In 88 I met a couple in Cabo who had built a new boat out of Mt St Helens fir. Beautifully built and almost brand new, saturated withe best epoxy available. A couple of months later , they found dry rot. Another friend on Cortes, a master craftsman and perfectionist, built a 36 footer out of wood. He saturated her with West systems epoxy. She now has deck leaks .
Winston took 14 days from BC to Hawaii, Andy Gray took 15 days. After leaving Vancouver Island in a good westerly, on my last trip south, I was south of Hawaii in 14 days. My last two trips north from Hawaii took me 23 days to BC , the first 1,000 miles being hard on the wind, in a strong NE trade wind, in a heavily loaded 31 ft twin keeler. How much faster could one expect to do in any heavily loaded 31 ft twin keeler with all the owners worldly posessions aboard?
Steve posted some impressive passage times on Silas Crosby , in his blog.
I remember going to windward on Shinola, in a light NW wind in Comox Harbour, Just South of Comox Spit, with a Cooper 41 ahead of us. The skipper made some derogatory remarks about us, so we sailed on past him, tied up, and were on our way to the pub by the time he passed the breakwater.
You call that slow?
Sailing home from Tahiti , about 1,000 miles north of Hawaii, I hit something so solid, and it threw me out of my bunk. Scrambling on deck, I saw a huge black shape in the light of the full moon, behind me. I quickly checked the bilge, and it remained dry. Later I found a small dent in my hull, where it had hit. If my boat had been anything but steel, I would be dead long before now. You couldn't pay me enough to go to sea in a wooden boat, or any non metal boat. Many who have are no longer with us( including the Sleavin family, the family Steve hoped to meet in Fiji,the young couple who disappeared on their way home from Hawaii, etc etc.)
My maintenance is about an hour a year ,a fraction that of any wooden boat owners I have ever known , in over 40 years of cruising. People I have met ,who switched from wood to steel, are blown away by how much less maintenance there is on a steel boat.
I just measured the height of the trip wires ( lifelines?)on a Catalina 27 ,Smacks first choice of boat. 24 inches, the same as on a Catalina 36. Does anyone know the height of such trip wires on a Hunter? None here to measure.
I stand corrected , I cut stanchions to 34 inches, and put the top rail on top of that , in Silas Crosby's case, 1 1/4 OD sch 40 pipe . Saddling the stanchions out on both ends takes about a half inch out of the height, giving one 30 3/4 inches on top of the 4 inch bulwark, for a total of 34 3/4 inches above the decks . I have been doing them that way, to that height ,since the mid 70's, including on Silas Crosby. But Smack claims that 1 1/4 inches less than 36 inches makes them far to low, while he chooses a boat with 24 inch high lifelines, having only plastic coasted wire for the top lifeline, instead of 1 inch sch 40m stainless pipe!
Does that still leave anyone gullible enough to believe anything else he posts?