mantra 28 sailboat

Review of Mantra 28

Basic specs..

The boat is typically equipped with an inboard Yanmar 1GM10 diesel engine.

The transmission is a saildrive.

The fuel tank has a capacity of 33 liters (8 US gallons, 7 imperial gallons).

Sailing characteristics

This section covers widely used rules of thumb to describe the sailing characteristics. Please note that even though the calculations are correct, the interpretation of the results might not be valid for extreme boats.

What is Capsize Screening Formula (CSF)?

The capsize screening value for Mantra 28 is 1.84, indicating that this boat could - if evaluated by this formula alone - be accepted to participate in ocean races.

Mantra 28 holds one CE certification:

What is Theoretical Maximum Hull Speed?

The theoretical maximal speed of a displacement boat of this length is 6.8 knots. The term "Theoretical Maximum Hull Speed" is widely used even though a boat can sail faster. The term shall be interpreted as above the theoretical speed a great additional power is necessary for a small gain in speed.

The immersion rate is defined as the weight required to sink the boat a certain level. The immersion rate for Mantra 28 is about 141 kg/cm, alternatively 790 lbs/inch. Meaning: if you load 141 kg cargo on the boat then it will sink 1 cm. Alternatively, if you load 790 lbs cargo on the boat it will sink 1 inch.

Sailing statistics

This section is statistical comparison with similar boats of the same category. The basis of the following statistical computations is our unique database with more than 26,000 different boat types and 350,000 data points.

What is Motion Comfort Ratio (MCR)?

What is L/B (Length Beam Ratio)?

What is Displacement Length Ratio?

Maintenance

If you need to renew parts of your running rig and is not quite sure of the dimensions, you may find the estimates computed below useful.

This section shown boat owner's changes, improvements, etc. Here you might find inspiration for your boat.

Do you have changes/improvements you would like to share? Upload a photo and describe what to look for.

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mantra 28 for sale

Mantra 28 (sailboat) for sale

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Boat of the Week: This 185-Foot Sea-Cleaning Sailboat Collects up to 3 Tons of Ocean Garbage per Hour

The "manta" is a giant, plastic-eating catamaran that collects trash on an industrial scale. and it's powered by renewable energy., julia zaltzman, julia zaltzman's most recent stories.

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Manta is a 185-foot sailing cat that collects garbage around the world

Meet Manta , a giant, plastic-eating catamaran powered by renewable energy. The 185-foot hybrid sailboat will be the world’s first sea-cleaning vessel capable of collecting plastic waste on an industrial scale. Operating autonomously 75 percent of the time, it’s also a state-of-the-art scientific laboratory.

World-record sailor Yvan Bourgnon is the mastermind behind the venture. During 20 years of transatlantic competitions and various solo world tours (including the first person to sail solo from Alaska to Greenland), he witnessed a sharp increase in ocean pollution. In 2015, he was forced to abandon the Transat Jacques Vabre yacht race after his sailboat struck plastic debris in the Bay of Gascogne.

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Bourgnon’s response was to set up The SeaCleaners NGO in 2016, a consortium of over 58 engineers, technicians and researchers comprising five research laboratories and 17 external partners to build a solution: The Manta .

Manta has nets along the stern to collect plastic and garbage, along with sustainable energy sources like solar panels and wind turbines to power the onboard collection and recycling center. Courtesy SeaCleaners

“During my racing career, I’ve missed out on records and broken my boat 12 times from hitting ocean debris,” Bourgnon told Robb Report . “I’ve circumnavigated the world twice in my life, once at the age of 12 with my parents, and another 30 years later. The difference in the amount of plastic pollution was alarming. I knew something had to be done.”

Built from low-carbon steel, the Manta is a virtuous energy recovery unit wrapped up in a 185-foot sailboat design. It features a custom electric hybrid propulsion system enabling it to travel at controlled speeds of between two and three knots, the optimum speed for waste collection. Around 500kW of onboard renewable energy is generated via two wind turbines located at the stern, 500 square meters of photovoltaic solar panels at the bow, two hydro-generators under the boat and a Waste-to-Electricity Conversion Unit (WECU) used to power the hotel load, or what the captain and crew consume.

The Manta gets its name from a pair of retractable wings used to hold a third of the solar panels that mimic the shape of a manta ray. Despite being an oceangoing vessel, the Manta will primarily focus on coastal areas in and around the estuaries or mouths of the 10 most polluting rivers in the world. These include the Yangtze (the longest river in Asia), the Yellow River, which feeds into China’s Bohai Sea, and the Ganges, which runs through India and Bangladesh.

Two rear tenders Mobula 8 and Mobula 10 will clean up trash in shallower waters. Courtesy SeaCleaners

“Despite the boat’s capabilities, we’re not looking to operate in the middle of the oceans,” says Bourgnon. “Instead, we’ll be crossing the mouths of the rivers several times a day collecting the rubbish that continually spills into the sea. The 20 largest rivers in southeast Asia account for 60 percent of ocean plastic, so that’s where we’re concentrating our efforts.”

Three floatable collection systems give the Manta a plastic-eating span of 151 feet and a collection depth of three feet. Two cranes are used to extract large debris. Up to three tons of waste will be collected per hour and sorted on board by a crew of 22 working in two 12-hour shifts. Metal and glass are sent to shoreside recycling units, organic matter is returned to the sea, and plastic waste is fed into the WECU which vaporizes the plastic turning “syngas” into electricity. Operating for 300 days a year, the aim is to collect up to 10,000 tons per year. Two multi-purpose decontamination boats stored onboard— Mobula 8 and Mobula 10— will be deployed to access narrow and shallow areas. Both models will also be sold individually to encourage public and private initiatives.

The sailing cat plans to collect 10,000 tons of ocean trash each year. It will also be able to house marine biologists doing ocean research. Courtesy SeaCleaners

“We’ll be collecting dense areas of macro-plastic pollution before it sinks or disintegrates into micro-plastics,” says the Franco-Swiss navigator. “Hurricanes and tsunamis cause massive inflows of pollution into the ocean, and it’s imperative that this pollution is dealt with quickly before it drifts, sinks and becomes irrecoverable.”

A shipyard is yet to be confirmed, but Bourgnon anticipates a two year-build for the first model, with delivery scheduled for the end of 2024. Sea trials will take place in Europe before heading to southeast Asia in 2025 to begin the first clean-up. Up to 10 scientists are also accommodated on board. All the scientific research and data collected by the Manta will be made available on an open-source platform.

“I’m not in competition with other boat builders to be the only one with a Manta ,” says Bourgnon. “Our hope is that hundreds of Mantas will be built around the world to help with the great ocean cleanup.”

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Sailing Anarchy

Mantra 28 and 31

Thread starter plattlens
Start date Feb 7, 2006

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Feb 7, 2006

Design by Andrzej Arminski and build in Poland - any opinions?

Feb 11, 2006
Thread starter

plattlens said: Design by Andrzej Arminski and build in Poland - any opinions? Click to expand...

Kevlar Edge

Super anarchist.

check with me monday, i'm sure i will have info in the archives

Betty's Boy

Is this the one with identical rig dimensions to a Mumm 30? I think I read somewhere the idea was to be able to buy used OD sails and be a kind of training boat for would-be Mumm programs. Looks very nice in those pictures. Hvor seiler du, plattlens? BB

Betty said: Is this the one with identical rig dimensions to a Mumm 30? I think I read somewhere the idea was to be able to buy used OD sails and be a kind of training boat for would-be Mumm programs. Looks very nice in those pictures. Hvor seiler du, plattlens? BB Click to expand...

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Sailboat Reviews

Affordable Cruising Sailboats

Practical sailor reviews nine used boats over 35 feet and under $75,000..

In a search for a budget cruiser, Practical Sailor examined a field of used sailboats costing less than $75K and built between 1978 and 1984. We narrowed the field to boats with sufficient accommodations for four people and a draft of less than 6 feet. One way to approach a used-boat search is to look for sailboats with informed, active owners associations and high resale values. Practical Sailor’s quest for recession-proof cruisers led us to the Allied Princess 36, Bristol 35.5C, Endeavour 37, S2 11.0, Freedom 36, ODay 37, Niagara 35, C&C Landfall 38, and the Tartan 37. The report takes a more in-depth look at the Tartan, C&C Landfall, and Niagara.

Let’s say you’re looking to buy a boat for summer cruising along the coastal U.S. or on the Great Lakes, one that, when the time is right, is also capable of taking you safely and efficiently to Baja or the Bahamas, and perhaps even island-hopping from Miami to the West Indies. Like most of us, your budget is limited, so a new boat is out of the question. Let’s set more specifics:

Passes a thorough survey by a respected surveyor and has been upgraded to meet current equipment and safety standards. (These are old boats, after all, prone to all sorts of potentially serious problems.)
Fun to sail inshore (which means not too heavy and not too big).
Sufficient accommodations and stowage to cruise four people for two weeks.
Popular model (active owners support group for help and camaraderie) with decent resale value
Under $75,000.
Monohull (multihulls violate the price cap, anyway).
Draft of less than 6 feet (for the islands, mon).

In the February 2008 issue, we examined 30-footers from the 1970s , which is just above the minimum length for the Big Three: standing headroom, enclosed head, and inboard engine. Too small, however, to satisfy our new criteria. So we need to jump up in size. As we culled through the possibilities, we found a fairly narrow range of boat lengths and vintages that satisfy the criteria. Of course, there always are exceptions, but basically it is this: 35- to 38-footers built between 1978 and 1984. Bigger or newer boats that meet our criteria cost more than $75,000.

Heres the list of nine models we came up with: Allied Princess 36, Bristol 35.5C, C&C Landfall 38, Endeavour 37, Freedom 36, Niagara 35, ODay 37, S2 11.0, and the Tartan 37. All were built by reputable companies in the U.S. or Canada, with underwater configurations ranging from full keels with attached rudders to fin keels and spade rudders. Displacements are mostly moderate.

Below we present notes on six of the finalists. Details of our 3 favorites are linked to the right of this page.

ALLIED PRINCESS 36

Allied Yachts developed an excellent line of cruising sailboats in the 1960s, including the first fiberglass boat to circumnavigate, the Seawind 30 ketch, which later was expanded to the 32-foot Seawind II. The handsome Luders 33 was the boat in which teenager Robin Lee Graham completed his historic circumnavigation. Arthur Edmunds designed the full-keel Princess 36 aft-cockpit ketch and the larger Mistress 39 center-cockpit ketch. None of these boats are fancily finished, but the fiberglass work is solid and well executed. They’re ocean-worthy, and affordable. The Princess 36 was in production from roughly 1972 to 1982. Wed look for a later model year; prices are under $50,000.

BRISTOL 35.5C

Bristol Yachts was founded by Clint Pearson, after he left Pearson Yachts in 1964. His early boats were Ford and Chevy quality, good but plainly finished, like the Allieds. Over the years this changed, so that by the late 1970s and early 1980s, his boats were between Buicks and Cadillacs in overall quality. This includes the Ted Hood-designed 35.5C. Its a centerboarder with a draft from 3 feet, 9 inches board up to 9 feet, 6 inches board down; a keel version also was available (named without the “C”).The solid fiberglass hull was laid up in two halves and then joined on centerline. It had an inward-turning flange on the hull, superior to the more common shoebox hull-to-deck joint. The 35.5C is very good in light air, but tender in a breeze. Pick one up for around $60,000.

ENDEAVOUR 37

The Endeavour Yacht Corp. was founded in 1974, and its first model was a 32-footer, built in molds given to it by Ted Irwin. Yup, the Endeavour 32 has the same hull as the Irwin 32. Its second model was the Endeavour 37, based on a smaller, little known Lee Creekmore hull that was cut in half and extended. Its not the prettiest boat in the world, and not very fast, but heavily built. Owners report no structural problems with the single-skin laminate hull. It has a long, shoal-draft keel and spade rudder. What helped popularize the Endeavour 37 was the choice of layouts: an aft cabin with a quarter berth, a V-berth and quarterberth, and a (rare) two aft-cabin model. Production ended after 1983. Prices are around $50,000.

After the Halsey Herreshoff-designed Freedom 40 that reintroduced the idea of unstayed spars, several other designers were commissioned to develop the model line-up. These included David Pedrick and Gary Mull; the latter drew the Freedom 36, in production from about 1986 to 1989. While the early and larger Freedoms were ketch rigged, models like the 36 were sloops, which were less costly to build and easier to handle. To improve upwind performance, a vestigial, self-tacking jib was added. Thats the main appeal of these boats: tacking is as easy as turning the wheel. The 36s hull is balsa-cored, as is the deck. Balsa adds tremendous stiffness, and reduces weight, which improves performance. The downside: Core rot near the partners on this boat could lead to a dismasting and costly hull damage. Interior finishing is above average. These boats sell right at our price break: low to mid-$70s.

This low-profile family sloop was second only to the ODay 40 in size of boats built by ODay under its various owners. Founded by Olympic gold-medalist George ODay to build one-designs and family daysailers, subsequent ownership expanded into trailer sailers and small- to medium-size coastal cruisers. Like the others, the 37 was designed by C. Raymond Hunt Associates. The center-cockpit is a bit unusual but some prefer it. The cruising fin keel and skeg-mounted rudder are well suited to shallow-water cruising, and the generous beam provides good form stability. The hull is solid fiberglass, and the deck is cored with balsa. Owners report it is well balanced and forgiving. Early 1980s models are on the market for less than $40,000.

Built in Holland, Mich., the S2 sailboat line emerged in 1973 when owner Leon Slikkers sold his powerboat company, Slickcraft, to AMF and had to sign a no-compete agreement. The 11.0 was the largest model, introduced in 1977. The designer was Arthur Edmunds, who also drew the Allied Princess 36, though the two are very different. Edmunds resisted some of the bumps and bulges indicative of the International Offshore Rule (IOR), but still gave the 11.0 fine ends, and a large foretriangle. Two accommodation plans were offered: an aft cockpit with conventional layout of V-berth, saloon, and quarter berth and galley flanking the companionway; and an unusual center-cockpit layout with V-berth forward immediately followed by opposing settees, and then galley and head more or less under the cockpit. The master suite is in the aft cabin, of course. The hull is solid fiberglass and includes the molded keel cavity for internal ballast; the deck is balsa-cored. Overall construction quality is rated above average. Prices range from about $30,000 to $50,000.

NIAGARA 35: a handsome cruiser with Hinterhoeller quality.

Austria-born George Hinterhoeller emigrated to Canada in the 1950s and began doing what he did all his life: build boats, first out of wood, then fiberglass composites. He was one of four partners who formed C&C Yachts in 1969. He left in 1975 to again form his own company, Hinterhoeller Yachts. The company built two distinct model lines: the better known Nonsuch line of cruising boats with unstayed catboat rigs, and the Niagara line. About 300 Niagara 35s were built between 1978 and 1995.

Canadian naval architect Mark Ellis designed the Niagara 35 as well as all of the Nonsuch models. He gave the 35 a beautiful, classic sheer with generous freeboard in the bow, swooping aft to a low point roughly at the forward end of the cockpit, and then rising slightly to the stern. The classic influence also is seen in the relatively long overhangs; todays trend is to lengthen the waterline as much as possible, with near plumb bows, discounting the old belief that overhangs were necessary for reserve buoyancy. So the Niagara 35 has a somewhat shorter waterline than the others in our group of nine, but as the hull heels, the overhangs immerse and sailing length increases. The short waterline also accounts for the 35s moderately high displacement/length ratio of 329. There is a direct correlation between the D/L and volume in the hull, and for a cruising boat, there must be sufficient space for tanks and provisions. Unfortunately, tankage in the 35 isn’t that much: 80 gallons water, 30 gallons diesel fuel, and 25 gallons holding tank.

The cruising fin keel is long enough for the boat to dry out on its own bottom should the need arise, like drying out against a seawall in Bali to paint the bottom. (Sorry-just dreaming!) The spade rudder seems a little unusual for a cruiser. When asked about it, Ellis said that it provides superior control to a skeg-mounted rudder, and that skegs, which are supposed to protect the rudder, often aren’t built strong enough to do the job. Circumnavigator and designer/builder/developer Steve Dashew agrees that offshore, in nasty conditions, spade rudders are the way to go.

Construction

George Hinterhoeller and his associates at C&C Yachts were early advocates of balsa-cored hull construction, because it reduces weight, increases panel stiffness, and lowers costs. The worry, of course, is delamination of the core to the inner and outer skins should water penetrate through to the core. This is why quality builders remove balsa coring wherever through-hulls or bolts pass through the hull or deck, and fill the area with a mix of resin and reinforcements. Hinterhoeller was such a builder, but core integrity still deserves close inspection during a pre-purchase survey.

All bulkheads are tabbed to the hull and deck with strips of fiberglass, and this is an important detail for an offshore boat. Many mass-produced boats have molded fiberglass headliners that prevent tabbing bulkheads to the deck; rather, the bulkheads simply fit into molded channels in the headliner, which do not prevent them from moving slightly as the boat flexes in waves.

Hardware quality is good. One owner described the chocks and cleats on his Niagara as “massive.” Hatches are Atkins & Hoyle cast aluminum, which are about as good as you can buy. And the original rigging was Navtec rod. Owners report no structural problems.

Performance

With its moderately heavy displacement, conservative sailplan, and relatively large keel, the Niagara 35 is not a speed demon, and does not point as high as a boat with a deep, narrow fin keel. But thats not what were after here. The 35s specs are just about what we want for a versatile cruising boat. Owners say performance picks up quickly as the breeze fills in. If the sailplan were larger, for improved light-air performance, youd have to reef sooner, and reefing is work.

The long keel has another advantage, and that is improved directional stability over shorter keels, which means less effort at the helm. We tend to think that a powerful below-deck autopilot can steer any boat, but autopilots struggle, too. A boat thats easy for the crew to hand steer also is easy for the autopilot to maintain course.

A lot of Niagara 35s were equipped with Volvo saildrives rather than conventional inboard diesel engines. Advantages of the saildrive: improved handling in reverse and lower cost. Disadvantages: potential corrosion of aluminum housing and not as much power. Various inboard diesels were fitted: Westerbeke 27-, 33-, and 40-horsepower models, and a Universal M35D, all with V-drives. Owners rate access somewhat difficult.

Accommodations

Two interior layouts were offered: the Classic, in which the forepeak has a workbench, shelves, seat, and stowage instead of the usual V-berth; and the Encore, which has an offset double berth forward, and quarter berth and U-shaped galley aft. The saloon in the Classic, with settees and dining table, is farther forward than usual; the head and owners stateroom, with single and double berths, is aft. Both plans have their fans.

Headroom is 6 feet, 4 inches in the main cabin and 6 feet, 2 inches in the aft cabin. Berths are 6 feet, 7 inches long; a few owners say berth widths are a bit tight. A couple of thoughts on the double berths offered in these two plans: V-berths are subject to a lot of motion underway and so do not make great sea berths, but at anchor, ventilation via the forward hatch makes them far more comfortable than a stuffy aft cabin, where its much more difficult to introduce air flow. Offset double berths do not waste outboard space like V-berths do, but the person sleeping outboard must crawl over his/her partner to get out of bed.

Thirty-year-old boats should be surveyed thoroughly. Nothing lasts forever, but boats well maintained last a lot longer. Pay particular attention to the balsa-cored hull and deck. If either has large areas of delamination, give the boat a pass, because the cost to repair could exceed the value of the boat.

A few owners expressed concern about the boats handling off the wind, which surprises us somewhat. A test sail in lively conditions should answer that question.

We much prefer the inboard. If you prefer the saildrive, look for signs of corrosion and get a repair estimate.

Niagara 35 Conclusion

The Niagara 35 is a handsome, classically proportioned cruising sloop from one of the best builders of production boats in North America. It is not considered big enough these days to be a circumnavigator, but certainly large enough for a couple to leisurely cruise the Bahamas, Caribbean Sea, and South Pacific. We found asking prices ranging from around $54,000 to $89,000, with most in the $60,000 range.

C&C LANDFALL 38

As noted, George Hinterhoeller was one of four partners who formed C&C Yachts in 1969, at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. The others were Belleville Marine, Bruckmann Manufacturing, and the design firm of George Cuthbertson and George Cassian. From the beginning, the emphasis was on performance. Indeed, the 40-foot Red Jacket won the 1968 Southern Ocean Racing Circuit (SORC).

In 1973, Cuthbertson retired to his Ontario farm, citing burn-out. Eight months later, he was back as president of C&C Yachts, telling staff that they ought to pursue more multi-purpose racer/cruiser models. C&C became the dominant boatbuilder in North America, with models ranging from the C&C 24 to the C&C 46, with models just about every 2 feet in between. The Landfall cruiser series was introduced in 1977, with the Landfall 42. It was followed by the Landfall 35, 38, and 48. Production of the 38 ran from 1977 to 1985, with about 180 built.

The C&C Landfall 38 is directly related to the earlier C&C 38. We wrote in our original 1983 review that the older hull design was “…modified with slightly fuller sections forward, a slightly raked transom rather than an IOR reversed transom, a longer, shoaler keel, and a longer deckhouse for increased interior volume.” The spade rudder is not everyones first choice on a serious cruising boat, but it does provide superior control. And the Landfalls have a higher degree of finish inside, along with layouts more suited to family cruising.

The Landfalls perform very well, thanks to lightweight construction and speedy hull forms. The Landfall 38s displacement/length ratio of 272 is the lowest of the three compared in this review.

Notable drawbacks: a V-berth that becomes quite narrow forward, and as noted in the 1983 review, “a hull that rises so quickly aft that C&Cs normal gas bottle stowage at the end of the cockpit is eliminated.” This on a cruising boat no less, where a hot meal is often the highlight.

Like nearly all the C&C designs, the Landfall 38 is attractively proportioned with sleek lines and a modern look, even several decades later. It appears most dated in the raked bow, but this better suits the anchoring duties on a cruising boat anyway.

Materials and building processes used in C&C Yachts are very similar to those of the Niagara 35, namely because of Hinterhoeller. Practices he established at C&C continued after he left, at least for the short-term. So what we said about the Niagara 35s balsa-core construction also applies to the Landfall 38, where it is found in the hull, deck, and cabintop.

The hull-deck joint is through-bolted on 6-inch centers, through the teak toerail, which gaves the Landfall series a more traditional look than the distinctive L-shaped anodized aluminum toerail Cuthbertson designed and employed on the rest of the C&C models. The joint is bedded with a butyl tape, which does a good job of keeping out water, but doesn’t have the adhesive properties of, say, 3M 5200. On the other hand, if you ever had to remove the deck-heaven forbid!-it would be a lot easier.

Deck hardware is through-bolted with backing plates or large washers, although some of the fasteners come through on the underside, where the core transitions into the core-less flange. We also saw this on our old 1975 C&C 33 test boat. It means two things: water migrating down the fastener after the bedding fails can contact a little bit of balsa, and uneven stresses are placed on the fastener, which above deck can cause gelcoat cracks.

Proper bronze seacocks protect the through-hulls, and hoses are double-clamped for added security. The mast butt is not deep in the bilge where it can corrode in bilge water, but rests on two floor timbers in the sump, above any water that would typically collect.

The external lead-ballast keel is bolted through the keel sump in the hull. Its run is flat, and the boat can sit on its keel, allowing it be careened against a seawall for bottom painting, prop repairs, or other work in locales where boatyards are rare.

In our earlier review, we noted that the engine compartment has no sound insulation, despite its proximity to the owners berth, but gluing in some lead-lined foam is within the capability of most owners.

Despite being 2,000 pounds heavier than the C&C 38, the Landfall 38 is still a quick boat. Its old PHRF rating of 120 is just a little higher than the Cal 39 at 114, and less than the Tartan 37 we’ll look at next.

The mast is a little shorter than that of the C&C 38, but as with most boats of the IOR era, the Landfall 38 has a large foretriangle of 385 square feet. A 150-percent genoa measures 580 square feet, which is a handful for older crew. Roller furling with maybe a 135 percent genoa would be a logical way to minimize the effort required to tack this boat.

Strangely, the Landfall 38 did not come standard with self-tailing winches; a highly recommended upgrade. The main halyard, Cunningham, and reefing lines are led aft to the cockpit, while the headsail halyards run to winches on deck near the mast.

The boat is stiff and well balanced. Owners like the way it handles and appreciate its speed.

The standard engine was a 30-hp Yanmar diesel. The early Yanmar Q series had a reputation for being noisy and vibrating a lot. At some point, C&C began installing the Yanmar 3HM which replaced the 3QM. Power is adequate. The standard prop was a solid two-blade. Engine access leaves a lot to be desired.

The interior is pushed well into the ends of the boat to achieve a legitimate three-cabin accommodation plan. The standard layout was a V-berth forward with cedar-lined hanging locker. The berth narrows quickly forward so that tall people might not find enough foot room. Moving aft, there is a dinette and settees in the saloon, U-shaped galley and large head with shower amidships, and a double berth in the port quarter, opposite a navigation station. In rainy or wild weather, youll want to close the companionway hatch and keep weather boards in place so that water doesn’t spill into the nav station. Installing Plexiglas screens on either side of the ladder will help.

Oddly, there is no place to install fixed-mount instruments outboard of the nav table; that space is given to a hanging locker, but could be modified. Other than this, about the only other shortcoming is that the toilet is positioned so far under the side deck that persons of average size cannot sit upright. And, the head door is louvered, which compromises privacy.

There is not a lot to complain about with the Landfall 38 that we havent already said: the V-berth forward is tight, theres no sitting upright on the toilet, theres no place to install electronics at the nav station, and the nav station and aft berth invite a good soaking through the companionway.

Construction is above average, but have a surveyor sound the hull and decks for signs that the fiberglass skins have delaminated from the balsa core. Small areas can be repaired, but our advice is not to buy a boat with widespread delamination.

Landfall 38 Conclusion

The Landfall 38 is an excellent family boat and coastal cruiser. Its popularity in the Great Lakes region is not surprising. Island hopping to the Caribbean is also within reach, but any longer cruises will likely require more tank capacity and stowage. Standard tankage is 104 gallons water and 32 gallons of fuel. Prices range from around $55,000 to $65,000.

TARTAN 37: shoal draft and S&S styling.

In the early years of fiberglass boat construction, the major builders-Columbia, Cal, Morgan, Tartan, and others-commissioned well-known naval architects to design their models. Today, this work is more often done by a no-name in-house team over which the company has more control. Tartan Yachts of Grand River, Ohio, relied almost exclusively on the prestigious New York firm of Sparkman & Stephens; they’d drawn the Tartan 27 for the company’s antecedent, Douglass & McLeod, and were called on again to design the Tartan 37, which had a very successful production run from 1976 to 1988.

The Tartan 37 has the modern, clean, strong lines that typified S&S designs. The bow is raked, and the angle of the reverse transom is in line with the backstay-an easily missed detail that nevertheless affects the viewers impression of the boat. Freeboard is moderate and the sheer is gentle. In an early review, we wrote: “Underwater, the boat has a fairly long, low-aspect ratio fin keel, and a high-aspect ratio rudder faired into the hull with a substantial skeg.” In addition to the deep fin keel, a keel/centerboard also was offered. A distinctive feature is how the cockpit coamings fair into the cabin trunk. Its displacement/length ratio of 299 and sail area/displacement ratio of 16.1 rank it in the middle of the 9-model group (see table, page 9), so while it looks racy, its not going to smoke the other nine.

From its beginning, Tartan Yachts set out to build boats of above average quality, and this can be seen in both the finish and fiberglass work. Some unidirectional rovings were incorporated in the hull laminate to better carry loads; like the vast majority of boats of this era, the resin was polyester. Vinylester skin coats, which better prevent osmotic blistering, had yet to appear. Some printthrough is noticeable, more on dark-color hulls. The hull and deck are cored with end-grain balsa, which brings with it our usual warnings about possible delamination. The hull-deck joint is bolted through the toerail and bedded in butyl and polysulfide. Taping of bulkheads to the hull is neatly executed with no raw fiberglass edges visible anywhere in the interior. Seacocks have proper bronze ball valves. One owner advises checking the complex stainless-steel chainplate/tie rod assembly, especially if its a saltwater boat.

Shortcomings: Pulpit fasteners lack backing plates. Scuppers and bilge pump outlets have no shutoffs.

Under sail, the Tartan 37 balances and tracks well. As noted earlier, its not a fireburner, but not a slug either. Its no longer widely raced, but the few participating in PHRF races around the country have handicaps ranging from 135-177 seconds per mile. The Niagara 35 now rates 150-165, and the C&C 38 126-138.

The deep fin-keel version points a little higher than the keel/centerboard because it has more lift, however, the deep draft of 6 feet, 7 inches is a liability for coastal cruising.

Because of the large foretriangle and relatively small mainsail, tacking a genoa requires larger winches and more muscle than if the relative areas of the two were reversed. For relaxed sailing, jiffy reefing of the main and a roller-furling headsail take the pain out of sail handling.

The 41-horsepower Westerbeke 50 diesel provides ample power. Standard prop was a 16-inch two blade. A folding or feathering propeller reduces drag, thereby improving speed. Access to the front of the engine, behind the companionway ladder, is good. Unfortunately, the oil dipstick is aft, requiring one to climb into the starboard cockpit locker-after you’ve removed all the gear stowed there.

The layout below is straightforward with few innovations: large V-berth forward with hanging locker and drawers; head with sink and shower; saloon with drop-down table, settee, and pilot berth; U-shaped galley to starboard; and to port, a quarterberth that can be set up as a double. To work at the navigation station one sits on the end of the quarterberth. This plan will sleep more crew than most owners will want on board, but its nice to have the option. Pilot berths make good sea berths but often fill with gear that can’t easily be stowed elsewhere.

The fold-down table, like most of its ilk, is flimsy. Underway, tables should be strong enough to grab and hold on to without fear of damaging it or falling-thats not the case here. And the cabin sole is easily marred trying to get the pins in the legs to fit into holes in the sole.

Finish work in teak is excellent, though this traditional choice of wood makes for a somewhat dark interior. Today, builders have worked up the nerve to select lighter species such as ash and maple.

Eight opening portlights, four ventilators, and three hatches provide very good ventilation.

The standard stove was alcohol, which few people want anymore, owing to low BTU content (which means it takes longer to boil water), the difficulty in lighting, and almost invisible flame. Propane is a better choice, but there is no built-in stowage on deck for the tank, which must be in a locker sealed off from the interior and vented overboard. (You could mount the tank exposed on deck, but that would not complement the boats handsome lines.)

Theres not much to pick at here, but we’ll try. Centerboards come with their own peculiar set of problems: slapping in the trunk while at anchor, broken pendants and pivot pins, and fouling in the trunk that inhibits operation.

Often what sets apart higher-quality boats from the rest of the fleet is the cost of materials and labor in making up the wood interior. They look better than bare fiberglass, work better because they have more drawers and stowage options, and are warmer and quieter. The unnoticed flip side is that the joinerwork tends to hide problems, like the source of a leak. When all the fasteners are neatly bunged and varnished, it takes courage to start pulling apart the interior!

Checking engine oil is unnecessarily difficult, and to operate emergency steering gear (a tiller) the lazarette hatch must be held open, which could be dangerous. Lastly, the companionway sill is low for offshore sailing; stronger drop boards would help compensate.

Tartan 37 Conclusion

The enthusiasm for this boat is strong. In fact, theres a whole book written about it, put together with the help of the Tartan 37 Sailing Association (link below). You’ll pay in the mid- to high-$60s, which ranks it with the Niagara 35 and Freedom 36 as the most expensive of our nine. While Tartan 37s have made impressive voyages, and are as capable as the Niagara 35 and C&C Landfall 38, like them, its not really a blue-water design. We view it rather as a smart coastal cruiser and club racer. Good design and above-average construction give it extra long life on the used-boat market.

Classic Cruisers For Less Than $75,000

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Tartan Owners

Tartan 37 Sailing Association

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By Quentin Warren
Updated: August 5, 2002

Among the more comfortable new cruising catamarans to make 1996 debuts, the impressive Manta 40 consolidates roomy accommodations, refined deck systems and first-rate construction.

At 40 feet, the hulls are long and sleek enough to counteract visually the freeboard required for volume below. The fine, plumb bows, cutting a strikingly delicate wake, are spanned by a composite beam that supports port and starboard foredeck trampolines and ties structurally into the decks. The bridge deck’s rounded pod is fit with wraparound portlights forward. Our test boat was equipped with a “Radar Arch/Hardtop/Dinghy Davit Pac,” featuring a welded, anodized-aluminum Bimini structure and davits for a sizable tender. The superstructure is substantial, but suits the boat’s cruising agenda.

Construction is fastidious, benefiting from the experience of Manta’s Pat Reischmann who has been involved in state-of-the-art composite technology since it first began to change the face of boatbuilding. All elements of the boat are vacuum bagged. Hull, deck and bulkheads utilize a varying schedule of traxial, biaxial and unidirectional cloth applied with isophthalic and vinylester resins. Below the waterline, the hulls feature solid glass and vinylester; above the waterline and in the deck, Nida-Core polyproylene honeycomb reduces weight and increases stiffness and strength. Where deck fittings occur, aluminum backing plates are inserted into the actual layup. The hulls-to-deck detail includes 3M 5200 adhesive sealant, mechanical fasteners on 10-inch centers and glass tabbing.

Access to twin 30-horsepower Volvos with Sail Drives is excellent. Plumbing lines, thru-hulls, filters, strainers, wiring, tankage and the like are impeccably organized and easily serviced and are fit with first-rate hardware. Two house battery banks totaling 360 amp-hours and a pair of dedicated 75-AH start batteries complement a 110-volt shore-power system that includes a 50-amp converter for battery charging. The Manta’s “Comfort Pac,” from extra batteries and high-output alternators to a generator and an electric head, can take power options into the realm of luxury.

The light and cheerful interior, with a lot of easily maintained vinyl and acrylic, is accented with varnished teak trim and highly durable synthetic teak-and-holly soles. On the bridge deck, a brilliant U-shaped galley to port serves the dinette, across from which a serious navigation station sits. The hulls are reserved for sleeping and ablutions, the port hull for the owner’s double cabin aft and private head with shower forward.

Sail control lines in the cockpit are nicely choreograhed. A very roachy, full-batten main with controls at the helm and a self-tacking Camber Spar jib that virtually takes care of itself on the bow provide good but easily managed power. The boat is solid enough and stable enough to relish a blow; our light-air test at least gave us the opportunity to confirm that the 40 is a responsive performer in a wide range of conditions.

This newest Manta pleasingly blends sophisticated technology and beautiful construction with the features to fulfill the needs and desires of a typical cruising couple.

Manta Enterprises Inc. 7855 126th Avenue North Largo, FL Phone:(813) 536-8446

Manta 40 Specifications:

LOA: 39’8″ (12.1 m.)
LWL: 39’0″ (11.9 m.)
Beam (max): 21’0″ (6.4 m.); 53% LOA
Draft: 3’8″ (1.12 m.)
Disp: 13,000 lbs. (5,897 kgs.)
Sail area: 798 sq.ft. (74.2 sq.m.)
Mast above water: 59’6″ (18.2 m.)
Length/Beam (hulls): 9.5:1
Underwing clearance: 2′; 5% LOA
Cabin Headroom: 6’4″ (1.93 m.)
Disp/Length: 97.8
SA/Disp: 23.1; Bruce #: 1.2
Fuel: 100 gal. (378 ltr.)
Water: 100 gal. (378 ltr.)
Holding: 30 gal. (114 ltr.)
Auxiliary: 2 x 30-hp Volvo diesel
Designer: Manta Enterprises
Base price: $204,950
More: 2001 - 2010 , 31 - 40 ft , catamaran , Coastal Cruising , manta catamarans , multihull , Sailboat Reviews , Sailboats
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TAKING ACTION

Concrete solutions against pollution

Reducing marine plastic pollution through innovative technology. This is MANTA INNOVATION’s mission, The SeaCleaners integrated engineering bureau, with the support of a pool of industrial and academic partners.

Rising up to the challenge

Under the banner of MANTA INNOVATION, the technical team develops a range of groundbreaking solutions against plastic pollution among which a bold and original project: the Manta . This first-of-a-kind processing ship is designed to collect, treat and repurpose large volumes of floating plastic debris present in highly polluted waters, along the coasts, in estuaries and in the mouths of large rivers.

In 2022, Bureau Veritas, the leading ship classification company, awarded the Manta with “Approval In Principle” certification. The Manta is now fit to be built.

Explore the Manta

The Manta, a giant of the seas against pollution

Collection systems.

Objective of 5 to 10,000 tonnes per year.

The Manta extracts both floating macro-waste and smaller debris from 10 millimetres upwards and up to one metre deep.

Depending on the density and closeness of the layers of waste, the Manta can collect between 1 to 3 tonnes of waste per hour, with the objective of collecting 5 to 10,000 tonnes per year. It can operate for up to 20 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The Manta is equipped with four complementary collection systems:

- Waste-collecting conveyors, which bring the waste on board. - Three floatable collection systems, which have a collection span of 66 metres, and pick up surface waste. - Two small, multi-purpose collection boats, or “Mobulas,” which can pick up both micro- and macro-plastic waste from the shallowest and narrowest parts of the ocean that the Manta can’t get to. - Two lateral cranes, which pull out the largest pieces of floating debris from the water.

Waste Recycling

90% of waste processed at sea.

The Manta is the first self-sufficient workboat capable of processing 90 to 95% of the collected plastic waste whilst at sea. This is all thanks an innovative, eco-friendly system, which consists of:

- A waste sorting unit: this manually separates the waste, according to its type, and packages it in a way that boosts its energy efficiency. - A waste-to-energy conversion unit: this converts the collected waste into electricity which, in turn, powers all of the Manta’s electrical equipment. This eco-friendly method emits hardly any CO2 or pollutants into the air.

Nothing is discarded during this process. All the collected waste is converted into useful components, in line with the principles of a circular economy.

Storage Capacities

200 m3 of storage for of all types of waste.

The Manta’s primary purpose is converting waste into energy, as opposed to storing it, as this increases the ship’s weight and energy consumption.

The waste that isn’t immediately repurposed is packaged into big bags and stored on the deck or the hulls, before it is eventually converted into energy.

The storage capacity for the plastic waste is 140 m3 (around 50 tonnes). In addition to this, there are two 33 m3 containers: one for drift nets and one for dangerous waste.

In rare cases where the waste isn’t converted into energy, it is entrusted to local waste treatment or recycling plants during stopovers.

Eco-conception

100% eco-conscious.

We have carried out a complete Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the Manta: we assessed the environmental impact associated with all the stages of the boat's life cycle. This includes everything from the first stage of the Manta’s assembly (the extraction of necessary resources), all the way to the last stage of its life cycle. The LCA enabled us to determine the highest quality, most eco-friendly, and most recyclable materials, as well as those with the lowest carbon footprint.

As a result, the hulls of the Manta will be made of 95% recyclable steel and the superstructure, with a cabin and wheelhouse, will be made of 100% recyclable aluminium.

This assessment also made it possible to find the right balance between the boat’s materials and its weight, ensuring that the Manta is as energy-efficient as possible.

Autonomy of action

Target: 50 to 75% energy autonomy.

The Manta can operate without using fossil fuels between 50% to 75% of the time, making it the first workboat to have such a high level of energy self-sufficiency. In order to minimise its energy consumption and carbon footprint, the sails and riggings are its preferred means of propulsion.

Due to its high energy independence, the boat also has an almost unlimited range, which allows it to rapidly reach intervention zones all over the world. These are typically mouths and estuaries of great rivers where the layers of waste are concentrated, or areas hit by climate hazards and/or natural disasters.

Its embedded clean shipping technologies make the Manta a model of "green ship" and "smart ship".

Green energy

500 kW of clean energy.

The Manta has several pieces of on-board equipment designed to generate renewable energy, which enables it to minimise its environmental footprint and consumption of fossil fuels, and simultaneously increase its energy self-sufficiency:

Two wind turbines (100kW)

Almost 500m² of photovoltaic solar panels (100 kWp)

Two hydrogenerators (100 kW) by means of a propeller driven by the sail-powered forward movement of the boat

The waste-to-energy conversion unit (100 kW)

To comply with regulatory requirements, the Manta has 2 diesel motors on-board in order to facilitate low-speed manoeuvres and to guarantee the safety of the crew.

Hybrid propulsion

Top speed of 12+ knots.

The Manta is fitted with a hybrid propulsion system, combining automated rigging from the DynaRig model, and propeller propulsion units driven by electric motors.

The electricity needed to power the rigging and electric motors is supplied by the on-board equipment designed to generate renewable energy, the waste-to-energy conversion unit and conventional generators.

Sailing is the Manta’s preferred mode of transport. The hybrid propulsion system allows manoeuvring at low speed for sensitive operations (such as the entry to and exit from ports), as well as waste collections, which are carried out at 2 or 3 knots, all whilst maintaining a reduced ecological footprint.

Agile and energy-efficient, the Manta can reach a top speed of over 12 knots.

Scientific laboratories

10 scientists on-board.

The Manta is a place of work for institutional research teams from all over the world, with the purpose of advancing the knowledge of the scientific community in the fields of geolocation, quantification and the characterisation of plastic waste.

6 to 10 scientists at a time can come aboard the Manta for on-board assignments. Whilst at sea, they’ll have oceanographic equipment and four research spaces at their disposal: two research labs, a study room and an analysis room.

The data collected will be completely accessible via Open data.

Educational platform

60 m² conference space for up to 80 people.

Also hailed as an ambassador boat for the protection and decontamination of oceans, the Manta is open to the public during on-land stopovers to foster individual and collective action in support of marine conservation.

The 60 m² conference room on-board the Manta can accommodate up to 80 people, providing a space to raise awareness about marine conservation amongst the general public.

The Manta also serves as a platform that presents a tangible example of effective technological solutions that, in turn, aid in the development of circular economy systems at a local level. Economic stakeholders and local authorities will have the opportunity to visit the Manta and discover its waste repurposing unit, the Mobulas, its collection systems, its scientific labs, etc.

Batteries Electric motors of the propulsion units Waste water treatment Freshwater production Technical premises Rudders Propellers (submerged)

Dimensions of the Manta: Height: 62 m Width: 26 m (66 m with outriggers) Length: 56.5 m Weight: 1,800 tons

Rafts for MOBULAs 8 and 10 Storage area for navigational waste Food storage area and cold storage Sports hall Technical premises Generating sets

Collectors Wind turbines Sorting and preparation plant for collected waste Waste-to-energy conversion unit Conference room Analysis office and scientific laboratories Hydro-generators (submerged) Waste storage area Storage containers for hazardous waste and large waste (drift nets) Gantries for outriggers and haling floatable collections systems Infirmary Technical premises

Wheelhouse Gantries for side outriggers and floatable collections systems Outdoor waste storage area Rescue boat Diving boat Cranes Cabins Kitchen Cafeteria & Mess

Automated rigging Fixed solar panels Retractable wings equipped with solar panels Sundeck

Acting where the need is

Launch of the manta in 2025.

Finalisation of the technical feasibility study
Demonstrator testing of collection systems
Preliminary design studies
Detailed design studies
System selection
Shipyard research phase
Launch of the MOBULA 8
1st shipyard consultations
Integration studies and systems testing
Equipment selection
1st MOBULA 8 campaigns
Circulation of consultation specifications
Request for Interest (RFI) to shipyards
Approval in Principle with Bureau Veritas
Request for Proposals (RFP) to shipyards
Launch of the Detailed Design and Procurement
Commissioning of MOBULA 10
Selection of a shipyard
Start of construction of MANTA
Systems' integration
Separate commissioning of systems
Integrated commissioning of systems
Completion of MANTA construction
Launching of MANTA

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Technical Consortium

The result of 3 years of Research and Development, the Manta mobilized a technical consortium of 17 industrial partners and 5 research laboratories for its design, including world leaders in their field. Since 2018, 60 engineers, technicians and researchers have worked more than 45,000 hours to bring the Manta’s vision to fruition. Each of the ship’s “technological bricks” is the result of a synergy of unique know-how. In 2022, Bureau Veritas, a leader in ship classification, awarded the Manta “Approval In Principle” certification. The Manta is now fit to be built.

Waste-to-energy unit

Automated rigs, energy management and optimisation, manta (naval & plant architecture), collection boats (mobulas), production of renewable energy, eco-design (ecoplex project), belt collection systems, collection systems by nets, detection and guidance systems, certification (approval in principle), why remove floating marine waste.

Because action speaks louder than words

The Manta is designed to collect floating marine debris in zones where it collects in large volumes, before it disperses and permanently enters the marine ecosystem. A virtuous circle will ensue: by restoring the ecosystems and local economies damaged by plastic pollution it will demonstrate fast, visible results which will in turn increase awareness, mobilise public authorities, private companies, communities and individuals.

Because the capabilities exist and need to be shared

The Manta will be an ambassador vessel, showcasing innovative, efficient, viable and easily replicated technologies to collect and repurpose plastic waste. The capabilities on board will be made available to local stakeholders so that they can in turn contribute to the circular economy in their own country.

Because several activities can be located in one place

The Manta will be a pioneering scientific platform for observation and research into plastic pollution, as well as a learning centre to raise awareness among the general public and communities directly affected by the problem.

To know more : read the article Why do we need to collect plastic waste ?

Become a sponsor

Join the Manta project by becoming a sponsor

The collectors are located between the vessel’s two hulls. They bring waste aboard quickly so that it can be treated in the on-board plant. The collectors operate during the day, “sucking up” the waste while the vessel continues to be maneuvered.

Floatable Collection Systems

Waste floating on the surface is collected using floatable collection devices: two nets are attached to each side of the Manta via outriggers, and a central net is attached to the stern. Floatable collection systems are preferably used at night in coastal areas where there is less marine traffic and surface trawling is permitted.

The collection nets are hung on the outriggers. When deployed, the outriggers give the Manta a collection span of 66m.

Two side cranes, located on the main deck, extract larger floating debris (such as drifting fishing nets or debris from ashore) from the water. Specially trained divers also help with this operation. This debris is then stored on board and brought back to shore to be processed via the appropriate channels.

The Manta carries aboard Mobula 8, a multi-service, multi-purpose 8m collection boat that can be used in calm and/or protected waters such as rivers, slow-moving waters, ports, lakes, areas with stilt housing and mangroves.

Mobula 10 is a multi-service, multi-purpose 10m collection boat that can be used in rivers with strong currents and in coastal waters less than 5 nautical miles off the coast. Both Mobula are carried aboard inside the Manta’s hulls, but can also be deployed autonomously for localized clean-up projects.

Sorting unit

After collection the waste is sent to a sorting unit where it is transported to sorting tables manned by three operators. The operators are responsible for manually separating plastic waste from other types of waste such as metals, organic materials, glass, aluminum or containers that could contain toxic, hazardous or unknown products. Plastic waste is then conditioned to increase its energy efficiency, i.e., dried, ground and homogenized, prior to being repurposed.

To avoid any harm to marine life, organic waste, such as wood, algae and living organisms, is immediately returned to the water through a hatch on the sorting plant floor.

Solid residue

The heat generated during the process is captured for use by the Manta. The solid residue (char), which represents about 10% of the processed plastic, is stored to be repurposed ashore in the form of asphalt, cement, fuel, etc. Thanks to the processing and filtration system, this process emits very little CO 2 and very few polluting emissions into the air, in compliance with European regulatory standards.

Waste that is not immediately repurposed is packaged in large waste bags and stored, to be converted into energy at a later date as needed – either during the same mission, to sail from one patch of waste to another, or during a future mission.

Large waste storage

Two 20-foot waste storage containers are located on Deck 3. They are used to store both hazardous and large waste such as drifting fishing nets.

Storage capacity

Storage capacity for plastic waste on-board the Manta has been optimized, representing approximately 206 cu.m (140 cu.m + two 33 cu.m containers), i.e., more than 50 tonnes.

Energy self-sufficiency

The Manta features a number of innovative technologies designed to maximize its energy self-sufficiency and limit its overall carbon footprint. The materials used to build the boat were also carefully chosen to limit its environmental footprint.

Life Cycle Assessment

Conducting a Life Cycle Assessment helped us rise to the challenge of making the Manta a technological marvel, perfectly adapted to its missions, while making the most environmentally friendly choices in the short, medium and long term.

Environmental impact

Everything aboard the Manta has been designed to minimize the boat’s environmental impact. Take, for example, its hybrid propulsion system, which relies mainly on sail power, its various renewable energy production equipment (wind turbines, solar panels, hydro‑generators), its waste-to-energy conversion unit and its propulsion units powered by electric motors.

Sails and riggings

In order to minimize the boat’s energy consumption, carbon footprint and operating costs, whenever possible the Manta uses its sails and riggings to get around, enabling it to run autonomously 50% to 75% of the time, without using fossil fuels.

The Manta’s large energy production and storage capacity, as well as its hybrid propulsion system (sail and engine), give it maximum autonomy for its cruising and operating phases.

The Manta is an ocean-going vessel capable of covering 3,500 nautical miles (6,500 km), the equivalent of a transatlantic crossing, without having to sail along the coast or make stopovers.

Wind turbines

Two wind turbines located on Deck 3 on the boat’s stern produce 100 kW of electricity.

Solar panels

Nearly 500 sq.m of photovoltaic solar panels are installed on the bow. About two‑thirds of their surface area are fixed in place, with the rest on retractable wings. These wings are what gave the boat its name – when they are extended, the boat looks like a manta ray. The solar panels produce about 100 kWp of electricity.

Hydro-generators

Two hydro-generators located under the boat produce 100 kW of electricity. The hydro-generators work using a propeller that is powered by the boat’s movement through the water when sailing.

The waste-to-energy conversion unit adds 100 kW to the energy mix. Through this unique combination of marine-based renewable energy sources, the Manta is powered by wind, sun, sea… and plastic.

Sails are the Manta’s preferred mode of travel. The riggings are improved Dynarig models that have been specially developed to reduce energy costs and the ecological footprint of sailboats.

Hybrid propulsion combines automated rigging, which supports the sails, and propeller propulsion units powered by electric motors. These conventional generators are used for sensitive maneuvers, such as entering and exiting ports, and low-speed operations, such as waste collection.

Energy management

A customized on-board energy management system determines the most efficient combination of energy sources from among those available on board to meet the consumption needs of current missions. The unique system includes a routing module that looks at the weather forecast and determines the most efficient routes in terms of energy production and hybrid propulsion (engine and/or sails).

The Manta will sail at an average of 6 knots and have a top speed of more than 12 knots using either the sails only or both the sails and the engine. In collection mode, the vessel travels at just 2 to 3 knots, to avoid harming marine life.

Scientific missions are carried out on board in order to geo-position, quantify and record details of waste patches during collection campaigns. At their disposal are work rooms, a dry lab, a wet lab, and oceanographic equipment.

The scientific missions also facilitate interdisciplinary discussions and accelerate the implementation of preventive and corrective measures. Research results will be published and data collected will be available in an “open data” platform. The aim is to advance the fight against plastic pollution backed by scientific results.

In the countries heavily impacted by plastic pollution where the Manta operates, educational awareness-raising and prevention activities and events are held on board to motivate, inspire and drive change at all levels. From schoolchildren, young people and families to companies, communities, institutions, local authorities and industrial partners, everyone is welcome.

The Manta is a demonstration platform for the promotion of effective and affordable technological solutions that can accelerate the development of local circular economy loops, and clean shipping technologies for clean ships and green ships. Local stakeholders are invited to visit the ship to discover onboard solutions that can be duplicated (waste energy conversion unit, Mobula, etc.).

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Sailboat Guide

Mantra 7000

Mantra 7000 is a 22 ′ 11 ″ / 7 m monohull sailboat designed by Andrzej Arminski and built by Projektowanie i Budowa Jachtów starting in 1998.

Rig and Sails

Auxilary power, accomodations, calculations.

The theoretical maximum speed that a displacement hull can move efficiently through the water is determined by it's waterline length and displacement. It may be unable to reach this speed if the boat is underpowered or heavily loaded, though it may exceed this speed given enough power. Read more.

Classic hull speed formula:

Hull Speed = 1.34 x √LWL

Max Speed/Length ratio = 8.26 ÷ Displacement/Length ratio .311 Hull Speed = Max Speed/Length ratio x √LWL

Sail Area / Displacement Ratio

A measure of the power of the sails relative to the weight of the boat. The higher the number, the higher the performance, but the harder the boat will be to handle. This ratio is a "non-dimensional" value that facilitates comparisons between boats of different types and sizes. Read more.

SA/D = SA ÷ (D ÷ 64) 2/3

SA : Sail area in square feet, derived by adding the mainsail area to 100% of the foretriangle area (the lateral area above the deck between the mast and the forestay).
D : Displacement in pounds.

Ballast / Displacement Ratio

A measure of the stability of a boat's hull that suggests how well a monohull will stand up to its sails. The ballast displacement ratio indicates how much of the weight of a boat is placed for maximum stability against capsizing and is an indicator of stiffness and resistance to capsize.

Ballast / Displacement * 100

Displacement / Length Ratio

A measure of the weight of the boat relative to it's length at the waterline. The higher a boat’s D/L ratio, the more easily it will carry a load and the more comfortable its motion will be. The lower a boat's ratio is, the less power it takes to drive the boat to its nominal hull speed or beyond. Read more.

D/L = (D ÷ 2240) ÷ (0.01 x LWL)³

D: Displacement of the boat in pounds.
LWL: Waterline length in feet

Comfort Ratio

This ratio assess how quickly and abruptly a boat’s hull reacts to waves in a significant seaway, these being the elements of a boat’s motion most likely to cause seasickness. Read more.

Comfort ratio = D ÷ (.65 x (.7 LWL + .3 LOA) x Beam 1.33 )

D: Displacement of the boat in pounds
LOA: Length overall in feet
Beam: Width of boat at the widest point in feet

Capsize Screening Formula

This formula attempts to indicate whether a given boat might be too wide and light to readily right itself after being overturned in extreme conditions. Read more.

CSV = Beam ÷ ³√(D / 64)

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An Arsenal of Mysteries: The Terrifying Allure of a Remote Caribbean Island

Why had immigrants, seekers and pilgrims been drawn for centuries to the treacherous shores of Mona Island? I set off to find out.

In Cueva Lirio. Even after many decades, the island’s sculptural inner terrain can be difficult to navigate. Credit... Christopher Gregory-Rivera for The New York Times

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By Carina del Valle Schorske

Carina del Valle Schorske is a contributing writer for the magazine. She spent four days on Mona Island, where, among other things, she climbed a ladder made of driftwood to report from a cave.

March 20, 2024 Updated 2:32 p.m. ET

Every year, I spend a month or two in Puerto Rico, where my mother’s family is from. Often I go in winter, with the other snowbirds, finding solace among palm trees. But I’m not a tourist, not really. I track the developers that privatize the shoreline; I follow the environmental reports that give our beaches a failing grade. I’m disenchanted with the Island of Enchantment, suspicious of an image that obscures the unglamorous conditions of daily life: frequent blackouts, meager public services, a rental market ravaged by Airbnb. Maybe that’s why I turned away from the sunshine and started to explore caves with my friends Ramón and Javier, seeking out wonders not yet packaged for the visitor economy. I’ve been learning to love stalactites and squeaking bats, black snakes and cloistered waterfalls — even, slowly, the darkness itself.

The Greater Antilles and the Yucatán Peninsula form one of the most cavernous regions in the world, and many of these grottos contain precolonial inscriptions. But no other site can match the density of designs found on Mona, a semiarid mesa halfway between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. The island is ringed by sheer cliffs and honeycombed with miles of subterranean passageways. Most of the inscriptions are tucked away in the so-called dark zone, far from access to the upper world, congregating around rare pools of freshwater. More accessible chambers harbor other histories: an Incan vase filled with gold coins, shards of a Spanish olive jar stained with the oldest wine in the Americas. In one cave, a foreign visitor from the 16th century carved a kind of commentary alongside ancient petroglyphs: “ plura fecit deus .” “God made many things.” I kept repeating the phrase to myself like a mantra, trying to impose divine order on the contradictions of the New World, the only world I’ve ever known.

Mona now “belongs” to Puerto Rico (and thus to the United States), but the island has always retained a certain rugged self-possession, rising fatherless and fully formed from the sea like an American Aphrodite. The archaeologist Ovidio Dávila famously described the island as “a floating fortress”: remote, inhospitable, an arsenal of mysteries. But Mona also teems with life: flowering cactuses, swirling flocks of seabirds, orchids and iguanas and frogs found nowhere else on Earth. Hawksbill turtles from as far away as Panama crawl onshore to nest under the summer moon. Enormous basket sponges and gorgonian corals cling to the sea wall. Many migrant species rarely seen from Puerto Rico proper come close to shore: dolphins, pilot whales, tiger sharks, bluefin tuna, flying fish. Mona’s remote beaches receive tribute from faraway waters, as if this might be the secret center of the world.

But for many Puerto Ricans, Mona is a legendary backwater, the punchline for a whole genre of jokes: Your political enemies “couldn’t even win the mayor’s race on Mona,” the socialists should “go live with the iguanas,” the Supreme Court might consider setting up “its little theocracy” over there. Like Robinson Crusoe, even locals who should know better view this other island as a blank slate for exile or utopia. Of course, Mona wasn’t always an abstraction. Before Europeans wandered west, Indigenous people settled the island as early as 3000 B.C. When Columbus first came to Mona in 1494, there was a community cultivating a marvelous variety of fruits and tubers from a thin fringe of arable soil on the island’s western side. Indigenous people continued to survive on Mona for another hundred years — much longer than elsewhere in the region — taking refuge in the island’s mysterious interior. Since then, the island has hosted a vivid procession of conquistadors, conversos, maroons, priests, pirates, prisoners, guano miners, military men, treasure hunters, scientists and refugees.

‘God made many things’ — so many more than the Old World predicted!

Now Mona is a protected nature reserve, and the only residents are park rangers. Researchers and amateurs alike must apply for a permit from Puerto Rico’s Department of Natural and Environmental Resources in order to travel there. Hunters come to subdue the feral descendants of goats and pigs introduced by the Spanish. Scuba divers wander the reefs.

But the Mona Passage — fast-flowing, shark-infested, one of the roughest stretches of water in the world — remains a troubled crucible of imperial traffic. Every year, migrants from Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic crowd small boats and try to make the dangerous crossing to Puerto Rico, the local gateway to the American dream. Many drown, uncountable bodies at the bottom of the sea. Hundreds wind up stranded on Mona, abandoned by smugglers looking to cut corners on the journey, then deported by authorities within days. Even those who visit Mona for recreation sometimes stumble into the island’s traps. In 2001, a Boy Scout got lost and died of dehydration. Just last month, a hunter disappeared near a well-known cave not far from camp.

Why did these frightening stories seduce me? If so many people were willing to suffer the island’s torments, I figured they must be suffering for something: freedom, beauty, maybe even wisdom. The travel industry sells the Caribbean as a gentle paradise where the workers of the first world can escape to rest at last on the shores of an infinite resort. But Mona remains incompletely mastered, a wilderness where you won’t be welcomed, where it’s still possible to lose your way and lose your life.

“This curious world,” Thoreau wrote, “is more wonderful than convenient,” and his words came to me as I gathered my hiking boots and helmet, laxatives and Dramamine, batteries, baby wipes and safety wardrobe of neon orange. After nearly a year of bureaucratic tribulations, I was finally going to Mona. The two most popular tour companies never wrote me back, so I planned the trip with Jaime Zamora, a freelance guide who had been exploring the island for more than 40 years. But it was better this way. I liked the purity of his passion and his disdain for institutions. Instead of a website or brochure, he directed me to a private Facebook group where he maintained a meticulous archive of old maps, news clippings and personal photographs of artifacts he found on the island: a creamy conch shell with a hole drilled through it, the ornamental handles of a broken urn.

In December, the stars suddenly aligned: Our permits were approved, the seas calmed and we pulled a team together. I crossed Midtown with cash in my coat to wire to a boat captain named Mikey. My friends Ramón and Javier came through; so did my friend Elisa. Our photographer, Chris, would bring his partner, Andrea. Jaime recruited some old comrades: Chito, Manuel and Charlito, the cook. The ecologist Hector Quintero, known as Quique, signed on and suggested we might invite Tony Nieves, who had recently retired from 33 years as Mona Island’s director. Finally, Jaime texted to say the moon would be full for our visit: “In one week,” he promised, “your magic will begin to shine.”

The boats arrived at the pier in Joyuda, on the western shore of Puerto Rico, near dawn. We were relieved to discover that the sea was quiet: “ plancha ’ o ,” the captain said, like an ironed sheet, only this gracious once or twice a year. He warned me not to get the wrong impression: “ Mona no es así .” Still, I could feel it when we crossed into the Mona Passage proper, where the waters of the Atlantic and the Caribbean come together in a cauldron of treacherous crosscurrents. The prow began to jump across the waves, so that we had to brace hard against the railing to keep our tailbones from bruising. I realized I had never been this close to the water for this long — I always approached Puerto Rico from above — and I tried to imagine the first people who came this way, rowing with no land in sight, searching the sky for congregations of clouds, the sign of green things breathing.

Over the last several years, I’d been unlearning the standard narrative about precolonial history. In Puerto Rico, the Department of Education still promotes the tired narrative that the people who greeted Columbus were simple and docile, with a rudimentary culture. But Reniel Rodríguez, an archaeologist, told me that the recent research is very clear: The migrants who left Central America and the Amazon basin to populate our archipelago were great mariners, like the Polynesians, navigating by stars and currents and wind patterns. Over generations of migration, they formed multiethnic polities and maintained vast trade networks: jade from Guatemala, gold and copper alloys from Colombia, jaguar’s teeth from continental jungles. None of these materials arrived by accident. As we bumped along, I wondered what it was like to bring, say, a passel of guinea pigs from Colombia to Puerto Rico in the bottom of a wide canoe.

The oldest carbon-dated evidence of human habitation on Mona dates from about 2800 B.C. They were probably attracted to the island’s majestic underworld. Indigenous mythology names symbolic caves as the great cosmic incubators, giving birth to the moon, the sun and the archipelago’s first people. Mona’s residents filled the caves with signs. The island was never a land of milk and honey, so its importance must have been strategic and spiritual rather than strictly productive: Ovidio Dávila imagines “a meeting point and tribal crossroads,” hosting chiefs and traders, “parliaments and pilgrimages.” The rigor of the journey to Mona conferred a kind of gravity on every human drama that unfolded on the mesa’s barren stage.

It took a long while for Puerto Rico to fall out of view, and hours more for Mona to appear, so that I felt suspended in time as well as space. I could imagine the Spanish ships prowling the Caribbean, snatching people from the Lesser Antilles and the coast of South America to “replenish” their depleted work force. I could imagine the first coffle of stolen Africans that would arrive in Santo Domingo. This passage still teems with human traffic. No one who worked these waters — our captain, the Coast Guard, local fishermen — wanted to talk to me about what they’d seen. Édouard Glissant was right: Even the brightest voyages bring to mind the depths of the sea, “with their punctuation of scarcely corroded balls and chains.”

I had taken off my glasses, foggy from the spray, so at first I wasn’t sure if the smudge of cream in the corner of my eye was just a trick of light. But then Quique pointed in the same direction, and the distant citadel began to shine — first the pale naked flanks of the highest cliffs, and then, slowly, the regions shadowed with underbrush. The island’s shape sharpened: a thin slice of stone floating like a cataract on the dark iris of the sea.

When we finally moored at Playa Pájaros, I woke up from my precolonial daydream. The beach was covered in trash. Quique blamed austerity: The Department of Natural and Environmental Resources, like all government agencies, has been defunded to prioritize the debt. There wasn’t money, anymore, to service the island properly. The rangers live on the other side, at Playa Sardinera, so our camp — Playa Pájaros — was wilder, both more private and more neglected. I was ashamed of my disappointment, realizing that it revealed some measure of willful naïveté: I knew the currents of the Mona Passage carried seeds and shells from far-off places, so why not shoes, plastic bottles, rubber tubing?

Still, there were hermit crabs and lizards creeping among the sea grapes, as there had been for millions of years, and wild cotton along the edges of the cliffs. Ramón helped me hang my nylon hammock from two sturdy trees, and I thought of the cotton slings — hamaca , an Arawak word — woven by the people of Mona, so finely made that the Spanish set them to work as suppliers for the imperial machine. I had never slept in a hammock before, but after the roughness of the voyage, it felt natural to sway, gently, and I dropped into a deep slumber for an hour, until I could hear Jaime pacing and singing, summoning us to our first cave.

If there had ever been a trail to Cueva Caballo, there wasn’t anymore, and so we had to shake the sleep from our senses in order to climb, almost crawl, through thorned bushes and over jagged limestone up toward the mouth of the cave. I was surprised to find a paved road just inside, punctuated by the rusted remnants of carts and rails. Tony explained how Cueva Caballo was mined for guano in the 19th century, when Western powers realized the nitrates in bat feces made it very good for gunpowder and fertilizer. The workers slept right here, among piles of excrement dredged up from the darkness. Eventually, they went on strike for lack of water. There was still fresh guano in Cueva Caballo — the color and texture of finely ground coffee — and the smell of ammonia saturated the tighter chambers, so that we passed through them quickly and sought out crevices in the stone where we could catch currents of fresh air.

“ Hay un chorro de formaciones ,” Jaime said, and it was true: The walls of the cave seemed to undulate like water, and a glittering white powder frosted the figures, crystallizing in chandeliers and sliding over smooth hills of stone like a gown over the hips of a beauty queen. “ Sorbeto ,” Tony told me it was called, as Jaime moved through the cave seeking his favorite free-standing sculptures and addressing them by his own private names: “ Huevo Frito ,” “ Dragón .” He was looking for “pearls,” the perfect mineral spheres that form over centuries in pools beneath dripping stalactites, especially one particular pearl he called “ La Cabeza, la perla más hermosa de toda la isla .” Tony, subtly competing, told me he had walked through every chamber in these caves — “ to’ completo ” — and was the only one who never lost his way on Mona.

Still, even after many decades, I could see how Jaime and Tony hesitated between branching passageways, retreating into memory’s inner topography before disappearing behind a blind curve. So many of the conversations I caught on tape were merely directional: “ Vamos pa’llá, ” “ No, más adelante, ” “ Y dónde está Javier? ” Cross-talk, muffled laughter. Jaime told me they sometimes stumbled upon the skeletons of goats that died lost in the labyrinth. We learned to listen for one another’s voices.

‘Yo la adoraba,’ he explained helplessly.

In Cueva Caballo, Jaime cried out: “ Se la robaron, Tony! ” When we found him, he was kneeling in front of what looked like an empty altar. La Cabeza — a glittering stone in the shape of a skull on a slender neck — had been carefully decapitated. There was a market for that kind of thing: Manuel said he had seen small-time hustlers selling stalactites on the roadside in the Dominican Republic. Even in the dim light of our headlamps, I could see Jaime’s face turn red, and I was worried he might cry. “ Yo la adoraba ,” he explained helplessly, using the word that blurs the boundary between love and worship. “If I were an Indian, this would be sacred for me.”

The older men in our group often spoke as if they had taken the place of Indigenous people. Jaime wore a necklace strung with three finely polished beads of shell and stone that he took from a cave years ago. Chito analyzed our dynamics as a “clan.” And Quique summoned scientific theories: Had I heard of epigenetics? How Native Americans transmitted the traumas of starvation, displacement and genocide across generations? Puerto Ricans, he continued, must be carrying our own ghosts. I was wary of these analogies, but I could also understand their emotional logic. Our guides had lived through “ el carpeteo ,” the U.S. government’s campaign against the Puerto Rican independence movement, when activists were surveilled and imprisoned, when close comrades turned out to be snitches. They were nostalgic for whatever came before the colonial encounter, when the islands they loved were sovereign. When we got back from Mona, Quique gave me a thumb drive of scientific documents and a short essay he wrote himself, simply titled, “Colonies Are There to Be Exploited.”

I struggled to absorb the intensity of information directed at me. Elisa, often at my side, said it was like standing next to a fire hose. Buried treasure, political intrigue, grand theories, deaths and disappearances. I was missing so much, but at least I could record the poetic names and properties of local plants: tourist tree, for its red and peeling bark, the cactus called snowball for its crown of white fuzz and thorns, the plumeria called alhelí cimarrón . In the mornings when it bloomed you could close your eyes and almost find your way across the island by following its fugitive perfume. Tabaco marino , rolled and smoked, might get you a little high. Chicharrón , higo chumbo , coca falsa . Jaime and Tony often returned to the same refrain: “ Eso es de aquí na’ más .” Only on Mona. Some of these species were immediately striking: The Mona land iguanas were enormous, with the terrible dignity of dinosaurs, and we had to fight them off whenever we took sponge baths by the cistern. Others seemed modest, enchanted only by the spell of our attention.

On the long, hot walk to the ruined lighthouse, Jaime and Tony peeled off, and Chito told me they were tired and had gone to camp. But on our way back, hours later, we came upon Jaime sitting in a patch of meager shade along the road. Our guides had finally found Psychilis monense, Mona Island’s endemic orchid, and Jaime was waiting to introduce us to this natural wonder. Last time he was on Mona, he spent an afternoon searching in vain, but this time — this time, just for us — she had revealed herself and would step into her stardom. Jaime had been so patient, had shown such fortitude, and now he was almost trembling with urgency as he guided us to the spot, off road, that he had marked with his staff so he wouldn’t lose the little flower.

The flower was indeed so little that I almost missed her, a bit of pale silk no larger than my thumbnail on the end of a long bare stem. When I bent the stem toward me to specify her beauty — a purple striped calyx, a clutch of green buds — I was worried it might snap. The tiniest dancer. How strange, I thought, to be so rare and lonely — endemic, endangered, the only flower in the stony field — and at the same time so unremarkable. Or was my own perceptive power unremarkable? My own capacity for feeling? Sometimes, reading research papers on Mona, I was baffled by the effort people made to catalog the most minute phenomena: the scientists in scuba gear who explored a dangerous underwater chamber in order to photograph “the curious case” of a cave-dwelling shrimp called Popeye. But I knew that the argument for protecting Mona depended on the meticulous accumulation of empirical evidence for the island’s singularity. And that love is not love without detail, without risk, without a touch of madness.

I tried to bring the intensity of attention I’d seen among our guides to the library. So much of my formal and informal education had rushed through the conquest of the Caribbean — especially Puerto Rico — as if the Spanish and then American invasions had been so successful that they erased not only the history of those who came before but also the muddy footprints of their own trajectory. Many primary sources confirmed the familiar narrative of unrelenting violence. The archaeologist Alice Samson drew my attention to an inventory of merchandise from Mona: “ grillones con un indio preso ” — shackles with a prisoner attached. But reading the colonial chronicles, I also felt a strange suspense, as if these encounters might have gone another way, as if the future I am living now had not yet been foretold.

Mona’s particular history dramatized the chaos and contingency of those early decades. The island’s location on the route between Santo Domingo and Spain made it a crucial supply station and entrepôt for slave trading. Juan Ponce de León imported roughly 80 captives to ramp up production of pan casabe , the durable flatbread made from yuca that was a staple of the Indigenous diet. Soon, Mona became the breadbasket for the whole colonial campaign: gold mines in Puerto Rico, armadas cruising for slaves, salt and pearls from Aruba to Venezuela. The women of Mona manufactured cotton ropes that might have been used — I can only speculate — to hoist sails, corral horses and bind the wrists of child brides.

But even at this high point of exploitation, Mona retained an ambivalent independence. Very few Spaniards took up permanent residence. Instead they installed Indigenous overseers and left the fragmented community to find its own working rhythm, to sustain traditions and experiment with new religions. Many of these people — colonizers, native islanders and captives from distant territories — would not have had a common language. Together, they had to learn to grapple with their new position at the center of apocalyptic change. They brokered deals with English and French raiders, they formed Creole families and they fled the violence of the island’s coast for caves in the interior, not far from the ceremonial ball courts.

Mona was never abandoned for long. Exiled islanders returned to fish, forage and visit sacred sites as their ancestors did for thousands of years. Sailors sick with scurvy came to gather oranges gone to seed. All through the 17th and 18th centuries, pirates frequented the island, making the surrounding waters some of the most perilous in the Atlantic world. The researcher Walter Cardona told me how Blackbeard, the notorious English buccaneer, used Mona to barrack twice-stolen Africans, reselling them on the black market once they became “acclimated” to hard labor. At the height of the Haitian Revolution, rebels moored ships along Mona’s coast. The island had become both a prison and a sanctuary, contested terrain where empire’s exiles hashed out new identities. In a recent article, Cardona included a photograph that Tony took of a skeleton recovered from Sardinera: DNA testing revealed a young man of African and Arawak ancestry, just a teenager when he died, maybe a maroon himself. Or maybe this was just wishful thinking, my desire for a story with a taste of freedom in it.

Something about the photograph — the arrangement of bones, the knowledge that Tony had touched them — made the limits of my reading obvious. I had come to Mona to go beyond the syllabus, and wasn’t it already working? Every feather and every grain of sand seemed like evidence. Every jagged window framing the sea looked like a wound torn open. Even the drooping casuarinas — imitation pines imported from Australia — seemed to lament their own story of displacement and adaptation. But there was one cave on Mona I still wanted to visit. Maybe seeing colonial signatures in stone would help me bridge the gap between the authority of documents and the testimony of the senses.

The entrance to Cave 18 was luminously pale and multicolored: blue, pink, yellow, the skyscape of a Renaissance painting. Right away, we had to bend at the waist, feeling our way through a wide, dim tunnel until it opened into a larger chamber. We were in the dark zone now, so that it wasn’t possible to go without our headlamps. Probably, the foreigners who visited this cave would have had to rely on local guides, the way I was now relying on Tony. I tried to let my senses adjust to the environment. This was my favorite kind of cave — not a cathedral but a chapel, damp and close as a pair of cupped hands. Later, reading Alice Samson’s analysis of Cave 18, I would learn that I had walked past the word “ entra ,” repeated three times in the same crude hand: a 16th-century visitor trying to formalize a route the first artists had established by feel, through the ceremony of repeated gestures.

The first signs I noticed myself were undulating lines traced into the soft, crumbly walls near eye level — “finger fluting,” Tony called it, an Indigenous technique common on Mona, where many caves are frosted with “ sudor de roca ,” as if stone, like human skin, could breathe and sweat. “Careful,” he warned me: It was easier to erase the delicate designs than it had been to create them.

I had just found an Indigenous petroglyph drawn high up on the curving ceiling — a round face with ornamental earrings — when Tony let out a small cry and beckoned me closer. This was the line I’d read about: plura fecit deus . The first word was written in perfect cursive, but the other words were messy, as if the writer had underestimated the effort it would require to inscribe his message. There’s no exact match for the Latin phrase in the religious writing of the period, so Samson suggests we take it at face value, as “a spontaneous response” to the cave itself. “God made many things” — so many more than the Old World predicted! Pineapples, manatees, reefs so thick with fish that boats could barely row to shore. Songs longer than books, clans ruled by women, caves that flickered with a thousand tiny faces peering out from the stone. Even familiar things, like Spanish melons, seemed transformed on Mona, swollen by the relentless sweetness of the sun. Was this not revelation? I tried to imagine landing here after months on a leaking caravel — outnumbered, now, by foreign people, encircled by charismatic foreign signs, compelled to register my wonderment with the sharpened point of a rusty nail.

Or maybe it was the other way around, and some of the crosses carved into the stone were made by mestizo conversos trying to reconcile competing cosmologies in the artistic language they knew best. Walter Cardona had combed the colonial literature for information on Mona’s Indigenous leaders, and he emerged with a document from 1517 listing every resident of the Sardinera village, many with hybrid names that reflected hybrid lives: Juan Yahagua, Francisco Maguatica, Isabel Bocoana, Luisica Guacoyo. Some of them might have kept visiting old sites of ceremony. Some of them might have shown strangers those hidden pathways and sacred chambers. Some of them might have disappeared together, preferring internal exile to the forced surrender of the island’s secrets.

When I met Walter Cardona in person, he told me he once spent nearly 10 hours in Cave 18, trying to catalog every human mark that was made there. Satisfied after his long effort, he announced, out loud, that he wasn’t planning to return. But the cave wouldn’t let him leave: “Something took me and threw me against the rock,” and he stayed there, pinned and paralyzed, for several moments before he realized he had spoken too soon. This was not a history you could finish. I remembered something I heard Tony say in a documentary: “No one can say they know Mona completely.” He was talking about space — the island’s intricate topography — but I was thinking about time.

Cave 18 is not a diorama, and Mona is not a museum. People still traverse these subterranean passageways in search of things they need: knowledge, freedom, temporary cover. Quique’s uncle was a rumrunner during Prohibition, or so the story goes, storing caches of liquor in caves. Now drug traffickers work the age-old route between South America and the Caribbean, stopping over on Mona to stash parcels of cocaine. And then, of course, there are the migrants: When Elisa and I arrived in Aguadilla, the airport guard told us how his father, a hunter, had stumbled upon a Dominican family in Cueva Negra, seeking shelter from the midday sun, trying to imagine an alternative to turning themselves in.

On the way back down from Cave 18, Tony walked us along Playa Mujeres, a dreamy stretch of white sand where sea turtles come to nest. We spotted the tracks of the animal’s soft, angled fins in the white sand. I took off my hiking boots to soothe my blisters in the surf. This beach seemed so much gentler than Playa Pájaros, I told Tony — and this, he replied, was why so many migrants landed here. Just a few weeks earlier, on Dec. 1, coyotes abandoned a group of 48 Haitians right where we were walking. Hundreds of migrants wind up on Mona every year — when the seas are calm, they come every week — and from all walks of life. There are doctors and ballplayers, mothers with babies and pets. Haiti and the Dominican Republic are both in crisis, Tony told me, and Puerto Rico seems to promise a more dignified style of poverty, perhaps a backdoor to U.S. citizenship.

The rangers at Sardinera gestured toward the graveyard of boats left behind on the island: “This is trash for us.” No one comes to clean up the evidence of Mona’s ongoing role in the underground economy. I walked closer to get a better look. Some had whimsical names like La Niña Coqueta that reminded me of slave ships called Friendship or Hope. The Middle Passage haunts these supposedly voluntary journeys. The rangers told me some coyotes throw menstruating women overboard so the sharks won’t track the smell of blood on the boat. When I see footage of migrants on Mona — lining up for food or singing a hymn in Kreyòl while they wait to be deported — I think of all the rebels, maroons and twice-sold people who made this island their temporary home.

The next day was our last on Mona, and we moved with a strange synchronicity, as if we had been rehearsing all along for a final performance. Like the other people thrown together there, we were beginning to fashion a shared culture of jokes and symbols, rhythms of rest and collective labor. Most of the footpaths through the coastal forest had been erased by recent hurricanes, so we had to open new corridors together, using our feet and knees to tamp down the underbrush and our hands to snap back dry branches. Jaime took me and Elisa to a heart-shaped chamber filled with impossibly velvety sand, talking us through what I can describe only as a matrimonial ritual. “Close your eyes,” he directed. “Can you hear that? The pulsing?” Now, he said, we belonged to Mona. We knew he practiced these lines on other people before, but we didn’t mind. Later, I told Elisa about a pictograph of a bird I’d seen in Cueva Lucero in Puerto Rico, and how Reniel, the archaeologist, identified an almost identical pictograph in other caves in the Dominican Republic. Jaime’s poetic repetitions were like that bird: a technology for creating community among people who might never meet.

That night, the moon was so completely red that it left a trail of blood across the sea. I wondered if the sky was always staging these operatic scenes behind scrims of light pollution. Not a scientific way to think, of course. The moon remained the moon regardless of our position or perception — mostly, if not completely, impervious to our corrupting touch.

But I still thought of all the natural wonders that had faded in the centuries since colonial contact. The chronicles suggest that all of Puerto Rico’s bays once glittered with bioluminescence. The afternoon sky would go dark when massive murmurations of green parrots from El Yunque blocked the sun. It was tempting to imagine they could skim the cream from the Milky Way and drink it. But I also knew that future generations would look back in wonder at what we have now, helpless with rage over what we’ve ruined.

Everyone went to sleep early. We knew that it was unlikely we would return to Mona together, and that even if we did, the island would be different: the infrastructure even more degraded, or worse, privatized. On our way back, there were flying fish, rainbows in the foam, bachata on the radio. Then the police stopped our boat — a reminder that government resources are always directed to limiting, rather than facilitating, the movement of people across the archipelago. I tried to keep Mona in my sightline the whole time, so that I could perceive the precise moment when the island disappeared. Or maybe that wasn’t possible. I blinked. I could already feel the fragile bonds among the people on the boat starting to loosen. I knew such losses were ordinary: Most contact is fleeting, most histories are forgotten. Ramón described Mona as a beautiful ruin, and I couldn’t disagree. The island dramatized every rupture, deepened every longing. But don’t we always make our lives among ruins, run to catch the bus over unmarked graves, cross paths with stateless people? I promised myself that when we landed, I would watch where I walked. I would keep trying to find out where I really stood.

Carina del Valle Schorske is a writer and translator living in Brooklyn. Her first book, “The Other Island,” is forthcoming from Riverhead. Her feature for the magazine about New York City’s Covid-era dance floors won a National Magazine Award. Christopher Gregory Rivera is a Puerto Rican photographer and director based in New York City and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

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COMMENTS

Review of Mantra 28
The immersion rate is defined as the weight required to sink the boat a certain level. The immersion rate for Mantra 28 is about 141 kg/cm, alternatively 790 lbs/inch. Meaning: if you load 141 kg cargo on the boat then it will sink 1 cm. Alternatively, if you load 790 lbs cargo on the boat it will sink 1 inch.
Mantra 28 (Issue 17/07): Polish potential
Agile characteristics, successful deck layout, little expansion: The Mantra 28 is attractive for the young at heart - if a few shortcomings are eliminated. Webreader. Abo-Shop. Yachts. Alle Themen. Yachts. Superyachts. Small cruiser. ... Used boats. Insert online. Buying advice. Webreader Abo-Shop Newsletter. Yachts Regatta Equipment Yacht Market.
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Manta boats for sale on Boat Trader are listed for a variety of prices, valued from $139,900 on the cheaper end all the way up to $439,000 for the most luxury model vessels. Higher performance models now listed come rigged with motors up to 600 horsepower, while more compact more functional models may have as modest as 58 horsepower engines ...
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Manta boats for sale on YachtWorld are listed for a variety of prices from $16,326 on the more modest side, with costs up to $439,000 for the highly-specialized, bespoke models. What Manta model is the best? Some of the best-known Manta models presently listed include: 40, 44 PowerCat, 30 PRO, 38 and 42. Manta models are available through yacht ...
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Buy a Mantra 28 - sailing yacht? Mantra 28, Bj. 2004 im Kundenauftrag, sehr guter Zustand. Erste Hand. Umfangreich ausgestattet. Sehr sauber...
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Mantra 28 Sailboat / sailing yacht: Mantra Yachts, used boat, GRP/polyester Length x beam: ... Price: € 31,000, VAT incl. Segelboot Mantra 28, Cruiser. Scorpius. Scorpius Sailboat / sailing yacht: T-Yachts, used boat Length x beam: 8.30 m x 3 m, 8.30 x 3 m built: 1987, cabins: 1 Engine: Universal, 12 hp (8.8 kW), diesel € 11,150 Location ...
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Sailing boat; Country: PL; Model: Mantra 28; Designer: Andrzej Arminski; See also: boats for sale. Baruffaldi Baruffaldi P38 Comar Yachts Comet 850 Comar Yachts Comet 850 Comet Comet 850 Alpa 27 alpa 27 Boat Files General Data. Overall length: 8.5 m; Waterline length: 7.75 m; Maximum beam: 2.72 m; Draught: 1.65 m; Displacement: 3330 kg; Ballast ...
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Meet Manta, a giant, plastic-eating catamaran powered by renewable energy. The 185-foot hybrid sailboat will be the world's first sea-cleaning vessel capable of collecting plastic waste on an ...
Mantra 28 and 31
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Mantra sailboats for sale by owner.
Mantra preowned sailboats for sale by owner. Mantra used sailboats for sale by owner. Home. Register & Post. View All Sailboats. Search. Avoid Fraud. ... 28' TES 28 Gatineau Quebec Asking $64,000. 31.4' Hunter 31 Grand Lake of the Cherokees, Oklahoma Asking $20,000. 38' Catalina Morgan 38 center cockpit
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One way to approach a used-boat search is to look for sailboats with informed, active owners associations and high resale values. Practical Sailor's quest for recession-proof cruisers led us to the Allied Princess 36, Bristol 35.5C, Endeavour 37, S2 11.0, Freedom 36, ODay 37, Niagara 35, C&C Landfall 38, and the Tartan 37.
MANTRA 7000
A boat with a BN of 1.6 or greater is a boat that will be reefed often in offshore cruising. Derek Harvey, "Multihulls for Cruising and Racing", International Marine, Camden, Maine, 1991, states that a BN of 1 is generally accepted as the dividing line between so-called slow and fast multihulls.
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mantra preowned sailboats for sale by owner. mantra used sailboats for sale by owner. Home. Register & Post. View All Sailboats. Search. Avoid Fraud. ... 28' TES 28 Gatineau Quebec Asking $64,000. 38' Catalina Morgan 38 center cockpit Brunswick, Georgia Asking $100,000. 37' Custom built Brewer 37 Cutter
Manta 40 Sailboat Review
Quentin Warren reviews this responsive cruising catamaran. Among the more comfortable new cruising catamarans to make 1996 debuts, the impressive Manta 40 consolidates roomy accommodations, refined deck systems and first-rate construction. At 40 feet, the hulls are long and sleek enough to counteract visually the freeboard required for volume ...
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This first-of-a-kind processing ship is designed to collect, treat and repurpose large volumes of floating plastic debris present in highly polluted waters, along the coasts, in estuaries and in the mouths of large rivers. In 2022, Bureau Veritas, the leading ship classification company, awarded the Manta with "Approval In Principle ...
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2000 Manta 42. US$279,000. Sunshine Cruising Yachts | Brunswick, Georgia. Request Info. <. 1. >. * Price displayed is based on today's currency conversion rate of the listed sales price. Boats Group does not guarantee the accuracy of conversion rates and rates may differ than those provided by financial institutions at the time of transaction.
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2003 22.97' Mantra Mantra7000 sailboat for sale in Lake Norman Penninsula yacht club North Carolina. Home. Register & Post. View All Sailboats ... 8.20' 4.92' North Carolina. $16,500. Description: Tohatsu sailpro. Equipment: The Mantra is in good condition. New bottom paint. Boat is equipped with a bowsprit. New asymmetric spinnaker never used ...
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1991 Catalina 28 Wing 28'6" Sailboat - Inboard Diesel Running - Florida. 2024 Survey $18K - Link in Description. Pre-Owned: Catalina. $2,100.00.
Mantra 7000
Mantra 7000 is a 22′ 11″ / 7 m monohull sailboat designed by Andrzej Arminski and built by Projektowanie i Budowa Jachtów starting in 1998. ... the more easily it will carry a load and the more comfortable its motion will be. The lower a boat's ratio is, the less power it takes to drive the boat to its nominal hull speed or beyond. Read ...
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Boat is located in Newport Beach, California. Email Address: [email protected] . New Main in 2021, New 155 Genoa in 2020, New Code Zero Spinnaker in 2019, 3 Extra Spinnakers, and a Storm Gib. New Running Rigging in 2021, Teak Flooring, Lots of Storage, Cooler, Sleeps 2, Bilge Pump, Coast Guard
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28.17 ft / 8.59 m: LWL: ... Like the LWL, it will vary with the weights of fuel, water, stores and equipment. A boat's actual draft is usually somewhat more than the original designed or advertised draft. For boats with adjustable keels (centerboards, daggerboards, lifting and swing keels), Draft (max) is with the board down. ...
The Terrifying Allure of Mona Island
The boats arrived at the pier in Joyuda, on the western shore of Puerto Rico, near dawn. We were relieved to discover that the sea was quiet: " plancha ' o ," the captain said, like an ...