The Best Weather Forecast You Never Heard Of

by John January 19, 2012
text-discusion.jpg

In the last post I explained how to receive text forecasts while offshore. Now I want to share one of my favourite forecasts, that I suspect very few people bother to get:

Our Weather System, Part 3—Forecasts

by John January 16, 2012
text-forecast.jpg

In this, the final installment of my series on our weather information gathering system, I’m going to write about how we receive voice (well, really not) and text forecasts while at sea and in remote places.

Margin Accounts Dangerous For Voyagers

by John January 13, 2012
MP900387264.jpg

In reading the headline of this post, you could be forgiven for thinking that I have completely lost my mind and decided to leave the nautical arena to become an investment blogger. Not so. Almost everyone out there voyaging is relying on their savings, to at least some extent, and most of you who are [...]

Treasures From The Sea

by Phyllis January 11, 2012
JHHGH1-1050587.jpg

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.

Gear Test—Engine

by John January 7, 2012
JHHGH1_0971.jpg

As most of our regular readers know, we just completed a 10,000 mile, eight month voyage to the Arctic and back on Morgan’s Cloud, our 56-f00t McCurdy and Rhodes aluminum cutter. A voyage that constituted a gruelling test of all the gear on the boat. Here is our report on how the engine and drive-train [...]

The Adaptable Polar Bear

by John January 3, 2012
JHH5II-12267.jpg

John and I just returned from a challenging Arctic cruise, one of many we’ve undertaken over the last 20 years. On all our previous voyages, we’ve only ever seen the back end of one bear running away from us…we were on the boat, steaming out of an anchorage in Northern Spitsbergen.

The Ideal Cruiser Camera—Part 2, Recommendations

by John December 29, 2011
JHHGH1-1050498_thumb.jpg

In the last post in this series I listed the capabilities that my ideal cruiser camera would have. In this post I’m going to recommend some cameras that have those capabilities.

Happy Holidays to All

by John December 23, 2011
JHH5II-12025_thumb.jpg

Wow, it has been quite a year for Phyllis and me. Sort of reminds me of the movie, Four Weddings and a Funeral. Only in our case it was one wedding, a funeral and an incredible Arctic voyage.

Windvane Or Autopilot?—Part 2

by Colin December 19, 2011
Blade angle

The first time I used a windvane in anger was back in the early 1980s, aboard my newly purchased UFO 34 cruiser-racer whilst delivering her home from Scotland through the Irish Sea. Fitted with a then state-of-the-art Aries vane, we had strong tailwinds for much of the way, which the vane handled fairly well, impressive [...]

The Ideal Cruiser Camera, Part 1

by John December 15, 2011
JHH5_106019_thumb.jpg

This is the second in my series on photography gear, but with a twist: rather than recommending a camera and then justifying my opinion, I’m going to try and define my absolute ideal cruising camera, based on fifteen years of taking photographs seriously while voyaging; not to speak of some really bad and expensive gear [...]

An Arctic Voyage

by John December 12, 2011
JHH5II-11310_thumb.jpg

Two weeks ago we tied to the same wharf that we left here in Charleston on April 1st—an appropriate date when you consider that our summer consisted of:

Windvane Or Autopilot?—Part I

by Colin December 8, 2011
Windpilot in control

Sitting in the Canaries watching all the yachts turn up to make the transatlantic crossing has been instructive in one sense. I’ve spent some of my time counting the number of boats equipped with what used to be the long distance boat’s badge of honour—a wind vane. And talking to the owners has been instructive, [...]

Provisioning For Remote Voyaging—Part II

by Phyllis December 5, 2011
JHHXZ1-1220415_thumb.jpg

In Part I of this two-part series I discussed how I determine what and how much of what to buy. After reading that post I’m sure most of you are shaking your heads at how much time and energy John and I put into food (not to mention writing this much about it!). However, having [...]

Provisioning For Remote Voyaging—Part I

by Phyllis November 29, 2011
JHHGH1-1040763_thumb.jpg

A big part of preparing for an extensive northern trip such as the one we undertook this summer is provisioning. In this case, I had to provision for six months. Yikes! A number of people have asked me how I go about doing this, so here goes.

Why The High Latitudes, #4—The Adventure

by Phyllis November 29, 2011
12206_thumb.jpg

This fall, on our way south bound for Charleston, SC after a challenging Arctic cruise to West Greenland, Baffin Island and Labrador, we were met on the dock in Northeast Harbor, Maine by our friend, Phil, a rock climber of some renown. The first words out of his mouth were, “Have you got over the [...]

Rocna Versus SPADE, Strengths and Weaknesses

by John November 23, 2011
JHH5-13426-Edit_thumb.jpg

Our position here at Attainable Adventure Cruising Ltd has been, and continues to be, that the Rocna and SPADE are both great anchors that have made previous generation anchors like the CQR and Bruce obsolete. But that leaves the question: What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two anchors? To try to at [...]

What You Can’t Hear Won’t Hurt You!

by Phyllis November 22, 2011
JHH5II-13906_thumb.jpg

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
JHHGH1-1040988_thumb.jpg

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
JHH5II-13718-Edit_thumb.jpg

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
QandA_thumb.jpg

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 [...]

← Older Posts

Newer Posts →