water and grateful that I’m on solid ground. Wishing you fair winds and following seas for your next legs.
Sadly your first offshore trip on a charter catamaran was awful! As you rightly pointed out the nature of a delivery trip is to bring the vessel to it’s destination, undamaged in a timely manner.
I own and cruise a similar, but different, Saint Francis 44 cat that also slams, horribly, when powered into chop, smaller engines dissuade that practice – I LOVE to SAIL! Thankfully our retired status permits us to await more favorable conditions.
Last month our overnight crossing from the Little Bahama Bank to Port Canaveral had us average 9.5, max at 16.5 while the 63, 69 and 70 year old crew relaxed, slept and enjoyed en-route prepared meals without any seasickness or drama in the dry. You would have enjoyed that trip.
I bought my first (monohull) boat 52 years ago but have owned and sailed, including trans oceans, trimarans and catamarans for the last 44 years. Multihulls have successfully proven themselves cruising, racing, chartering and just having fun afloat for decades.
I encourage you to re-visit.
Keith, thank you so very much for writing and for telling me all of this.
I have received three or four comments from people telling me that my experience is typical. These are people who have written to me outside of the comment section. One, in fact, wrote to me before I published the post asking me if my fillings were still intact.
The really bad seasickness at the end was under sail, but only a Genoa. I’m not sure what to think.
On your crossing was the wind before the beam?
We won’t be changing boats in any case, but it would be a nice to know that one can do passages to windward in a cat without being miserable.
When you were making the very high speed, 16 knots, what was the sea condition?
Unable to post my comments – insists my captcha answer is incorrect! 10 + 5 = 15 no?
Keith, that has been an ongoing problem. But this comment did post.
There is a major upgrade to wordpress which I will try to install today or tomorrow. I’m currently on the hard in Homer and I’m completely without power as I redo the battery string and the wet exhaust line which runs under the batteries.