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Read more: Newfoundland—Family, Fog and BakeapplesBakeapples and fog…Newfoundland shows its true colours!
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Read more: Wharf HockeyIce hockey, street hockey, field hockey…wharf hockey?
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Read more: One Tough Old Aluminum BoatIt is amazing how often people look surprised, and even mildly alarmed, when I tell them that we own an aluminum boat. The next tentative question(s) is almost always about electrolysis and the general longevity of the material.
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Read more: When Injury StrikesOkay, 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.
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Read more: Charleston With Travel Photography TipsNow we are going to get to the hard stuff, the stuff we all have to work at for our entire photographing lives: composition and lighting. Hard yes, but John has made it more interesting and fun by using photographs in a slideshow to illustrate each tip.
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Read more: Engineers Are CoolMy father was an engineer and I like to think that if I was not dyslexic, with the resulting poor academic record at school, I would be one too. In any event, I ended up being a technician (mainframe computer), which meant that I got to hang out with a lot of engineers, thereby developing […]
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Read more: Briefing New Crew
Once your crew are safely aboard it’s time to brief them on the boat and life on board—safety, watchkeeping, and domestic life. Colin discusses the pre-departure briefing they use on “Pèlerin”.
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Read more: Dubarry Boots—Arctic Voyage Gear TestIn 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.
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Read more: Storm MooringI have written in the past about our distrust of moorings and how we generally prefer to be on our own anchor when the winds blow hard. However, there is one exception to that rule: our own mooring at our Base Camp.
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Read more: Preparing For New CrewWelcoming friends or family to join you on a long leg is something we all look forward to, but in order to make sure that the reality matches the expectation, it pays to plan ahead, and a briefing document can help to make sure everyone is on the same page.
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Read more: Reliability And QualityThere is a saying that “cruising is the process of working on your boat in exotic places” and it’s distressingly true. Even buying a brand new boat does not fix the problem, let alone fixing up an old one. But I don’t believe it must be that way. Let’s look at how the Adventure 40 will be better than that.
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Read more: Beauty and The Beast12 Meter Gleam, 1937
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Read more: Introduction to Getting Along With Your Crew
Extra crew can lighten the physical load of passagemaking and bring fun and light when it’s needed. But this kind of harmony doesn’t happen by accident. Colin shares his techniques for managing crew in this Online Book.
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Read more: Laziness Never Goes UnpunishedLaziness is the single biggest enemy of good seamanship. Here’s an example of when I was lazy…and paid the price. But really, I got off light, it could have been a lot worse.
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Read more: There Be Adventurers
I recently wrote a post on spreading happiness, inspired by Tassio and Claudia’s website. Well, their website inspired me in another way, as well.
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Read more: Emergency Tillers—Easier Said Than DoneAt the beginning of each working season we used to take our old boat out on a really breezy day and push the boat hard to check that everything was in good working order. Whilst we had run through our winter maintenance schedule with great care, winter always seemed to find a chink in our […]
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Read more: Friday 13th and The Importance of Testing Engines
Sailors can be a superstitious lot, and the idea of setting sail on Friday 13th has always alarmed mariners. But as the latest one came around we weren’t worried. As we were simply minding our own business alongside a pontoon, and planning on going nowhere we were in a risk-free place – or so we […]
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Read more: Superstitious…Me?I’m an electronics technician by trade and a believer in logic and scientific method. When I ran my businesses I was an analytical manager delving into the numbers as a foundation for my decisions. And when voyaging, I’m a compulsive list keeper, boat preparer and weather analyzer. Yes, I’m the hard cold facts guy. Well…except […]
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Read more: You Have To Be Happy To Spread HappinessOver the years we’ve been voyaging, we’ve occasionally heard from people who accuse cruisers of being parasites—wandering the globe without giving back. And, yes, we’ve run across some cruisers like that. We call them “user cruisers”. They come into town, take from the generous locals (sometimes from people who have less than them), and then […]
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Read more: Arctic Gear Test—RadarA reliable radar is the most important piece of electronic gear on a boat sailing in northern waters. In this chapter we discuss how our Furuno 1832 radar performed during our 10,000-mile Arctic voyage.
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Read more: Nobody’s Perfect
One of the strangest exchanges I have ever had occurred in my days as a sailing instructor. My manager sidled up to me one day and asked, “Do you demonstrate all of the manoeuvres to your students in advance, before asking them to do it?”. Thinking this might be some kind of trick question, I […]
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Read more: Pitfalls to Avoid When Buying a New Voyaging BoatWhat about buying a brand new boat? That should be great if you have the money, right? Yes, but with caveats. And if you think that buying a brand new boat will enable you to just jump aboard and go voyaging, this sobering story will show another far more likely scenario and highlight the traps to avoid in buying a new boat.
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Read more: The Three Most Dangerous Words In Boat MaintenanceWe joined our friends Dave and Shelly, who live and voyage on their beautiful, and beautifully maintained, Able Apogee 50, Cadence, for dinner the other night.
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Read more: The Bug Is Taking Over
Following our arrival in the Canary Islands last autumn we watched an endless stream of yachts line up at the pontoon alongside the boatyard, all of them with fuel contamination problems. In my experience, it’s usual to find that in cases like this the outbreak can be isolated to one or two suppliers who have […]
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Read more: A Well-Deserved MedalLast spring I wrote a post about our friend Alasdair, who at the time was planning a trip on his 26-foot Vertue sloop Sumara to Jan Mayen to climb Beerenberg. Well, he and his crew, along with another small sailboat and crew, pulled off the trip with aplomb!
