Preparing For The Pacific

Having recently crossed tHe Pacific, multiHull sailor Stephen Kingsman gives His tiPs on boat cHoice, PreParation and Places not to miss

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Sailors have long asked whether a multihull or monohull is best for crossing oceans. For me, the perfect sailing machine for the Pacific is a Lagoon 570 catamaran built in 2003. I spent far too much time in my early sailing days being ill on an old wooden Hillyard monohull. I’ve now sailed over 40,000 miles on my catamaran and, while I have felt a bit dodgy on occasions, I have never been seasick.

Bear in mind when choosing your catamaran that lighter and faster is not always the strongest or most seaworthy – being safe and comfortable takes preference and, if you’re a little slower, you get to spend more time sailing.

Sailing west in the Pacific is nearly all downwind and rolling along on a monohull is not for me. While some may say that 57ft is too large, I found that two of us could easily handle the boat, as it is such a stable sailing platform. Indeed when talking to others who had sailed both monohulls and multihulls, most (with the exception of a few diehards) have to admit that multihulls really are the best for a Pacific crossing.

Besides comfort, catamarans have some major safety advantages. For instance, you can fix the jacklines sufficiently far away from the side of the boat to make it impossible to fall over the side when clipped on. And provided your catamaran has watertight bulkheads to the forward peaks and the aft engine compartments it should maintain positive buoyancy and be virtually unsinkable.

It’s definitely true to say that one of the hazards for any small boat in the Pacific is hitting a semisubmerged object. We naturally carried a liferaft, but perhaps the only reason we might have used it is in the event of a fire, although lightning strikes do sometimes happen in the Pacific.

A step-up in prep