[dieselboy]

Man, i have heard it all so far.. There is a guy i met who told be he sailed his 25' Hunter to Cuba! I think he figured out i though he was full of it so, he brought me a bunch of Pictures. Either he is REALLY good at photo chop or he did sail that thing from Houston to Cuba..
Any way while i dont think a 25' Hunter is "Blue water" what is?? WHY????

These are things i ponder while i look at these MASSIVE sail boats next to mine that seem to have been forgotten by their owners. I am always sad when i work on my boat because there are so many other " much nicer boats" around me that would and could be magnificent if some one just cared for them.
I believe every boat has a soul and the neglect just pains me.

Anyway..
How big and why? are we looking for a particular draft? Dead weight?
A wider beam?

Thanks to all of you for all your help and to put up with my stupid questions..

 

[southshoreS24]

i think to define some general guidelines as to what is a bluewater boat you have to define what is bluewater (not possible as each person has a different definition, so maybe just go with offshore more then, oh say 25miles?) and then what the boat has to be capable in those waters.

any boat can be sailed anywhere with the right weather. there in lies the rub....

 

[dieselboy]

Around here blue water means Well not murky brown/green water which is almost 15 miles out in the gulf of mexico where the wind is scary and the water rather deep.

How about.. I want to sail to St Croix what should i sail? would my 29 foot do it ? Or should i say would i want to do it... lol
I saw a chey truck with 55 gal drums make it from Cuba before that does not mean i want to try it. :laugher

 

[MikeinLA]

Well, the first response is that there are a million posts on this and other forums about this same issue including one I posted about my Catalina 36. Try searching "blue water", that oughta do it. Basically though (and others may correct me), it has more to do with design and construction than it does with size. Pacific Seacraft makes (made) boats from 20-31 feet which are considered blue water capable while a Hunter 40+ may be questionable. Entire books have been written about favorable design elements such as sail area/displacement ratio, self-righting ability, etc. A VERY knowledgeable response to my "can I make my Catalina 36 blue water capable" thread brought up elements of construction. Basically, what happens to your light coastal crusier when it falls off a 30' wave or flips over. Will the tankage & cabinetry stay in place? Are they bonded to the hull or just screwed in? Stuff like that. Given 10 knots of wind & 2 foot seas, ANY boat can sail around the world. Many boats not designed or built to take the rigors of heavy weather have, by luck or good planning, made extensive voyages. But these are the exceptions rather than the rule. Generally, a boat which is designed and constructed for potentially heavy weather and which is of a manageable size for the intended crew makes a good blue water boat.

Mike

 

[CaptainForce]

Most would expect a bluewater boat to be able to perform well in harsh weather. With today's weather forecasting abilities we can expect to consistantly predict three safe weather days in the immediate future. Therefore, at ninety miles from Florida, a passage to Cuba would not require a bluewater vessel. 'take care and joy, Aythya crew

 

[Capt.Fred]

I don't understand the question? "What is a blue water boat?" There simply is no such thing as a blue water boat. There are only blue water sailors. Millions of $ cannot buy a blue water boat, but a blue water sailor can sail a dingy across an ocean. Look at Capt. Bligh, he sailed an open lifeboat full of sailors across 1600 miles of open ocean. I could do it my self in a rubber raft, if I could remember what I was doing out here in the middle of the sea without my honey and where are my glasses? Now repeat after me; "It is not the size of the tool that counts. It is how well you use it" And I know where of I speak.

 

[TQA]

Webb Chiles is off again round the world in a Drascombe Lugger. OK he is a very experienced blue water sailor but it is an open boat somewhere around 20 feet long.

Shane Acton made it round in a 18 foot Caprice plywood bilge keeler with no sailing knowledge to begin with AT ALL! He had not even had the mast up when he left from Cambridge. He learned as he went along.

The seamanship matters more than the boat IMHO.

 

[genieskip]

I completely agree with TQA and Captn Fred. Its the boat and the sailor. Could someone make it across the Atlantic in a Hunter 25? If adequately modified and superbly skippered, of course. Could someone not make it to Catalina island on a Swan 45? Certainly, if he (or she) was an incompetent dodo.
There is no hard and fast line, its a continuum and you have to gauge where the skipper and the boat fall along that.

 

[PalmettoSailor]

I completely agree with TQA and Captn Fred. Its the boat and the sailor. Could someone make it across the Atlantic in a Hunter 25? If adequately modified and superbly skippered, of course. Could someone not make it to Catalina island on a Swan 45? Certainly, if he (or she) was an incompetent dodo.
There is no hard and fast line, its a continuum and you have to gauge where the skipper and the boat fall along that.

While I somewhat agree with the above sentiment and I don't claim to be that bluewater sailor, I also believe there is only so much a "bluewater sailor" could do to keep a non-bluewater boat intact, should it encounter truly bad weather.

For me (perhaps a sea-chicken), a bluewater boat is defined as one that I would willingly be more than 2 days from a safe port aboard.

With todays forecasting, its relatively easy to accurately forecast 3 days ahead. Further out than that, it becomes increasingly difficult and I wouldn't want to be on a boat designed as a coastal cruiser without the ability to run for cover if the weather window was closing. I'd want something substantially more robust than the typical production cruiser if I was further offshore than that.

 

[johnshasteen]

I don't understand the question? "What is a blue water boat?" There simply is no such thing as a blue water boat. There are only blue water sailors. Millions of $ cannot buy a blue water boat, but a blue water sailor can sail a dingy across an ocean. Look at Capt. Bligh, he sailed an open lifeboat full of sailors across 1600 miles of open ocean. I could do it my self in a rubber raft, if I could remember what I was doing out here in the middle of the sea without my honey and where are my glasses? Now repeat after me; "It is not the size of the tool that counts. It is how well you use it" And I know where of I speak.

Capt Fred, I can agree with you about 50%. There are boats, like a Hunter 25, that are clearly not capable of enduring a storm at sea. I also know where of I speak, having been through two Force 10 storms and one hurricane at sea - a Hunter or Bayliner or open lifeboat or ..., would not have made it through, regardless of the sailors

 

[Boasun]

How big a blue water boat is?? That depends on the size of your bathtub.

And how much you have upgraded you boat and your skills at survival on the big ponds.

 

[Stiche]

DB-

A Hunter 25? Wow. I can get pretty close to that though. How about a Cal 25? There have been a few (at least) that have been modified and successfully circumnavigated the globe. I've heard one story of a guy who sailed a Cal 25 from San Diego to Hawaii in 21 days.

I believe the most common modification was to the rudder, which won't make it without modification. Extra bulkheads, stringers, and strengthen the keel, and around the world you go.

The Cal 25 is surprisingly strong and handles well...not sure that I'm up to the task in mine, but hey, my idea of a good time is sails up, beer in hand and my GPS pointed to nowhere!

 

[Omatako]

About this big . . .

Basically, what happens to your light coastal crusier when it falls off a 30' wave or flips over. Will the tankage & cabinetry stay in place? Are they bonded to the hull or just screwed in?

Yep, I reckon that's a good synopsis. And I also agree with John. A good sailor can't stop a breaking 30ft wave from smashing the side of a weak boat in and no sailor is good enough to guarantee 100% avoidance of extreme conditions.

We are after all talking about open ocean and whilst I subscribe to the theory that the sea holds no malice, it can also be innocently brutal.

 

[Capt.Fred]

By golly some of you nice folks out there just don't get it. There is no majic bullet blue water boat. There is no nice warm cozy boat like your mom was to protect you. A blue water sailor would not take an unseaworthy boat to sea. However a blue water sailor could be pretty creative if he found a mangled derelict of a boat floating were he was swimming unintentionally at sea. After all that is why he is a blue water sailor. He has learned through the road of hard knocks to THINK out side the box! Amongst other honed instincts. Bless ya'll.

 

[JomsViking]

A Danish guy (Svend Billesbølle) did one and a half circumnavigation in an 18' Lynæs Senior (aka Midget class in the Netherlands, and Nordica-class in North America). Not to mention Serge Testa (12 foot)

 

[johnshasteen]

By golly some of you nice folks out there just don't get it. There is no majic bullet blue water boat. There is no nice warm cozy boat like your mom was to protect you. A blue water sailor would not take an unseaworthy boat to sea. However a blue water sailor could be pretty creative if he found a mangled derelict of a boat floating were he was swimming unintentionally at sea. After all that is why he is a blue water sailor. He has learned through the road of hard knocks to THINK out side the box! Amongst other honed instincts. Bless ya'll.

True there's no "magic bullet" bluewater boat, but there are a slew of "don't go in harms way in them" boats and anyone who goes deep into the blue with them had better hope to be damn lucky. On the other hand, there are a large number of stoutly built boats that will see a good sailor through a blow.

 

[jephotog]

Cuban Pacific Seacraft

Here is a nice blue water boat makings its way in the opposite direction. From Cuba to the states.

 

[smackdaddy]

Okay - c'mon. I'm with you guys on the light weight boat off a 30' wave scenario...to a point. But what "blue" boat out there is going to be just fine in a roll?

 

[Jeff_H]

These discussions always strike me as the sailing equivalent of the medieval "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" As has been said above, the answer depends:
· Your definition of "blue water"<O</O
· How good a sailor you are,<O</O
· How much risk you are willing to assume.<O</O
<O</O

Anecdotally, there are bunches of stories of this guy or that gal sailing the moral equivalent of a tea cup around the world. Does this mean that sailing a teacup around the world is a good idea? I don't think so. By the same token there is a recent phenomena that just plain baffles me where brand new, know-nothing sailors go off and buy 45/50 footers as their very first boat and plan to sail around the world. And before they've sailed a single serious passage, or gotten hammered by their first gut-wrencher of a storm, they swear that this is the smallest boat that is safe to sail around the world. <O</O
<O</O

To me, anyone seriously contemplating serious blue water sailing better have spent a bunch of time coastal cruising and getting to know almost reflexively how to sail out of any mess they get into. People would not do surgery or fly a plane without learning how to do so through a rigorous apprenticeship (by any other name). Yet they are perfectly comfortable setting off into the wild blue yonder on whatever plastic (or metal) fantastic they happen to justify owning. <O</O
<O</O

I understand that going voyaging always includes a bit of the Dirty Harry factor (as in "How lucky do you feel? Punk") But making a careful and thoughtful decision before getting your head handed to you on a silver platter seems to make a lot more sense than trying to wrestle your way out of hell in a leaky basket. It makes a lot more sense than wrestling against the huge forces of a big boat before you learn how to work with them. It makes a lot more sense than trying to survive in a boat that is the poster child for "how big is thy seas and how tiny is my boat". <O</O
<O</O

Almost any decent boat, with a touch of luck can make almost any passage that it can carry enough supplies to keep the skipper and crew alive, assuming that is that the worst does not happen. And experienced distance cruisers tell us that the worst rarely does happen. It's the lottery in reverse.

<O</O
<O</O
And since you can't be certain that you won't be the one who won the negative lottery and in other words, you can't be certain that you won't have to be the one to prove that you really can claw off a lee shore in a full gale in a Lead Bobber 24, then you better pick the most suitable boat you can find and make every effort to make sure that boat is in good shape and that you know how to sail it.

<O</OPretty much all studies of marine disasters have shown that length matters (at least up to a point), more than any other parameter, in the likelihood that a boat will survive a bad storm. Robustness is important because no matter how long your boat started out it had better hold together and keep water out and the rig up. Stability counts because there are cases you need to be able to carry enough sail to keep sailing no matter how much wind you are in. And lastly you need to have enough displacement to carry all the supplies and gear that you need to carry to make the passage.

<O</OWhich gets us back to the original question of how small a boat makes sense for offshore use. In a general sense, if you plan to do distance voyaging offshore, you need 2 ½ to 6 tons of displacement per person to carry enough stuff to keep them alive. If you go modern with your cruiser then you end up with an L/D somewhere less than 200 or if you go more traditional you end up with an L/D somewhere above 250. There is no excuse for an L/D any higher than 300.
<O</OAnd those numbers get you to a minimum size distance cruiser. But of course, not every boat that goes offshore is actually going distance cruising. Many are doing a series of short hops no longer than a coastal cruiser might grapple with.

And that, of course that brings us back to the guy with the Hunter 25 who went to Cuba. If I remember right it is roughly 90 miles from Key West to the Cuban coast. In decent weather that is roughly 24 to 30 hours of sailing. If you can pick your weather window, it's not all that hard to make that leap on any half-way decently maintained and constructed boat, including a 25 foot Hunter. <O</O

Respectfully,
Jeff

 

[mgiguere]

Yes, but if you do all that stuff to a Cal 25, then it's no longer a Cal 25! You can't then say that a Cal 25 survived a circumnavigation.