Barbara and Jim Cole started sailing in Utah’s Great Salt Lake on a 16-foot Hobie Cat. A vacation trip to the Sea of Cortez with the Hobie Cat brought out yearnings for bigger experiences. They bought a 23-foot Hunter and kept it in a marina on Antelope Island in the middle of Great Salt Lake. They moved to Seattle and the next year was dedicated to a search for a suitable blue water boat. After classes, boat shows, and crawling through a broad spectrum of boats, they bought a Hallberg Rassy 36 in 1999. After sailing and exploring the Puget…

Once in a great while, we find ourselves trying to anchor under the most challenging of circumstances. Perhaps you have tried dropping the hook in soft sand on the west side of the Gulf of Suez during a sustained 50-knot gale. Or audibly detected the anchor going “clunk” on the flat rock “anchorage,” for lack of a better word, at Isla Santa Cruz in the Galapagos. [gtx_gallery] While those are definitely close competitors, one very tough situation is anchoring bow to the swell with the wind blowing at a right angle across the deck. This unusual situation can occur in…

When Jon and I dropped the hook in El Nido, Palawan, in March 2020 under the new pandemic lockdown rules of the Philippines, we took a deep breath. We’d been voyagers for more than 25 years. Voyaging, to us, has always meant freedom, adventure, the call of the open sea, and the allure of new lands and new cultures. It meant being part of a community of like-minded sailors. We had no goal to circumnavigate, no itinerary other than what our hearts sought and the weather permitted.   And then the pandemic hit. Our voyaging ended. Or did it? Locked down…

Traveling by boat to multiple foreign countries on a continent other than where one lives has its challenges. Being American and “living” in Europe aboard our Nordhavn 64 Gratitude for more than a year now, we have been delighted by the new discoveries and learning opportunities offered along the way. Some of those opportunities, however, we could have done without, and one such learning experience, while a hassle, could have been far more costly in terms of time, money, and destinations unseen if not for the practiced help of a yacht agent. [gtx_gallery] Our first encounter with a yacht agent…