NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: What do offshore recreational navigators really do?
From: Fred Hebard
Date: 2005 Jun 7, 22:44 -0400
From: Fred Hebard
Date: 2005 Jun 7, 22:44 -0400
On Jun 7, 2005, at 9:47 PM, Lu Abel wrote: > In a similar vein, Larry and Lin Pardy sailed for a long time in a > series of engineless sailboats. As I recollect, their reasoning was > that engines weren't really that useful and were too much of a > maintenance hassle. Wise or foolish? Maybe it depends on whether > one > is lucky to avoid being caught on a lee shore in a full gale. It also > denys a lot of useful harbors (as I recall, the Pardys didn't have a > powered dinghy either, that some have used as a tug). > > Lu Abel > A lee shore is much less hazardous to a fore-and-aft rigged vessel than to a square rigger. Perhaps one might motor-sail off a lee shore, but I'm not sure I'd want to trust my life to a little yacht engine pushing straight into the teeth of a full gale; better to sail her off if you can.