Looking back on this passage I remember how hard it was to do things in the middle of the ocean, feeling a bit lonely and worried about what might go wrong. Any boat can break. When I sailed on another boat to the Azores we heard a mayday from a brand new French boat on its maiden voyage. Their rudder had fallen out of the bottom of the boat and the crew abandoned it, probably after reading their insurance policy a couple of times. True Blue broke too, despite being a strong, purpose built blue-water boat. Everything that broke was equipment of some kind, and equipment that deteriorates over time.

Almost nothing is as important on a cruising boat as self steering. Recently Alison and I have been sailing on Sydney Harbour, and have had to hand steer. This is a shock to the system, because we have probably steered more this year than we did on the whole trip from the States.

A few years ago now I wrote the article below, deciding to keep our 32 footer for our trip around the world. Well - we reneged! As we say in the front we went 5 foot bigger. What were we thinking! Have we changed our minds on what makes a good boat?

One of the most useful, and most annoying things aboard a cruising yacht is the SSB. We did not have an SSB transmitter for our trip from the States, but we did have a receiver for getting the weather and listening to the radio. I had sailed from Florida to the Azores on a 65’ boat, and caught the disease of ‘getting the weather’.
Getting the weather becomes an addiction. I estimate that I spent at least an hour a day trying to figure out what to expect next. I still cannot walk past a barometer without tapping it. Which is weird, because we have a pretty slow boat, so the chances we can avoid bad weather are pretty slim.