Partners
AkzoNobel
Sweet Ruca has been protected by AkzoNobel coatings since day one of our voyage. From the tip of the mast to the bottom of the keel, Sweet Ruca’s beautiful paint is Awlgrip and International Micron Premium. It was only after we required an unexpected haulout in Brazil after hitting a UFO during our transatlantic crossing that we reached out to them for support. They understand #thatfeeling of sailing a fast and beautiful boat and decided to help us continue our journey with a proper and fast bottom. As we have worked together we have enjoyed and continued our partnership as we share #thatfeeling that can only be had on the water.
Marlow Ropes
After over 18,000 nautical miles of sailing, rounding Cape Horn, and then sailing upwind through the fjords of Patagonia, our running rigging and lines were wearing out from use. The lines that had held up the best for us on board were Marlow! We contacted them to see how they could help, and they delivered bigtime! Sweet Ruca is now #riggedbymarlow and we couldn’t be happier. Line handling and sheeting have been greatly improved, we have been able to improve safety and reefing systems, and the boat is #technicallybetter using Marlow’s bio based dyneema. We are very excited to show off these new lines during our Pacific Crossing portion of the journey.
180Sails.com / Evolution Sails Chicago
When we left Newport, Rhode Island for the first time in 2019 the boat was equipped with its original, 20 year old upwind sails. Since then we have put on quite a few miles, including crossing the Atlantic Ocean twice. We had already worked with Evolution Sails Chicago while in the Azores to replace our Genoa with one of their Expedition Membrane sails. The performance was excellent. We went back to them when it was time for a new mainsail and Andy worked closely with us to design the sails as Curtis consulted on his website www.180sails.com which we hope to make a great resource for offshore sailors, both racers and cruisers alike!
PredictWind
As a racing navigator Curtis knows the value of having the best weather information. We have applied this to cruising as well, as improved forecasts, polars, and data allow for safer and more efficient passage-making. Key to this is our PredictWind Professional package which allows grib downloads for on boat routing, PredictWind online routing which saves time and resources, as well as the DataHub which allows our followers to view our tracker, but also has data acquisition features to better our polars, create wave routing, monitor our boat remotely, and connect to the internet. The DataHub has become just that, a hub of everything aboard Sweet Ruca and we would highly recommend it to any cruising or racing sailor.
Expedition Navigation Software
Some think Expedition is just for racers, for us as performance cruisers we don’t think so. Curtis used this same software to win the Chicago-Mackinac race overall. Expedition Navigation Software allows us to do on board weather routing that many other boats simply can not do. It opens doors to different cruising routes that aren’t in the book and are off the beaten path. It does have a learning curve, but once mastered it is extremely powerful and used by the likes of The Ocean Race and IMOCA sailors. It works well alongside PredictWind and along with Starlink can provide a complete ECDIS system which allows you to monitor all the boats systems including weather radar.
Patreon Crew
You can find a list of our Patrons at the end of each YouTube video. Our Patrons have become like our friends and family, a wonderful group that communicates behind the scenes and stays up to date, while at the same time contributing a modest amount which helps fund our video production and blog posts. We can’t thank this group of wonderful people enough, and we consider all of our Patrons as part of our crew. Even though they are aboard only digitally, they are a key part of the amazing sailing team of Sweet Ruca! If you happen to meet one, please extend thanks for their support, as without them, there would surely be no sailing vlogs!