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Essential options - davits

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I'm so thankful for our davits. On the Open 40 it means that raising and lowering the dingy with the 3:1 pulley setup is simple and can be done with minimal effort.  We are in our fourth year as liveaboards over 20,000 nm sailed. We have left our Highfield CL130 with Suzuki 9.9 outboard on the davits throughout. That's pretty good going, to think that we can prepare the dingy to cross an ocean in under three minutes.  Often overlooked when securing the dingy are the cleats placed specifically to stop sideways movement. It's horrible to see someone sailing along with the dingy crashing from side to side, when it is so simple to tie up.  To secure it from sideways movement:  Lift up the dingy, aim to get the dingy side tucked in right up to the bottom of the davits.  Take the painter to the cleat just behind the main sheet winch, and tighten the so that the side of the dingy presses firmly up against the back of the boat.  Take a line from the stern of the di...
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Tuning the Autopilot response

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The autopilot is made up of an electronic compass, a controller, and an arm -  a kind of piston that attaches to the steering quadrant. The response is how quickly the system moves the rudder back and forward to keep the boat on track. I'm writing about this as we went through a set of setting cables, this can be unnerving when you are out sailing on the ocean and suddenly have no steering, but that's another story. Anyway, we are not the only ones to see broken steering cables. So what's the issue? It could be wear and tear, but we have now done more than double the miles on the new cables than we had on the old ones, and they are still in good shape, so we must be doing something else right. We are careful to keep the right amount of tension on the cables. Too tight and the steering will feel stiff, too loose and the cables could slip out their tracks. We keep them greased where they run through pulleys and the quadrant, but the main thing we do is balance the boat, and t...
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Twilight rescue

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As a skipper, your number one concern is safey,  thinking always of saftey makes you think about others in distress, especially others on the water.  We have just made a monthly berth booking in Whangarei, New Zealand, and we didn't really expect to be doing any more boating adventures. When we were cruising, we often wound up in unexpected situations, but we thought this was all over after signing up for a long term berth. We decided it would be nice to go for a sail over the weekend and planed to go to Munro Bay, a favourite local anchorage, pretty and remote. There are hills, a farm, a reserve, and a couple of houses. Its shallow, good holding, muddy bottom, and good protection from North - NothEast winds. Also scallops and good fishing if you're a Kiwi.  Anyway, an hour out we heard a distress call from a boat in Paura Bay. This was sort of on the way, well its actually out of the way, but we did have to go passed the entrance. There's usually tons of boats there. The...
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Anniversary of our Pacific crossing

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6th March - 2 years ago Fung and I left Panama for the Marquesas, a 3800nm sail that took us 30days. We did not know what to expect from this long passage, but we had lots of adventure, and even met new friends. One Booby bird joined us as crew for several days, and even helped on watches and sail changes. Fung put together this vid of the fun with our Pacific crew. https://youtu.be/jNK3Z6kAwYk Read our Pacific Crossing 2019 Passage Log here We couldn't imagine that we would wind-up in New Zealand, or that we would still be here onboard Wilderness 2 years later.
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