Ocean Voyaging - Ocean Navigator

Mona Passage A rough sail through a treacherous passage

It was dark with a dimensionless blackness that comes at sea on a starless, humid night. Oddly Enough’s stern faced swells and rising wind. We’d been meeting them head-on an hour earlier when we left the breakwater that sheltered the harbor at Samana on the east side of the Dominican Republic. They had been the cause of our turning back instead of plowing eastward to the Mona Passage. We couldn’t see, just feel them. The blanket of black meant nothing reflected back at us, and like most of the islands we had visited, navigational marks were far apart and their…

Into The Storm

Tropical storm Ana, the first named storm of the season, developed early and directly in the path of our Nordhavn 52 trawler Dirona during a May North Atlantic crossing from Dublin via the Azores to Charleston, South Carolina. This was our third Atlantic crossing while voyaging around the world and, knowing that the North Atlantic can be difficult, we had plotted a route for the best weather and were comfortably ahead of the hurricane season. Yet a named storm was lying in wait as we proceeded. Route planning In determining the route for our spring passage from Ireland to the US east…

Out of Sight

My young sons and I were about to sail my 50-foot yawl, Empiricus, from Ketchikan to Seward, Alaska. Moving back to my hometown of Seward from my current home in the southeast part of the state with my boat would mean crossing the Gulf of Alaska. “It’s just wind and waves out there, boys,” I assured my sons: Isaac, 10 and Steven, six. “We just have to keep the ocean out of the boat and stay onboard. We’ll be fine.” This would be my first time out of sight of land. Beyond the ripping tidal currents of the inside waters…

Landfall on Zanzibar

Tanzania, if people are aware of it at all, evokes images of safaris on the vast African plains or perhaps the challenge of climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro with its famous snow-capped peak. Prior to the global pandemic, we had no plans to go there on Perry our Privilege 482 catamaran. Not only had we already visited more than a decade before, it sits in a sort of no-man’s land for global cruisers. It’s not on a direct route to the Red Sea from Asia and doesn’t beckon to south-bound Indian Ocean cruisers like Madagascar does. To make our way back to…

Getting the Picture

For sailors who plan to cruise overseas (including the Caribbean), using satellite imagery is an important subject. Based on our 20 years of experience cruising in the Caribbean, across the Pacific and all over Southeast Asia, we know that commercial charting accuracy away from the U.S. and Europe is not nearly as accurate and detailed as it is in North America. Exclusive use of a chart plotter even with expensive commercial charts can be a big problem if, like many cruisers, you use it to cruise in remote areas. The main issue is that these charts, though loaded with navigation…

Winward Passage By the Stars

The 238-nautical mile voyage from Matthew Town, Bahamas, to Port Antonio, Jamaica, was a navigationally interesting one. Our route transited the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti close to the Cuba side where a traffic separation scheme is in place. Though relatively short, the dogleg path made things slightly more challenging than our previous open water crossings with no obstructions. It also provided some coastal navigating opportunities. Additionally, our path passed about eight nautical miles from dangerous reefs near Jamaica. One of those reefs is only 16 feet deep with large breaking swell and an exposed shipwreck. My wife Monika…

From Bay to Sound

My husband and I bought Ora Kali, a Sabre 30, in June and just a month later left New Jersey to take her to Maine. We had delivered less prepared boats than Ora Kali; the owner was planning to slip her himself when we made the deal. But the marina was up a shallow tidal creek where we couldn’t do any preparation. So our first foray was the day we dropped the mooring lines and negotiated two opening bridges to get into Raritan Bay. That short sail showed we were not ready to go offshore. We needed shakedown time which…

Inside Passage

Navigating the waters of the notorious Inside Passage, stretching between the San Juan Islands in northwest Washington State past Vancouver Island and on up to Alaska, is like finding your way through a tricky and dangerous labyrinth. Not for the weak of heart, you will encounter confusing tidal rapids that can run as strong as 12 to 16 knots replete with whirlpools that compete with those Odysseus faced in the Straits of Messina. The big difference is that the waters of the Inside Passage will also bless you with daily vistas of snow-capped mountain peaks on both the Vancouver Island…

The Whale’s Way

We had tacked past the mighty seamark that is Barra Head and out past St Kilda, carrying a reduced sail plan into the wide Atlantic on our passage from Oban in Scotland to Reykjavik in Iceland aboard the Clipper 68 CV6, operated by Skirr Adventures, based in the UK. We were accompanied by a second Skirr Adventures boat CV11. The rising sun was scraping filigree from the wavetops and burnishing the clouds’ undersides. The watch was alert on these night-blue ocean swells. Then — a blowspout. Only one, and it was huge. Then all suggestions of its existence disappeared. ‘Did…

Charmed by Japan

Like many cruisers hailing from ports on the west coast of North America, we’ve always had Japan on our minds as a natural leg of a Pacific voyage. We weren’t sure about an extended cruise, however. We had the impression that sailing in Japan was daunting — plagued by typhoons, currents, fog, fishing gear, forbidden ports, and impossible regulations. We had understood it was perhaps better visited by air and land than explored by sailboat. The beauty of the culture and country aside, Japan is an undeniably convenient stepping-stone for completing a North Pacific loop. Because of prevailing winds and…