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Read more: Storm Preparation, All Chain On DeckWhat with spending a lot of time in the high latitudes and keeping boats on moorings year round in Bermuda, John has a lot of experience dealing with heavy weather while anchored or on a mooring. In this chapter he gives some tips for preparing your boat to safely ride out a storm.
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Read more: Lunenburg, Nova Scotia—In Our Own BackyardLunenburg charms with its historic waterfront, dory races, and tasty restaurants. Oh, and it’s a UNESCO world heritage site to boot!
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Read more: Anchor Swivels, Just Say NoWe have never seen the point of anchor swivels. In our opinion all they do is add a potential point of failure to the anchoring system and provide no benefits in return. But they are, in fact, even more dangerous than we thought. In this chapter we explain why and even tell you how to ameliorate the danger if you really must have a swivel.
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Read more: Q&A: Hybrid Rope And Chain Anchor RodesMany anchoring experts advocate hybrid anchor rodes made up of a long length of chain attached to an even longer piece of rope. But is this really a good idea? We examine the practical real world issues in this chapter.
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Read more: Earl Comes To LunchHurricanes, you just can’t trust em. When we went to bed Earl was supposed to make landfall on the west side of the province, some 80 miles away. But this morning he has wobbled east and is heading straight for us here on the southwestern shore of Nova Scotia.
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Read more: AC Chargers For Lead Acid BatteriesMost marine battery chargers are, in fact, battery killers. Yes, that includes most of the fancy three stage units we all pay so much money for. Here’s why and what to do about it.
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Read more: Hurricane Forecasts, Sausage Or SizzleIt is now pretty likely that Hurricane Earl will give us high winds here on the south-western shore of Nova Scotia. However, a deviation of just 50 miles either side of the forecast track will likely make the difference between us experiencing gale force versus hurricane force winds. And that in turn will determine whether […]
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Read more: Hurricane ResourcesI have lived most of my life in the direct line of fire of Atlantic hurricanes, first in Bermuda, and now on the southern shore of Nova Scotia. But no matter how familiar I am with the damned things, or perhaps because of that familiarity, I always have a slight feeling of constant tension at […]
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Read more: Inverters And ChargersCombined inverters and chargers have become pretty much standard on cruising sailboats but, in fact, that’s a really bad idea. In this chapter we will share why and what to do about it.
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Read more: Always Have A Way To Rest
There is so much about this story (originally reported in Cruising Compass but no longer available) 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.
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Read more: Colin And Louise’s OVNI 435, “Pèlerin”An overview of Colin and Louise’s Ovni 435, Pèlerin.
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Read more: “Vagabond”—An Extraordinary Polar YachtThere’s no mistaking the profile of certain boats, so it was easy for us to recognise the red yacht transiting the Caledonian Canal one day in early April, despite the near blizzard conditions at the time. Vagabond is a well-known yacht in polar circles, and there is really nothing quite like her visually.
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Read more: A Glimpse Of The Future?Many yachtsmen who have visited the Rias of Galicia have remarked that they resemble the sea lochs of Scotland (but without the rain or the midges!). And they do, although they are far busier than Scotland, not just in terms of population and boat traffic, but also because of one of the cornerstones of the […]
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How Lead Acid Batteries Get Wrecked and What To Do About It
68 CommentsReading Time: 5 minutesMembers
Read more: How Lead Acid Batteries Get Wrecked and What To Do About ItRegularly equalizing our lead-acid batteries can save us a lot of money and aggravation by extending their useful lives as much as five times.
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Read more: Engine Installation—The Devil Is In The DetailsJohn, who has done three of them, fervently hopes that this will be his last repower. Read along as he spends three months fulltime at one of the best diesel repower shops in the world, sweating the details to make this installation the best it can be.
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Read more: Love Of The Ocean And The Real Price Of OilI have, with a few short breaks, lived either on, or within a stone’s throw, of salt water all my life. My earliest childhood memories are of commuting by boat from a small island where we lived to a larger island called Bermuda. I have spent the majority of the last twenty years voyaging on […]
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Read more: Q&A: Propeller Shaft Rope CuttersQuestion: Do you have a rope cutter? I ask because we are thinking of fitting an Ambassador Stripper (stainless) to a new build alloy [aluminum] yacht with an alloy sterntube, and we wonder if it is possible to get the two to live happily together.
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Read more: Learning The Hard WayAfter 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.
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Read more: Cooking And Heating With Kerosene (Paraffin)[While living on Polaris for a month, I wrote about the boat’s kerosene stove (cooker), which sparked a lively debate in the comments about the benefits and drawbacks of various cooking fuels on boats. Continuing that theme, we just got a note from our good friend and Norwegian Correspondent for the Norwegian Cruising Guide, Hans […]
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Read more: Q&A: How To Design A Shorefast SystemHow to build and use a shorefast system for boats.
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Read more: Q&A: Crossing The Atlantic In A 32-foot BoatQuestion: I received a Cris Craft 32′ cruiser/racer as a gift. This is my first boat and I’d like to sail it to France from NYC. I’m preparing it for solo sailing and would like your opinion on it’s survivability. A Sparkman& Stephens design…it has a fin keel and a lovely interior. It has been […]
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Read more: Test Sail On A Boréal 44Colin answers the most important question: how does she sail?
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Read more: Rudder OptionsOne of the biggest challenges with lifting keel boats is how to design a rudder for them that really works? Jean-François Eeman, one of the partners at Boréal, shares their approach to this tricky problem.
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Read more: The Real Story On The MacGregor 65[We just got a great comment by Lawrence Trimingham from Bermuda, on our post on a late season crossing in a MacGregor 65, that we thought was so interesting that we are putting it up as a post. Lawrence has literally lived with the boat “man and boy” since his father bought Bermudian Escape 20 […]
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Read more: Boréal 44 DesignColin moves on to examine the boat in detail with many photographs.
