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Read more: Messing Around In Boats
Yesterday I spent a couple of hours in our neighbour’s Boston Whaler sounding out the inlet our cabin is on and then carefully positioning a plastic bottle anchored by a rock as a marker for the barge that will drop our new mooring.
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Read more: Discomfort
Discomfort is a bad word in our society. Our houses, our cars and our public buildings shelter us so totally from the environment that we rarely feel cold or hot or wet or windblown and, unless it’s a hurricane or tsunami, the weather very seldom stops us from doing what we want when we want.
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Read more: Why Go North? For The LightWhy do we keep returning to the north, you ask? For one thing, there is a quality to the light in the north that is indescribable—you have to see it to believe it!
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Read more: Champagne And Polar Bears: Romance In The ArcticApproaching the lee shore of Nordaustlandet (the uninhabited—or so we thought—icecap-domed island separated from Spitsbergen by Hinlopen Strait) in a building gale in early August of 2002, was intimidating to say the least.
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Read more: An Attainable Adventure Cruise?We spent Christmas in Nova Scotia. Phyllis’s family visited and her brother expressed interest in seeing the world record—there is some debate about this with some claiming that honor for Ungava Bay—tides in the Bay of Fundy; a great idea that spawned a car outing on a clear crisp day.
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Read more: Which Way Around Newfoundland?
Question:Based on your experience, would you do such a circumnavigation clockwise or the other way?
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Read more: It Takes Guts To Own A Wooden BoatOur neighbour here in Down East Maine, where we have been refitting Morgan’s Cloud for the last three winters, is Jeff: lobsterman, talented photographer, Persian carpet dealer and, for the last two years, wooden sailboat owner.
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Read more: Q&A: Winter Boat Storage In The North
Question: We are thinking of buying a 70′, 55 ton, steel motorsailer which we want to fix up and cruise on for 4 months of the year. We would be starting out on the east coast of the US and are contemplating going via Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Greenland to Northern Europe. We would have […]
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Read more: Q&A: Which Autopilot Drive?
Some thoughts on autopilot drive types and reliability.
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Read more: Q&A: Windvane Or Autopilot?
Do you prefer a windvane or an autopilot for longer passages?
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Read more: Autopilot Installation Problems and Lessons Learned
Lessons learned from a poorly installed autopilot, and how we fixed it.
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Read more: Q&A: Do You Carry Survival Suits?Question: Do you carry survival suits and do you do anything special for working in the dinghy? I’ve seen ice suits, and all sorts of combo work/survival suits and we are wondering if we should carry something similar for the wilder areas?
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Read more: Q&A: Rod Rigging Replacement
Question: Our Swan 51 is at Morris Yachts for a mini refit this winter and my plan, in addition to everything else, is to start to replace some of the existing rod rigging. It turns out that the rod is 24 years old. Navtec says it should be replaced every 11 years or 30,000 miles. […]
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Read more: What Happened To Teamwork?
Eleven years ago I met John and started scaling the voyaging learning curve. Since I was starting from scratch, it often seemed to me that the learning curve was vertical.
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Read more: Q&A: Newfoundland To Europe Via The Azores In JuneQuestion: We would like to seek your advice on my next summer’s trip from Newfoundland to the Azores, then on to Europe. We left our boat in Newfoundland last year and plan to leave for Europe in June to avoid the hurricane season.
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Read more: Q&A: Maine To Ireland In June
Question: I am a 46 year old professional in fairly good health and in good shape. I am wanting to reverse the steps of my great-great-grandfather, sailing from Belfast, Maine to Bantry Bay, Ireland. I plan to leave June 3rd, 2011. What is my best/safest route? What time frame should I use? I have calculated […]
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Read more: Q&A: BVI To The Chesapeake Bay In October
Question: We are bringing our Beneteau 411 from the BVI via the Bahamas to the Chesapeake Bay, leaving the end of October. The first leg of the trip, from the BVI to the Bahamas, is going to be the two of us (my husband and I). From the Bahamas to the Chesapeake Bay we will […]
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Read more: True GritI’m going to make a confession here: I think brightwork is beautiful. However, since I’m the one that ends up maintaining it—that’s because John insists I’m so much better at it than he is, which is a rotten trick and one I fall for regularly—I also believe it doesn’t belong on our boat.
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Read more: Death By A Thousand Details
Over the last 35 years of offshore boat ownership (there were dinghies before that) I have done four major refits and a complete rebuild—I’m beginning to think that this may be seriously sick behavior. But, be that as it may, at this point in the process, with the launch date looming large, we have entered […]
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Read more: McMaster-CarrDuring this last refit, we had custom wood bezels with embedded helicoils built to fit permanently around the cabin ports (we’ll discuss these further in our Refit Series). During cold weather, we screw Plexiglas covers to the bezels and voila…no condensation! However, after installing them we realized that the little chains with small bars at […]
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Read more: FearWhen people, predominately non-sailors, find out that John and I live on our sailboat and cross oceans (well, one ocean—seems we just can’t shake ourselves loose from the North Atlantic), the thing they most often ask is, “Aren’t you afraid out there?”
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Read more: There’s No Excuse For PoundingIn this chapter I have a good old rant about one of the most common and unpleasant faults of many modern designs that claim to be offshore capable. Reading this chapter could save you from buying a boat you will come to hate.
