John Neal from Mahina Offshore Services is back on the podcast for another practical conversation, this time focused on shorthanded sailing, preparation, and how sailors can build systems that make life offshore safer and more manageable.
A big part of this discussion is what happens when there are simply fewer hands on deck. We talk about why checklists matter, how routines reduce stress, and how preparation can make shorthanded sailing feel more controlled rather than reactive. Whether it’s systems, planning, communication, or mindset, John shares practical ways sailors can reduce preventable mistakes and make better decisions offshore.
And beyond seamanship, we shift into the current sailboat market. After years of hearing mostly the same story—tight inventory and rising prices—there are finally some more interesting, and positive, developments to talk about. We discuss what’s changing, what buyers and sellers should be watching, and how these shifts may affect cruising plans and boat decisions.
As always, John brings practical, grounded insight that applies whether you’re already passagemaking or simply preparing for future cruising.
Transcript
Annika: Well, let’s start by talking about the state of the sailboat market, which is a topic that we often come back to because you always talk about this in such a grounded and practical way, which l- I know that listeners love and it’s so useful. And we spoke last about a year ago and probably a year before that again, so it’s like a regular check-in. And I’m wondering if you look at the boat market now,, what’s changed? What, what are we looking at? What are we working with?
John Neal: Well, Annika, super question because I know a lot of your followers are at the point in their lives where they’re ready to buy a boat and, um, so the news is definitely good. I contacted a a broker in Sweden who owns Berthon Scandinavia brokerage, and I’ve worked with him for a ton of years, and he’s just– He does– Berthon does all of Europe.
They’re the largest cruising boat broker in Europe. And he said that their market there has slowed a bit. Prices aren’t quite as firm, but any boat that’s offshore capable, that is in good condition, well-outfitted, um, goes very, very quickly. I just heard from Max Shaw, whom you’ve interviewed before, who’s in, uh, near Victoria, Canada, and Max said…
I’ll just read it ’cause it just, just arrived, and Max also works worldwide. He says, uh, “The market has definitely softened, but a lot of YouTube chatter about a collapse in the market for used cruising boats is a gross exaggeration. While catamaran prices have softened, there’s still a strong demand for them.
Less demand for older offshore style monohulls, so I have had clients get some great deals on those. On the other hand, I have had clients that keep insisting on trying to lowball offers on quality catamarans, and they are being [00:02:00] rejected out of hand. So opportunities, but not a free-for-all.
Say hi to Annika for me.” It was fun to catch up with them in person in France.
Annika: Yeah indeed we did meet.
John Neal: The next is– Yeah, that’s great. Uh, well, that’s super. Uh, then I heard from Ryan Hilling, whom I’ve known for a long time, and he’s a dealer for several of the aluminum lifting keel top-end boats and, uh, also for Hallberg-Rassy, and he’s based in Seattle, but he works worldwide as well. Um, and he says, “It s-seems like there’s still activity. I’m working with some good buyers, broker clients on boats here and in Europe. Prices are definitely a little softer, but it doesn’t seem like the good boats stay on the market very long. If they are well-priced, they get snapped up. It will be interesting to see what happens this spring.”
So there you go. Um, [00:03:00] to that, I just, uh, finished presenting in Seattle Boat Show, and I talked with a Beneteau dealer there who, who is a cruising kid. She grew up– Uh, her dad was an airline pilot, and she grew up living aboard in different exotic places, homeschooling and, uh, thinking it was the life.
And she said that, um, they had, because of the tariff deal, they had a lot of people holding off from purchasing, so, um, August, September, October was kinda quiet for them. And then she said, now people just accepted that the tariffs are gonna be here and, the boat builders are trying to make some adjustments.
The boat dealers are maybe absorbing a little bit of that, and people are just saying, “Well, we wanna get a boat, and we wanna go cruising, and so we’re just gonna have to bite the bullet.” And that’s for new boats. Um, used boats, My observations is that, There seems to be a shrinking pool [00:04:00] of quality boats that aren’t 30 or 40 years old, and those prices have dropped.
So I do– I’ve been tracking 30 boats for about 20 years, and I just went through an update of those January 1st, and it was interesting. Probably 70% of the prices went down of the boats that I’m tracking, and 30% went up. The one that went up the highest was, no surprise, Leopard 46. So, so many, so many people have said that that’s…
I think of Will and Sarah Curry, the Hydrovane couple. And Will, they had two monohulls that they– One they– The first one they purchased in Mexico, sailed to Australia over, I think, 18 months. They sold it in Australia for enough to pay for the boat and the outfitting almost as soon as they got there.
They said there were 17… And I actually met a bunch of these people ’cause I was in the Pacific at that same time. There’s about 17 young [00:05:00] cruisers, almost all of them from Europe, many of them from Scandinavia, Baltic countries, at– that cruised together. And normally, the cruisers are, a lot of them are grandparents.
And they– This was cool ’cause these guys were all under 30. All these were young couples, and they all sold their boats within two weeks of arriving in Australia, and they all flew back, and many of them started families and are planning on going once their kids are a little bigger. So that was just really interesting.
Well, Will and Sarah then bought a, uh, Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 43 and did a trip from, uh, Vancouver, Canada, to, Can’t remember where they sold that one. Maybe that was Australia as well. Not sure. Well, then they just purchased– They’re, they ha-have two boys now who are, I think, about five or something like that.
They’re very rambunctious. And the monohull is a little bit small, so they, they had interviewed over their ca- course of fitting [00:06:00] Hydrovanes for cruisers around the world. They just had really… And plus, Will grew up as a cruising kid. They just zeroed into Leopard 46 as being the ideal boat within their budget, super boat for two kids and two adults.
Good enough tankage, good enough speed, and it’s a charter boat. It’s not a, uh, it’s not a gunboat or a, Outremer but it fit their deal. And they bought it from a Norwegian cruising family that had two kids in Greece, and then they flew off there, and then they sailed it a little bit. Did a s– a little bit of, tiny bit of work on it.
Then they joined the ARC, and they crossed the Atlantic with this brand-new to them, and they’d never sailed catamarans before, and they were totally sold. And Will is totally certain that that boat just really ticks so many boxes. So, uh, it– that went up almost two hundred thousand dollars in average [00:07:00] selling, not listing, the average selling price over a year ago.
So that was really shocking.
Leopard 42 also took a big jump. So
Annika: that is interesting then. So yeah, I’ve definitely seen there’s a trend online. You see a lot of, people shifting, from monohulls to catamarans, so I can see that there would be, some excess monohulls, out there, which is good because I think at a certain point there was a time where you could still kind of overpay for even a monohull that needed a lot of work.
So at least, you know, there’s some kind of a correction in the market it seems like.
John Neal: Yeah, we can call it the COVID correction or end of COVID correction.
Annika: Exactly. Took a few years. Interesting. Okay. Those are, um, really good insights, especially for anybody who’s looking for a monohull, maybe not so if you’re looking for a catamaran. Um, but if someone is looking for a boat, say this year, is there anything you [00:08:00] would be telling them to be careful about while you’re out shopping, looking, testing?
John Neal: Well, the 20-year point is interesting because a lot of underwriters will not insure boats over 20 years now, period. The ones who will, the price goes up, but that’s not a deal breaker. It’s just something you have to factor in because if your budget is modest, then your chance of being able to buy a boat less than 20 years old is very, very slim,
Annika: Do you think there are any design trends from, you know, early 2000s or so, um, or any kind of, uh, gear that is aging badly that people should pay attention to if they’re looking for boats that are over 20 years, 25, that are still- When I- I’m asking because when I see a boat from the 2000s, it feels like it’s a modern new boat, and then you start thinking like, “Wait, hang on.”
John Neal: To me compared to the ’80s. Um, well, I just finished a [00:09:00] 20-year project of doing, um, we call it modern m-man overboard, uh, technique. It’s a technique that I developed, took me 17 years and, um, all together 1,500 actual man overboard Exercises where I had the students on board, I throw a newspaper over.
Many times, we have a volunteer jump in the water and then go through a rescue. Well, I developed a sequence that is faster and better than anything that’s ever been taught, and I just finished the second presentation on that. One thing that really, really became clear through that, uh, development was that a swim step is a huge safety item.
If you have someone fall overboard and you don’t have a swim step, it’s a huge disadvantage. And I can’t say, “Well, don’t buy a boat without a swim step,” because then you knock out some good boats like the Valiant 42. But I can say swim step is, is a deal changer just for getting in and out of the dinghy, getting in and out of the water, [00:10:00] being able to back up to the dock and step ashore.
Um, so that’s one thing. And then for gear, um, n-new gear is always better, and new electronics are always better. And in terms of safety, if you can afford it, if you buy a boat that’s 20 years old and has all the original electronics on it, you might want to budget. It’s a bunch of money. It’s like twelve to fifteen grand.
You might wanna just replace all the instruments, the readouts, the autopilot, the displays, get so that you have integrated charts, integrated AIS and radar and depth and all the other instruments on one display in the cockpit. Um, it’s just so much easier to avoid close encounters with big ships if all the information is right there on one screen.
If you buy an old boat that all the instruments still work on, the [00:11:00] problem is getting service if they’re over 20 years old. And, um, the worst would be Brooks and Gatehouse, B&G. For that, the best for service from my experience is Raymarine. They tend to have parts and service worldwide, uh, for older gear more than Garmin or, uh, B&G.
Um, but that would be a really worthwhile upgrade. And then the autopilot, so on Mahina Tiare 3 yeah, after a hundred twenty thousand miles and ten years, I replaced all the electronics, um, and the autopilot.
Autopilot was starting to, uh, very occasionally Get weird, you know, go, “Err.” And, um, everything else was working, but the new stuff took less electrical power, and the displays were so much easier to read and, uh, the functionality was way better. And having the AIS integrated into the main screen, [00:12:00] um, is just a game changer in terms of your safety and not getting run down.
Always having to remember, military vessels and fishing vessels aren’t required and almost never are transmitting their positions. So I– when I was going down the coast toward Gibraltar last time, a couple of years, three or four years ago, maybe five years ago, um, we came into a harbor in Spain– no, in Portugal, uh, and met a boat that had just been run into by what we assume was a Spanish naval vessel.
They ran into them, broke the bow sprit off the boat, did a bunch of damage, and then disappeared. And then Gibraltar Traffic called on channel sixteen and said, “Were you just involved in the collision?” And he said, “Yeah, how’d you know?” He said, “Well, we know. Uh, are you okay?”
And that’s all they wanted to know and end of story. And so you have– And they were– they had no lights on, as military vessels frequently don’t have [00:13:00] lights on. But, uh, you just have to be really careful, especially in Europe, where there is so much people trafficking going on. Um, I– When I was last in the Canary Islands, I talked with a naval patrol boat in, in the marina and said, uh, “What’s the deal?”
And they said, “We have one patrol boat twenty-four hours a day on the coast between the Canaries and Africa,” because there is such an incredible pressure of, uh, refugees trying to get into Europe. So that, that’s just something to keep in mind.
Annika: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, If somebody is looking to buy a boat this year, are you still helping people out with, uh, with consulting and such?
John Neal: Yes, I am, and people all over the world. and in fact, as soon as I’m done with this, I’ll be talking with a couple with two young boys in Win– not Windermere, um, place I’ve never heard of. It’s near [00:14:00] Banff, just on the border of British Columbia and Alberta, Invermere, BC. And they, uh, they’re ready. They’ve been saving, and they– their oldest boy is 12 or 13, and they know they’ve got a narrow window of when they can go between– before he says, “No, I don’t wanna my friends and school and stuff.”
So, uh, that’s gonna be exciting because they are open to the world. They say, “We’ll buy a boat in Europe. We’ll buy a boat wherever it makes sense.” And so that’s exciting to work with people.
Annika: Oh, that’s, that’s a fun project, yeah. Now I wanted to talk in this episode more about shorthanded sailing, because I know you do a, a good talk about this in, in many boat shows. And I just wanted to dive into this topic and pick out a couple of things from, uh, from your brain around this subject.
So I know you talk about developing sort of an onboard safety ethos. Um, what does that actually look like in the daily life, [00:15:00] and, and what is it? What do you mean by the onboard safety ethos?
John Neal: First of all is getting training. That makes such a huge difference because if you’re just self-taught and using YouTube, um, will have some huge gaps in your safety ability. And so I am a real big proponent of two-day weekend seminars, and I have started and pushed many other people in the marine industry to offer this.
And so I have a list, I’ll just go through it right now, a list of weekend seminars that I highly recommend. You will be safer and your insurance costs will be substantially less because the insurance companies love it if you are preparing yourself. You’re a better risk according to them. So at the very top of the list would be getting sailing instruction, not just learning from YouTube, but going– And the very best, I think, is intensive.
So if you [00:16:00] can do a seven or ten-day-long liveaboard training course, hopefully in an, in an exotic, warm place like the BVI, or there’s some really good courses offered in Gibraltar. that’s another warm place. But if you can do a, There’s so many different, um, uh, types of instruction, but if this were ASA, it would be like 104 to 106, where you get up to offshore.
if you can do that, that’s super. The second o– is a hands-on safety at sea seminar. These are offered in the UK. They’re offered throughout the US. I’m not sure if they’re offered in Canada, but the woman that I’ve been teaching and working on this modern Man Overboard technique is doing two, one this week, and then she’s leading another one the second weekend near Portland, Oregon.
And so this is, uh, 100 people. It’s required for offshore racers. You have to do it every five years. It’s in a facility with a swimming pool. They inflate [00:17:00] life rafts. They in– require, not invite, they require you to bring your full gear, your foulies, your personal flotation device, harness.
Jump in the water Turn the life raft back right side up, understanding about 40% of the time the life raft inflates upside down, and it’s a real bugger to get it flipped back. Uh, and just see what works and what doesn’t work. So, and then shoot off flares, so they have Coast Guard there. Extinguish fires.
first aid, they have a mini short first aid at sea course in there. It’s a very busy… I haven’t– I have helped teach one a long time ago, super busy weekend. But the insurance companies that I’m hearing from love it, and they are actually when– If you come to them in an area where these are offered and say, “I’d like to get insurance for offshore,” they say, “Well, I’d like you to take this course first, and we will give you 10% discount on your offshore insurance.”
That could be hundreds of dollars a year, so [00:18:00] you pay for the course instantly. So that’s another one. Uh, and the next one would be if you can find one, an offshore cruising seminar that incorporates everything like I used to teach. And then sail and rig repair, super important because where you and Adam are gonna be sailing, there aren’t very many sail lofts.
I knew that because I supported myself for quite a few years throughout the South Pacific, repairing sails and making awnings and dodgers and canvas things. So there are a couple that I know of around the world, but, but very few. There’s one in Port Townsend that I helped start. and then a marine diesel engine course, two-day hands-on seminar.
You can get so much knowledge and self-sufficiency. there are just a few in the world that I know of. There’s one offered during the Annapolis Boat Show. There, um, Michael Beamer at Marine Tech Center in Anacortes, just south of Vancouver, he offers them all the [00:19:00] time. And this is brilliant because in that facility, they’ve got ten to 15 engines from twenty to two hundred horsepower, and you get dirty.
You have to replace fuel filters, bleed the fuel system, work on the cooling system, replace all the stuff that you wanna have the knowledge to do. So I was talking to some clients last weekend on– who are going to have a new boat built in Europe. They’re looking at, um, several of the aluminum lifting keel design to circumnavigate the world on.
And they’re really set on this and, uh, they said, “Well, no, we’re just gonna hire. We have the money. We’ve saved up. We’re just gonna hire people to do this.” And I said, “Look, great idea, except do you know, in a lot of places of the world, the people you hire know less than you do about working on your engine?”
They said, “Yeah. You know, actually, we hired an independent guy working out of his van, and he screwed up a bunch of stuff that we had to pay someone else to fix on our [00:20:00] brand-new, um, Beneteau thirty Thirty-eight. And so he said, “Okay, we will take that course.” Uh, and then another one would be a marine electrical course, and Nigel Calder of- has offered those in Maine.
He’s offered those during the Annapolis Boat Show. There will be one at the Annapolis Boat Show this October. Uh, that’s a super deal because electrical problems, as you know, Anika, the modern cruiser has a lot of electrical demands, and so that system has become more complex. And so if you have the knowledge to repair, to fix, um, that is a huge deal.
And then a medicine at sea course. This should be– This is required for offshore ocean racers. Um, it’s just so smart. And so medicine at sea course, there’s one offered in Southampton, England. It’s part of a professional to train yacht captains for mega yachts. There is, uh, there are a few around the country, around the world, but not very many.
[00:21:00] Uh, so that is really excellent. And then a weather, a marine weather course, and, uh, Lisa Bachelor Fraley, who has co-written with her husband, Andy Bachelor, many of the ASA training manuals, she offers a two-day… Actually, no, I think it’s two weekends. It’s four-day virtual live limited audience marine weather course.
She’s a US Naval aviator, US Naval weather forecaster, and, um, I, I think a hydrographer or something. She’s a Wonder Woman, and then– and she has taught sailing on her own, uh, Outbound 46. Um, and that’s– She does that usually twice a year, and I believe she’s got one coming up in April. I always list those seminars under mahina.com/seminars because they’re hard to find.
There’s, there’s not that many. And I think we covered it all. Um, the only other one would be an emergency rig repair [00:22:00] seminar, but, um, those are very rare. But, so I think you get the, the, uh, picture here, Anika. What I’m talking about for short-handed sailing techniques is the more self-sufficient you are in terms of being able to maintain and repair your boat while you’re cruising, the less time you’re going to be stuck waiting for people, waiting for parts.
Um, it just makes a huge difference
Annika: Absolutely. So really that practical preparation, even before you set sail, getting all those, um, courses and trainings, uh, under your belt will make life a lot easier. Uh, what about then on while you are… Oh, and there is a, a checklist manifesto.
John Neal: So this is a book that I think all of you starting out wannabe cruisers need to buy. the author is a surgeon. This is a New York Times bestseller, Checklist Manifesto. to Get [00:23:00] Things Right is the subtitle. And he just goes through how the medical profession… You remember when you used to read about them sewing up scissors, hemostats, and stuff?
Well, he said nobody had checklists for doing surgery, and every surgeon had a different way of doing it, and there, there were problems. From the aviation industry and world, they took the checklist. So I’m a private pilot, and there’s checklists for everything on airplanes, and they took that to medicine with excellent results.
So cruisers need to have checklists. Of course, a checklist for abandoned ship, a checklist for, Making an emergency distress call. You need to have all these things written down, and I’ve been working on that, and those are all on my website, mahina.com/seminars. Go to the bottom of the page, and there’s tons of checklists, including brand new one I just did for modern overboard [00:24:00] rescue.
And then I also did one in conjunction with that, uh, uh, well, I don’t– see if I can remember the name or if I have it here, but it’s something like features that make a cruising boat safer, design features. And so that’s would be really good for you and Adam, because it just talks about things like having handholds, things that you can add, but having handholds near the swim step so that if you do have someone that you’re trying to retrieve from overboard, there’s something for them to hang on to and for you to hang on to as you’re trying to help them aboard.
things like having adequate pad eyes to clip your tether into when you’re on watch or steering in the cockpit, hard attachment points, things like that. So I’ve got a lot of checklists. Um, I’m kind of a checklist nerd, uh, fr-from the aviation background, but it really helps for cruisers because if you don’t have to, in a critical situation, if you [00:25:00] don’t have to think about, “Well, what do I need to do?” You just say, “Oh, okay, I got that checklist in the pouch of the logbook. Let’s get it out.” Checklist for fire, checklist for abandon ship, things like that. It’s a huge, huge help. getting in that, in that mindset of preventing problems or addressing problems. So when I’ve done this fifteen hundred overboard rescues, it’s amazing how many people freeze up or completely forget the overboard rescue sequence.
And even though they know, even though they’ve watched five of their crewmates do it, someone throws over the newspaper or jumps in the water and someone shouts, “Man overboard! Man overboard!” And then they just, they freeze. It’s fairly common. And so going through the checklists on a regular basis is a huge help.
Annika: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s, it’s good ’cause I was going to ask what are some sort of [00:26:00] practical things and practical tips that, um, maybe separate a, a competent crew from a risky one, and it sounds like the checklists are definitely one. And, uh, you were talking about checklists for all sorts of emergencies, but in my mind I’m thinking that would be really handy to just have a really basic checklist as you’re getting started to help you build a routine.
Like, did I check XYZ before I set sail? Did I close off so and so and, and do all that? Just, you know, as you’re getting started, I think that would be really something that I would want to have, just, you know, tick the boxes. Uh, and then eventually will become muscle memory, but when you don’t have that yet, then that’s a good way to get started. Now, I’m wondering, since you have been on many boats, um, and have you ever been on, on a boat and that immediately felt to you that this boat is not ready or it’s not safe? And if so, what would be causing that?
John Neal: Well, looking at the [00:27:00] preparedness of the owners, if you go on a boat and things are not properly stowed and they’re getting ready to go at sea on a long passage or, um, or they’re not aware of the weather. So I was once in Hilo, Hawaii, waiting for my new crew to arrive to sail to Tahiti, and the boat next to me said, uh, “Oh, okay, well, uh, we’re getting ready to leave.
We’re gonna leave tomorrow morning to sail to Tahiti.” And I said, “Have you looked at the weather?” They said, “Nah, we just set a date and go.” And I said, “Well, there is a tropical cyclone,” uh, tropical hurricane they’re called in that part of the world, um, “that is leaving Mexico and is going to cross your track.”
They said, “Uh, it’ll be petered out by the time it gets here.” I saw them in Tahiti a month later. The boat was really in shambles, and they were thinking of selling it, and they got hit by a Pacific, hurricane and really beat up. And so, uh, [00:28:00] when you meet someone who’s really cavalier in their approach to weather, it’s, it’s gonna happen.
They’re gonna get nailed. It’s just a matter of when. and the other thing that I should put in here in terms of preparedness is having good s- personal safety gear. And so a lot of cruisers aren’t into wearing PFDs. Um, I am, or at least in cold water temperature. And so I have a Spinlock Lite Plus combination auto-inflate PFD with a harness built into it.
It is so light you don’t even know you have it on. But if you jump in the water, within about three seconds, you are– It has a crotch strap so that your body doesn’t go down and the PFD doesn’t choke you. Um, you are really in a whole lot better position, and so having that makes a big difference. Um, and then having– I’m a real proponent of high lifelines instead of [00:29:00] jacklines on deck.
I rig lines that go from the bow pulpit through a fastener on the inside of the upper shrouds, chest height at the mast, and then back to either the pushpit or if you don’t have a sturdy pushpit, just the mooring cleats. This way you can clip on before you ever leave the cockpit, go forward, reef the main, look at, check, check whatever you need to check, and then come back without ever unclipping your tether.
That’s a huge deal for safety. So, preparedness makes a huge difference
Annika: Yeah, and awareness especially when it comes to weather, I guess then, yeah.
Well, what about if somebody is outfitting their boat now, um, planning to do short-handed sailing maybe just as a couple, are there any sort of upgrades that you would recommend?
John Neal: if the autopilot’s at all questionable, if it’s 20 years old or if it is intermittent like mine became after 20 years, uh, [00:30:00] replacing that’s a big deal. If you’re gonna be doing a long ocean passage and don’t wanna worry about the autopilot and don’t wanna deal with the battery consumption, the power consumption, putting a hydrovane on, a self-steering wind vane is absolutely brilliant because it steers 24 hours a day.
You don’t have to feed it. Y- they don’t have to sleep, and it just frees you, sailing as a couple, up tremendously to be able to deal with navigating weather, cooking, and standing watch. And so standing watch is so important. It’s surprising a fair number of cruisers don’t stand watch at night. They say, “No, we just put the guard zone on the, on the radar and AIS and go to sleep and wake up the next morning.”
And it’s like, wow, that’s really– That’s like putting put the cruise control onto your car and going down the motorway at 120 kilometers an hour and saying, “Well, I’m gonna get a little catnap here.”
Annika: Yeah. It’ll be fine. It’ll be
John Neal: it’s… It’ll be fine. Well, [00:31:00] and you know, most of the time it is fine, but in the 6,000 miles that I single-handed through the South Pacific, there were two instances.
So I never slept down below when I was alone. Slept in the cockpit, just in a sail bag with a pillow. There were two times where I was woken up by the throb of the propeller of a ship that would’ve run me down. And I had a kitchen timer set for 20 minutes, a- and every 20 minutes I get up and do a 360 and then go back to sleep.
But the sound of the propeller through the hull, the thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, uh, woke me up and it’s like, oh my goodness. So maintaining watch is a huge, is a huge safety deal
Annika: Yeah, absolutely. And I assume those were then the, the ships that you saw were at a, uh, a nighttime, but still at a distance away that they didn’t see you, or?
John Neal: N– ships never have any– ships rarely have anyone on watch at and so they frequently go [00:32:00] to sleep. And one of those was a freighter, one of those was an Oriental fishing boat. The Oriental longline fishing boats from China, mostly from China, but from Taiwan, Korea, are worldwide. It’s– They’re an issue in the, uh, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, uh, all over the world.
And they have got lots of lights on, and they’re fishing. They are not looking out for anybody. They run over each other. They run into each other. They run into islands. They run over yachts. And, um, it’s just a, it’s just a fact of life. And so you have to be a-alert and aware. And then cruisers will say, “Well, what about using guard zones on the AIS?”
Well, fishing boats don’t… aren’t required and don’t transmit AIS. And on the radar, well, a, a fair number of those boats are still wooden, believe it or not. They don’t have radar reflectors, and they do not show up well on radar. And so you’ve gotta be proactive about your safety. The majority of cruisers are shorthanded.
It’s just a couple, [00:33:00] maybe occasionally a third person, maybe a couple kids as well. But, uh, shorthanded sailing is the, is the norm worldwide
Annika: Yeah, absolutely. Now on the next topic, you don’t really need to think about if you’re sailing solo, but communication is something I wanted to touch on as well, um, because I know you emphasize very clear commands, and you’ve even mentioned the concept of a sterile cockpit at critical times, and I’d like to dive into what this means and, um, why do you think, like, communication breakdowns happen so often on cruising boats when it’s just the two people on 40 foot of boat?
Uh, what can go so wrong?
John Neal: How could– Yeah, what could go wrong? Well, it’s amazing. Things can go wrong. So wh-while I was, uh, cruising the South Pacific on my first trip, I would pick up different people, um, girls usually in ports and, it was never an issue. But then when I started doing deliveries, sometimes with the owner aboard, expectations versus [00:34:00] reality was frequently an issue.
And so communicating ahead of time before leaving land at the very beginning of what– who needs to stand what watches, what you need to do while you’re on watch, um, your responsibility for the safety of the vessel when everybody else is asleep, things like this. And then when I started having sail training students on board, it became a huge deal because everyone has a different perception of what it will be like to be crossing an ocean.
And the reality is frequently that it’s more challenging, more physically demanding. The lack of sleep is a huge issue for some people. I’ve had people who say, “Well, I’m an eight hour a night person. If I don’t get my eight hours, I’m really cranky the next day.” And it’s like, “Well, you better look at buying a motorhome.
Forget this sailboat deal because you’re not gonna get eight hours unless you have sixteen people aboard.” So most couples are doing three hours on, three [00:35:00] hours off, twenty-four hours a day. And having those watches, um, written down and posted so that you know when you can sleep and when you don’t have to be alert is a big deal.
If you’re the captain, even if it’s just you and your husband, if you’re the captain and he’s asleep, you wanna know that he’s gonna be standing watch, he’s gonna be scanning the horizon, he’s gonna be turning the radar on once every hour or so, checking for vessels further out. You wanna know that you can re-relax without being worried.
Um, it’s a big deal. It becomes incumbent on you to find what works in terms of sleep patterns so that sleep deprivation doesn’t raise or rear its ugly head. For many cruisers, they follow the, uh, wisdom learned by the single-handed around the world racers. Um, Elisabeth Otissier, [00:36:00] and then I can’t remember the name of the famous British woman.
Um, but they both were the first– they were the first two to hire sleep physiologists. And the sleep physiologists, they do a sleep study, like if they– you think you need to have a CPAP, your doctor thinks, where they hook you up with electrodes and you sleep for the night and they monitor your pattern.
Well, they told these two women, uh, that what they needed was their magic was twenty minutes, and that’s twenty minutes it really works for ninety percent of people. You need to learn how to sleep quickly, deeply, as deep as possible in twenty minutes. Because if you’re stay– if you’re wa- standing watch three hours on, three hours off, twenty-four hours a day, most cruisers need to get some naps in the afternoon, and twenty-minute nap is the gold standard.
Forty-five minutes isn’t as good as twenty minutes because you go through a cycle, and then you start to go into another cycle, and if you get woken up then, you are [00:37:00] less alert than you are at the twenty-minute period. Once you figure this out, you don’t need alarm clocks.
Annika: Yeah, that’s an interesting insight, for sure on, on the sleep part of it ’cause you would think, you know, try to get, if you can get more sleep, do it. But, there’s the, REM cycle and, or whatnot that you need to worry about, so that’s interesting. Um, now I’ve also heard you use the concept of, uh, happy ship.
And I’m wondering what does this mean in practical terms or operationally?
John Neal: Well, a happy ship, a ship or a yacht is like a little community, and if you plan surprises You know, if you hide some treats away, um, if you plan traditions or routines that are inclusive, it makes a huge difference. And so something that I don’t know where it came from, but decades and decades ago on Mahina Tiare doing our around the world sail training, we came up with a deal of doing, [00:38:00] storyteller.
So we have a duty roster, just like you have on a sail– any big sail training ship. So every day you have a different job. You’ll be the cook one day, you’ll be the captain the next day, you’ll be the navigator the next day, you’ll be the head cleaner, uh, the next day, um, so that everybody has shared responsibility.
And one day you will be the storyteller. The storyteller’s job is during dinner to present an item of interest. It could be a song. We’ve actually had someone… We had an opera singer write an operetta and perform it. It could be a limerick, but usually it’s a story. Doesn’t even have to be a true story, but it’s an interesting story.
Um, five minutes long, maybe ten minutes long. And that becomes a highlight of the day at sea. Everybody’s– At dinner, people are relaxing. Maybe you’re passing around biscuits or having a cup of tea or something, and then you get the story. And so [00:39:00] it’s just something that people really look forward to, and that builds community because you learn about your shipmates things that you would never otherwise learn.
Interesting things, interesting facets of their life, of their career, of their childhood. And so that’s a really cool deal. Another thing about making a happy ship, food on passage becomes really important. And so I think that putting real energy into planning healthy, interesting meals is a game changer because everybody’s looking forward, uh, to meals, mealtime.
At sea, most cruising couples end up just doing two meals a day. You do a late breakfast and, uh, you as a Finnish person must know, um, I’ve heard this so many times, uh, Päivi being a Finn also, um, early dinner, and so dinner before sunset. You know, the tropics [00:40:00] dinner, uh, sunset is at six o’clock. And so on sail training, always try and have dinner done by six o’clock so that we could start the watches and everybody can get their much needed sleep early.
And so, um, if you put time into provisioning… So there’s a book I’d like to re-recommend written by, uh, Amanda Swan, my ex-wife, called Essential Galley Companion Second edition is out. You can get this from Amazon. And there are three hundred sixty recipes from probably sixty different nationalities around the world.
I should send you a copy. Have I sent you one?
Annika: Yes, I was going to say that I have that book and it is very versatile. And it’s got a lot of good tips, uh, not just recipes but other, sort of galley-related provisioning, uh, information as well. So it’s a, it’s a really good resource as well.
John Neal: Yeah. The food storage tips I think are the most important. How do you make lettuce last longer at sea? How do you keep [00:41:00] stuff from going mushy quick? But anyway, that book, uh, is brilliant and really makes a difference. And so if you can try new recipes that your partner or your crew haven’t had before and have the spices and the extra ingredients that make that recipe special stashed away, that’s a really big deal ’cause that’s part of making a happy ship
Annika: Yeah, absolutely. And I love that, uh, idea that y- the storytelling idea or your, your roles for the day, ’cause you can use that even if you are just two people. You just have multiple roles each.
John Neal: You may get tired of cleaning the head every day, and so mixing it up. And you get tired of cooking every day. It’s no fun just to have to do the same thing. Some– Different couples deal with this in different ways. Some, some couples are really, have really traditional pink and blue jobs.
Other couples say, “Well, hey, I’ll cook tonight. You’ve been doing this.” And it, you know, especially if it’s a bit rough and rocky and rolly at sea, um, having someone else take that [00:42:00] responsibility is a real gift
Annika: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Sharing is caring when it comes to boat jobs.
John Neal: Yeah, it is
Annika: Now, I’m sure there are, sort of riskier moments any time, whether you’re sailing solo or with two people or more than two people, but I’m wondering, in your experience, where do you think the sort of more dangerous moments are?
Is it when you’re taking off? Is it when you’re making landfall or when you’re on day 15 of your passage and you’re tired? Or, um, where do those sort of, uh, risky areas lie?
John Neal: Well, um, great question. The risky areas frequently lie in landfall. When you’re making landfall, you have the– frequently have the highest concentration of vessel traffic, fishing vessels, commercial vessels. it comes in heavy weather. Um, o-one book that I like to mention is “The Queen of the North Disaster.”
This is a very, very good book to learn [00:43:00] from. The Queen of the North was a famous British Columbia ferry, uh, run by the province, and it ran from Nanaimo, halfway up Vancouver Island on the inside, up to Prince Rupert, right at the Canadian, uh, Alaska border. And this vessel was the lifeline of so many of the really small communities because some of them are not reachable by road.
And, uh, it ran for as long as I can remember, and then it was lost. It ran into– They failed to make a course correction, and they ran into Gil Island. They tore the bottom open, and the ship sank with loss of life. And one of my expedition members and dear friends, uh, Tom, was the, general counsel for BC Ferries, and so he had to interview the survivors, the captain and the crew, and figure out what happened and why was this shipwreck, uh, why did [00:44:00] this occur.
And it’s really great because there’s so much to learn from– the cruising sailor, so much to learn from this book about cascading failures. One problem then compounds, and it gets worse and worse and worse and then results in loss of life. And s-same thing happens with cruising boats. So, um, it’s just– I recommend that.
Last time I checked, it was available on Amazon, so it’s just “The Queen of the North Disaster: The Captain’s Story” by Colin Henthorn, H-E-N-T-H-O-R-N. But, um, we can learn. You know, we don’t wanna read this as entertainment, but we can read it as a information
Annika: Yeah, as a cautionary tale. Exactly.
John Neal: The other thing you mentioned earlier and I didn’t address, you said, “What is sterile cockpit?”
You mentioned sterile cockpit. So in commercial airliners, they have sterile cockpit, and it’s usually, I’m trying to remember, I think it’s below 10,000 feet. [00:45:00] Sterile cockpit means when you are coming through a narrow coral pass or into a situation where there are crossing ships ahead of you, you ju– the captain just says, “Okay, sterile cockpit now.”
Sterile cockpit means you talk only about what is affecting the safety of the vessel. You don’t say, “Hey, look, there’s a dolphin over there. Oh, let me get my camera out. I wanna take a picture.” It’s like total focus of everyone on board. That means people are st- looking out, everyone is looking at different directions, watching the depth, watching the radar, whatever.
But it means total focus on the safety of the vessel.
Annika: Yeah, absolutely. And now that you mentioned that, that reminds me a lot of sort of the bridge etiquette on ships. Uh, when I travel for work, and we do occasionally travel through narrow channels or other waterways, uh, up in the Arctic especially, and then normally passengers are allowed to be on the, on the bridge.
But when, there’s [00:46:00] something more navigationally challenging coming up, then the passengers get booted out and, uh, uh, I’ve been lucky enough to stay on, on the bridge and see the magic happen, and it’s a very different vibe when they’re just normally sailing in open water versus when they’re sailing in a more, um, in an area that takes a little more navigational finesse.
John Neal: Yeah.
Yeah, so that’s sterile cockpit, and it applies to the cruising sailor as well. It’s just focus. And one thing that I must bring up here is I’ve run aground, every– most cruising. It’s just a matter of when. And the, one of the real critical things that I learned from Pete McGonigal, Pete w-was the yacht broker.
He, he’s a, he has a million miles at sea, more than anyone I know because he was a Kings Point US Merchant Marine Academy graduate, and he was an officer on Exxon oil tankers. Something, I think it was Pete who told me, on the oil tankers, when they are getting close to land and, and depth is an issue, they [00:47:00] have one person on the bridge just calling and watching the depth.
It is so easy to get sidetracked and run aground, and that can– you can lose your boat that way. Um, I just had students of mine do a presentation, uh, at the Seattle Boat Show about running aground in Haida Gwaii, the Queen Charlotte Islands west of British Columbia. Um, they ran aground because they were using the chart.
They had chart plotter on, paper chart out. Everything was fine. They hit an uncharted rock in British Columbia, which has some of the best charting in the world, and it was confirmed by the, uh, BC, the appropriate agency, that it was truly uncharted. But if they had somebody tasked with calling the depth, they wouldn’t have hit that and done damage to the hull and to the rudders of the boat.
It’s really easy if you have three people on board because, you know, frequently you have one person standing up, uh, standing forward or standing on the granny bars [00:48:00] looking for any obstructions in the water, person at the helm. But if you have a third person who’s just responsible for watching the chart plotter and seeing if you’re getting close to any dangers and calling the depth, that really reduces your chance of a collision with an unmovable object.
Annika: Yeah, absolutely. And now that you mention this, it just feels like it should be a checklist item, what to do when you run aground. Because my mind went to like, “Okay, I’m sailing, I’ve hit a rock, and now what? What do I do? Then what? What, what do, what do I do?”
John Neal: Well, Annika, that’s great. There’s something I can make a new checklist. I don’t have a checklist for getting off if you’ve run aground. So the first thing you do is drop the sails if you’re under sail. Uh, the second thing you do is assess the state of the tide, because if you’re on a falling tide, it’s time-critical. especially if you’re in an area like, uh, where you’ve been in, um, Brittany, an area that has huge tides, or in [00:49:00] Scotland, um, or in Patagonia, or in British Columbia or Alaska, uh, tide becomes really an issue. And so, uh, very quickly, I found one of the advantages of having a bow thruster is having six or ten or 12 horsepower up in the bow of the boat.
Many times, you can just blip the bow thruster and spin the boat and get right off. It just depends if there’s coral or the to- the underwater topography, what, what the rocks or the coral is like, how quick you can get out. Getting an anchor out so that you can kedge yourself off, that just means taking the anchor out in opposite direction.
You want– You have to frequently go out the same way you got in. And so taking an anchor out astern and then bringing that anchor line to the largest sheet winch in the cockpit, winching yourself off. But you have to be so careful. You can damage your rudder doing this. Um, heeling the boat over. Uh, if you have [00:50:00] someone who’s agile and have them get out to the end of the boom, swing the boom out as far as it’ll go, having that extra weight over can heel the boat enough so that you’re not going aground.
Well, if you have a French lifting keel boat like an Ovni or a, Allures or a Garcia, cranking up the centerboard, that can be a frequent deal. And so when I was running the Exploration 45, the Garcia with the lifting keel, in tricky areas, I would never have the keel down, and I would never have it up all the way.
I’d have it partially down at, back at an angle. It’s just a safety thing. If you hit, then you just winch up the keel and zoom you’re off I mean the centerboard, not the keel
Annika: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But okay, so that’s, that’s interesting. Yes, um, that’s definitely a good checklist to have for that. There’s so many different things that, you can try to be prepared as much as you can for everything, but, you know, something’s always going to happen that you didn’t think that will happen to you or will happen on this trip or, [00:51:00] all those things, so.
Now, is there anything else in the sailboat world that we should cover? I know we always talk about insurance a little bit. Is there any news in the world of boat insurance?
John Neal: no there’s not. But the 40-hour workaround, which I first heard from, Hugo Hannum Gross in Charleston, South Carolina, of all places. Um, now I’m hearing it from, from more and more brokers. I’m hearing it from Canadian brokers and from European insurance brokers as well. And so the offshore insurance still ideally wants you to have three years of prior boat ownership on a boat that’s within ten to 12 feet of the one that you’re looking for offshore insurance on.
If you don’t have that, um, the answer that you have is, we agree to hire a licensed, trained, professional sailing instructor to give us X number of [00:52:00] hours of intensive instruction with a test and sign-off, which they will forward to the insurance company. That is amazingly successful. It, it works and the, the larger the boat and the more ambitious the plan is, the least that works.
And so I have a couple of clients who are ordering– have ordered an Oyster. I don’t remember the exact size, but it’s like seventy feet long, and they’ve never had a boat before, and they have signed up for the World Arc. The underwriter says you’ve got to have a licensed captain on board the entire way around the world because of the value of that boat and because you’re continually in new, sometimes tricky waters.
So that’s the most extreme. But usually, most cruising couples are able to get, with forty hours, get signed off. Maybe you can try less than that. But if you also tell the– when you’re applying, when you’re [00:53:00] writing up the prospectus, when you’re applying for offshore insurance, if you list all the seminars that you’ve taken, all the, all of the, uh, liveaboard cruising classes you’ve done, and just as importantly, all the places in the world you’ve chartered.
Another thing I’m hearing from underwriters is they really like four weeks of chartering experience. It can be two. They kind of like longer versus shorter. It could be two, two weeks, and if you chose to do that with a skipper for the first day or two, that would be excellent, and you need to document that.
But that’s what I’m hearing from underwriters that they really like to see. Uh, so let’s say you wanna– your, your goal is to cruise the Med. Well, if you go and do a charter in Croatia or in Greece or in Turkey or wherever, that’s great because that means you have checked out the weather resources. You know the harbors.
You have a little bit of a feeling of [00:54:00] what to do in a f-storm forecast. You know, in the Med, we get phenomenal storms, even in the middle of the summer. They’re really short and really strong, and I couldn’t believe when we were sailing in the Balearics After one of these, how many boats were piled up in the beach because the moorings broke or their anchors drug?
And there just aren’t harbors for every night, and so it’s a matter of being prepared and knowing what the, um, what your options are. So the insurance company thinks you’re gonna be better if you’ve checked it out
Annika: Yeah, absolutely. And it makes sense when you think about it from the insurance company’s point of view. Like, of course they want some assurances that you’re not gonna wreck the boat the first week. So showing that, uh, previous experience or education and training that you’ve received will put them at ease.
So yeah, that, that makes sense. But it’s still good to know ’cause it’s not necessarily something people will automatically think about. They just think like, well, you take like car [00:55:00] insurance, you have a license and you get, uh, your car insurance, right?
John Neal: Yeah. And I have, uh, I hear cruisers or I hear people new to cruising saying, “Well, that’s gonna cost a bunch of money, and wouldn’t– I’d rather put the money into the boat.” And it’s like, well, guess what? The amount that you’re charged for offshore insurance is variable. Sometimes it’s between 1.5% and 5% per year premium of the value of the boat.
And with that huge range of 1.5% to 5%, if you get, get it from 5% down to let’s say 2% or 3%, you’ve just paid for that charter.
Annika: Yeah, absolutely. And, um, but isn’t some insurance required in some marinas as well if you want to go? Uh, it, uh, not really to offshore, but if you are visiting marinas and such
John Neal: Insurance is required for just about every marina in the world, and it’s required for many countries. So all of the [00:56:00] European Union says you can’t even enter EU waters without having at least liability insurance. Many countries also have that. Mexico has that rule.
you can’t enter Mexico without having– In Mexico’s instance, you have to have Mexican insurance, not European insurance.
So you have to get an extra policy. It costs a couple hundred bucks. It’s not a big deal, but they won’t let you enter the country without that. So it’s not a… You know, the other thing that, uh, uh, Julie and Gio, whom you know, uh, who I’ve given the, a lot of my business to, they are now in Mexico, and they’ve just been applying for a permit to cruise the Galapagos, and they’re working with people who are all over the world.
They’re saying more and more countries, including Ecuador, are requiring that you have to have AIS. And I know from Fiji, it’s a law. You have to have AIS transmitting twenty-four hours a day if you’re within their territorial [00:57:00] waters. It’s not an option, and they will boot you out of the country if you don’t do that.
And so, um That is probably slowly going to become the norm, and it has to do with people in drug trafficking more than anything. They want to keep track of the boats, and it’s really easy if all they need to do is look on a big screen and say, “Oh, okay, there is Sun Shadow. They’re over there.” And, uh, you know, Chile was a most amazing example, and this is 1995.
AIS hadn’t been invented, but Chile, for you to get permit to cruise through the country, you had to tell the Navy your latitude and longitude of every anchorage every night for your entire time in Chile. And it’s like, wow, when I found that out, I didn’t found that– find that out until we were in Puerto Montt on our way to Cape Horn.
Uh, I had to sit down for two days with another cruiser who had just come [00:58:00] up the other way and their notes and the charts and make a, a plan. And then you have to call, in Chile, you have to call the lighthouse or navy base. There aren’t many navy bases, so lighthouse. Every… Now it is every night between certain hours, you have to call them either on a single sideband or VHF, um, and in some instances, you may be able to email now.
But they wanna know where you are because, uh, it is such a critical, such a difficult area for cruising. I understand from their standpoint, they don’t wanna spend time and resources looking for you if you disappear and if your family calls, contacts the Navy through the embassy and says, “Hey, my daughter is out somewhere in Patagonia, and I haven’t heard from her, and she said she would contact me, and I’m wondering if they are in distress.”
And before the, you know, for the Chilean Navy to initiate an air search, it’s hugely expensive and [00:59:00] unnecessary. And, and so Chile, they were the first country I knew of, they required insurance, and that was almost impossible to get to cruise through Patagonia. Um, and so that just really separated out unprepared people that they would have to go rescue.
And I, uh, some cruisers, I’ve seen this on the internet, some cruisers think that it’s really onerous for a country or a marina to require insurance, but, uh, I get it. I understand why they do and
Annika: Yeah, absolutely. Especially thinking any kind of search and rescue efforts in a country the size of Chile, that’s impossible. It’s so huge. So I, I get it why they, why they want that for sure. It makes sense. And, uh, through my work, I work a lot with, like, search and rescue plans, and they want to know everything about these small ships that I work on.
And same thing, especially in Greenland, if you’re changing your plan from what you told us six months ago, you better email [01:00:00] us right away. And so yeah, they want to know s- and not that they’re nosy, they just need to know where to come get you in case you get into trouble.
John Neal: Well, their whole job is to prevent loss of life and maritime, uh, pollution from ship grounding or yacht groundings, and so they’re doing the right thing. We– It’s our job to do the right thing as well
Annika: No, that’s well said. Um, and now John, we’ve had a, a great conversation. We’re almost at– We’ve gone over an hour already talking about all sorts of practical things, uh, that I know are just so useful for, uh, not just for myself, but many of the listeners. Is there anything else you would like to share before we wrap up?
John Neal: No, that’s it. Um, I really appreciate how many people are following Liveaboard Sailing Podcast. When I was just recently in Europe, it was amazing, how often your name came up and how many people ar-around the world are getting value [01:01:00] out of the podcast and the people that you interview. I think it– I’d just like to commend you on that and say, “Don’t stop. going.”
Annika: Yeah, exactly. Well, it’s thanks to guests like you who are so w-willing to share their knowledge and expertise with, me and, through that with everybody else. So, um, yeah, thank you for letting me ask, uh, all my questions. On an annual basis now, we’ve been going on, uh, for a, a little while.
John Neal: It’s great fun. I enjoy it
Annika: Absolutely. Well, John, thank you again so much, and, uh, until next time.
squadcaster-18b6_1_02-13-2026_080534: Thanks, Annika