Names of Owners (and crew): Captain Dena Hankins and James Lane do watches, Beluga Greyfinger supervises.

Nationality: U.S.

Boat Name: S/V SN-E Cetacea

Boat Type/Model and Size: 1984 Baba 30, 9.7m cutter-rigged sailboat since 2018

Your Home Port: Orcas Island, Washington

Blog/website/facebook pages:

• sovereignnations.net
• patreon.com/user?=92510289

How did you start cruising?

We both wanted to travel. I (Dena) had never sailed but I was looking for a way to travel without being overwhelmed and, in effect, missing out on the most powerful experiences the world has to offer.

Sleeping in our own beds and cooking with our own tools, we figured we could go anywhere in the world we wanted and bring home the foreign and new, giving us time and space to incorporate them into our reality. So we bought a fifty-foot wooden ketch in Port Hadlock, Washington, and took off.

Describe what sort of cruiser are you:

We are full-time liveaboard sailors. Over the years, we’ve wintered where the work was, wintered by going south and summered Down East. We’re the kinds of cruisers who look at the weather and sail where we want to go.

What type of cruising are you doing currently?

We’re circumnavigating the Earth on our electric sailboat via long ocean passages punctuated by shorter trips between islands and anchorages.

What were the key reasons you selected your current boat?

Cutter sail plan, full keel, and sea-kindliness. We also considered how to keep it small while having enough space for two people, a cat, and enough supplies to fix or rebuild anything the boat might require.

What other boats have you owned?

S/V Sovereign Nation: 1969 (wooden) Sea Wolf ketch from 1999-2003

S/V SN Sapien: 1989 Gulf 32 sloop from 2003-2007

S/V SN Nomad: 1961 Chesapeake 32 sloop from 2009 to 2018

What changes have you made to your current boat?

We have replaced, rebuilt, or at least serviced every single system on our current sailboat. We bought a new mainsail, rebuilt and reinstalled the headsail roller furling systems, new (to us manual) windless, running rigging, new electrical system, new electric motor, replaced the wheel steering for a tiller, new primary energies tower, new solar (800 watts), windchargers (plural, we have two at 500 watts each), LiFePO4 batteries, LED lighting, wiring, connectors, etc…you get the idea!

Most useful equipment fitted, and reasons for this choice:

Getting rid of the old diesel engine and replacing it with an electric motor was a profound decision and an incredible project but it’s so reliable that we never really think about that anymore.

What made the biggest difference in the way we sail on an everyday basis has been our soft shackles and sheeting lines.

I (James) have been hit in the face with both kind of shackles and I much prefer the soft ones. We use them for everything from jib sheets to snubber lines.

We don’t have self-tailing winches so we handle our sheets more than most. It’s important that they remain as soft as possible. A nice soft twelve-strand Regatta Braid is not only easy on the hands, it flattens underfoot, it’s non-kinking (so it’s easy to cinch in a cleat with one hand) and it lasts like no other line we’ve ever used.

Equipment regrets, or things you would do differently:

This is our 24th year living aboard and we’ve done and bought a whole lot of stuff that we have regretted, like flying-saucer grills and cheap electric pumps, but we’ve whittled our current sailing vessel down to the simplest and easiest boat we can possibly imagine. That is the most important lesson we have learned in our sailing lives: don’t go cheap but keep it as simple as possible.

List the countries you have cruised:

USA, Canada, Bermuda, and Portugal.

Future cruising plans:

We will be the smallest electric sailboat in history to circumnavigate the planet Earth…unless we can encourage other small circumnavigators to recognize how much better it is to carry solar panels than fuel. We travel at a leisurely, exploratory pace and being beaten to the record by someone we inspire would be just as satisfying as achieving it ourselves.

List the oceans/seas you have crossed:

The Puget Sound and San Juans, the coastal Pacific Ocean from Vancouver Island to San Francisco Bay, the open Pacific Ocean from San Francisco to Hawaii, Chesapeake Bay, Delaware Bay, Long Island Sound, Massachusetts Bay, the Gulf of Maine, the coastal Atlantic Seaboard from Nova Scotia to Key West, Florida, both outside and inside the ICW from mile 0 to 1243.8, the open Atlantic Ocean from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, to Bermuda, and the open Atlantic from Bermuda to the Azores Islands…so far.

Approximate sea miles:

30,000NM and counting.

Scariest day on the water:

When we were sailing down the Pacific Coast in May of 2002, we made the mistake of staying too close to land on our 55-hour passage from Eureka to San Francisco, California. Between Point Arena and Bodega Bay, we got 10 hours of 40-foot seas that were more than a mile long. We lost our lifeboat Sojourner Earth, a 1924 Herreshoff lapstrake dory and a large part of our rig but somehow managed to make it safely into the San Francisco Bay. That wasn’t some record-breaking storm or a fluke of nature of any kind…that was just us not going far enough away from Cape Mendocino to do the trip safely.

Best cruising moment:

On the 15th day of our 20-day cruise between San Francisco and the Big Island of Hawaii, I (James) was on my long dog watch. The sky was clear and the sea-state was glass becalmed, making the water an almost perfect reflection of the stars above. I witnessed a ball of reality that was our universe…the sky above became the reflection from our Earth below and I was the only thing that defined the two.

Favourite cruising area and why:

So far it’s got to be the Penobscot Bay, Maine. When we sailed away from the San Juan Islands in Washington’s Puget Sound, we had no idea that we were leaving some of the best sailing in the United States. We went to India for a year and when we got back, we sailed all over the Chesapeake Bay, the Long Island Sound and ocean cruised all the way up to Maine before discovering late summer in Penobscot Bay. It’s an almost perfect cruising ground. If you want to be alone in Vinalhaven’s Seal Harbor, just go around the next bend or if you want to climb a mountain, sail to Isle au Haut and anchor in Duck Harbor or if you just want to eat some lobster with a thousand of your closest friends, go to the Lobster Fest in Rockland. Summer in Penobscot Bay has it all without all the rains of the Puget Sound.

Favourite anchorage:

Somes Harbor in Maine, USA, was the most brilliant anchorage in a time of need for us. On S/V SN Nomad, we tore the genoa track right out of the toerail and splintered the teak. Over three weeks in 2015, we did a serious repair while, at the same time, I (Dena) completed the entire first draft of my third published novel, Lysistrata Cove. We did go ashore for some walks and groceries via the free Acadia National Park buses, but we mostly worked on the boat, wrote, and did a little dinghy sailing in the beautiful, well-protected small harbor.

Favourite cruising apps:

Windy…because it’s almost accurate and the rest just lie…

Favourite cruising websites:

• https://speedwelladventures.com/blog/
• https://sv-exit.com/
• https://thevoyagingvegetarian.blogspot.com/

Favourite cruising books:

On long passages, we read science fiction for the break from reality. Martha Wells, Iain M Banks, Ann Leckie, John Scalzi, N.K. Jemisin, Becky Chambers…all are tremendously fun underway reads that we have as e-books. Books we keep around in physical form as reliably incredible re-reads include Salman Rushdie (we have both Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses) and Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.

What advice or message would you want to pass on to anyone new to cruising or thinking about casting off the dock lines?

Don’t fight nature; work with it. Go with the wind, the tides and currents, look at weather forecasts and keep assessing whether or not they’re coming true.

Stock your boat with the tools, materials and spares for all your systems so that you can fix things wherever you are. FREE YOUR PROP and go with an electric propulsion system…you won’t regret it.

Travel under sail with patience and diligence. Bouncing from anchorage to anchorage every day can be a lot of fun, but give yourself time to get to know new places if you like them.

Why cruise? In a few sentences, what is it that inspires you to keep cruising?

This big, beautiful world is full of enticements to travel and there’s no better introduction to a new place than sailing up to it. Seeing the world, meeting new people, and being at home at the end of every day…cruising can be the perfect way to balance humility and curiosity in foreign places and learn from people as you go.

Any other comments:

Just go!

Dena Hankins, James Lane and Beluga Greyfinger the Cat
S/V SN-E Cetacea

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