Salty Dips Episode 8: Racing and Cruising with Max Shaw
Racers and cruisers are often placed in separate boxes. Max Shaw does not buy that split. In Salty Dips Episode 8, Chris Maier talks with Max about where cruising and racing meet. They cover boat choice, distance racing, offshore racing, racing preparation, safety, and the skills that transfer both ways.
Meet Max Shaw
Max Shaw is a yacht broker, ocean racer, sailing instructor, and world cruiser. He spent seven years cruising the South Pacific with his family in Fluenta, giving him deep experience in passage making, boat systems, and family sailing.
His racing roots include the Royal Canadian Navy sail training programme on Tuna, a Canadian Sailcraft CS36. That mix of cruising miles and racecourse time shapes this conversation from start to finish.
Key Navigational Marks
[00:00:36] Welcome to Episode 8: Max Shaw, world cruiser, yacht broker and ocean racer
[00:01:25] Cruiser and racer boxes
[00:05:10] What racing brings to cruisers
[00:09:59] The value of crewing on other boats — and Cheeky Monkey
[00:16:27] Distance racing versus around the cans, and offshore sailing as a leadership laboratory
[00:22:04] The rise of double-handed sailing
[00:24:57] Tuna, the boom and the duct tape
[00:26:23] The market for racer-cruisers
[00:33:03] Safety standards and accessibility
[00:40:01] Favourite race: Halifax to Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon
[00:44:34] The Salty Dip: a Force 12 North Atlantic crossing
[00:53:45] The decision to start
[00:55:18] Closing thoughts and farewell
[00:56:46] Outro and next episode
Cruiser or Racer? Start with the Mission
Max describes himself as a cruiser and sailing instructor who enjoys racing. He argues that both camps have something to learn from the other.
As a broker, he starts with the mission before the boat. What does the owner actually want to do, and how often will they really do it? That matters more than labels.
For most sailors, rating-based racing means almost any boat can compete. Boat choice only becomes critical at the sharper end of the sport.
What Racing Gives Cruisers
Max’s case for racing is simple. It is fun, it is good exercise, and it builds useful sailing skills. He points to an ARC crossing with a client. The least-dramatic boats were often the ones with racing habits on board. They prepared spinnaker halyards properly, trimmed actively, and understood how to keep a boat moving without needless strain.
Trim remains primary propulsion. Good helm matters when autopilots are not enough. Light-air finesse helps keep the engine off. Watch rotations matter too, because tired crews make slow decisions.
Different Weighting, Same Skills
Cruising wants a reasonable passage time too. Moving efficiently reduces exposure and often lowers risk. The difference is weighting. Racers push harder. Max puts it bluntly: if you are not breaking anything, you are probably not pushing hard enough. Cruisers make a different choice.
On his 47-foot, 20-ton boat, Max slows down above eight knots to protect the gear. French Polynesia is for kitesurfing and spearfishing, not repairs. Racing still prizes speed, but the same trim, steering, and judgement skills are in play. He also notes that racers find ways to compete within the race. Inter-watch surf competitions are part of the fun.
Crewing on Other Boats Changes Everything
Max is clear that racing your own boat is optional. Crewing on other boats is one of the fastest ways to learn.
As a broker, he has sailed more than 30 boats a year. That exposure builds judgement quickly. He mentions the Mexico Saturday series on Profligate, Banderas Bay regattas, and club racing in Tonga.
The Tonga story is classic sailing small-world stuff. A young New Zealand couple were racing an older IOR boat with updated rigging and B&G electronics. They turned out to be connected to Sir Peter Blake’s former crew, running Steinlager 2 as a charter boat, and his wife was Sir Peter Blake’s daughter.
Then there is Cheeky Monkey, an all-carbon Farrier 45 catamaran with a rotating mast, twin daggerboards, a canting fore-and-aft retracting prop and shaft, diesel-electric hybrid systems, and halyard locks. On board that boat, Max says he feels like a beginner.
Racing Basics Cruisers Often Miss
Racing teaches simple disciplines that many cruisers never think about until they need them. Read the sailing instructions. Load the waypoints. Attend the skippers’ meeting. Make a plan. Brief the crew. Know how you will handle the start.
Those steps matter most when the boat is big and the skipper is new to racing. Max recalls helping a first-time racing skipper on a 65-foot aluminium boat in the Banderas Bay Regatta get prepared and around the course safely.
His reminder is a good one. This is recreation, and sometimes we lose sight of that.
Distance Racing and Leadership
Max got into racing while running the military sail training programme on the East Coast. It was easy to justify because offshore sailing is a leadership laboratory.
People get real responsibility regardless of rank. The cycle is direct: develop a plan, brief the plan, execute the plan. Offshore sailing adds preparation, fatigue, movement, seasickness, and cold.
Around-the-cans racing moves too quickly to hand a new watch leader the helm at the start and step back. Max learned more from a Halifax to Saint-Pierre race than from years of Wednesday-night racing.
Preparation Transfers
Provisioning, food, water, safety gear, and watch systems all transfer between cruising and offshore racing. Max says they used the then-ISAF, now World Sailing, standards as a cruising guideline. Cruisers may not follow race rules line by line, but the framework is still useful. Watch rotations vary by crew. With a full team, they can stay fixed. With Max and his wife Liz, they are looser. Trust allows longer or shorter watches without anyone turning into a martyr.
The Rise of Double Handed Sailing
Max sees double-handed sailing growing for a simple reason. People are often the hard part. Assembling a crew, feeding them, and managing dynamics takes work. He remembers the relief when the five-minute gun went in a four-leg expedition format from Halifax to Marion, Marion to Bermuda, Bermuda to Marblehead, and Marblehead to Halifax. Once the gun went, it was just sailing. Then the boom came off.
Double-handed removes a lot of logistics. You sail with the same partner every time, and you do not have to coordinate eight people and eight box lunches.
Tuna, the Boom, and the Duct Tape
On the way to Bermuda, the gooseneck rivets sheared and the boom extrusion came off the casting. Max lashed it with Dyneema, used bolts as makeshift pins because there was no rivet gun or tap-and-die set on board, and finished the job with duct tape. In Bermuda, they became known as the Canadian boat that duct taped its boom on. That reputation came with free drinks. The boat later received a new boom.
The Boat Market: Two Different Paths
Max sees two broad paths in the market. Older GRP-era cruisers can sail beautifully and race well under handicap. At that price point, survey condition is everything. A competent surveyor matters, especially when rot or structural issues can turn repairs into a bill near the value of the vessel.
New racer-cruisers are out there, but the price of entry has climbed sharply. Many modern cruising boats are built around couples and easy handling. A new boat of similar length may have four winches where Max has eleven. Everything is simpler, but not always easier to optimize for Cunningham or outhaul tension.
Aftermarket changes are possible, but many buyers simply choose a more optimized cruiser-racer if racing is a real priority. In BC, most buyers still want to cruise first. Ease of single or double handing matters because extended sailing is basically sequential single handing.
Getting into Racing
Max does not think most cruising couples should start by racing their own boat.
His advice is to find boats looking for crew, find a skipper you resonate with, and see what it is like on someone else’s boat first. That is especially true for starts, where the learning curve is steep and the pressure is immediate.
The Future of Corinthian Distance Racing
Max is cautious about predicting the future, but he sees clear pressure points. The sport is getting older, and boats are expensive.
He also sees real appeal in distance racing. Events like the Van Isle 360 still offer adventure and a target worth chasing. That gives younger sailors something exciting to work toward.
Safety Standards and Accessibility
Max’s view on safety is direct. As he puts it, the rules are written in blood.
Most standards come from real incidents. Organizers can add exclusions or amendments, but there is no better baseline. Cruisers may not mirror every rule, but the framework is strong.
He recommends safety at sea courses to anyone heading offshore. Pool practice is very different from watching a video. The goal is to put the probabilities in your favour.
Favourite Race: Halifax to Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon
Max’s favourite race is Halifax to Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, his first significant offshore event.
It started in dense fog and stayed there. They were all learning, using a green-screen Furuno radar and a borrowed laptop velcroed to the chart table. Saint-Pierre felt properly French and properly welcoming.
Crews were assigned local sponsors for meals, laundry, and a real shower. They also had to stay several days for the race to count, which included an inshore race around islands with puffins alongside boats ranging from older Volvo 70s to their CS36. Bermuda, by contrast, is less impressed by visiting sailors. The delivery home was no gift either.
Why East Coast Distance Racing Thrives
On the East Coast, cruising has less room to compete with racing. Once you clear Halifax Harbour past Hotel Alpha, you are in the Atlantic.
It is a challenging cruising ground, with limited anchorages and plenty of exposure. So people race. Halifax piers, Marblehead, Chester Race Week, and the feeder races all reinforce that culture.
The Salty Dip
Max’s Salty Dip is his first transatlantic, a Yachtmaster Ocean assessment on an Oyster running crewed charters in the Arctic and the Canaries. The marketing promised at least one gale. The boat had no way to download GRIB files, only an old weather fax and an antiquated sat C, so Max loaded GRIBs onto his iPod touch before departure and showed the experienced skipper what was coming off Newfoundland. They had prepared well, but his line still stands: the most dangerous thing on a boat is a schedule.
They were hit by sustained Force 12 conditions for several days, with 30- to 50-foot seas. The analog B&G needle pegged at 50 apparent while the digital readout showed 65. It was fun surfing until a wave from another angle put the rig in the water. One crew member was ejected but tethered, a watchmate was thrown across the beam into the handrail, the mast blew out, one life raft was ripped off, and the other was stove in. Days later, with two crew down, too far offshore to medevac, and everything wet, they diverted to Falmouth, where Max learned to sail, for a rig inspection, medical attention, and a pint.
His lesson is simple: do not be in the wrong part of the ocean at the wrong time of year. Max says 36,000 miles with kids produced only one gale, and that one was chosen knowingly with limited fetch. The answer is timing, patience, and weather knowledge. The second part of the dip is the Convoy Cup lesson. The forecast was awful, but the race was on the calendar. Most of the fleet bailed before leaving Halifax Harbour, and the boat that did start was unready, with a seasick, inexperienced crew. Max’s conclusion is direct: the skipper’s job is to ask whether it is actually a good idea. In racing, starting is your own decision.
Closing Thoughts
Max closes with a useful reminder. Sailing is supposed to be fun.
There is always more to learn, and sailors who stay involved in both cruising and racing usually become stronger in both. That applies far beyond the Pacific Northwest. The same questions show up anywhere people go sailing offshore, go distance racing, or simply want to run their boats better.
The Hero’s Return
The return is not just about results. It is about coming back with better judgement.
That is true after a club race, a distance race, or an ocean passage. Max’s story makes the point well: preparation matters, weather matters, and the decision to start always belongs to the skipper.
Thanks to Max Shaw for joining us and sharing a life lived across cruising, racing, and brokerage. It was also good to hear the thread from the Navy sail training programme’s ad hoc East Coast roots to the more professional programme in place today.
Next time, we hope to catch up with the Cascadia team and hear how the New York Yacht Club Women’s Invitational went. If you enjoyed the show, like, subscribe, and leave a review.
Listen to the Salty Dips podcast on the Black Wolf Racing website, or find the series on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Podcasts.
For more conversations about sailing, racing, preparation, and the people who make the sport happen, explore Salty Dips Episode 6 with Peter Salusbury and Episode 7 with Ben Mumford.
Stay salty.
Disclaimer
Disclaimer: The safety information and advice shared in this article are for general guidance and information only. Every skipper and vessel operator is solely and ultimately responsible for the safety of their crew, boat, and decisions made on the water. All skippers must ensure they are fully informed, exercise their own judgment, and comply with all applicable laws, regulations, and race rules. Readers should do their own research and consult with qualified professionals as needed, as situations on the water can vary widely and may require different actions.
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