Rants & Musings, Articles

For various reasons we spent most of the summer at our cabin in Nova Scotia, working way too much and sailing way too little. While preparing to get back out cruising, we were once again reminded of the difficulties and sheer work of leaving a land base: Get car ready for storage, store same, move [...]

As we get older, Phyllis and I are getting simpler. No, I don’t mean in the head, or at least that’s not what this post is about. Rather in the way we evaluate the functionality, or lack thereof, of equipment and systems on Morgan’s Cloud.

It’s March, and so it’s re-fit time, and we’re busily taking advantage of the mild weather here in Portugal to sand and scrape blistered paint, then get some epoxy primer on, our lot in life with an aluminium boat. Not that it’s all bad – at times in the past we have been in the [...]

Part of about a gazillion engine parts that we checked were the correct ones for our engine, entered into our parts inventory spreadsheet and finally stowed away. We are now in the phase of preparation for a high latitude voyage that I call “death by a thousand details”. Make that “death by a million details”. [...]

The legendary Bill Tilman wasn’t afraid of many things. Having survived the slaughter in the trenches of WWI, fighting with Tito’s partisans in WWII, establishing the route by which Everest was finally conquered and then late in life sailing a succession of elderly Bristol Channel pilot cutters to climb remote peaks in the polar regions, [...]

Ever since John took up photography, our hikes have turned into strolls interspersed with numerous long hiatuses while he records our surroundings for posterity. This initially caused a certain amount of friction, until I developed my own obsession—sea glass.

Over the years we’ve been voyaging, we’ve occasionally heard from people who accuse cruisers of being parasites—wandering the globe without giving back. And, yes, we’ve run across some cruisers like that. We call them “user cruisers”. They come into town, take from the generous locals (sometimes from people who have less than them), and then [...]

Sailors can be a superstitious lot, and the idea of setting sail on Friday 13th has always alarmed mariners. But as the latest one came around we weren’t worried. As we were simply minding our own business alongside a pontoon, and planning on going nowhere we were in a risk-free place – or so we [...]