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Active Light was named after a lighthouse in Active Pass in British Columbia. She is a Cape George 36, built by Cecil M. Lange & Son Boat Building near Everett, Washington, USA. Launched in 1976, her first owners were Jim Roberts and Dick McCurdy, both of Port Townsend. Dick bought out Jim and Active Light completed one 5-year circumnavigation with Dick and Penny McCurdy from 1976 through 1981. Their trip was chronicled in the Port Townsend newspaper by Dick's father.
The construction is a polyester fiberglass hull with a wooden deck and house. House sides are beautiful Port Orford cedar. The decks are Bruynzeel plywood on one-foot-centered cedar deck beams, covered with teak planks which are bedded and caulked in Thiokol. The construction schedule is detailed in Ference Mate's Best Boats to Build or Buy, pp 204 - 221.
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All boats are a compromise between the three factors: seaworthiness, speed, and comfort. Active Light is least compromised in the areas of seaworthiness, then speed. She was designed by William Atkin in 1935. Her immediate prototype is the vessel Tally Ho Major. According to builder Cecil Lange, she was hull number three from his boatyard. This is all chronicled in Atkin's book, Of Yachts and Men. Cape George yachts are really classy, seaworthy, high-end traditional sailboats. Active Light is the only Cape George 36 with a house 2 inches lower than specs. Predictably, Neil is 6 feet 5 inches in height. Her low profile, narrow beam, and high ballast/displacement ration help her punch through head seas. She is the first boat we have ever had in which we do not dread sailing to windward. She is a joy to sail when the wind picks up and the seas start building. We can keep up with much more modern production racer/cruisers of lighter displacement.
She is rigged as a traditional cutter. Our sailmaker, Carol Hasse, talked us into a ProFurl roller furling genoa. Neil had been resisting that and radar for a long time. We have the original Monitor vane on board. Along with the new main, roller jib, and staysail, we also bought an asymmetrical cruising spinnaker. Active Light has the slightest touch of lee helm in winds of less than 10 knots, will often balance perfectly sailing upwind in 15 knots of wind, and has the slightest weather helm in 25 knots or above. Active Light does well closehauled on a starboard tack with 30 knots of wind across the decks, making six and a half knots steadily in heavy head seas, crashing and shuddering with the running backs set, double-reefed main and staysail set only! We needn't adjust a sail nor touch the helm (windvane steering) for hours and hours. She also did very well running before 35 knots of wind under staysail only for four days from New Zealand to Fiji, vane steering all the way, running back set port side, and no strain at all on the boat nor crew. What a great run, until the wind peetered out on the fifth day!
Accommodations below are neither spartan nor luxurious. We do not have a watermaker, pressure water, hot water, nor refrigeration. There is one double bunk, a head with a 40 gallon holding tank, and a shower pan. The forward V berths have been converted to storage. A table in the main cabin seats four for dinner. We have a large ice box, a Broadwater propane two-burner stove with oven and grill replacing the old kerosene Shipmate stove. The cabin can be heated quite well with a Dickinson Antarctic diesel floor-mounted stove. We have recently added an electronic tiller steering device, . . . a Raymarine ST4000+ GP, for those tedious hours when the wind fails and we have to motor.
For electronics, we have a couple of Garmin GPS units, the new Raytheon SL72 radar, an ICOM VHF radio, an ICOM 710 SSB/ham radio couple with a Pactor IIe modem for email, and Datamarine Corinthian series wind, depth, and speed. We carry two laptops aboard and spend an inordinant amount of time using them for digital photos, navigation, weather fax, email, financial tracking, reference, and webpage maintenance.
We carry a 10.5 feet hard dinghy on the foredeck. This is a Cape Dory 10.5 foot dinghy and is a good rowing boat. We were, at first, worried that it might be swept away by seas, but so far we have had no problems with that. We would sometimes like to have a hard-bottom inflatable. They are so attractive for diving and increased range of exploring, but there are the offsetting issues of theft, gasoline, and initial purchase expense. But afterall, RIBs are not really boats, but mere rubber floaty things designed to promote congestion around dinghy docks.
Active Light carries no firearms aboard. We are both black belts in Shorin Ryu karate and we smile a lot. We have had not a single problem regarding our personal safety in five years of cruising in Mexico, the South Pacific, and Southeast Asia.
The decision about ground tackle has been a long slow process. Sifting through so much personal experience, anecdotal and scientific data, our rigger guru, Brion Toss, finally loaned Neil a copy of William G. Van Dorn's Oceanography and Seamanship and told him to read Chapter 28, "Anchors and Anchoring". Neil had a hard time following all of the formulas and derivations as Van Dorn described the "elastic anchoring system", but the book really changed his mind. Sometimes you just have to say, one cannot digest anymore data, we are going to make a decision and live with it. We believe ground tackle should be thought of as a system, not in terms of just "which anchor is best?". We have settled on the following systems, for better, not worse.
Main anchor is a 66 lb Spade with 200 feet of 3/8 inch BBB Acco chain spliced by Brion Toss to 270 feet of 3/4 inch nylon three-strand New England Ropes "Caprolan" rode, coupled to a Simpson Lawrence 555 windlass. We pivot this system from a large block on the end of the bowsprit with a nylon snubber. We are very happy with the performance of this new anchor. However, the reality of anchoring in the many deep harbors of the South Pacific makes us wish we had instead opted for 400 feet of 5/16" high test chain for this anchor. In Bora Bora, for instance, we had to anchor, like everyone else, in 90 feet of water off the Bora Bora Yacht Club. This meant letting out 300 plus feet of anchor rode. We were past the 3/8" chain and onto the 3/4" nylon rope. Not able to use the Simpson Lawrence 555 windlass on the rope (it severely abrades the soft nylon rope), we lifted that chain by hand. Ninety feet of 3/8" BBB chain weighs about 150 pounds. We are getting too old for that sort of lifting.
Anchor #2 is a 44 lb Bruce with 140 feet of 5/16 inch high test chain, eye splice shackled to 300 feet of 5/8 inch nylon three strand. This is ready to deploy from the bow.
Anchor #3 is is a 21 lb. Fortress FX-37 with 30 feet of 5/16 inch high test chain eye spliced & shackled to 300 feet of 5/8 inch dacron three strand. This is carried in the stern, ready for instantaneous deployment!
Anchor #4 (!) is a Jordan Series Drogue, a series of 127 small parachute cones on a 295 foot long nylon cable terminated by the lightweight Fortress stern anchor (as a weight to keep the cones from skipping out of the water). This is deployed astern from a 30 foot bridle through two stern hawseholes well-padded with old firehose anti-chafe gear.