Sailing Today with Yachts & Yachting November 2023 - Sample Issue

A walk on the wild side

Leo Kenny discovers another side of the Caribbean with a delivery trip from Martinique to the Panama Canal PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

Junior Pirates of the Caribbean

Experienced charter skipper Tom Fletcher takes a look at cruising as a family in the Grenadines

Anyone who has been on a yacht with children has enjoyed the look of amazement on their faces when the sails go up for the first time. I find they rejuvenate me and remind me of what I loved about sailing when I first started – and that’s an amazing feeling for a jaded, old charter skipper!

Many parents worry about sailing in the Caribbean with young children though. While they are right to be protective, it’s really not dangerous to enjoy all the area has to offer your children. The beaches and bays are ideal for kids, and the islands really are very safe for children.

The Caribbean’s sailing conditions are, however, more adventurous than many other areas like the Mediterranean. The blue water environment on passages between islands is enough to put many parents off. But, given half a chance, children love the excitement and the adventure!

As a charter skipper in the Windward Islands for SVG

Yachting, I’ve spent years sailing up and down the island chain with many different families. The islands are an ideal area to charter with children, they are close together, comparatively underdeveloped, and safe. I want to disprove the myth that the Caribbean isn’t really suitable for children, and show what methods I have personally seen work well to ensure their well-being.

Routeing and conditions

Firstly, a word about routeing and conditions. To be on the safe side, pick an area, like the Grenadines, with short distances between islands. Don’t attempt the long 10 hour passages some regions necessitate. Always go from north to south down the island chain so you go with the wind, which is predominantly northeasterly in winter, and not against the waves. Many companies will arrange one-way charters down an islands chain. At SVG Yachting we like to start from our base at Blue Lagoon, St Vincent and finish in Grenada over a week or two. This allows for a lot of more relaxing downwind legs, limiting the amount of time spent fighting your way upwind into the swell.

Plan the shortest hops you can between anchorages. When you are tucked away in the lee of the islands the sea is calm and the winds lighter, allowing for more relaxed sailing with the children. Short passages mean they don’t get bored or seasick during long days. A few days on the yacht close to base, in

ABOVE

Catamarans are a great choice for the Caribbean

When it is safe to do so, encourage children to get involved in the sailing

PHOTO: YACHT GROOVY

Black Forest Bateau

Bavaria Yachts has founded its reputation on comfortable cruisers and its new C38 is the cornerstone of a new generation of yachts which are roomier than ever. Sam Jefferson reports

BERTHING FOR 450 YACHTS

The lower basin is accessible at all states of the tide, the upper basin has a tidal cill

MARINA RECEPTION

WASHROOMS/LAUNDRY RESTAURANT, BAR, CAFE

HOLDING/VISITOR BERTHS

MUD BERTHS

NEYLAND YACHT HAVEN

Milford Haven is the ideal base for cruising the Pembrokeshire coast and beyond, and Neyland Yacht Haven with its warm welcome, easy access and first-rate facilities comes highly recommended says Sue Pelling

Jess Lloyd-Mostyn

The harsh reality of sailing full-time is that things inevitably break. Whether your boat is old or new, whether you’ve recently made all sorts of expensive upgrades or been sailing on a shoestring budget for years – it makes no difference. Boats are just so complex and have such a huge variety of fittings and components that, over the years, one by one and in no particular order, elements will either suddenly fail or slowly fall apart. So much so that every serious bluewater cruising boat has practically every cupboard and locker full of spare and replacement bits and bobs. Not to mention all the old ones that you never throw out anyway, just in case.

But spares and extras are very much connected to being in lands of plenty – where the chandleries are abundant, easy to access and well-stocked. It also hints at always having the available funds to fork out for the essential engine water pump or new halyard or tin of non-skid deck paint.

For those of us who venture further than most, who do more than simply go offshore, who cross oceans, choose cruising grounds where there is no pilot book, or find anchorages using satellite, there is a whole other level to provisioning and carrying everything you might need in case of equipment failure or breakage. And, by far the best tool in this particular toolbox, is ingenuity.

Yes, you can order a replacement part, but it may take several weeks or a few hundred miles more sailing before you are able to get somewhere to pick it up. So most long-term sailors hone their MacGyver skills, learning and developing inventive ways of mending what they can, with whatever they have to hand.

The small plastic intake elbow pipe at the back of one of our marine toilets on board cracked. A new £20 part sent from Germany would be around £60 including the shipping out to Asia. But with care, the right resin and a nifty fix, the old one can be made to work fine for years, until we can get a visitor to bring one out to us. We had to cut away patches of historic water damage to some of the cabinetry in our saloon, as the peeling veneer looked rather ugly. In some of these areas we were able to install thin marine plywood, nicely varnished,

to restore the woodwork. In other places we simply removed the wood altogether and used white paint, keeping the boat looking well-maintained and cared for. Up on deck we had a strand of one of our lifelines that had sheared and left the odd sharp spike poking out, just where little hands could get hurt on it. We sheathed these in narrow lengths of cheap hosepipe we had onboard for years before we got around to replacing them. We’ve used seizing wire to help hold a manual bilge pump back together; there is a border of gorilla tape stopping a badly leaking Perspex window in one of our sliding companionway hatches; and our mainsail stackpack sailbag was more patches than sunbrella before we eventually replaced it last year. Because sailing is only a very small portion of what we actually do on board. Cleaning, painting, polishing, lubricating, sanding, sewing and gluing are all common boat jobs. Checking bilges, changing filters, topping up battery water, cleaning the hull, whipping rigging lines, servicing the winches – all of these are part of our regular maintenance rhythms that punctuate each day and keep coming round like clockwork. Throughout the years we’ve taught ourselves through trial and error, consulting books and the internet and asking for help; enabling us to tackle aspects of wiring, plumbing, carpentry, engineering, sail-mending and a multitude of other skills in order to keep moving, and keep on top of the boat’s upkeep. And why throw out perfectly good parts when it’s perfectly possible to fix them? Or when you have no easily or affordable way of getting a new one? Or simply so that you can sail on for one more day? Because even the shiniest yacht, with the sleekest lines, the most seamless varnish and whose stainless steel fittings gleam on even the dullest days will have some ingenious and resourceful solutions to repairs going on behind the headlining. Make do and mend was a war-time slogan and one perfectly suitable to be adopted by the modern day boater: someone practical and creative, used to adapting to shifting supply situations. And although we were perhaps no less capable in our land lives before we became sailors, we certainly have plenty more opportunities to practice those imaginative mends now.

‘Most long-term sailors hone their MacGyver skills, learning inventive ways of mending’

Breakages aboard yachts are a simple fact of life and never welcome. When you are miles away from the nearest chandlery, however, you are forced to develop new skills to get by

JESS LLOYDMOSTYN Jess and James left the UK in 2011 in their Crossbow 42 and have sailed halfway round the world, growing their crew en route. Follow their journey at water-log.com