Summer is upon us. I can tell by the type of requests and letters we are receiving that many of you are in the last stages of preparing your Pearson for the plans you have made for this season. Your NPYOA has had a fairly full spring as well. We have been responding to many member requests—some of which involve fairly heavy repair jobs on Pearsons that unfortunately suffered storm damage. We will be tracking this work and publishing it in future issues of TPC. Our events scheduled for SAIL-EXPO in Atlantic City last February were very well attended. More than fifty Pearsons were represented at our owners’ meeting and about fifteen members attended our cruisers’ dinner. A Special thanks to Everett Pearson who took time out from his many official obligations at the show to spend considerable time with us at dinner.

By the time this issue hits your deck, we will have held the first of what I hope will be many Pearson Owners Rendezvous. This year’s event was scheduled for Newport since it was in these sailing waters that the Pearson legend got its start. Our next issue will have a full report on the event. We are close to getting the list of like Pearsons completed and I hope to have it in your hands before the end of the summer. We appreciate your patience—these things always seem to take longer than anticipated. It takes a considerable amount of time for me to keep all aspects of our association up to speed and still have some left over to fulfill my other obligations and to sail Satori.

In this issue, Bill Pogson has written what we feel is an extremely informative piece dealing with the removal and replacment of handrails. Leaking handrails represents a common problem for many of us. I am sure you will pick up some excellent tips from Bill’s article. NPYOA member Hal Sutphen (P-424) has given us an update on his winter with the "Caribbean 1500" Cruising Rally. My immediate reaction to the article was envy. Given the many requests we get about the offshore capabilities of our Pearsons, I am sure that many of us wish we could be down there on Sea Duty with Hal and Helen.

I feel obligated to comment on the tortuous track taken at the most recent "America’s Cup" show. It seems however, that more was written about the maneuverings off the water than about what transpired on the race course itself. Evident in much of the discussion is the regret felt by many over the loss of a focus which was traditionally the matching of sailing skills and getting the best possible boat in the water. The rapidly escalating commercialization and politics involved in this world class event has managed to seriously diminish my interest. However, I would strongly encourage you to follow the New York Yacht Club’s new creation, "The International Cup." The NYYC has set a new standard of match racing for this event that should prove to be most exciting to watch and possibly even to participate in.

A note on upcoming topics for the Current: I have asked Bill Shaw to put together a brief article explaining how we can evaluate the stability factors of our specific Pearsons. He is gathering the key ratios used by Naval Architects to determine the safety factors we are comfortable with as they relate to your particular boat. Bill has also given me some information on the history of the Pearson Yacht Company which I will put together for the fall. Many of us would like to know more about how the company got started and grew to become a leader in the industry. I hope this will address the comments and questions many of you have sent to us.

Wishing you smooth & safe sailing,

Bill Lawrence

I agree with the statements made by Lazaros Lazardidis, (TPC Vol 1 No 4), regarding the "well-documented difficulty the P35 has backing down." If the water depths permits, I have found that lowering the centerboard about half way allows me to actually steer backing down. Can Bill Shaw tell me why this is so? Am I putting my P35 Revelation in too much danger by doing this? Thank you.
— Steven Schreer Albany, NY

Dear Steven, Most designs with full back keels and a propeller in an aperture have difficulty controlling direction when backing down. The slip stream from the prop is deflected by the aperture causing a side wash when what you want is a nice flow fore and aft.

Late in October, along with 59 other boats, we left Hampton, Virginia aboard our Pearson 424 Sea Duty. We were part of the "Caribbean 1500" cruising rally bound for St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. Our passage south was smooth and relatively uneventful. Crossing the Gulf Stream went well—several periods of light air, some brisk breezes and choppiness, but winds never exceeded 26 knots and the seas were never threatening.

We stayed close to St. Thomas until mid-December except for Thanksgiving week which we spent at Culebra, an island about mid-way between Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Anchored behind the protect-ing reef off Bahia de Almodovar, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with a group from past and present Caribbean 1500 rallies.

We left for Martinique in mid-December. The three-day passage was our first ex-tended trip with just the two of us onboard. With the wind southeast, we were close hauled all the way. Initially, we had very light air but it built steadily and most of the last 30 hours of our passage were spent beating into gusts above 25 knots. This brought a lot of water across the foredeck and led us to finally discovering why we sometimes had leakage in the forward cabin. It seems that the bulkhead separating that cabin from the anchor locker does not extend all the way up inside the coamings at the hull-deck joint. When the fore–deck anchor locker fills in heavy seas, the water could slosh over the top of the bulkhead and drain into the V-berth area! Two care- fully shaped pieces of acrylic sheet and lots of caulking compound appears to have fixed this.

We spent Christmas in the Fort de France area and after a brief stop at St. Pierre (the city destroyed in the 1902 Mount Pelee eruption), we sailed north to Dominica. At Roseau, we had our first opportunity to moor anchored offshore in deep water with a stern line to the shore. It was also our first encounter with the infamous "boat boys" who actually proved to be more helpful and less aggressive than many stories had led us to believe. Tying to shore proved effective once we bent together enough lines to stretch that far. All the knots held (unlike one of our neighbors whose stern line let go at 10:00 p.m., leading to a large cooperative effort to get him reattached.) A tour of the island with "Roy," a legend in the boat boy/ tour organizer/taxi coordinator profession, was fascinating. We ate grapefruit and bananas fresh from the tree, drove through miles and miles of banana, coconut and pineapple groves interspersed with occa-sional coffee, cacao, and mango trees. We traveled up a narrow road on the spine of a mountain ridge that dropped straight away for a thousand feet or so on both sides, and visited "natural wonders" like the Emerald Pool and Sulphur Springs (very over-rated tourist attractions). Because Dominica is a mountainous island that rises right out of the sea, there are only a few places where a shallow shoreline shelf permits comfortable anchorage by a boat whose anchor windlass is not operating.

Our next stop was a three-day visit to Isle des Saintes, a cluster of islands south of Guadeloupe. We stayed here over the New Year holiday, touring the mainland by motor scooter and enjoying the time spent ashore. Like the other French islands, going topless (and nude) is common on the beaches, so there was plenty of anatomical examination to fill the time. While in the Saintes, we also enjoyed our first ice cream in several months. It may also have been the most expensive we’d ever consumed—over $5 US for one small dip!

From the Saintes, we went on to Pointe a Pitre in Guadeloupe. We expected a mail delivery at the big new marina there, but the mail never made it (our message to the forwarding service had been garbled on their answering machine). Finding Pointe a Pitre dirty and unpleasant, we retreated to an anchorage behind a small island a few miles to the southeast. After spending one night there, we decided to lin-ger no longer than neces-sary in Guadeloupe. A nice day of sailing took us to Basse Terre for customs clear-ance, and up the west coast to anchor near Pigeon island, a national underwater park. The next morning we snorkeled for several hours in wonderfully clear water and saw lots of undersea life, much of it in spectacu-larly brilliant color. A final stop for a day or so was at Deshaies, a tiny, charming town at the northwest corner of the island. We took full advantage of our last opportunity to buy the delicious fresh-baked bread available only in the French islands, and then we were off to Antigua, a 40 mile jaunt across open water.

We found Antigua to be a delightful place (one we want to visit again). It was also good to be back on an English-speaking island. We spent several days at English Harbour, visiting Nelson’s Dockyard and finally catching up with our mail. Two days in beautiful, peaceful anchorages in the lee of Green island on 7Antigua’s southeast corner were an absolute pleasure. They were followed by a superb day of sailing as we rounded the south side of Antigua and slipped up the west coast to the new marina development at Jolly Harbour. Though the area is still somewhat of a wasteland, we observed a steady stream of real estate sales pitches being delivered. If these pitches are effective, it won’t be long before the condos will be occupied, barren spaces will sprout more condos, the golf course will flourish and developers, shopkeepers and tourists will wear happy faces. The best $1 entertain-ment we found was the bus ride to the capital city, St. John, where we strolled among tourists disgorged by a cruise ship and actually found some excellent shops.

Next was a two-day passage westward toward Puerto Rico. The Caribbean weather has been contrary this winter—the strong "Christmas Winds" that traditionally blow between northeast and southeast between mid-December and March never material-ized. Instead, there were light airs from strange directions. On this leg, we had light southwest to south winds and had to motor well over half the way. We checked back into the USA, cleared customs at Culebra, then sailed to Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico, where we moored Sea Duty at the Navy marina and headed home for a couple of weeks. The flight home was an experience in itself—a "Space Avail-able" flight in an Air Force C-130 cargo plane, luxuriously outfitted with canvas "pipe berth" seats and minimal head facilities. After only 5½ hours of droning propeller noise (even with ear plugs it was enough to make the skull vibrate), we were home in Norfolk and winter.

Our visit home has been a welcome change of pace to life afloat, but we’re also eager to be back in sunshine and bathing suits, snorkeling and sailing again.