Which Ensign?

by John January 1, 2007

Question: I liked the beautiful twilight photo of your boat in Hare Bay, Newfoundland in this month’s Cruising World, and I showed it to a friend who’s been reading a manual on marine flag etiquette. He asked me what flag you’re flying on the backstay…and if the boat is an American registered boat from the [...]

The Ethics Of Cairn Building

by John February 1, 2007
Phyllis, from aluminum sailboat Morgan's Cloud, puts a wine bottle with a message into a cairn at Skjoldungen, East Greenland.

We just got an e-mail from our friend Louis Nielsen. Louis has lived for over 20 years, mostly alone, in a remote cabin on the west coast of Spitsbergen. He is one of the last, perhaps the very last, people to make a living as a trapper in the Svalbard archipelago, some 500 miles north [...]

Watch Out For Whales—Part I

by Colin December 18, 2009
OVNI 435 Pèlerin with a friendly whale swimming close by.

Another race, another whale collision, yet again ending in the loss of a boat and injury to a whale. Thankfully no loss of life, although one day that may not be the case. What is happening out on the oceans? Pirates everywhere, climate change driven hurricanes, and now homicidal whales?

Watch Out For Whales—Part II

by Colin November 12, 2011
Lunge feeding humpback

Collisions with whales and dolphins are becoming an increasing concern for offshore cruisers, as I outlined in a previous post. But up until recently there has been no serious attempt made to quantify the level of actual collision events, or to plot their geographical distribution. Obviously, having some idea of where and when collisions might [...]