Articles - Ocean Navigator

A fall offshore voyage to Bermuda

We’re heading south to spend the winter in the Caribbean. The Plan I’d recently retired and was planning to spend the entire winter in the eastern Caribbean. While I already had made the offshore passage from New England to the islands of the Caribbean a dozen times via Bermuda, this voyage would be special. The family was coming along. Julie and our two kids were no strangers to boats. Julie had been sailing with me in Maine since before the kids were born. She and the kids later joined me one winter in the Caribbean, but they’d yet to make…

Networking: a tale of two technologies

As we cross oceans on our vessels, we spend a great deal of time studying our chartplotter, autopilot, depth sounder, radar, AIS transponder, knot meter, wind-speed indicator and so on while also tending to the deck winches just to squeeze that extra half knot of speed out of our sails. That’s a lot of information to be churning in our heads as we constantly make decisions and course corrections on the path to our next landfall. Over the last 20 years or so, manufacturers of navigation and communication gear for pleasure craft have recognized the need to consolidate these myriad…

Belaying Pins on a Modern Sailboat

I started sailing as a boy on my father’s heavy, wooden ketch, the Windjob, on Puget Sound. Then as a young man, I began to learn about real seamanship as crew on Jack Carstarphen’s 74-foot, gaff-headed ketch Maverick in the Caribbean. Both ships had plenty of control lines, especially Maverick, and both had pin rails at the base of the mainmast and shroud-mounted pin rails at the mizzen shrouds. There were always plenty of belaying pins on which to tie the sail control lines, and it was easy to attach each line onto the proper pin at the mast because…

Captain Nat: Part 2 – Answer

1. HO is 18°48.2’. 2. LHA is 285°. 3. Intercept is 8.8. nm Away at 074°. 4. Estimated position is 15° 25’ N by 52° 08’ W.

Captain Nat: Part 2

This is the second part of our story about Captain Nat Palmer. The return passage from China to New York was very slow, and Capt. Palmer, frustrated with the progress, took to carving a design from a block of wood combing a sharp, concave bow with a fuller, flat-bottomed hull. A fellow passenger was William Low, one of the family that ran the shipping business A. A. Low & Bros., a highly successful firm in New York. Low was very impressed with Captain Palmer’s design and when they arrived in New York, he brought Palmer and his new design to…

Rolex China Sea Race 2024

The final yachts of the 2024 Rolex China Sea Race arrived in Subic Bay, Philippines, in the late afternoon of April 2 with a total of 21 boats and 191 competitors from 26 British territories having taken part in the 2024 edition. It was a fierce battle between TP52 Happy Go and Standard Insurance Centennial V, but Happy Go ultimately finished the race a mere five minutes ahead of her rival, taking both Line Honours and the IRC Overall win. Chinese entry William Liu’s Seawolf claimed second IRC Overall and IRC Racer 0 second place. Skipper YY Yan said, “We…

Nigel Calder seminar in Portland, Maine, October 29/30, 2024

Electrical systems are the leading cause of problems on boats that have more than a rudimentary electrical system. Most of these problems are preventable; they arise from a failure to abide by core design and installation principles. To take a deep dive into both design and installation issues, OceanPlanet Energy (OPE), in collaboration with Ocean Navigator magazine, Professional Boatbuilder magazine and BoatHowTo.com, is sponsoring an intense, two-day seminar developed and presented by tech guru Nigel Calder, author of the best-selling Boatowner’s Mechanical and Electrical Manual. Topics include key design criteria for both DC and AC systems; how to keep batteries…

Marina Bahia Golfito

Marina Bahia Golfito on the shores of Golfo Dulce—a southern fjord considered one of the most biodiverse places on Earth—offers incomparable yachting, sportfishing and wildlife experiences that epitomize the very essence of Costa Rica. Located in one of the most vibrant destinations in Costa Rica, Golfito Bay is a “gulf within a gulf,” a pristine landscape framed by the lush mangroves of Corcovado and Piedras Blancas National Parks and home to some of the richest biodiversity in the world. This is where cruising sailors, big game anglers, eco-adventurers, boaters, surfers and outdoor lovers of all ages and interests can reconnect…

Notable New Titles

Finding Serendipity: An Adventure of Boating on North America’s Great Loop by John L. Gray JL Gray Co., 377 pages; $18.95 on Amazon John Gray’s Finding Serendipity recounts a journey on his 29-foot motor yacht, a compact Ranger Tug called Andiamo (Italian for “Let’s Go”). On a flawless February morning, the author and his wife, Laurie, set out on what boating enthusiasts describe as “looping,” a circuit beginning on Florida’s west coast. The couple then cruised north along the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway to Chesapeake Bay and New York’s Erie Canal. From there, the route crossed the Great Lakes before veering…

Boat Monitoring Systems

The more we streamline and centralize our vessels’ myriad navigation and propulsion systems in one place, either in the pilot house or in the nav station below decks, the safer crew and vessel are while underway on the water. The core of any vessel monitoring system must, of course, include today’s standard array of compass, GPS chartplotter, depth sounder, wind direction indicator and battery charge indicator. More advanced systems include engine monitoring, a radar screen and sensors for water and fuel levels. Battery Monitoring A small day-sailing vessel with an engine used only for propulsion and nav lights can be…