by Colin
on June 12, 2013
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The red trimaran alongside us crashes through another short steep sea and a jet of water with the ferocity of a fire hose blasts her from stem to stern as she claws her way upwind into a steady 35 knots at the start of the 1986 Route du Rhum race off the French port of [...]
by Phyllis
on April 21, 2013
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I have to admit that I was leery about writing this review of Carolyn Shearlock’s and Jan Irons’ fresh-off-the-press cookbook, since John and I do a lot of cooking, both on and off the boat, and are a long way down the gustatory road from making casseroles with condensed mushroom soup and dried onion soup [...]
by John
on March 27, 2013
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I have been thinking about safely a lot lately. I guess that stands to reason, given that I’m in the middle of a series of posts on person overboard prevention—not to speak of the fact that I had a very nasty accident a few months ago—and, up until a couple of days ago I was [...]
by John
on February 27, 2013
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Those of you who read AAC regularly will will know that I’m no fan of the current state of the sailing magazine industry. Just how many charter-in-the-Virgin-Islands-with-cheesecake, so-we-can-sell a-bunch-of-advertising, articles do we need? Boring, boring, dull. But there is at least one shining exception to the above jaundiced view: Ocean Navigator magazine, which has always [...]
by John
on October 7, 2012
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Last year Phyllis and I made a voyage to the west coast of Greenland on Morgan’s Cloud. Once in Greenland, we spent nearly a month visiting remote hunting and fishing communities so that our friend Grete, an eminent anthropologist, could continue her study of the impact of climate change on the people. That voyage, which covered [...]
by Phyllis
on May 6, 2012
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I recently wrote a post on spreading happiness, inspired by Tassio and Claudia’s website. Well, their website inspired me in another way, as well.
by Phyllis
on March 27, 2012
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Last spring I wrote a post about our friend Alasdair, who at the time was planning a trip on his 26-foot Vertue sloop Sumara to Jan Mayen to climb Beerenberg. Well, he and his crew, along with another small sailboat and crew, pulled off the trip with aplomb!
by Phyllis
on 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 [...]
by Phyllis
on 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 [...]
by John
on 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 [...]
by John
on August 11, 2010
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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.
by John
on July 24, 2010
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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.
by Phyllis
on April 24, 2010
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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 [...]
by John
on April 22, 2010
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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 [...]
by John
on March 25, 2010
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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.
by Phyllis
on May 19, 2007
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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.
by Phyllis
on May 1, 2007
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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?”
by John
on January 1, 2007
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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.
by John
on May 19, 2005
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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 [...]
