Tips for Cruising in Foreign Waters
Life’s too short to be bored. If you’ve got Melville’s “damp, drizzly November in your soul,” it’s time for a new adventure: time to get away, to see something different, to do something you haven’t done a hundred times before, to take a few risks. If you love boating (and if you’re reading this, chances are you do), what better way to fight existential ennui than discovering new cruising grounds, where new adventures await, where you’ll see strange things and maybe even stranger people and where your anchor will take hold on history-laden seafloors? Brush the dust off your passport: It’s time to go foreign.
Of course, there are different degrees of “going foreign.” Canada and the Bahamas are foreign, but not that much different from the U.S., other than the first one being colder in the winter and the second having better conch chowder all year round. And both are easy to reach from the Lower 48. You can go foreign, in a way, without leaving the U.S.; Hawaii is a state, but you have to make a 3,000-mile open-ocean passage to get there—so that’s kind of foreign. Navigating the Inside Passage to Alaska is foreign to, and enough adventure for most folks; watch out for the bears and the orcas. I’d like to cruise in all these places, but by “foreign” I mean someplace where they speak a different language, eat different fast foods, use different voltage in their shore-power cords. Nirvana for the cruising yachtsman going foreign, in this regard at least, is the Mediterranean. You just have to get there.
If you have a seaworthy, long-legged yacht with enough range to fuel-hop from the East Coast to the Azores (about a 2500NM jaunt from New York), Gibraltar and then into the Med, you can motor there. Allow about a month at 6 knots to reach the Pillars of Hercules. If you’re not a trawler person, or crossing the Atlantic isn’t your thing or you don’t have a month to spare making the passage and another month to come home, ship your boat and pick it up in, say, Marseilles. However you get there, once in the Med, nothing beats cruising aboard your own yacht: You know how to handle her, you know how everything works and how to fix things when they don’t, you can go where you want. Same holds true if you’re going to Northern Europe, maybe mooching around the Hebrides and Orkneys or checking out a fjord or three. It’ll be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Don’t Plug That In!
Only thing is, Europe ain’t the U.S., and you’ll have to make some adjustments. The first one is what to do for juice. Standard mains electricity is 240 v.a.c./50 Hz in Europe; chances are your U.S. boat is wired for 120 v.a.c./60 Hz, but you can work around this. Hardcore cruisers install a shore-power converter, which can convert almost any input voltage to U.S. specs, but consult your marine electronics guru. The equipment can be expensive, but so is cruising the Med.
If you can live without prodigious amounts of air conditioning when dockside, and you have a modern battery charger, you’re covered: Most can handle 240 volts input, convert it to U.S. specs and charge the batteries; use an inverter to supply air conditioning. You’ll just need the correct adapter for the shore cord. It helps to have high-capacity house batteries if you have large AC loads. This will allow you to use most of your appliances—maybe not the air conditioning or the galley range, but the fridge and microwave will keep working. Underway and at anchor, you’ll use your genset for air conditioning. (Europeans also frown on running the genset in the marina.)
Set up your boat to be as self-contained as possible. Add solar panels, or maybe upgrade your engine alternators to pump out more juice, so you can recharge your batteries faster when you’re underway. If you added more amp-hours to your battery banks to make better use of the inverter, extra charging current will come in handy.
Many years ago, I spent six months cruising the Med and lived off 12 volts the whole time. I had neither an inverter nor a genset, and charged the two 300-amp-hour house banks with the alternator and, with a battery charger I bought in a Spanish electrical store, plugged into dockside power whenever possible. It wasn’t the best procedure, but it worked. I cooked with propane, so I didn’t have an electric range to feed. I just had to keep the cabin lights burning, the stereo playing and the refrigerator running.
Mooring, Med Style
We are spoiled in the U.S. by our marinas: lots of pilings to tie our lines to, plenty of space between our boat and the guy in the next slip. It’s not the same in many foreign harbors. Vessels from superyachts to runabouts moor by dropping an anchor offshore, then backing into the quay between two other boats and passing stern lines ashore. You rely on your anchor to keep you from whacking your transom. This procedure is so ubiquitous in the Mediterranean that’s it’s called the “Med moor.” Your anchoring technique must be good so you don’t drag into the dock. If you’re not comfortable anchoring, work on it before trying the Med moor in a harbor crowded with expensive yachts.
You’ll need good ground tackle, a primary anchor heavier than recommended—I’d go one size up—and an all-chain rode. (I like big anchors.) In the U.S., folks typically anchor in relatively shallow water, but when you go foreign you have to be ready for deeper water, so carry plenty of rode; I’d go with a couple hundred feet, at least, and more if possible. Add a second anchor with a long rode, too; rope is OK, but with at least 50 feet of chain leader. When I cruised the Med, the anchor of choice for most yachts was a CQR plow; today, most of the pros use a modern design, like a Rocna or Spade. Both are highly rated for typical Med anchoring conditions. You’ll need a muscular windlass for handling both anchors. Skimping on ground tackle will come back to bite you eventually, so don’t.
Marinas sometimes have permanent mooring lines or even chains that you can use instead of your own anchor. Learn the correct bend to use to attach a dockline to the chain so you can belay it to your bow cleat. I found that unshackling my own anchor and attaching the rode to the marina’s chain, using my anchor shackle, worked well for long-term Med mooring, but it’s too much hassle if you’re just spending the night. In any case, expect to use your own anchor, and have the ground tackle you need for Med mooring efficiently and safely.
Once you arrive in the Med, buy a gangplank—megayacht folks call them passarelles. You can’t pull the boat tight up to the quay, because the stern will hit if the boat pulls back against the anchor. Leave a few feet of clearance and use the gangplank to get on and off the boat. Another reason for an all-chain rode: The weight of the chain works better to hold the boat off.
Finally, you need plenty of big fenders. In Europe, boats often ride against each other when Med moored, so you’ll want to hang three or four on each side. Don’t be rude and arrive under-fendered. Check out pictures of marinas on the Riviera to see how it works.
Going Foreign For the Rest of Us
Maybe you’re one of the unfortunate few who don’t own an oceangoing yacht and can’t take six months or more off from real life to mooch around the Med. Why not go foreign for a week or two, and charter somebody else’s boat? It’ll be all set up for cruising, be wired for 240 volts, have appropriate ground tackle and mooring equipment, and look “local,” so you won’t stand out and, possibly, become subject to tourist pricing. Not that everyone is trying to squeeze the max out of Americans who go foreign, but it happens.
Bareboat charters are available all over the world. At Boatbookings.com, I found a 37-foot Fountaine Pajot power cat in Ajaccio, Corsica, for 6,800 Euros/week (about $7,400) and up, depending on the season. That boat’s large enough to handle most conditions, and small enough to sneak into interesting anchorages. Corsica and Sardinia are not as posh as the Riviera, but worthwhile cruising grounds nevertheless. Check out Maddalena Island at the northern tip of Sardinia. (Be careful of the Strait of Bonifacio, between Sardinia and Corsica; in less-than-ideal conditions, it can be very unfriendly.)
Add about 30 percent to the weekly rate for expenses: food, fuel, gratuities, dockage and harbor fees, etc. Fuel is expensive in Europe compared to the U.S. At the time of this writing, the average cost of diesel in France was about $7.08 U.S.D. per gallon; probably more at the fuel dock. Gasoline costs about $7.63 U.S.D. per gallon. All but the smallest and/or most extravagant European boats (e.g., fast runabouts like Rivas) run on diesel, sometimes called gas-oil or red diesel when used in off-road engines, and DERV for on-road vehicles. It’s all the same fuel, but different uses incur different taxes; lower-taxed gas-oil is dyed red. Whatever it’s called, diesel is more readily available for boats than gasoline/petrol is. Anyone cruising foreign waters on their own boat probably has diesels anyway, but whatever your fuel, refilling the tanks will be way more costly than in the U.S.
Chartering a bareboat isn’t as easy in other countries as in the U.S. In the Mediterranean, for example, charterers are required to have the appropriate license and experience. Qualifications are evaluated on a case-by-case basis, so you have to apply to the charter company once you know what size, type, etc., boat you want. If you don’t qualify, you can hire a skipper; cost is about 200 Euros/day and up, depending on the boat, plus food and gratuity. A skipper with local knowledge will make cruising a lot more fun, can help with language barriers and can do all the worrying. For something completely different, charter a sailboat with a skipper and you can cruise the Med like Odysseus. With luck, when you go foreign you’ll have fewer problems than he did, but enough adventures that you don’t get bored again for a long time.
This article originally appeared in the December 2024 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.
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Source: https://www.powerandmotoryacht.com/voyaging/tips-for-cruising-in-foreign-waters
