Health/Comfort

A little tip that can make a big positive change to your quality of life when voyaging in cold climates.

Phyllis shares tips about the gear we use that makes hiking such an enjoyable activity for us, from woodland trails in Nova Scotia to wilderness scrambles in Greenland to non-technical (small) mountain climbs in Norway.

A while ago I wrote about how we keep our hands warm when sailing and a number of commentors mentioned they really like Sealskinz gloves. Well, when something gets that much good press, who are we to argue? So we went ahead and bought ourselves a pair of Chillblocker Sealskinz gloves. And yes, you all [...]

Okay, you have your medical kit, but what about medical insurance? Colin discusses options in light of an injury he suffered when working on their boat.

In our Warm Feet, Please post of several years ago, we mentioned that we had purchased Dubarry Ultima boots and, after several years, were impressed. At that time, however, we weren’t ready to commit to anything until we had given them a thorough testing. Well, we’ve used them now for 5 years and we’re still in love [...]

Question [edited for brevity]: I did a quick search on your site, but didn’t find anything discussing foul weather gear. I’ve researched all lines and all levels of gear—West Marine, Gill, Henri Lloyd. I’d like to think this stuff may last me 10 to 15 years with proper care and avoiding snags anywhere on the [...]

John and I have been ardent fans of Maui Jim sunglasses for many years and many pairs. Their glasses get ever lighter in weight and more comfortable and their lenses get ever better at cutting glare on the water (we prefer their super-thin polarized glass lenses in gray). However, John’s last pair had a problem: [...]

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 [...]

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. Before I get into that, though, I have [...]

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 the wind [...]

It’s a funny thing, sleep, isn’t it—too much of it can make us sluggish, not enough and we can come close to collapse. Preparing for a passage, it’s vital to get enough rest in advance, but we find that’s one of the most difficult things to achieve. Resting well in the days before departure should [...]

One of the most important factors in making safe seamanlike passages is getting as much rest as possible. And one of the most important factors in getting enough rest is having a proper seaberth. Though it took several iterations over a number of years, we think we now have the perfect seaberth on Morgan’s Cloud: [...]

A 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. I guess it makes sense that keeping hands warm is a more difficult task than keeping feet warm, [...]

I don’t know about the rest of you, but figuring out how to get bedding to fit the odd size and shape of boat bunks has been an ongoing battle for me. Failure: I tried adapting king-size sheets by adding an extra bit to the bottom (our bunk is king width at the top, narrower [...]