Seamanship & Navigation - Ocean Navigator

28 Nov

It’s you, not your anchor

John J. KettlewellSeamanship & Navigationanchoring, anchors

By John Kettlewell We all have a tendency to blame the hammer when we hit our thumb with it. It's the same with anchors. You sail into a beautiful but crowded harbor, drop the hook while looking forward to celebrating with an evening cocktail, only to find the darn thing isn't holding and instead of that Marguerita you have to pull on a mucky chain. Sometimes this process is repeated several times until something goes right and you have a solid bite, or you give up and look for a mooring. Since I've been anchoring cruising boats for close to…

25 Jul

Crossing the Atlantic: left or right?

Laurie ThyrreSeamanship & Navigationpower voyaging, voyage planning, voyaging in Europe

By Laurie Thyrre We are planning to cross in 2025 aboard our Nordhavn 64 Gratitude and we need to decide whether to go left or right (from the Azores). This is the question that every voyager must ask when crossing the Atlantic from North America to Europe and it isn’t as straight forward to answer as one might expect. Due to the lovely Bermuda/Azores high pressure that dominates the North Atlantic in the month of May, most people will opt to cross eastbound at this time. Logical stops for weather or fuel are Bermuda and the Azores. But from there,…

30 May

How to get over an override

Will SofrinSeamanship & Navigation

By Will Sofrin Sailing offshore, on a coastal passage or racing, winch overrides can happen. How do you deal with them effectively? The energy on board is tense. Our rail is pressed hard down, and I am getting covered by walls of white water breaking over our deckhouse. Unfortunately, I wasn't dressed for these conditions since I thought it would be just another one of our typical Wednesday night beer can races. The race committee was usually pretty good about calling the race off if the conditions got too intense, but not tonight. "Thirty seconds!" our timekeeper shouts, who is…

25 Jan

Thinking about Right of Way

Will SofrinSeamanship & NavigationColregs, Navigat, Rules of the Road

by Will Sofrin When I first started learning how to sail as a teenager, I was given some pretty simple advice that should not be considered absolute. I was told not to worry about any power boats so long as I was under sail. Then if there was another sailboat on the water, the one on starboard tack has rights over the boat on port tack. Then of two boats on starboard tack, the leeward one has the right of way. Yes, the advice was correct, to a point, but I can think of at least a dozen situations on…

22 Nov

Flooding or ebbing?

Will SofrinSeamanship & Navigation

Sadly, I’ve recently realized that, sailing out of Los Angeles, I don’t think as much about the tide as I should. The changing of the tides has little impact on our Wednesday night races, and being tied up to a floating dock in the very sheltered Marina del Rey basin means my boat always feels to be in a safe place. There have been times when I had to be very aware of what the tide was doing, like when sailing along the southern coast of England or crossing Long Island Sound. Growing up in Connecticut, I was taught that…

28 Jul

Log books

Will SofrinCrew's Picks, Seamanship & Navigationnavigation, Seamanship, voyaging

The first thing I ordered when I purchased my boat were two log books: a general log and a maintenance log. The general log book is where I record the underway activity of my boat. A short afternoon sail will get one log entry when I return to the dock, but an extended distance sail like a race around an island may get entries every few hours. My maintenance log is where I record all maintenance and repair activity. In the front, I record chronologically the work done and the related cost. This could mean replacing a turnbuckle or having…

30 Nov

Seamanship & Navigation, November 2021

Ocean NavigatorNewsletter, Seamanship & Navigation

Stories of repairs at sea always make for fascinating reading. Not the fairly routine substitution of a spare part but rather a failure so horrendous that great ingenuity was called for to get the ship to port. You can learn a lot from these episodes; many yachts have made it safely back to land with jury-rigged masts, usually broken offshore in heavy weather. Miles and Beryl Smeeton lost their masts twice during an attempt to round Cape Horn from the Pacific in a 46-ft ketch, Tzu Hang. They made it back to Chile both times to effect repairs. The first…

05 Oct

Seamanship & Navigation, September 2021

Harry HungateSeamanship & Navigation

Buoys have been used by mariners since the 1500s to guide them been past shoals and rocks, with early buoys being no more than large pieces of timber strapped together, topped with a marker, and anchored in position. Modern buoys are brightly painted and labeled, can show a variety of light characteristics, can produce distinctive sounds. In the U.S., the Coast Guard is responsible for buoy placement and maintenance, and it uses a prescribed procedure for determining where buoys will be placed and what shape, light, sound and electronic signature they show. Buoys come in a wide range of shapes…

29 Jul

Harry HungateNewsletter, Seamanship & Navigation

Being seen is critical to being rescued. Even if you are equipped with a modern EPIRB that can get rescuers very close to your position, the rescuers still must see you to pick you up. This can be challenging when weather conditions are extreme, it’s nighttime, or if a rescue aircraft or ship has limited on-scene loiter time. A person overboard faces a rescue dilemma similar to that of a crew of a sinking boat, even if it occurs from a slow-moving vessel. At six knots a boat covers 200 yards, or 600 feet, every minute. If it takes a…

26 May

Harry HungateNewsletter, Seamanship & Navigation

Any sailor who ventures out on the ocean will very quickly find himself standing on deck with a length of line in his hand facing the need to fix, adjust, repair or lash some crucial item of equipment. No matter how much gadgetry is aboard, the harsh environment of the open ocean will soon reduce things to the lowest common denominators: a sailor, the sails and the rope. A sailor needs to be able to tie a variety of knots, perform a simple eye splice and be capable of intelligently lashing one item to another. The Ashley Book of Knots…