Voyaging belongs to seamen and wanderers of the world who cannot or will not fit in. To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Only then will you know what the sea is all about. But in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheel of routine. The years thunder by. The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie, on the shelves of patience. Sterling Hayden
It's strange how sometimes an insight comes to you out of the blue, often about something you've known well before. And when it does, no one is more surprised than you.
I had spent a couple of days at the Annapolis Boat Show, screening boats for this volume, poking into whatever was accessible on the gorgeous Hinckleys, the perfect Aldens, the indestructible, powerful Swans, and the palace-like Oysters. And I was awed by their ever-growing size, the brilliance of their technology, the complexity of their systems. I had a great debate going on within me as to which was The Perfect Yacht -the ones above or the bulletlike Baltics or the daringly innovative Turner or the J/Boats that fly as much as they sail.
It was late the final day, with the rain drizzling down, when I walked along a part of the docks I hadn't bothered with before. There were some daysailers there, and wooden skiffs; then there was the Pardeys' little Bristol Channel Cutter-type boat that Lyle Hess had designed. It was one of the smaller oceangoing cruisers at the show. Its house was square, its decks wide, its bowsprit pesky, its gear modest, its lines and honest simplicity redolent of the sea. And without thinking, without analyzing, in the midst of the billions of dollars' worth of yachting glitter, for the first time in two days I felt something stir inside me. I gulped hard, and the words leapt like a breaking wave until I mumbled them aloud: 'Now there's a real boat.'
There is something about these boats - the Bristol Channel Cutter and the smaller, even more feisty Falmouth Cutter - that seems to attract some of the most likable people around. First there was Sam Morse, with his honest eyes and kind manners, who started the company almost thirty years ago. When he was ready to retire, along came George Hylkema, and soon thereafter, Roger Olson who, after sailing 50,000 miles in his Bristol Channel Cutter, became a partner and eventually took over the company until the land began to burn under his feet again and, in his new Bristol Channel Cutter, he returned to the sea. And now there's Sumio Oya, who is exactly like you always wanted your favorite uncle to be - warm, thoughtful, disarmingly honest, with a quick, uncontrollable laughter that, no matter how old you are, makes you laugh like a kid again.
He was born in Japan, and the cadence of his words, and the care with which he utters them, makes you listen with as much attentiveness as you listen to a good friend. By the time you've spent a day with him, you feel as if you've known him for years.
'Ten years ago,' he begins with a deep breath, and you look forward to the story, 'I was the general manager of a high-tech manufacturing company. We made broadcast test equipment, high definition, that sort of thing. The four big networks were our major customers. I did that for sixteen years. When the stress was kind of maximizing, a friend invited me to go sailing one day. Before I was a sailor, I used to get seasick on a ferry that crossed a river. But I went; I dreaded going, but I went anyway. We set sail. After less than a mile, he stopped the engines. There was just the sound of the wind and the waves. Instead of being seasick, I felt - for the first time in I-don't-know-how-many years - relaxed. All my stress gone. At peace.
`That night, I went to a bookstore and bought your World's Best Sailboats. I'd minored in art and love good design. I read through the book, loved the photographs, and within a month I was sitting in this office in front of Roger. I was fascinated with the shape of his boats. He spent the morning with me telling me about them - each part, how it's built, why it is built the way it is. Since that day I have been hooked on the boat. I wanted so much to be a part of the Bristol Channel Cutter that finally, three years ago, I bought into the company. Roger stayed on for two years to teach me all about boatbuilding.
When I planned to buy the company, everyone said not to. The boat may be very tough, but maybe not the company. But I couldn't resist. I didn't want Roger to retire and have the boats disappear. And when I saw the quality and saw the shipwright, working, so proud of his work - and he had every right to be – I thought, if the company was managed well, it could survive.
`We have only three workers. The foreman who was here for twenty-five years retired, but the shipwright, who was his partner here all those years, is now the foreman. I'm sure we could make more money by building bigger boats - say a 45-footer. It would certainly be more profitable, but my goal is not maximum profit. I had been there with the high-tech company, doubled and quadrupled in sales every year, but I could not find any satisfaction. Chasing money, you never get enough; you only killed. And chasing money is such a limited goal for a human being. People need something more. I sure did. Money you can always find, but time, your life - once it's lost, it's lost.
`Here I do what I love every minute. I'm happy here. I love, see the faces of people who are thrilled to get their boats.
`What is wonderful about these boats, is that there is something timeless about them. When I was in high tech, we used to change designs every week, prices changed every fifteen days. Here it's: We have built it this way for twenty-five years. Why change when you have something so good? So we change only minor things, to perfect things.
`I just can't say enough about Lyle Hess; he designed such a perfectly thought-out boat. But then in came Roger, with all his sailing experience in it, and made some very good changes. He had taught engineering and design before he sailed off to the South Seas and Singapore and on to New Guinea. He improved the sail plan to give her more drive to weather.
`We made some minor interior improvements as well. A recent owner wanted a dinette, so we reconfigured that to port. With that, we increased the size of the pull-out double berth. Small, ongoing improvements to a timeless boat. And we changed from Volvo to Yanmar and improved the engine access. We improved the tanks, the head system. Then switched the water tanks to under the floor. Little things, they can mean a lot.
`We are building a boat now for a very knowledge owner - he had owned a Hinckley and a Swan - who wants to visit the Arctic Circle. This boat will incorporate Kevlar to reinforce an already substantial hull for travel in icy regions. strength is about ten times that required by the Coast Guard.
There were three boats under construction the day I visited the yard, and seeing one just out of the mold, my first impression was, 'My God, but it's a beautifully shaped hull.' And far past the beauty, the boat is perfectly thought-out. The cockpit well is small, so you can brace on a heel, with good, high coamings to support your back. The decks are very wide and safe with the high bulwarks; the ventilation below is perfect - with the huge forward hatch open, and the skylight open, and main hatch open, the damned thing is practically a top-down convertible.
As they have been from the start, the hulls are laminated by Crystaliner, the fiberglass experts in the area. They have been at it for almost forty years, laying up, among others, Westsailsand Alajuelas. Their work is impeccable. It is all hand-laid by a multigenerational cadre of craftsmen.
The engineering is as meticulous as the layup itself. The aperture for the propeller is beautifully faired. The tooling in general is very fine. The bottom of the skeg is filled in solid with resin and fibers. The hull flange on which the deck sits consists of all the hull laminates turned back; hence, it is integral and massive. The hull-to-deck attachment bolts are staggered every 4 inches - one inboard, one outboard - ensuring a perfect seal and a more reliable torque distribution all the way around. The deck is dry-fit, drilled, lifted, cleaned, then set in 5200 polysulfide - guaranteed by the manufacturer until a minute past doomsday - then bolted.
The coring for the deck is marine plywood, and that is about as compression-proof as you can get. And its insertion is no slapdash affair. The plywood sheets are grooved on both sides - first to facilitate bending, and second to ensure perfect adhesion to the resin and fiber bonding agent.
The ballast is internal, made up of four nicely cast lead ingots. The mast is keel-stepped, and a very thoughtful aspect of it is the Delrin plate that separates the ballast bond from the aluminum mast base, keeping it out of the way of any water that may be trickling aft from the chain locker.
The bulkheads are set back from the hull onto tapered foam fillets to avoid hard spots against the hull, and to create smooth, gentle curves for the bonding. Here I have to remind you of a Sam Morse specialty - the bonding of the main bulkhead to the hull and deck. Where the bond is to be laid, the bulkhead is drilled every foot with a 2-inch-diameter hole. As the bonds are laid in both forward and aft, they are pressed onto each other through the holes, so the bond forward of the bulkhead actually bonds to the bond aft of the bulkhead. In other words, the bulkhead is 'locked in' at every foot. In contrast to this, most builders lay bonds forward and aft with the bulkhead in between. The Sam Morse system protects against any conceivable delamination between layers of the plywood itself, or the delamination of the bond from the plywood. Admittedly, both are rare events in sailing, but then why not be prepared - just in case? It's time-consuming but indestructible.
As for the cabinetry, the boats are still stick-built - no liners - and every cabinet, every piece of wood is bonded into the hull, one at a time, to perfection. And the bonding is enormous. Even inside the cabinets, it is so immaculate and so perfectly, parallel that they must use either a ruler or voodoo. The cabintop, underdecks, and the hull above the waterline are insulated with rigid foam.
I know there is much debate about which steering system is the most reliable for an offshore boat - rack and pinion hydraulic, or cable. The Bristol Channel Cutter settles that once and for all - the tiller. It doesn't bend, doesn't fray, doesn't leak doesn't squeak and most important of all, never breaks. And not only is it breakproof, but it is utterly simple to connect to wind vane, which in turn is about ten times more reliable and foolproof than an autopilot; and lo and behold, it doesn't require generators or engines to provide electricity. The system gives you calm and freedom. Were those not the things that attracted you to going to sea in the first place? Just asking.
I don't want to repeat what I wrote in Volume I about these boats, for as Sumio said, they have changed little. And perhaps that is the point - that they were well thought-out from the beginning. Now it is true that the accommodations are not palatial compared to others in this book, but then so what? As long as you have good settees and a good table, and a good pilot berth, what is the advantage of a wider saloon? So you can get thrown around more in a seaway? Or to let you sit farther from your loved one? And why a huge galley? Are you going to make Thanksgiving dinners twice every day? Sure, you might have to think and organize a bit more as you cook, but hasn't thinking been shown to stave off Alzheimer's?
And if you say a bigger boat gives you more storage, forget it. Go sailing; leave your junk at home or give it to the poor. This boat is so simple and unbreakable you won't need many spare parts. And if you say that you would like to have all the comforts of home, then maybe, just maybe, that is where you should stay. For if you don't go to sea to experience something different, to feel something different, to have new thoughts and emotions stir you, then why bother going to sea at all? Why go cluttering up pristine, distant harbors with all that gear and junk?
And if you think bigger boats are safer, think again. The most frequent danger long-distance cruisers seem to encounter is robbery and piracy. A friend who circumnavigated in a humble, wooden 30-footer recounted dozens of stories. But they almost always involved people from large and flashy boats. Bristol Channel Cutters are so charming and friendly looking that people will probably give you things instead of taking from you.
And one last thing - your life. How many more years will you have to toil in the salt mine so you can buy a bigger, more fancy, more gear-laden boat? If I may quote Conrad:
`I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more - the feeling that I could last forever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; ... the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires, too soon, too soon - before life itself.'
`At the high-tech company,' Sumio says softly, looking at the dusk, 'I had great status and all the money I could want. Yet I wasn't happy. Then five years ago, my father, who was a doctor, was dying. I had always thought he had an ideal life, accomplished a lot - he owned a hospital, helped people. A week before he died - I had been looking after him for six months - he became like a child and said, Oh, I wish I had done this, had done that, retired earlier. I knew life was short, but this. And he looked at me and said, Never worry about what others may think. Do whatever your heart says.
'I will never get rich here, but all I want is just to keep these boats going. To give people a chance, like I had, to have their dream. I feel it my duty to keep this company as is, until I'm too old to run it. My hope is that it will outlive me, that I can hand it down to someone who loves these boats just as much as I.'
[1] Ferenc Máté, The world's best sailboats: Volume II, New York: W. W. Norton, 2003, pp. 177-88.
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