What You Can’t Hear Won’t Hurt You!

by Phyllis November 22, 2011
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I read an interesting book this summer called In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise by George Prochnik. One thing that I got out of the book is that noise in and of itself increases our vigilance response (a leftover from the days when we were prey). For example, when [...]

Photo Short—Meaningful Voyaging

by Phyllis November 21, 2011
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Marcel Proust wrote: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” John and I are slowly learning the lesson that exciting cruising doesn’t mean we have to go to the Arctic—we can take great walks, make cool pictures, meet neat people, and enjoy ourselves wherever we are. [...]

Our Weather System, Part 2—GRIBs

by John November 17, 2011
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This is the second in a series of three posts on the system that we developed during our Arctic cruise this summer to do our daily weather analysis. In the first post I wrote about the way we use weather fax. In this one I’m going to get into the details of how we request [...]

Trans-Atlantic Single-Handed Sanity Check

by John November 13, 2011
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Question [Edited for brevity]: I’d like to move my boat, a 50’ Hinckley Yawl, from Mt Desert, Maine to Mallorca, Spain and “do” the Med for 12-18 months. I’ve been thinking about single-handing her across; from Maine direct to Gibraltar. The boat is in good condition but 33 years old, I am in good condition [...]

Watch Out For Whales—Part II

by Colin November 12, 2011
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Collisions with whales and dolphins are becoming an increasing concern for offshore cruisers, as I outlined in a previous post. But up until recently there has been no serious attempt made to quantify the level of actual collision events, or to plot their geographical distribution. Obviously, having some idea of where and when collisions might [...]

Contrasts in Cruising

by John November 9, 2011
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Question: What do these two photographs have in common?

Wave Action Takes Over AAC Consultancy

by John November 7, 2011
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For some years Attainable Adventure Cruising Ltd has offered consulting services and advertised them, in rather a low key way, on this web site. Originally we thought that such a service might generate a bit of income to keep us out cruising. But the reality has been that in almost all cases, as soon as [...]

Halloween Storm, Choosing an Anchorage—Part 1

by John November 4, 2011
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As I write, the still gale force remnants of the Halloween Storm of 2011 are howling in the rigging as Morgan’s Cloud tugs at her anchor and bucks to the chop here in Great Salt Pond at Block Island. I sometimes call cruising, particularly when tired and crotchety, “death by a thousand decisions”. And deciding [...]

We Can Cope With This

by Colin October 31, 2011
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Leaving Morocco was a bittersweet experience in many ways, as we had really appreciated our stay in the country. Not just the charming, hospitable people, but also the fascinating culture and magnificent scenery that we experienced on our treks inland. But the anticipation of getting back under way was powerful, too, and that gradually got [...]

Our Weather System, Part 1—Weather Fax

by John October 27, 2011
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In my last few posts on weather I have been writing about various aspects of weather analysis. In the next three posts I’m going to pull it all together by detailing the daily procedure that we found worked well during our Arctic cruise this summer. In part one I’m going to cover weather fax, part [...]

Don’t Pass The Bucket, Please!

by Colin October 24, 2011
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We’ve discussed the thorny question of seasickness before here at Attainable Adventure Cruising, and all correspondents agreed that it is one of the most debilitating things that can happen to anyone at sea. As they say of seasickness sufferers, ‘first you don’t want to die, then you think you might die, then finally you want [...]

The Best Camera Is The One You’ve Got

by John October 18, 2011
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[Written October 13th] This morning, Phyllis and I were out for a short walk in Northeast Harbor, Maine, where we arrived yesterday after an overnight sail across from Nova Scotia. We were more in search of sticky-buns than photographs, but I slipped the newest and smallest of my three cameras into my pocket, just in [...]

Duelling GRIB Viewers

by John October 15, 2011
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I have written several posts lately on weather and each has mentioned GRIBs. In this post I’m going to get into the nuts and bolts of the software we use to view GRIB data.

Your Boat Should Forgive You

by John October 12, 2011
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Many of you will be aware of the sinking of the sail training vessel Concordia off the Brazilian Coast last year. The Canadian Transportation Safety Board (TSB) have now completed their report. I see lessons in it for all of us that go to sea, albeit rather different ones than those trumpeted in the media.

Weather, How To Look Ahead—Way Ahead

by John October 6, 2011
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In the last few weeks I have posted on weather twice: The importance of looking at the big picture. Recognizing the possibility of dangerous weather well ahead of time. In this post I’m going to talk about one of the weather tools that I mentioned in those two posts.

Mixing Battery Sizes In One Bank

by John October 3, 2011
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Question: Due to space considerations I want to use  two 105 amp hour and two 150 amp hour batteries as a house battery bank. Would this arrangement be detrimental to the smaller batteries?

Site Maintenance

by John October 2, 2011

I just did a bunch of upgrades to this site, including all the improvements and bug fixes to the underlying software that came out over the summer while we were in the Arctic. So if anything looks weird to you, or just plain does not work, please leave a comment at the end of this [...]

Arctic Voyage Milestones

by John September 30, 2011
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I thought about titling this post “High Latitude Voyaging, It Feels So Good When You Stop” but we like to keep things positive here at Attainable Adventure Cruising (AAC) World Headquarters. Anyway, here are a few milestones that we have experienced in the last month.

Lessons From Maria

by John September 29, 2011
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[Written 17 September] As I write the wind from the remnants of Hurricane Maria, or to be more accurate at our location, post-Tropical Storm Maria, is howling in the rigging as Morgan’s Cloud surges and tugs at the shore-fast and anchor holding her secure in a cove in north Newfoundland. The winds are down to [...]

Internal Volume—Too Much In The Wrong Place?

by Colin September 23, 2011
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It’s all very well to have so much internal volume, but if all of it is taken up with berths and shower units, then where does all the ‘stuff’ go? On the charter boat we hired, for example, the forward double had a water tank beneath it, a few shelves with nothing to secure gear [...]

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