Do You Carry Survival Suits?

by John May 19, 2007
A marine survival (immersion) suit.

Question: Do you carry survival suits and do you do anything special for working in the dinghy? I’ve seen ice suits, and all sorts of combo work/survival suits and we are wondering if we should carry something similar for the wilder areas?

What Life Raft Do You Have On Morgan’s Cloud?

by John April 19, 2008
An inflated RFD Beaufort 6-person commercial SOLAS liferaft.

Question: What sort of life raft do you have on Morgan’s Cloud?

Portland Pudgy Tender And Liferaft Combo

by John September 19, 2009
Person in Portland Pudgy as a liferaft.

Question: What are your views on the Portland Pudgy as a “proactive” life raft?

Obeying The Rules

by Colin October 19, 2009
Pèlerin in Loch Moidart

It has been something of a culture shock to be back in Cornwall, where the volume of boat traffic is on a completely different level to the western isles of Scotland. Up there other yachts really are few and far between, whereas sometimes around the Falmouth area we may be altering course for another yacht [...]

Safety By Reason, Not Rote

by John December 19, 2009
And loaded into the dinghy.

We spent a month taking care of Polaris, a sailboat wintering over on the west coast of Greenland. Before he left for home, Michael (owner of Polaris), Phyllis and I talked about managing risk, particularly as it related to falling overboard into the sub-freezing sea water there.

Fire Blankets

by John February 19, 2010
A one-time-use-only fire blanket and fire extinguisher on Polaris, an aluminum expedition sailboat.

Fire blankets are a great idea, particularly to smother a grease flare-up in the galley without the mess of a dry powder extinguisher, and we have long carried one on Morgan’s Cloud; however, it was bulky and ugly and so was relegated to a locker up forward, much reducing its effectiveness in a fire where [...]

Keeping The Water Out

by Colin July 3, 2010
Rainy Night In Spain From Boat Cockpit

After nearly 20 years of going North, our decision for 2010 was to head South in search of new horizons and the sun. Last year in the Hebrides was wonderful, but when the weather broke in August we were glad to move on, and we know we’ll be back one day.

The Most Dangerous Thing On A Boat

by Phyllis July 31, 2010
Calendar page

Long gone are the days when sailors could drift with the wind and the tide, without worrying about the demands of bureaucracy. It’s now a rare country that doesn’t impose limits on how long foreign sailors can stay, with the added requirement in some jurisdictions (the U.S. for example) to phone in whenever you move [...]

Always Have A Way To Rest

by John August 26, 2010

There is so much about this story that worries me that it is hard to know where to start. A single-handed sailor abandoned his boat because he was totally exhausted from three days of hand steering, not because there was anything wrong with the boat.

Spinlock Lifejacket

by Phyllis January 21, 2011
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One of the many things that attracted John and I to each other is that we are both gimped. John has one leg shorter than the other and a slight scoliosis and I have congenitally flat feet and knock-knees. John walks like a duck and I walk like a penguin. It is a match made [...]

Keeping The Water Out #2

by Colin February 2, 2011
A motor boat negotiates its way around floating logs, British Columbia

When we were formulating our long-term list of places to visit during our cruising life, the Pacific northwest was high on our list. And having spent Christmas and New Year on the shores of British Columbia and Vancouver Island, we can confidently say that as a cruising ground it has now gone well up the [...]

Stuff that Works–Liferaft Service

by John March 11, 2011
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We are really careful about getting our liferaft serviced each year.  So back in the fall we contacted Raymond Harvey at Air-Sea Safety and Survival Inc, here in Charleston, South Carolina, where we are spending the winter.

Q&A Radar Reflectors and/or AIS Transponders

by John May 3, 2011
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Question [Edited for brevity]: We have been upgrading the safety equipment on board our boat and are thinking of installing radar reflectors to amplify and enhance the radar signal we create to alerting oncoming vessels of our position during offshore sailing in bad weather and heavy seas. The Echomax Active-XS-Dual Band reflector seems very good, [...]

Great First Aid Course For Offshore Voyagers

by John May 27, 2011
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What does spending four days in the woods of Nova Scotia getting eaten alive by black flies have to do with offshore voyaging? Well I have to admit I was asking myself the same question, particularly at ten o’clock at night when faced with a horrible lake motor boat accident: One compound fracture, one head [...]

First Aid, Prevention Is Better Than Cure

by John June 1, 2011
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Even on a gentle sailing day like this, the loads on a offshore sailboat are substantial and deserve respect. While updating our first aid skills we have been lucky enough to spend time with two doctors who both sail and, in addition, have a lot of emergency room trauma experience. They confirmed one of the [...]