Custom Log Book

by John May 18, 2005
Custom marine log book page from aluminum expedition sailboat Morgan's Cloud.

Question: I read your article, “Knowing Where You Are“, in January’s Cruising World magazine and was wondering if I could see a copy of your custom log book page.

Magnetic Compass

by John May 18, 2005

Question: Do you use a magnetic compass to augment your navigation process?

Time Signals for Sextant

by John May 18, 2005

Question: Do you still do sights with a sextant? If so, where do you get the time signal from when underway? I found several shortwave frequencies for time signals on the web but the reception is extremely poor. In fact, I can’t get any useful exact time at all with my SSB receiver (Lowe HF-150 [...]

AIS—See And Be Seen

by Colin May 1, 2009
How can we be sure they'll see us?

One thing that most sailors dread is poor visibility. Throw in high levels of shipping traffic and you have a perfect recipe for sleepless nights.

Trans-Ocean Navigation

by John September 18, 2009
The chart shows various great circle (dotted orange) and rhumb line (solid gray lines). Counter intuitively, the curved courses are actually shorter. The difference between the two tracks is almost nonexistent on the Caribbean to US east coast passage; larger on the westbound trans-Atlantic passage; and very large on the eastbound trans-Atlantic passage, to the point that the great circle course takes you over land and the iceberg infested Grand Banks—a good reason to understand which type of course your GPS is using!

Question: We are crossing the Atlantic from the Canary Islands to St. Lucia. I found a large scale chart of the Atlantic (Imray Passage Chart 100). This single chart shows the entire Atlantic Ocean taking the earth’s curvature into account and therefore does NOT have a compass rose to help steer by. I am having [...]

It Ain’t Necessarily So

by Colin February 18, 2010
Channel marker, Arisaig, West Highlands.

In these days of hyper-accurate GPS navigation and deck mounted plotters, it can sometimes seem like navigation has been reduced to no more than a video game.

An Old Newfoundland Story

by John March 18, 2010
This retired fisherman and lifeboat coxswain from Clarks Harbour, Nova Scotia, is not the hero of my story, but I bet he could pull off the same trick.

It’s an old Newfoundland story. The details change depending on who tells it but the essence of the story is always the same: A young “come from away” goes fishing several miles offshore with a veteran Newfoundland fisherman in an open skiff. The fog comes down “t’ick as shit in a barrel”. There are no [...]

How We Know Where It’s At On Morgan’s Cloud

by John March 23, 2010
Phyllis in the cockpit navigation area on aluminum expedition sailboat Morgan's Cloud.

So what is it specifically that we do to make sure “we know where it’s at” while cruising some of the world’s more remote places on Morgan’s Cloud, our 56-foot aluminum McCurdy and Rhodes cutter?

Electronic Charting Dangers

by John March 24, 2010
Aluminum expedition sailboat Morgan's Cloud aground in the Bahamas.

Although we are not Luddites bemoaning the take over of electronics and warning of the dire consequence of over reliance on them, we are aware of several dangers in their exclusive use:

Navigation System—Plotter Or Computer

by John March 25, 2010
iPhone with marine charting

Our comparatively late adoption of electronic navigation (summer 2008) was, for more than any other reason, due to the difficulty we had in making the decision between a dedicated chart plotter and a computer running a navigation program. Either way, we had specific selection criteria that had to be met before we would switch to [...]

Navigation System—What We Bought

by John March 30, 2010
Dell computer

In the last post in this series we wrote about the criteria we used in choosing an electronic navigation system for Morgan’s Cloud. In this post we will write about the systems we looked at and what we finally bought. Plotters We started off looking at large screen plotters and because we have had such [...]

Save Our Lighthouses

by Phyllis April 9, 2010
The lighthouse at Andenes, Norway.

I can’t imagine that there are many sailors out there who don’t share John’s and my fascination with lighthouses—walking around them, climbing them, photographing them, reading about what it was like to take care of them—we don’t seem to tire of it. However, in Canada, the USA and the UK, and I’m sure in other [...]

Anatomy Of An Accident

by John December 3, 2010
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It was 4:00 am on a black early morning anchored at Cape Lookout Harbour when Phyllis and I were awoken by a crash from up forward followed by a sickening scraping sound. A quick look out the companionway showed the outline of another sailboat reversing away from our bow. The outline looked a lot like [...]

Chart Plotters And Autopilots, Never The Twain Should Meet

by John December 17, 2010
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On Morgan’s Cloud we don’t hand steer much: approaching and leaving a wharf, anchoring and hauling the anchor, transiting an intricate channel, or in the presence of a lot of other boat traffic; that’s about it. We find that by using our autopilot we are left with more time and focus to navigate, keep a [...]

Things Are Different Now

by Phyllis July 9, 2011
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[Written July 1st] In a previous post I mentioned a few things that have changed in Greenland over the 16 years we’ve been voyaging up here: less ice, more English, more sailboats, earlier cruising season, and a busier capital city due to oil exploration.