Survival Tips for Heavy-Weather Cruising

Your Passport to Adventure at Sea

“Conditions worsened to 65 knots, with higher gusts and monstrous seas. The drogue slowed our speed, and we went below, and slept, ate and played cards for 48 hours. You need sea room to do this.”

11/09/2023

This week, offshore veteran Steve Brown provides sound strategies for voyaging in extreme conditions, we test drive some essential apps for your navigation toolbox, we  take a turn on the light and lively Excess 14 catamaran, and the Sailing Totem crew reveals best practices for safely going up the mast. 

Wicked Weather: High Latitude Sailing Strategies

Steve Brown knows a thing or two about heavy weather. Throughout his sailing career, Brown and his wife, Trish, took on a four-year circumnavigation aboard their Oyster 56, Curious, sailed a 30,000-mile circumnavigation of the Americas—sailing north from Camden, Maine, and then an east-to-west transit of the Northwest Passage—and spent more than his fair share of time in the Southern Ocean. Based on real-world experience, his strategies and tips for voyaging in extreme conditions should be mandatory reading for any offshore cruiser. Get them here.

PARTNER CONTENT

Navigare Yachting Chartering in the Med, the Virgin Islands, Thailand. Plans to Add St. Maarten and Tahiti Soon.

Dependability and options are names of the game for Navigare Yachting.

Gear Review: Navigation Apps Help You Get To Where You Want To Go

As the Boy Scouts like to quip: Be ­prepared. And with relatively inexpensive prices for hardware and plenty of free or low-cost apps among which to choose, it’s pretty darned easy to put together a take-it-with-you navigation toolkit that can double as a backup should the primary system on your own boat fall prey to the electron demons. We tested the latest and greatest from Navionics, iNavX and C-Map. Here’s what we found.

Sailboat Review: Light and Lively Excess 14

When Groupe Beneteau’s Excess Catamarans introduced its first model in 2019, a test sail in winds approaching 40 knots made it abundantly clear that the Excess 12 wasn’t just another pretty new face in the ever-growing cat crowd. That boat could sail. A recent light-air outing aboard the company’s newest model, the Excess 14, was perhaps equally revealing—it stepped up and delivered a punch, despite nearly calm conditions, providing a hint of the fun a good breeze might deliver. Read our review here.

PARTNER CONTENT

Watch Randy Vance's overview of Mustang Survival's New MIT Technology

Mustang Survival has decades of experience supplying comfortable and reliable safety solutions for boaters engaged in all types of activities. Randy Vance highlights recent advances in one of the most important pieces of boating safety equipment...your Personal Floatation Device (PFD).

Sailing Totem: Safely Going Up the Mast

Inspecting the condition of your rigging is an important step in safe-passage preparation, so going aloft should be on the maintenance shortlist of many cruisers. Does that sound like a glorious opportunity to gaze at your boat from an eagle’s-eye view or a nerve-racking ascent to get over with as quickly as possible? However you feel about going aloft, cruisers should be familiar with safe practices for ascending their boat’s mast(s). Here are some tips for doing it well.

Share Your Experiences on the Water with Us

It’s that time of year again! We’d like to learn about your boating experiences in the last 12 months. As a token of our appreciation, you have the opportunity to enter a drawing for a chance to win one of five $100 West Marine gift cards.

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