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Read more: John’s Thoughts & Photos, February 2011
From time to time our readers point us toward, or we stumble upon, something published on the internet that we learn from and that makes us better offshore sailors.
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Read more: 11 Steps To Better Lead Acid Battery LifeIn the last chapter, we quantified how short battery life will be on a cruising boat with a standard electrical system, now let’s move on to fixing that.
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Read more: Piracy—Trouble In ParadiseFor most cruising yachtsmen there are few more beautiful, peaceful or congenial places to down a cold Tusker beer, than on the Kenyan shore of the Indian Ocean. Such places form the backbone of the dream for so many, and it’s not hard to see why. But outside in open waters things are less idyllic, […]
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Read more: How To Use An Anchor Trip LineJohn writes about how we rig an anchor trip line on Morgan’s Cloud.
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Read more: The Beauty Of SimplicityToday our boats are more complex than ever before. And yes, there are benefits that go along with some of this complexity. But, as a general rule, simple is almost always more seamanlike than complicated.
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Read more: Sailing The West Coast Of Scotland, Part 2Sailing ‘off-grid’ is all about getting away from the crowds, and the west of Scotland can certainly offer that – during my first fortnight in charge of a charter boat in the Hebrides back in the spring of 1992 we saw one other yacht in two weeks. And in those days there was a kind […]
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Read more: Warm Hands, PleaseA while ago I wrote about how we keep our feet warm when sailing in colder climes. In this post I will address the issue of keeping our hands warm, which aren’t, unfortunately, as easy to please.
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Read more: A Hidden Gem, Cape Lookout HarborBeing too tall for the Intracoastal Waterway has its advantages, as stumbling on this stunning anchorage proves.
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Chart Plotters And Autopilots, Never The Twain Should Meet
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Read more: Chart Plotters And Autopilots, Never The Twain Should MeetThe dangers of interfacing a boat’s autopilot and navigation plotter.
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Read more: Sailing The West Coast Of Scotland, Part 1A hardy perennial in sailing magazines has always been some well-known individual describing their ‘favourite secret anchorage’. I’ve never fully understood the rationale for taking part in such an exercise. After all, if it’s no longer a secret, won’t that make it as busy as any other place as a result? As someone once wisely […]
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Read more: New Versus OldWhen we arrived in Lagos, Portugal, I recognised a very smart looking cutter berthed near us as belonging to people I knew, so when I could see there was someone aboard I wandered over to say hello. After a brief chat, I was told that this obviously ocean-ready yacht was now up for sale due […]
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Read more: Chafe-Pro ReviewChafe-Pro provides an off-the-shelf solution for protecting vulnerable lines from chafe.
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Read more: Anatomy Of An AccidentIt was 4:00 am on a black early morning anchored at Cape Lookout Harbour when Phyllis and I were awoken by a crash from up forward followed by a sickening scraping sound. A quick look out the companionway showed the outline of another sailboat reversing away from our bow. The outline looked a lot like […]
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Read more: Cruising With A PurposeThe liveaboard life appeals on many levels, but in common with many cruising couples that we have encountered, we have found that it can feel a little purposeless at times. This is partly due to us still shaking off many years of frenetic career work, but we’ve found we’re far from alone in this regard. […]
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Read more: Reefing Made EasyHow to reef a sailboat easily and quickly without getting frightened or wet.
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Read more: Closed For The SeasonDue to John’s and my penchant for sailing in the high latitudes, “Closed For The Season” signs have become somewhat of a theme for our cruises. In early spring we are on our way north and nothing is open yet, and by the time we turn south in the fall, it’s all over.
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Read more: Avon Dinghy, Take TwoWe loved our old Avon dinghy, so much so that we kept it in active service for 20 years, even though it sprang a slow air leak about year 17. (Unless you’ve ever tried jumping 4 feet into the air—it’s about that distance from the dinghy tube to Morgan’s Cloud’s side-deck—off a squishy inner tube, […]
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Read more: Racing To CruiseRacing sailboats is a great way to gain experience that will be invaluable when we go offshore cruising. John shares a passage across the Gulf of Maine.
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Read more: Achieving The ImpossibleColin discusses some of the modifications they made to their OVNI 435 to make her both a comfortable home and a voyaging machine.
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Read more: Cutting The Ties That BindFor 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 […]
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Read more: Perkins M92B, Initial Report CardInstalling the new engine was a huge and expensive job, so how did it work out?
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Read more: Rudder Options, Staying In ControlWhenever we lift our OVNI out at a boatyard, she soon attracts a lot of attention. Partly that’s due to the sight of a sizeable boat (seemingly) without a keel, sitting on her bottom, but especially the rudder in its kicked up position, pointing out behind her.
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Read more: Nexus Instruments, Great Gear And Great CultureReasonably Priced Seven years ago, when KVH stopped supporting our previous sailing instrument system, we looked at Brooks and Gatehouse but balked at the cost and instead settled on a new NX2 system from Nexus at less than half the price.
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Read more: Equalizing Batteries, The RealityFully charging your batteries after each discharge on a live-aboard cruising sailboat is simply not practical. Instead, most of us will cycle our batteries between 50 and 80% of their capacity. The bad news is that this will ruin your lead-acid batteries (regardless of type) in a distressingly short time due to sulphation. However, there is a solution: equalization. In this chapter we cover what it is and how to do it.
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Read more: Climate Change In ActionJohn 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 […]
