Circumnavigation
- Thread starter BlueTequila
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Definitely more of a coastal boat.
Enjoy what you have for now and try hard not to dream about what you want on your next boat - it will only distract you from enjoying this one. When the time comes to head to far off lands, buy another boat more made for that purpose - All boats are compromises and your "needs" change - Hopefully your needs for the next few years are coastal cruising and you are golden. No matter how much you think this is THE last boat, it won't be (been there, done that). Just maintain her well so you enjoy using her now and so she will sell fast when the time comes.
Enjoy what you have for now and try hard not to dream about what you want on your next boat - it will only distract you from enjoying this one. When the time comes to head to far off lands, buy another boat more made for that purpose - All boats are compromises and your "needs" change - Hopefully your needs for the next few years are coastal cruising and you are golden. No matter how much you think this is THE last boat, it won't be (been there, done that). Just maintain her well so you enjoy using her now and so she will sell fast when the time comes.
We have a couple in my small yacht club that took a standard Catalina 34 and went three quarters of the way around the world. They got bored with cursing and sold the boat in Turkey and then flew home.
They gave us a slide show showing parts of the cruise and I was interested to see the number of small boats that I think this list would say was not a blue water boat. I agree with Roger--it is not the boat, are you ready to cross some water?
Just as a tag about this couple, she didn't know how to sail when they started out.
Good luck
They gave us a slide show showing parts of the cruise and I was interested to see the number of small boats that I think this list would say was not a blue water boat. I agree with Roger--it is not the boat, are you ready to cross some water?
Just as a tag about this couple, she didn't know how to sail when they started out.
Good luck
In the 70's an 18 year old boy from Calif sailed a production flush deck Cal 25 and made it all the way around, but it's not something I would try. Rigging to light, and you invite a quick end, he lost his mast twice as I recall. He did make it. Lucky boy, but luck isn't what a wise Captain counts on, its just a bonus. Fair winds
Its all about the preparation. There are loads of "coastal cruiser" Catalina/Hunters/Beneteaus that I can think of that have completed circumnavigations, or are on their way to completion. But Roger is correct, its more about you than the boat, although the right boat goes a long way (no pun intended). By the time you make the necessary improvements to your boat it might bring you closer to the cost of a different boat. It also depends on your route, times of year. How long you plan to take. If you are just taking it slowly, and can plan stops along the way, and wait for better weather windows, sure. I don't think that Laura Dekker's Jenneau Gin Fizz is any more a blue water boat than your Hunter, and she made it by taking "short" hops from one port to another, and not around Cape horn. Abby Sutherland's Open 40 was a blue water boat, and didn't make it. And Jessica Watson's S&S wouldn't make most lists of a blue water boat either (it would mine), but it was highly modified also.
Good luck.
Good luck.
Via the major capes or high latitudes? Not a good idea. A downwind tropical tradwind run? Absolutely, provided you and the boat are properly prepared. As long as you acknowledge that you're on a light displacement sloop and not try to sail it to places or in ways that really call for a heavy displacement cutter, you'd have to have some particularly bad luck (or exhibit phenomenally bad seamanship) to not be OK.
There's a book by Liza and Andy Copeland entitled "Cruising for Cowards" that you might want to pick up. They disagree with the conventional wisdom that a fin keel spade rudder light displacement boat isn't suitable for a circumnavigation, and they write about their experiences sailing the world on Baghera, their Beneteau sloop.
You might want to plug your boat's stats into the following:
http://www.gosail.com/boatRating.html
I was surprised when it calculated that our H336's Comfort Ratio was the same as a Valiant 40, which is widely recognized as a suitable cruising boat.
Personally I think you'd have a lot more margin for error if you traded the Hunter for somthing like an older Caliber or Columbia, maybe a small Island Packet or even a Morgan (not the O/I models though). But if you really want to go with the boat you have (which is what they recommend afterall, go now with the boat you have rather than wait forever for the perfect boat), then as long as you've done your research and made the right preparations, you should be fine.
I think your biggest problem as long as you and your boat are in good shape is going to be a severe lack of storage space. There are legs on a circumnavigation that can keep you at sea for up to 30 days, and that's a lot of fuel, water, food, and other stuff to cram into a 33 foot boat.
Generally speaking it is not the capabilities of the boat but the capabilities of the captain and crew that determine if they can make it around the world.
With that said the smaller the boat you have the smarter and more innovative (aka costs a lot) you need to be.
Example:
How do you carry enough water to stay at sea for over a month on that longest leg of the passage? The simple fact is you can't on a small boat with a 50 gal tank. You can catch rain but that involves taking some risk, what is it does not rain? You can invest in a water maker though which solves the problem right up to the point where you run some oily water through your last membrane and it stops working......there are lots of examples and the smaller the boat them more of them there are.
So start a "my perfect boat will have...." list and keep in close at hand so you can jot down those things you would like to have as you think of them. Also start measuring how much stuff you use, water, food stuffs, fuel, propane...... so you can make some informed decisions as to if the next "perfect" boat can do what you want without a lot of innovation on your part.
With that said the smaller the boat you have the smarter and more innovative (aka costs a lot) you need to be.
Example:
How do you carry enough water to stay at sea for over a month on that longest leg of the passage? The simple fact is you can't on a small boat with a 50 gal tank. You can catch rain but that involves taking some risk, what is it does not rain? You can invest in a water maker though which solves the problem right up to the point where you run some oily water through your last membrane and it stops working......there are lots of examples and the smaller the boat them more of them there are.
So start a "my perfect boat will have...." list and keep in close at hand so you can jot down those things you would like to have as you think of them. Also start measuring how much stuff you use, water, food stuffs, fuel, propane...... so you can make some informed decisions as to if the next "perfect" boat can do what you want without a lot of innovation on your part.
I know if we were to try it (our boat is basically the same size), I have no doubt we could pack enough rice and beans on board so that we wouldn't go hungry, and a half dozen of those five gallon water cooler bottles stashed in the head would give us an emergency backup water supply that would keep us alive for a week or two if the tanks ran dry, and jerry cans of fuel lashed to the lifelines would give us the necessary range, but there's no way we could make it on those little tiny propane bottles our boat uses. So we'd either be looking at cold food and cold water bathing, or else we'd have to rig up some form of additional propane supply.
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