Jon and Megan Schwartz, along with their sons, Ronan, 16, and Daxton, 14, have been cruising full time aboard their Boreal 47, Zephyros, an aluminum expedition monohull, since 2017. Since picking up the boat at the factory in northern France, they have sailed 40,000 NM together. Driven by a desire to explore the world and experience its disappearing wilds, they have often pursued places less traveled. They started in northern France, the UK, Atlantic Spain and Portugal before heading into the Mediterranean for a season.  The Paxtons then crossed the Atlantic Ocean from late 2018 to early 2019. They were…

Life at sea is lived 24 hours a day, whether you are a cruising single-hander or a navy destroyer sailor. By this I mean there’s no period in which humans can ignore input from the outside world and just sleep.  How do we balance the fundamental need for sleep with the requirement to be vigilant, and what are the consequences of being unbalanced? There’s surprisingly little research on those who live and work at sea, but studies of the effects of sleep deprivation by sleep labs on land are useful. In an effort to find balance, vessels set up watch…

At the end of the last century, Dick and Gail Barnes disengaged from the workforce and community volunteer life and began consulting while waiting for the commissioning of a new Nordhavn 50 trawler-style motor vessel. Dick was the President of a natural gas distribution company and a pipeline transmission company. When home in Anchorage, Gail remains active as a volunteer at the Alaska Native Medical Center. Soon after moving from San Diego to Anchorage in 1966 they purchased an aluminum skiff; in 1971 they built a 19-foot rough-water river boat, and in 1991 bought a 28-foot Sea Sport cabin cruiser.…

Getting marine insurance in the continental US and Canada is simple enough. Most homeowners can add a boat to their home insurance policy. Geico, Progressive and other major retail insurance companies offer marine insurance, but they are typically limited to boats less than 50 feet worth less than $2.5 million. Even with this limitation the major carrier approach sounds like it might work for Robin and Dale, a couple in their mid-thirties living in Annapolis, Md. They just bought a well-equipped 1999 Island Packet 35 for $150,000. The boat is set up for offshore voyaging, with a watermaker, generator, galvanic…

Have you ever been in an uncomfortable at-anchor situation? A fisherman friend told me once that anchoring is about 70 percent of boating. Maybe, for some people, but I see a lot of folks sweating it out, and a lot of boats bumping and/or crashing into each other. How could this be? Little or no experience - the test first and the lesson afterwards and we live and learn. Here are some thoughts on anchoring that voyagers can take to heart. Once while anchored on a voyage, I  had to confront just such an unexpected anchoring situation. My mariner’s eye…