Zen Again is our Yamazaki Yachts Stinger 34 1980s IOR ¾ tonner. She’s gorgeous. She has a deep fin keel, strong skeg-hung rudder and tall masthead cutter rig. She displaces under 5,000kg naked and 6,000kg clad for cruising. She’s a member of our family.

When we met her in 2010 she’d already had two long-term cruisy Japanese relationships circumnavigating South America and touring the South Pacific, two racy Australian boyfriends and one brief relationship that ended in an arrest for drug running.

We have logged 65,000 miles together over 16 years, including seven ocean crossings. Despite being small and light she has looked after us very well. In return we have looked after her, investing in numerous refits along the way.

Our relationship with Zen Again is a love story. We’ve had our ups and downs but we’ve survived and thrived. We like to think her parents – designer Ken Hayashi and builder Yamazaki Yachts – approve of us. Likewise we hope her previous owners (except the drug runners) approve of us, as we do of them.

Preparing a boat for blue-water life together can seem a daunting task. But when complete – including living together for a while – you will know her very well indeed. You’ll understand her, her maintenance needs and most of her idiosyncrasies. You’ll understand her strong points and her weak points. You’ll love her, and if you don’t, then we recommend divorce. Accept that you will never completely understand her – she will surprise. And accept too that the work is never done – constant investment is the key to keeping the love story alive.

Prior to purchasing the boat in Brisbane in 2010 she had been club and offshore racing. She had good safety equipment and sails. Her electronics were dated, including an old ‘crystal set’ HF radio. Her wiring was in poor shape.
We sailed her south to her new home in Batemans Bay, New South Wales. Her old autopilot proved unreliable. So did the engine gear control lever. Don’t ask! But she sailed beautifully. At home we set to work turning her into our pocket blue-water cruiser.

Making her an Australian citizen

We holidayed in Sydney over the New Year and cruised Middle Harbour north of the city. Back in Batemans Bay we took part in local races and cruised the Clyde River. We registered the boat as an Australian ship, renaming her Zen Again. Registration involved finding all previous owners – a complex but rewarding task.

After a year in Batemans Bay we resigned from our jobs, sold our house and moved aboard. The cyclone season was over and it was time to cruise north. We visited Broken Bay, Port Stephens, Coffs Harbour, Southport and Mooloolaba. However, along the way we discovered the boat was taking in water. Sea water was appearing in the ‘egg crate’ bilge just aft of the main bulkhead. Not good.

We knew the boat had experienced a serious grounding in the past and had been repaired twice. We had the boat hauled out in Mooloolaba. Locals remembered the drug bust. But no-one could work out how the water was getting in. After some soul-searching we decided to push on to Darwin where we hoped to figure out the source of the leak. We visited Pancake Creek, Cape Capricorn, Great Keppel Island, Pearl Bay, Island Head, the Percy Islands, Airlie Beach, Yorkeys Knob, Lizard Island, Lockhart River and Adolphus Island along the way. All great cruising destinations.

In Darwin we found little professional help to solve the leak. But we met many cruisers planning to head north to Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand next season. They suggested we join them and have repairs carried out in Thailand. We had intended to cross the Indian Ocean to South Africa but didn’t want to do so in a leaky boat. We spent the cyclone season in Darwin, which gave us time for more boat work.

We did contract work to pay for the upgrades. They greatly improved the boat. In May 2012 we had a good shakedown cruise east to the Cobourg Peninsula and back. In June we departed in the Darwin to Dili race/rally. Dili in East Timor is a great place to visit. On departure our engine’s freshwater pump bearings failed and we returned to Dili. The failure was fortuitous since importing parts in East Timor is far easier than in Indonesia. We then headed onward to join the Sail Indonesia Rally in Kupang.

Sail Indonesia took us to Malaysia via West Timor, Alor, Pantar, Kawula, Flores, Komodo, Banta, Sumbawa, Lombok, Bali, Bawean, Kalimantan, Manggar and Batam over four months. We then joined the Sail Malaysia rally which took us to Langkawi via Port Dickson, Pangkor and Penang. It was a fantastic cruising season with amazing culture, scenery and wildlife.

Refit commitment

From Langkawi we day-sailed north to Boat Lagoon in Phuket, Thailand. We had booked her in for a major refit. It was time to ‘buy the boat again’ and to properly fix the old grounding damage. Our Thailand refit was carried out by Precision Yacht Services. They did a magnificent job.

During this refit we were back in Australia working to pay for it. Flying to and fro was affordable, allowing us to monitor progress. Between visits Precision sent us weekly photos. We finished the refit with an all but new boat in which we could cross oceans with confidence. Except in one detail – our engine.

Back in Malaysia we had planned to sail home to Western Australia via Cocos-Keeling leaving Sumatra to port. But we weren’t happy with our engine. In Langkawi we fitted a new Craftsman CM3.27 ourselves.

With the new engine fitted we sailed home via the Malay peninsula, Bali, Dampier, Exmouth, Geraldton and Fremantle. It was another good shakedown with only one defect coming to light and being fixed in Fremantle. She was watertight again. We spent a year sailing home waters while rebuilding the cruising kitty.

While at home in Fremantle we had a new mainsail and yankee headsail constructed. The mainsail was first-reef sized, since we’d realised we almost never sailed with full main. This allowed us to control two deep reefs easily, with the second trysail sized. We finally had a blue-water cruiser we had faith in. Worth every cent.

In June 2015 we again departed Australia. We sailed back up the west coast to Geraldton and Carnarvon, cruising Shark Bay along the way. From Carnarvon we crossed the Southern Indian Ocean to South Africa via Cocos Keeling, Rodrigues, Mauritius and Reunion islands. It was amazing to finally cross an ocean. The passage from Reunion to Richards Bay in South Africa, around the southern end of Madagascar, is still the most ‘out there’ we’ve ever felt. It’s a wild place.

Dodging busters in South Africa

We loved South Africa. We spent three months there, most of it in hire cars visiting game parks, historic sites and wine regions. Cruising South Africa involves touring for 10 days or so while a southerly buster blows though. In the few sailable days between busters you sail south then west with at least 70 miles a day help from the Agulhas current.

We only did a few boat jobs in South Africa. We replaced our anchor chain and had stainless steel brackets for our autopilot on-deck actuators constructed. The latter were supposedly to stop the actuators dying after one ocean. It didn’t work.

We had a great passage to St Helena. The first two days were wet and windy but then we broke out into the South Atlantic trade winds. And what lovely trade winds they were! 15-18 knots with no swell, unlike the Southern Indian Ocean with 20-25 knots and a nasty SW Southern Ocean swell.

From St Helena we sailed direct to St Lucia in the Caribbean. It was a 4,200 mile passage through the SE trades, ITCZ and the NE trades. It took us 31 days, consuming 200 litres of water and 60 litres of diesel.

From St Lucia we rather rapidly cruised through the eastern Caribbean to the British Virgin Islands via Martinique, Dominica and Guadeloupe. From there we sailed to Bermuda, the Azores and Falmouth in the UK. We had sailed nearly 18,000 miles in 13 months. It was time to take a break and rebuild the cruising kitty again.

We lived and worked in the UK from 2016 to 2021. For about half the time we lived ashore, during which we sailed the boat around the UK during work holidays. For 18 months we lived aboard in St Katharine Docks in London, which was great fun. While in the UK we completed yet more upgrades.

We escaped London just before the first lockdown, sailing to Gosport on the Solent. We had intended to cruise Ireland, the Orkneys, Norway, the Baltic and all the way down the European coast after leaving the UK. Covid broke that plan.

In Spring 2021 we crossed Biscay to Spain, cruising south along the Portuguese coast. We sailed through ‘Orca Alley’ to Gibraltar and spent a month cruising southern Spain and the Balearics. With our 90-day Schengen passport rapidly running out, we headed to Tunisia.

Leaving the Med behind

We really enjoyed our time in Tunisia exploring ashore. After 90 days we departed and made our way rapidly out of the Mediterranean. We were then on a schedule to cross the Atlantic back to the Caribbean. Along the way we visited Madeira and the Canaries. Back in the Caribbean in 2022 we explored more of the eastern islands before heading south to Grenada for the hurricane season. We had another mini-refit in Grenada.

From Grenada we headed west to Bonaire, Curacao, Colombia and Panama in October to December. In Panama we cruised through the San Blas islands.

While in the San Blas we discovered our engine mounts were disintegrating. We spent two months in Linton Bay Marina fixing this problem. For reasons unknown, the engine wouldn’t align the shaft with the new mount inserts. We ended up having new engine mount bases constructed in order to lower the engine sufficiently.

Many of our friends had headed to Panama to go through the canal. We’d accompanied them while awaiting a date for a US Visa interview in Nassau. Finally in February 2023 we secured an interview in April. We were lucky to get a good weather window to sail a 750 mile beat to Jamaica. We spent a fun week there before sailing onward through the Windward Passage to the southern Bahamas.

We cruised through the southern Bahamas and Exumas rapidly to reach Nassau on time. With our US Visa stamps in our passports, we took our time cruising the northern Bahamas, enjoying the Eleuthera and Abaco islands.

From there we sailed direct to North Carolina then through the Intra-Coastal Waterway to Chesapeake Bay. We hauled the boat out at Deltaville Yachting Centre and flew back to Europe for the winter to work and visit some of the places Covid had made impossible.

In spring 2024 we returned to Deltaville, where Zen Again received yet another refit while on the hard.

Back on the water

We splashed Zen Again in late April and sailed up the Chesapeake to Annapolis, then through the canal to the Delaware River. From there we sailed coastwise to Cape May, New York, Long Island Sound, Block Island, Woods Hole, and through the Cape Cod Canal to Provincetown.

From there to wonderful Maine and onward to Nova Scotia, including the spectacular Bras D’Or. Finally on the eastern American seaboard we visited southern Newfoundland and St Pierre, which we reached in late July. From St Pierre we sailed to the Azores, as described in Yachting Monthly’s February 2025 edition.

We spent August and September exploring Flores, Faial, Sao Jorge, Terceira and Sao Miguel with an Ocean Cruising Club cruise. We continued with the cruise in Madeira and the Canaries, then did our fourth North Atlantic crossing. We stopped briefly in the Cabo Verdes for emergency repair of a weeping thru-hull.

In the Caribbean we again made landfall in lovely English Harbour, Antigua. After spending a week there, we sailed to St Maarten where we had scheduled a pre-Pacific refit. From St Maarten we sailed direct to the San Blas Islands – a great 1,000-mile shakedown to check all was well. From there we moved on to Linton Bay and Shelter Bay. In April we transited the Panama Canal.

Our 2025 South Pacific crossing took us west to the Marquesas, Tuamotu and Society Islands of French Polynesia. Panama to the Marquesas was a 4,300nm, 34-day passage consuming 200 litres of diesel and 180 litres of water.

Island hopping

From the Societies we sailed westward to Samoa then southward through Tonga.

We visited Niuatoputapu, the Vava’u group, the Ha‘apai group and Tongatapu. En route to New Zealand we stopped off at North Minerva Reef. It was a busy 18 months, sailing 18,000 miles from the US via Newfoundland, the Canaries and Panama to New Zealand.

Blue-water cruising takes a heavy toll on a boat. Nothing lasts forever and many items don’t last long at all. We carry a large array of spares but still get caught out. Redundancy is vital. Also vital is a thorough shakedown after any refit.

The love story continues

We estimate we’ve ‘bought the boat again’ every 5-6 years. That’s investment in replacing and upgrading equipment only.

We try to keep our systems simple, maintainable and modern. We have few luxuries aboard our pocket blue-water cruiser. But we have everything we need. Our love story of boat maintenance in exotic locations continues.

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