CRUISING OFF THE BEATEN TRACK IS A BLUEWATER DREAM, BUT HOW CAN YOU PREPARE FOR EVERY SITUATION? CATHERINE LAWSON SHARES REMOTE CRUISING WISDOM
If you sail far enough from home, you’ll eventually reach a place that looks wonderfully unfamiliar and is almost entirely your own. Aplace where there’s no jostling for space in busy anchorages, but where you slow down and experience a slice of the simple life.
For many adventurous sailors, this kind of escapism ends on a balmy, empty, coral-fringed beach drinking green coconuts, swimming until sunset, and grilling the day’s catch over hot coals. But your coveted backdrop could equally be an icy shoreline studded with seals, or a wild, dusty African coastline where the surf breaks are all yours. Those of us lured to tackle long passages to faraway places often do so to find ourselves where others are not. But the reality of this ideal is that the challenges you’ll likely face when you get there will be all for you to contend with too. Testing yourself might be part of the appeal and with a well stocked boat, some careful planning and the ability to problem solve that remote cruising invariably kindles, this type of adventure will put you on a path towards a more self-sufficient life afloat.
MAKING PLANS
In my own sailing grounds in Australia’s far north, haul-out facilities are separated by passages of more than 1,000 miles along remote coastlines. Once you weigh anchor in Cairns and join the south-east tradewinds pushing towards Darwin and beyond, there are very few settlements to pull into.
Prudent sailors following this route towards Indonesia and beyond arm themselves with bulging medical kits and a bounty of boat spares, download satellite imagery, and beef up their boat insurance – with good reason. In the many years we’ve spent cruising our Grainger 1250 catamaran on Indonesia’s wild West Papuan coastline, we’ve barely sourced a tube of Sikaflex, let alone seacocks or float switches, and our idea of what constitutes a viable boat haul-out facility has shifted markedly too.
Right across this isolated region we’ve shopped in villages with the most basic of medical outposts, and commonly resorted to patching and treating our own motley crew.
Some of the world’s most enticing sailing grounds throw up all kinds of navigational challenges too. Our reliance on AIS and radar when underway is routinely bolstered by careful night watches, especially in places where the flame of a cigarette lighter or a sudden flash of torchlight may be the only beacons lighting up a local fishing boat. To avoid wrangling with nets, lines and buoys in heavily trafficked fishing grounds, we avoid entering anchorages at night where possible, and sail far further offshore on passages in search of more open seas.
We have also had to rethink our strategies around personal safety on boar
