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Read more: Another Reason To Buy an Electric OutboardThanks to an article by Eric Klem, and to a lesser extent one of mine, we all now clearly understand how bad weight in the ends of the boat is for sailing performance. What’s this got to do with electric outboards? While thinking about a new outboard for our J/109, it just struck me that […]
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Read more: Review of Ocean Signal PLB3 Against MOB1When something new and cool is released, it’s always tempting to assume it’s better than the older simpler option, but is it?
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Read more: Weather Analysis—Part 2, StrategicWith modern weather reception and analysis tools we can plan our cruises and voyages as much as two weeks ahead. John shares how.
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Read more: Happy Holidays From Phyllis & JohnThis year our annual holiday post is all about the wonderful people…and boat, in our lives.
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Read more: How I Know Drag Is Bad On An Offshore SailboatWe just published another article on the importance of keeping drag low on our offshore sailboats. Some may wonder why we make so much of this? Here are two (of many) reasons, which got cut from the article to keep the length reasonable: #1 Fixed Props Suck Back when I had my Fastnet 45 I […]
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Read more: 12 Tips To Avoid Ruining Our Easily Driven SailboatWe bought a lovely easily driven offshore cruising sailboat, but it’s all too easy to screw her up if we don’t heed these tips.
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Read more: Four Winter Layup ToolsI don’t think any boat owner would argue with the statement: Moisture is the enemy of boat reliability and gear longevity. And that goes double when the boat is laid up over the winter. The above photo shows four useful tools in the battle against damp. Starting from the left: Davis Air-Dryr 1000 Davis call […]
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Read more: Weather Analysis—Part 1, TacticalMost discussions about weather reception and analysis in the cruising community end up focused on the tools and technology. But that’s not what matters. In fact, planning fun and safe cruises is all about how we USE the tools and THINK about weather. That’s just what this chapter, based on some 25 years of real cruising experience, is about.
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Read more: Cool Boat—Dragonfly 40I don’t generally put a lot of weight on magazine Boat Of the Year competitions, but I think Cruising World got it right picking the Dragonfly 40. I haven’t seen a 40, but I have drooled over the web site pages and videos and I was very impressed with the Dragonfly 28 when I was […]
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Read more: Why Cheap Boats Are Not InexpensiveAn irrational drop in price makes a boat cheaper. A rational drop in price makes it more expensive. Originally Gautam Baid about investments, modified for boats by me Never truer words were said. Refits almost always cost more than the purchase price of the boat, often double or more. And worse still, the money we […]
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Yes, You Can Have an Offshore Sailboat For Less Than $US100,000
33 CommentsReading Time: 10 minutesMembers
Read more: Yes, You Can Have an Offshore Sailboat For Less Than $US100,000Some years ago Colin and John explored whether or not a seamanlike offshore boat could be had for less than US$100,000. Colin and Louise have just proved we can, but there are things to know.
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Read more: Great Weather ProductThe good folks over at the Ocean Prediction Center have a feature on their weather-maps page to cycle through weather maps for the last 3, 7, or 14 days. A great way to study how systems are moving and evolving over time in the area we plan to cruise or the ocean we plan to […]
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Read more: PredictWind Unlimited With GO! Exec Better Than I ThoughtA few weeks ago I wrote a Tip pointing out that the “unlimited” air time package for Iridium GO! exec was not actually unlimited and therefore I recommended staying with the truly unlimited package available on the original Iridium GO!. I have now dug into this in a series of emails with Craig and Matt […]
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Read more: Beware AI-Generated Weather MapsI have repeatedly recommended looking at forecaster-generated weather maps, as well as GRIBs, to get an overall understanding of how weather systems, and particularly fronts, which are not drawn on GRIBs, are developing. But wait, lately some of the GRIB-viewing tools have added AI-generated fronts. So can we now not bother to go through the […]
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Read more: Spade Anchor Failure, Update and SummaryA follow-up, with some significant changes, to our article on a failed Spade anchor.
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Read more: Beware Lithium Battery SalesIn the last few weeks I have been getting a series of emails from Battle Borne aggressively promoting sale pricing on their lithium batteries, see the above. As far as I can see, these are batteries that don’t have any way to communicate with external charging sources or even a way to inform you that […]
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Read more: Life-Threatening Seasickness?I was very sad to read of the recent death of a crew member on the Salty Dog Rally. According to this article by Don Street, the cause may have been, at least partly, dehydration from seasickness. And Don suggests how that could possibly have been avoided: a seasickness medication delivered by suppository. Based on […]
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Read more: Wind Generators Can Be DangerousA few weeks ago I wrote an article on renewables in which I opined that the days of wind generators are, for most cruising usage profiles, over. Too much windage, too much noise, in return for less generated electricity, particularly when it matters, than many people believe. The interesting thing is I got surprising little […]
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Read more: Weather Analysis—Hardware and SoftwareWhich hardware and software should we use for weather downloading and analysis? Lots of good stuff out there. Here’s how to choose.
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Read more: Bilge Alarms And MonitoringVery few boats have a good automated bilge pump and flooding alarm system. Let’s fix that.
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Read more: Kilowatts and HorsepowerI’m as concerned about climate change as anyone, and maybe more than most, but obfuscation and pretengineering does not help us get to a sustainable future. A good example is the way that electric-drive vendors use horsepower when talking about the diesel engine they want to replace and kilowatts when talking about their offerings. You […]
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Read more: Bent Spade Anchor AnalysisWhen an anchor many of us have come to trust over two decades fails catastrophically, it’s time to think about why and what we can learn.
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Read more: Cool MotorboatA few years ago I got interested in efficient motorboats and wrote several articles on the subject. At the time there were almost none around, with the exception of the FPBs from our friends Steve and Linda Dashew that cost millions, and a first try from a budding designer in New Zealand that still cost […]
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Read more: 9 Tips to Assess Weather Forecast AccuracyIt’s comforting to believe that weather forecasts are always right, but we all know that’s not true. Here’s how to assess the chances that a given forecast will be wrong in a bad way.
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Read more: An Even Better Alternator Regulator?There has been a lot of excitement recently about the release of a new alternator regulator that takes direct aim at the WakeSpeed WS500‘s position as the only truly smart regulator, primarily because it measures the current (amperage) that goes into the battery and then acts on that information, rather than making a bunch of […]
