Without the keen eye of experts who know what to look for, product testing can offer only a partial picture. The insight gained through hard won experience becomes more valuable at sea, which is why this months issue focusing on offshore sailing turns to four noted experts for advice on topics ranging from gear selection, to weather forecasting, to boat maintenance.
John Neal has conducted 177 sail-training expeditions aboard his Hallbery-Rassy 42, Mahina Tiare II, and Hallberg-Rassy 46, Mahina Tiare III, sailing 350,000 miles in the South Pacific, Caribbean, Patagonia, Antarctica, Atlantic, Scandinavia and the Arctic. He has rounded Cape Horn six times under sail and holds a USCG 100-ton Masters and private pilots licenses. Johns wife and partner in Mahina Expeditions, Amanda Swan Neal, has 308,000 miles of ocean sailing experience and has co-skippered aboard Mahina Tiare since 1994. She is author of The Essential Galley Companion.
Ralph Naranjo is Practical Sailor’s chief contributing writer and the author of the Art of Seamanship from McGraw-Hill. During his ten-year stint as the Vanderstar Chair at the U.S. Naval Academy, he augmented safety and seamanship training and played a key role in the development of the Navys 40-foot new sail training sloops. His sailing background includes a five-year family voyage around the world and the management of a full service boatyard. He and his wife Lenore have made two other lengthy cruises aboard Wind Shadow, a 41-foot sloop the Naranjos have owned for over three decades. During the past 15 years he has moderated US Sailing Safety at Sea Seminars across the country, and now is an adjunct lecturer at the Annapolis School of Seamanship.
Captain Frank Lanier is a 27-year Coast Guard veteran and Accredited Marine Surveyor with over 30 years of experience in the marine and diving industry. He holds a 100-ton masters license, is an FCC licensed electronics technician, and a PADI Master SCUBA Diver Trainer. He has captained and maintained vessels ranging from dive boats to passenger ferries in the Atlantic, Caribbean, and South Pacific and has over 15 years of experience living aboard both power and sailing vessels. He is also a prolific writer, public speaker, and award-winning journalist whose articles on seamanship, marine electronics, vessel maintenance, and consumer reports appear regularly in numerous marine publications.
Drew Frye, is a regular Practical Sailor‘s technical editor, specializing in anything having to do with chemistry and engineering. He has 35 years experience a refinery engineer and has been sailing for more than three decades. He has conducted dozens of test for Practical Sailor and published over 100 articles on sailing equipment.
The reports here represent only a small slice of the research these sailors have carried out, and we are looking forward to their involvement in a variety of upcoming tests and special reports. If you have specific questions for them, tests youd like to see, or topics youd like to see them address, please send them here to practicalsailor@belvoir.com.
