People & Books

Literature And Sailing Singlehanded On The East Coast Of Greenland

by John May 19, 2005

Question: I am planning to take my boat from North Donegal to the east coast of Greenland. I was planning to make landfall in the area of Kap Dan. My boat is a 38 foot Rival (fiberglass) and I was planning the out bound trip single handed. Could you suggest any literature on the east [...]

Webb Chiles—Adventurer And Artist

by John January 1, 2007

I stumbled across Webb Chiles’ site today. For those who don’t know of him, Chiles is a single-handed multiple-circumnavigator, consummate seaman, writer of good prose and even poetry, and probably a little nuts—but then, in my experience, many of the most interesting people fall into the last category.

Fear

by Phyllis May 1, 2007
high endevours

When people, predominately non-sailors, find out that John and I live on our sailboat and cross oceans (well, one ocean—seems we just can’t shake ourselves loose from the North Atlantic), the thing they most often ask is, “Aren’t you afraid out there?”

Champagne And Polar Bears: Romance In The Arctic

by Phyllis May 19, 2007
The research station built by the Swedes for the International Geophysical year of 1957/58 on Nordaustlandet, Svalbard.

Approaching the lee shore of Nordaustlandet (the uninhabited—or so we thought—icecap-domed island separated from Spitsbergen by Hinlopen Strait) in a building gale in early August of 2002, was intimidating to say the least.

OVNI Photographs At SetSail

by John March 25, 2010

Steve Dashew over at SetSail has just published some interesting photographs of, and comments on, an OVNI. This is the type of boat that our European Correspondent, Colin Speedie has written about extensively here at AAC.

Visiting The Gizmo Guru

by John April 22, 2010
Ben Ellison of Panbo

Last weekend we had a pleasant break from our re-power project while visiting some good friends in Camden, Maine and giving a slide-show to some members of the Ocean Cruising Club. While there, our friends suggested that we visit Ben Ellison, author of Panbo, the popular blog on marine electronics, on his aptly named motor [...]

Robert Eddy Yacht Models

by Phyllis April 24, 2010
Rob Eddy yacht model in construction.

We took a break from working on our boat this past weekend to visit friends in Camden. While there we dropped in on Rob Eddy, yacht model builder. Now, in case you are visualizing wooden half models, think again! What Rob makes are exact, and I mean exact, replicas of (mainly) superyachts (e.g. The Maltese [...]

A Great Photography Workshop

by John July 24, 2010
Sailboat at anchor in the sunset

This may be a little off topic, but then again many voyaging sailors are, like me, also avid photographers, so here goes. I just got back from an intensive one week travel photography workshop taught by Bob Krist, who is one of the best and most prolific travel photographers around.

S/V Danza In Greenland

by John August 11, 2010
David and Judy Nutt of S/V Danza in Greenland

Well worth a read: An interesting blog by our friends, circumnavigators and frequent commentors on AAC, David and Judy, who are in Greenland with their family on Danza, their beautifully prepared and just plain beautiful steel ketch.

Storm Tactics, Learning From The Best

by John September 22, 2010
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Tony and Coryn Gooch stopped by this summer in their lovely and beautifully maintained aluminum sloop Taonui. If you don’t know who they are, that is simply because they go out there on the ocean and do incredible things without fuss or drama. Like Tony deciding, when he was into “senior citizen” territory, that it [...]

Climate Change In Action

by Phyllis October 2, 2010
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John and I have a longstanding interest in collecting books on historical and present-day exploration of the high latitudes, or “death and destruction on the ice” as we call it. But it looks like climate change could put an end to this genre more quickly than we thought: This summer, for the first time in [...]

A Big Adventurer In A Small Boat

by Phyllis March 18, 2011
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On our way to Svalbard (Spitsbergen) in Morgan’s Cloud in 2002, we stopped at Teltvika, a cove on the west side of Bjørnøya (Bear Island), a virtually uninhabited island which lies at the halfway mark on the 550 nautical mile passage from Norway. During our second evening at Teltvika, the fog came in pea soup [...]