Ocean voyaging has changed in the decades since Bob Austin and I did
our transatlantic crossings, in that communications and weather
forecasting are so much more comprehensive and accurate.  I first
crossed in 1977 on a custom race boat named "IMP", a state of the art
composite fiberglass race boat with the first carbon fiber rudder
shaft.  We left Jacksonville, Florida, with a single side band and a
Plath sexton, all the tables we needed and radio schedules with the CG.
Three hundred miles the other side of Bermuda we lost the rudder blade
and were effectively hors-de-combat; fin keel boats with high lift
foils don't respond to either emergency rudder systems that pass ORC
regulations or to accepted "sail combinations" when in ocean swells
with a few meters of chop on top.

We had had cloudy weather for three days and didn't really know where
we were. The CG decided to send a CG vessel that was off of South
Carolina, something like five days away, as opposed to a vessel seven
days away to the east.  She was a 1945 tug boat with mostly originally
equipment; started steaming for us, had an incident in the radio
compartment that effected their communication so that we could hear
Norfolk, they could hear us, but we couldn't communicate directly, and
rendered their other navigational equipment? questionable.

When it became apparent that neither one of us really had a clew where
we were, it was decided to send a SAC bomber out of Bermuda to locate
us, the CG tug, and facilitate our rendezvous.  We had one of the first
EPIRB's on board and when we made that known to the CG they were
ecstatic, until it became apparent that the Air Force didn't have the
EPIRB frequency on any of their ADF equipment.  A long box search later
and we met up, resulting in a long tow back to Bermuda.

Thirty some years later I am asked by the owner of a major steering
component company to check the equipment on one of his customer's boats
which has arrived in Tortola.  The owner described to me a fairly hairy
storm that lasted about thirty hours and resulted in a two hundred
pounder "hanging" on the wheel at the stops long enough to destroy part
of the system.  In passing, I asked if he had employed a weather
router; his answer was that he had, but ignored the router's advise to
stay in port another day.

The pertinence to the above is that none of this would have happened
today with the communications we have.  To me, voyaging in a power cat
makes sense if one utilizes a power cat's ability to outrun what ever
may threaten.  Any boat with a four hundred, even three hundred, mile a
day run capability will be able to out run any but the most localized
weather system.  Screw the sails, carry the fuel and the horsepower to
simply run away.

Bob Phillips,
Storm Trysail Club member, having met the requirements the hard way!
Another Asylum, 60' custom trawler

Bob Phillips:
To me, voyaging in a power cat
makes sense if one utilizes a power cat's ability to outrun what ever
may threaten.  Any boat with a four hundred, even three hundred, mile a
day run capability will be able to out run any but the most localized
weather system.  Screw the sails, carry the fuel and the horsepower to
simply run away.

There, in a nutshell, you have it.

Thanks, Bob!

--Georgs