http://www.americanaustralian.org/en/cev/302

or just show up

There will be free wine and a lot of Australians and New Zealanders there. Registering will ensure there in enough wine for everyone.

Part of any book sale receipts will be going to charity.

My son Ryan was 8 when we left, and 14 when we completed our circumnavigation.  He, my wife and I were the only crew for the whole time.  When we returned, Ryan was a very experienced blue-water sailor.  He wanted to go on.  “Dolphin Spirit” was fully set up to be single-handed, completely equipped, proven, loaded with all the right instruments and charts.  Ryan knew the boat intimately, he had experienced three major ocean crossings and had dropped anchor in hundreds of foreign spots, many uncharted.
In all of these ways, and in many others, he and his boat were far more well prepared than were Zac and his boat.  Ryan would have easily been the youngest to solo circumnavigate, but we decided not to for a number of reasons:
1. The circumnavigation Ryan had just completed was fun, the one being contemplated was not going to be that.

2. Sticking to a timetable meant disregarding almost every lesson I had taught him about being weather-wise and cautious.  There is simply no way to circumnavigate in less than 18 months and stay out of problem weather areas and times.

3. Solo long-distance sailors are a danger to themselves and to everyone else on the ocean.  There is simply no way to keep a proper watch and we and almost every solo sailor I know understand that audio alarms do not wake an exhausted person. A solo sailor has to rely on other boats to avoid him, and this is contrary to my teachings to Ryan about being in control of your own destiny to the greatest extent possible. Others certainly do not agree with me on this subject, and that is their right.

4. Ryan had nothing to prove about himself or his skills.

I understand that others don’t share my point of view, but I repeat that I am really concerned that this competition to be the youngest circumnavigator will get out of hand and felt that something had to be said, not to denigrate Zac’s accomplishments in any way, but to put them into a perspective.

My concern is that his exceptional feat be put in proper perspective and that the almost inevitable trend to younger and younger record-seekers that new technology makes possible be staved off.  As Zac has proved, sailing around the world on a timetable, even with all possible personal and technological assistance, is dangerous process and I don’t want to see sailing and cruising tarnished by the death of a child trying to break another child’s record.

I wrote the above before the report in the July 17 LA Times which said that a 15 year old was about to set sail. I rest my case!

Laurence Sunderland advised his 16 year old son Zac (LA Times “Adventure on the high seas” 11/9/08), who is sailing solo around the world, to load his pistol and shoot to kill if threatened by an approaching vessel.

This is seriously bad advice. Assuming the approaching vessel did contain pirates, there would be 20 or so automatic weapons and most probably a 50 caliber machine gun and a couple of RPG’s, all pointing in Zac’s direction. Firing at them would be the fastest way possible of committing suicide.

Fear of pirates can be a bigger problem than the pirates themselves. A solo sailor, asleep in an anchorage on the Venezuelan coast, woke to hear footsteps on his deck. He opened fire with an automatic weapon, and the people on deck returned fire. The boarders then identified themselves as Venezuelan Coast Guard, the sailor was arrested, and his now seriously leaking boat impounded.

The truth about pirates is that they make for great headlines, are a real danger to some vessels, but are not interested in small private yachts. Why should they bother when they can capture a small freighter or tanker with about the same effort, and gain a multi-million dollar return? There was a recent report of a French yacht boarded by pirates off the Somali coast. Research the details and you will find the yacht had a crew of 30, not your typical small sailboat.

I sailed around the world for six and a half years with my wife and son (8 when we left, 14 when we returned) in a small sailboat, traveling more than 40,000 miles and visiting 56 countries. We spent more than six months sailing in Indonesia, mostly in places very few yachts had visited. Not once did we feel threatened. Not once did we feel we had to chain our dinghy to the yacht, as we later had to in the “lock it or lose it” Caribbean. Our dinghy and outboard were left unsecured, simply pulled up in front of many a village, and were always there when we returned hours later. The fishing boats and small inter-island trading vessels often came close to us for a look and a cheerful wave of greeting.

The story was the same in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Yemen, Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt, some of the poorest countries in the world, and all on the US government Advisory List of countries not to visit.

Pirate attacks are increasing around the world, but most occur in well defined areas, Nigeria, Somalia and the Gulf of Aden, Indonesia (Malacca Straits), and Bangladesh. Regardless of pirate preferences for larger vessels, sailing a yacht in those regions is not to be taken lightly.

The Malacca Straits, between Malaysia and Indonesia, has to be traversed to get from Singapore to Thailand, so we sailed through in company with another yacht, anchoring at night without lights and restricting radio communication. Knowing Socroto Island, in the Gulf of Aden at the bottom of the Red Sea, was a pirate source, we diverted from our direct route to sail no closer than 150 miles from it.

In common with most cruisers, we started out armed, in our case with a shotgun. Almost every country we visited required that we surrender the gun and all ammunition on entry to the country, returning it when we left. That meant most of the theoretical value of having a gun on board was negated. Any non-declared weapons or ammunition, even a single bullet, found during a Customs search, could result in immediate seizure of the yacht, and the certainty of severe penalties.

On arrival in the Cook Islands, when we declared our shotgun I asked if it could be sealed in a locker, instead of being taken off the boat. The Customs official agreed, but had no seals with him, so promised to return the next day. I saw him on the dock a couple of days later, and asked about the seals.

“Can’t find any,” he said. “Promise me you won’t shoot anyone and we will forget about it.”

He was alone in his tolerance in the 56 countries we visited. Soon after, we got rid of the shotgun.

We were not totally naïve about the possibility of personal attacks, so the boat was well stocked with pepper spray and equivalent non-lethal protective materials. I had my wife and very young son on board, so was not about to take any unnecessary chances, or expose them to dangers.

There may be lots of reasons for people not to go sailing around the world, or in parts of it, but the threat of pirates should not be one of them. As with all things, information, precautions and caution are very effective.

If the boats in the anchorage have dropped a stern anchor, you must also. Do not be the only boat without a stern anchor, or the only boat with one. Yachts with all-chain rode will swing differently from those with rope; ketches will be different from sloops; full keels are different from fin. It is polite to ask the boats nearest you how much rode they have out, and what type, as this will, in part, determine how they will swing.

We discovered a delightful little bay in Southern Spain, with room for about five boats, dropped anchor all alone, went below for a nap, and came back on deck to find we were in the middle of about 20 charter boats. They had limited knowledge of scope, apparently believing that, as long as the anchor was on the bottom, all would be well. Thankfully it was a low wind night, and creative fendering got us through without damage. Up-anchoring was not an option as we had at least three anchors on top of ours.

Perhaps the most stringent test of our technique occurred in the Red Sea. The weather got really bad about midnight one night, so we decided to try for the Ras Gharib anchorage, which is behind a projecting reef. There were no navigation aids, just the way points provided by the Red Sea Pilot, which on my charts plotted as right in the middle of the reef, and the darkness was almost total. Deciding to trust the Pilot, we gingerly felt our way in—if the movement of a blind, bouncing cork can be so described. I was in the bow with a spotlight to see if I could see the reef, perhaps by waves breaking on it. Carole was driving, shining a flashlight on me to see my signals, watching GPS and radar, holding on to stop being thrown about the cockpit, and totally distracted by two huge black cockroaches which chose that moment, and our cockpit, to mate. No other system but ours could have coped. The morning light revealed that we had dropped anchor on the reef, but were swinging over sand.

Spend five minutes learning the hand movements. It is much more effective than a marriage counselor, and much cheaper than a divorce.

Paint, and those commercially available markers, last about three drops, and in any case can’t be properly seen at night. We finally settled on using plastic wire ties – one at 30’, two at 60’, three at 90’, one at 120’, two at 150’ and so on. They do not interfere with the anchor winch, last many months, can be distinguished at night and can be easily replaced in seconds while pulling up the anchor on a calm day.

I usually let out a lot of anchor chain at times, when I am uncertain about the bottom or the weather - how does 250 feet in 20 feet of water sound. The aim of anchoring is to allow you to wake up in the same anchorage you went to sleep in. After many thousands of anchorages, I am very happy to say that we have dragged only three times, two of those because I went brain-dead.

One of my anchoring errors occurred in Sicily, when I let out 60’ instead of 150’. I lost count, and my only excuse was that the two women sunbathing on the boat next to us were totally naked.

GPS, on the other hand, is very, very accurate. To put this into a perspective that may be a little clearer, your GPS will precisely record your position aground on the reef the chart shows to be a mile away.

I tip my hat to the old surveyors, because they managed to place almost everything within a mile or so of where the GPS says it should be. In practice this meant that I never set a waypoint less than two miles off any charted land, reef or obstacle, three miles if the waypoint was to be approached at night, and even then I held my breath.

A common response is, “But my boat isn’t ready.”

Will your boat ever be ready?  No, of course it won’t. By definition there will always be items on the To-Do list (I am not superstitious but I never have an empty To-Do list, just like I never leave port on a Friday.  Why take the chance?), but that is why there are days at sea and days at anchor. Where is it better to polish the stainless - in a slip where all you can see is other boats, or at anchor in an atoll in the Tuamotos? In which place can you stop, roll over the side and snorkel with glorious coral, lovely fish and warm, clear water? Why do I even need to ask that question?

Bad weather can be avoided - really it can. Pirates are not a concern, except for the land based ones that own shops. Children are an incentive, not a deterrent. The stories and tips in Chasing Sunsets and Steering You Straight tell you everything you need to know.  Every excuse has been eliminated.  Go now!

The simple answer is that cruising costs what you allow it to cost, just the same as living on land. Certainly living at anchor is less expensive than existing on the solid stuff a few hundred yards away, but it isn’t free. In six-and-a-half years of sailing around the world, we had one month when we spent almost nothing, and we know of some cruisers who had two or three such months, none consecutive.

There are certainly cruisers who claim to have lived on $500 per month, and good luck to them. We didn’t live that way on land, so saw no reason to do so on a boat, particularly as divorce would have been an almost inevitable result. Anyhow, most such stories are based on selective memories, or faulty math, or both.

We did a lot of land cruising which meant hire cars and hotels. That is the point of cruising, to fully experience the country you are visiting. The cruiser who stays on board in port certainly saves money, but sees only other cruisers.

We spent (for 3 people) around $40,000 per year including every expense.