It brings to mind a conversation Lise and I were having with our friend, Doug, late last summer. We used to follow the OSTAR race in the late 70's and early 80's with great interest. Back then regular folks, like Alec Rose, Clare Francis and Francis Stokes, competitively raced what were essentially off the shelf boats across the Atlantic. Techniques and gear that they and their supporters developed for those races could be directly applicable to coastal cruising and their acheivements appeared to be within reach of the average dreamer. By the late 80's nearly all the boats were custom designs built with exotic materials. I recall a quote by Walter Greene in one of the sailing magazines from around that time saying that little backwater boat shops like his could no longer build competitive boats and, not to diminish their skill, but the people driving the new boats were more pilots than sailors. The skipper's quote from the above article, "Passage planning is out of my skill area..." seems to support Walter's decades old conclusion.