Articles - Ocean Navigator

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…

Juggling all the variables

Certain harbors are gathering places for sailors headed offshore. Back in the good old days I met a lot of fellow cruisers while arguing about the weather as we holed up waiting for a weather window to jump offshore. The sources of information were few — pretty much everyone shared the same data. Here in the USA the main sources were NOAA Coastal, Offshore, and High Seas text forecasts, gathered by weather fax, VHF and SSB radio. Sometimes we downloaded small-scale (large area) weather maps that gave us very general information on huge areas of ocean. And sometimes we just…

Seeing the whole weather picture

The preceding article provides detailed information about many apps for smartphones, tablets and laptops to help ocean voyagers with passage planning. These apps bring the output of mathematical models of the atmosphere to mariners in a useful, widely used format. Since mathematical models are the core of these apps, it is worth discussing the general theory behind them. The forces that dictate atmospheric motion in three dimensions depend on differing amounts of incoming solar radiation around the globe, the differing nature of the earth’s surface, the rotation of the earth, the temperature and density of air, the changing amounts of…

Schooner Coronet around the world

In the 1880s Rufus T. Bush was at the top of his game. Standard Oil had purchased his oil refining business and Bush now had a great deal of money and was retired. He had previously owned a steam yacht but now he wanted a schooner. One of the very best wooden boat builders in New York City was the C & R Poillon shipyard, located in Brooklyn at the end of Bridge Street, close to where the Manhattan Bridge is today. Brothers Cornelius and Richard Poillon were renowned for building fast and able Sandy Hook pilot boats and well-appointed…

Schooner Coronet around the world – Answer

Schooner Coronet around the world - Answer A. 14:14:46 GMT B. Ho is 52° 14.0’ C. Estimated position is S 53° 11’ by W 65° 28’

Voyagers effort to aid Vanuatu

A group of voyagers organized by liveaboard Luc Callebaut — who, along with his wife Jackie was interviewed in ON’s 2022 Ocean Voyager annual issue — is pitching in to assist the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu after it recently suffered two tropical cyclones — Cyclone Judy and Cyclone Kevin — and also a magnitude 6.5 and a magnitude 5.4 earthquake. The assistance effort is being aided by such groups as the Seven Seas Cruising Association; the Grand Large Yachting World Odyssey 500; Byond Disaster Relief NZ; Bay of Islands Marina, Port Opua, New Zealand; and Noonsite.com. Callebaut wrote:…

NOAA updates custom chart site

NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey has been on a long program to digitize and customize the process of distributing nautical charts to users. The latest step in that process is an updated custom chart site with the release of NOAA Custom Chart version 2.0 (devgis.charttools.noaa.gov). NOAA is calling this “a dynamic map application.” It enables users to create their paper and PDF nautical charts that are derived from the official NOAA electronic chart the NOAA ENC. Users can create nautical charts with customized scale and extent, which can then be downloaded as PDF files. The data on the chart is…

Citizen science for voyagers

Cruising sailors leaving home often want to be useful in places they visit along the way. This can take the form of applying skills from their lives on land, like teaching or carpentry, or distributing supplies to distant places. But another way to contribute to the greater good is through citizen science. Citizen science happens when the public voluntarily helps conduct scientific research. Citizen scientists may collect data, analyze results, and even design experiments but the specific problem and the tools to address it are set up by professional scientists. Employing volunteers can broaden the geographic reach of a research…

Transpac Race gearing up

More than 60 boats have been entered in the 2023 Transpac race from Cabrillo Beach, Cali. to Honolulu (Ocean Navigator is a Transpac Race co-sponsor). The pace quickens now for the competitors and the race committee as the first start on June 27 approaches. Before the start there will be a skipper’s meeting and an aloha send-off party on June 24 on board the former US Navy battleship USS Iowa, which is docked in Los Angeles as a museum ship. There will be three starts: Tuesday, July 27 for 17 boats (some boats slated for this start are provisional as…

Notable New Titles: All Hands on Deck: A Modern-Day High Seas Adventure to the Far Side of the World

All Hands on Deck: A Modern-Day High Seas Adventure to the Far Side of the World by Will Sofrin Abrams Press—253 pages: $28 Will Sofrin, sailor and shipwright, was a man in a hurry. “The clock was ticking,” he writes. He and the men and women he sailed with had cleared out of Newport on what would be a 36-day, 6,000-mile voyage to California because a production company was waiting to make a movie. The year: 2002. Sofrin had signed as deckhand on Rose, a replica of an early 19th-century British frigate. The film would be called Master and Commander:…