Why fixed delivery deadlines can hurt a boat and why Lauren stopped doing charters
One reason Lauren stopped doing charters was that having to be somewhere at a specific time almost always ends up hurting the boat. When you must make a destination regardless of conditions, you push into weather you would otherwise wait out, and the boat pays the price. In this case, she felt compelled to leave despite not wanting to because she had a grocery delivery scheduled at Fakarava. Fresh produce is very hard to find in the remote atolls of French Polynesia, so having groceries delivered when possible is a real benefit of cruising to places with that service. But the experience reinforced her view that schedule-driven sailing creates the exact kind of pressure that leads to hard passages and potential damage.
Go deeper with Lauren Landers Sailing
Ask anything about this, and Lauren Landers Sailing answers from everything they've shared.
More to learn
See everything in Learn
Drone battery and altitude management during an extended wildlife search
During a wildlife search flight, Lauren Landers Sailing keeps an eye on both altitude and battery level simultaneously. At 40 metres (about 120 to 130 feet) the drone still provides a useful overview, but for spotting smaller species like b
Why staying in one area makes wildlife spotting much more rewarding
Spending extended time anchored or moored in a single location builds a mental map of what lives there and where. Lauren Landers Sailing notes that once you know an area well, you can predict that a particular bait ball will be in its usual
What it feels like to transit an atoll for the first time without it being too sketchy
After completing the pass entry, Lauren reflects that the conditions were relatively flat, which made for a good first experience. The key takeaway is that if the waves had been bigger, waiting for them to settle would have been the right c