I was looking at a beautiful semi-racing 40ft cruiser that an American husband and wife were having built, when they pointed to one of the cabins and said "That’s the place for the Gorilla". They were both late middle-aged, but felt they were simply not strong enough to sail together without a hairy heavyweight to help with all the lifting and pulling.
But my wife and I are much older, with the eighties almost upon us and we are very keen to sail together, hopefully into our nineties without a supporting crew. With a lot of retired people around us, we constantly hear: "Afraid we’ve had to give up the cruiser, it’s just getting too much for us; too much hassle". But with all the aids and clever equipment available, plus a bit of luck with health, we should be able to keep going. Anyway, we listed our requirements, which may also apply to others in a similar position. We wanted:
Over the last quarter of a century, my wife and I had been sailing Iroquois catamarans which were modified to our own design requirements. First, a Mark 1 (No 2) then a Mark 2 (No 150). This experience led us to believe that a 30ft x 13ft Iroquois extended to 34ft 6ins x 18ft might be the answer. Then we heard that Reg White was already busy producing two lengthened hulls, so we asked him to let us have the first two, with the cockpit moulding of a standard Mark 2.
This turned out to be far more like building a prototype than the simple modification of an existing design, nevertheless it was finally completed. (Or almost completed!). The accommodation lay-outs are always a compromise, but in our case special emphasis had to be on the main saloon, the galley, and the main double cabins. For us, the feeling of light airy space was important, particularly with the idea of spending a good deal of time aboard, preferably a long way up quiet secluded creeks.
With Candida 3 you do get this feeling of space. You enter through wide 10mm perspex doors, and find generous horseshoe seating beneath larger than usual all round windows. These are made of toughened glass, with a good slope on the forward windows for safety. We have never yet had to use the protective washboards for the doors.
Entry is particularly easy with the very wide, shallow rise, curved steps, and the large hatch measuring 5ft x 3ft 6in. Surprisingly, a large hatch does spend most of the time open and it does give you a great feeling of the open air. Once inside, the central area has full headroom, with easy access to the galley, the loo compartment and main cabins.
The sitting and dining room area is wide enough to have a coffee table in the centre with no toe restriction. This can be raised, literally at a touch (on a simple lazy tongue principle), to ordinary table height. Then you fold up one flap for a limited number, or both flaps for a dinner party of up to at least eight people. With the seating it’s necessary to compromise, both with the height and the softness of the seats. We have a dished plywood base, and deep crisscrossed foam rubber underneath, a compromise which seems to have worked out well for both purposes.
Particularly on a ‘Geriatric Boat’, a sizeable, easy to operate galley, with no awkward corners, and lots of storage space, is essential. Our work surface measures 7ft 10in x 1ft 9in. Keeping the main work surface facing inwards rather than outwards not only helps the galley slave or slaves, who can keep in touch with the seated company, but also make it easier to pass up the meal. A great help with this is the easily reachable wide shelf behind the work surface on which the cook puts everything ready for handing over to the table.
The living area between the seating space and the steps to the galley and cabin on one side, and the steps to the toilet and vanity unit and the cabin on the other, all have full standing headroom. This also allows for a full sized chart table and instrument board. The navigator has a 270 degree view all round and can keep the boat on course and avoid crab pots with a ‘dodge’ control. Opposite the chart table is a large wet locker which drains through the bridgedeck. In this locker, as well as a locker behind the galley, is a self contained Calor installation for hot water, and cooking. One big advantage of a Cat is that you can make all these installations self draining through the bridgedeck, so the old ‘bogey’ of a bottled gas leak getting into the bilges and causing an explosion is eliminated.
Racing catamarans usually go for very deep high aspect ratio dagger boards. The disadvantages is that they come right up through the cabin seriously interfering with the living space. Running aground can be dangerous too. (They sometimes have sacrificial lower sections, to guard against serious damage.) The majority of cruising catamarans go for conventional keels, with the disadvantage of lower efficiency and increased draft. (We find our 18 inch draft a very big advantage). The plates themselves are very carefully shaped and controlled. Because they roll up and over like a garage door it was still possible to make them tuck neatly under the galley work surface on one side, and under the vanity unit on the other. There’s a theory that if you can pull up the plates so the boat has the minimum lateral resistance, it will be much safer in extreme conditions because it can slide sideways like a raft. Anyway, for going to windward you can always rely on two good diesels - so there’s no doubt that easily operated efficient plates have considerable advantages.
The main double cabins again are lightened by extending the side windows and also by the additional aft facing windows. Largish mirrors over the wash basins have the same effect. It might just have been possible to achieve a double berth in each main cabin, which you could climb into from both sides. This would have been unique, but disadvantages seemed to outweigh the advantages. Still, for climbing in over pillows, you need plenty of headroom and strategically placed steps and handles. With the two forward bunks, and the day bed behind the horseshoe, which forms a reclining reading couch, plus the two sides of the horseshoe, you could sleep nine in an emergency, but it would have to be a big emergency!
With a cruiser of this beam loaded for cruising, a capsize is a virtual impossibility. Nevertheless, I have in mind, and part tested, a simple inexpensive device for releasing the sails in the event of unprecedented gust. But it must be remembered that multihull racing capsizes, which give multi-hulls a bad name, are usually the result of being overdriven then meeting a freak wave - which results in a cartwheel and then a capsize.
I have found that a wire and pulley steering has advantages over Morse cable or hydraulics and this makes double wheel steering possible. It feels more comfortable to be on the windward side, and the visibility is better. The sprocket gear for wire operation seems to have gone off the market, but it’s possible to use outboard steering gears fitted with bicycle rear wheel sprockets. To get the feeling of racing cat steering, this must of course be as light as possible, which means the rudders should be well balanced. Richard Woods tells me that if you overdo it, it’s at high speed that the steering gets a bit "twitchy". On some early M.T.B.’s, I believe this had disastrous consequences. However, a 22 per cent gives good results, but it could probably have been safely exceeded. I have found that any fences (or wings as they are now called) which increase the efficiency of keels or rudders have to be carefully designed to avoid rope catching.
Another general difference between a racing and a cruising cat is the forward decking. On a racer this is usually replaced by a trampoline. That is just one of the jobs still to be done on the endless list, which never seems to decrease. However, a central walkway with trampolines each side provides a useful compromise with plenty of space for picking up a mooring in the centre, or operating the electric anchor winch.
To make boarding as easy as possible, a fold up side ladder with treads kept fairly well off the side of the boat, seemed to be most convenient. This keeps the dinghy in line with the stream, and avoids having to step sideways on to a stern ladder. Nevertheless, a folding ladder which folds down well into the water, will be fitted to the rear beam alongside the dinghy, not only for bathing, but for anyone in the water for any other reason, since it’s almost impossible to reach a bottom rung if it is not well down in the water. Hauling on board someone in the water who has lost strength, is a different matter. There are various methods for both keel boats and multihulls, mostly making use of tackle on the boom fixed over the side, but here again, an electric winch is an advantage.
The choice of a ships’ dinghy is of course important, on both multihulls and keelboats, and here the extra weight of a rigid dinghy must be set against the skittishness under foot, and the poor rowing of a small inflatable. The hoisting arrangements make it possible to carry the dinghy on board with the outboard attached, since you often hear the cry from the elderly that it's difficult to ship the outboard in a choppy sea. For a boat normally on a mooring, a somewhat larger rigid dinghy is desirable for ferrying extra people on board, carrying gear etc., and this raises another problem - getting it up and down a launching ramp. There are various methods: pulling it up with a club winch, fixing a tackle - I’ve even seen a petrol driven ‘drag buggy’. We are fortunate in having a ramp where, if the tide is out and the dinghy is on a difficult section, we can tow it up by car, but we’ve still found invaluable the addition of a swivelling nose wheel on the launching trolley which also has some greased slides and guides and a small tackle for pulling the boat into position.
All heavy work on board is handled by electric winches, with of course, back ups in the event of failure. The cockpit electric winch has been found valuable for pulling in the genny sheets, in addition to other jobs. As has the electric anchor winch.
It goes without saying, that all reefing should be handled from the cockpit. Foresail reefing is of course, well established and mainsail reefing is catching on rapidly. However, due to friction, our in-the-mast reefing is nothing like as easy as the foresail reefing and, in fact, needs hand winching in both directions.
If, "Heaven forbid" I were to carry out the same exercise again, (divorce and bankruptcy would be simultaneous) I think I would try to work out the sheeting for an entirely boomless sail like a foresail, using Barber Haulers for changing the sheeting positions and possibly with a streamlined rotating mast with an exposed roller behind and with leading edge slots. There might be developments in this direction, if I can hang on long enough!
Finally, of course, old age sailing is always in the ‘lap of the Gods’ health-wise, and you must consider yourself lucky if you’ve no disability which prevents you from working the boat, even if you have to be hoisted on board. But most of all you need motivation and the will to go. Of course there will be problems. We make frequent lists and promptly lose them, but we do careful cockpit checks when setting off or leaving the boat. When our failures are not simultaneous ones, all is well.
However, with Candida 3 we hope to keep going without being too much of a nuisance to anyone. Here's hoping anyway…..