Ocean Voyaging - Ocean Navigator

16 Apr

Ocean NavigatorOcean VoyagingDacron, North Sails, Ocean Voyager issue, ocean voyaging, sails, voyaging, voyaging sails

Our new Ocean Voyager 2021 annual issue has an informative article by Jayme Okma Lee for which she interviewed sailors on three voyaging boats about the decisions they made in replacing their cruising sails. One of the sailors interviewed was the cruising instructor and author John Kretschmer, who has long worked with Peter Grimm at North Sails in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., for sails on his and his wife Tadji's Kaufman 47, Quetzal. During a recent phone conversation, Grimm mentioned to me that North Sails — well known for its high tech racing products, its sails were used by various boats in the recent…

16 Apr

Yes, you can still get Dacron

Ocean NavigatorOcean VoyagingDacron, North Sails, Ocean Voyager issue, ocean voyaging, sails, voyaging, voyaging sails

Our new Ocean Voyager 2021 annual issue has an informative article by Jayme Okma Lee for which she interviewed sailors on three voyaging boats about the decisions they made in replacing their cruising sails. One of the sailors interviewed was the cruising instructor and author John Kretschmer, who has long worked with Peter Grimm at North Sails in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., for sails on his and his wife Tadji's Kaufman 47, Quetzal. During a recent phone conversation, Grimm mentioned to me that North Sails — well known for its high tech racing products, its sails were used by various boats in the recent…

06 Apr

Ocean NavigatorOcean Voyagingoverhaul, rebuilds, U.S. Navy, USN, USS Constitution, Vice President, wooden boats

Wooden boat owners know that wood is a beautiful material, but unlike fiberglass or carbon fiber, wood can fall prey to rot. And so wooden vessels can require rebuilding at times. A famous example of this is the USN's wooden frigate USS Constitution which is the U. S. Navy's oldest commissioned ship and which, at 224 years old, undergoes regular rebuilds. And it turns out that some of the wood from rebuilds in 2007 and 2017 was still usable and so the navy SeaBees built a desk from it for the use of the sitting Vice President. According to Paul…

30 Mar

Capt. Wayne CanningNewsletter, Ocean Voyaging, Offshore Sailing, Seamanship & Navigation

After a second reef is tied in to a yacht's mainsail, the next step in sail reduction is a storm trysail. Many offshore sailors feel that a triple-reefed main is not effective, inducing too much distortion and stress to the sail and not providing sufficient support to the boom. While not all modern yachts carry a storm trysail, those undertaking ocean passages should have one in their inventory. In truly heavy weather conditions, a storm trysail not only offers an opportunity to fly a still smaller sail but it also will help reduce unnecessary wear and tear on the vessel's mainsail which has already been buffeted and battered enough withstanding the wind and stresses of…

12 Mar

Ocean NavigatorOcean Voyaging, UncategorizedAIS, electronic charts, Furuno, GPS, marine electronics, MFD, multifunction display, PBG, personal bathymetric generator, radar

Is there a piece of marine electronics that does so much yet has such a non-descript name? The multifunction display, usually dryly shortened to simply "MFD," is a powerhouse that can combine electronic charts, AIS, radar, GPS, voyage planning, tide data, performance instrument display, depth sounder display, engine gauge displays and a lot more. The MFD is more of a "Houston mission control" on your boat than some anonymous three-letter acronym, which is usually better suited to black box units that reside unseen behind a bulkhead. An example of the kind of power features available to MFDs was recently announced…

10 Mar

Ocean NavigatorOcean Voyaging, Uncategorizedbermuda, weather

For East Coast voyagers, Bermuda is an attractive option for an offshore passage. Either as a destination or a stopping point before proceeding south to the Bahamas and the Caribbean or east to the Azores and the Med. There's also the offshore races from the East Coast: Newport/Bermuda, Marion/Bermuda, Annapolis/Bermua and others. As such a popular destination, the weather surrounding Bermuda is naturally of interest to voyagers. And according to a recent study, those waters are experiencing increasingly stormy weather during the last 60 years. According to the study, the researchers noted "...a statistically significant increase (r = 0.94, p…