Ocean Navigator - January/February 2024

ICOM/Ocean Navigator Photo Contest winners

Thanks to everyone who submitted photos to the ICOM/ON photo contest. We received great images from our readers that reflected all areas of voyaging. On these pages are the images that won their photographers the ICOM handheld radios. First place and winner of an ICOM IC-M94D goes to Jennifer Massaro who sent in a photo of her son Dante Massaro sailing the family boat Benevento, a Pacific Seacraft 40, after handling the notorious potato patch while headed inbound to San Francisco Bay. Dante is an old hand at ocean sailing, having sailed from San Francisco to Europe when he was…

Survey into gender design in sailing

The World Sailing Trust has launched a survey to gather baseline data on whether the design of sailing equipment is affecting the development of greater gender diversity. This new survey, launched in early October 2023, follows up on findings from its Strategic Review of Women in Sailing published in 2019. While opinions differ among sailors about how women are treated in the sport and whether that treatment needs changing, there’s no doubt from the news that they are participating in and winning events. World Sailing Trust was created in 2018 as a global charity to support sailing, especially through increased…

150th edition of The Little Yellow Book

With the 2024 edition, Eldridge Tide and Pilot Book turns 150 years old. Known informally by East Coast sailors as “The Little Yellow Book,” Eldridge is a jam-packed compendium of 275-plus pages of mostly useful stuff. In an era when even NOAA is phasing out printed nautical publications in favor of apps, Eldridge’s continued existence seems strange. But when my husband Tom and I sailed our Sabre 30, Ora Kali, from New Jersey to Maine one of the first things I did was buy the latest Eldridge. To successfully navigate up the East Coast would require not just up-to-date nautical…

Notable New Titles: Chanties: An American Dream

Chanties: An American Dream by Eric Weiskott Bottlecap Press $10 I’ll admit it’s a stretch for me to review a book of poetry for Ocean Navigator. I am usually found writing the celestial navigation problems appearing at the back of the magazine. But when this small book (technically this type of book is called a chapbook, derived from the word chapman, the name given to itinerant dealers, who sold such books) of poems appeared in the mail, I wanted to share it with my fellow mariners. Chanties: An American Dream is a collection that I would recommend for an afternoon…

Electronic Navigational Charts explained

As has been long reported by this magazine and others, NOAA’s on-going policy is to eliminate traditional paper charts. At the end of 2024, NOAA will no longer update traditional paper chart products. A type of electronic chart c alled the Electronic Navigational Chart (ENC) will be the only official chart product available to recreational mariners. To buffer the transition to all-electronic charts, NOAA has created a new online app called NOAA Custom Charts (NCC) that mariners can use to make a backup paper chart of their own design based on the ENC. The app creates a PDF, which users…

Away Garcia Exploration 45

Many voyagers are sure that if they’re going to take on the Northwest Passage through Arctic Canada, they want to own a steel or aluminum boat. The malleable nature of metal, bending not shattering on impact, makes these materials appealing (see our article on steel boats in this issue). An aluminum hull was important for voyager and author Jimmy Cornell, for example, who helped design the aluminum-hulled Garcia Exploration 45 for his 2015 NW Passage voyage. When Australian voyagers Fiona Muir and Adrian Foote were looking for a new boat for voyaging, a major reason they chose a Garcia 45…

Cruising power

While there has never been a perfect boat, a few have come pretty close, and the Nordhavn 57 is one such vessel. With 40 hulls delivered, the 57 was retired and production was halted in 2006. During the summer of 2004, I had the opportunity to put the 35th 57 through her paces. Named Atlantic Escort, we led an 18-yacht fleet consisting of 15 Nordhavns and three other capable trawlers across the Atlantic Ocean from Ft. Lauderdale via Bermuda, the Azores and into Gibraltar. The fleet was composed of Nordhavns as small as the N40 Uno Mas to Crosser, a…

West Penobscot Bay coastal passage in thick fog

Fog on the Maine coast is difficult to forecast accurately. If it descends mid-voyage you deal with it; fog that comes while still in harbor throws sailing plans into uncertainty. Early summer this year was foggy and rainy, but by the time we left for our three-week cruise on our Sabre 30, Ora Kali, the weather was warm and clear. At the end of August we reached our furthest destination west at Tenants Harbor and were departing east for home on Frenchman Bay. The decision to do so was given urgency because I wanted to get Ora Kali out of…

Out of Sight

My young sons and I were about to sail my 50-foot yawl, Empiricus, from Ketchikan to Seward, Alaska. Moving back to my hometown of Seward from my current home in the southeast part of the state with my boat would mean crossing the Gulf of Alaska. “It’s just wind and waves out there, boys,” I assured my sons: Isaac, 10 and Steven, six. “We just have to keep the ocean out of the boat and stay onboard. We’ll be fine.” This would be my first time out of sight of land. Beyond the ripping tidal currents of the inside waters…

Checking every bolt

It was May when my wife Ellen gave me the go ahead to cross the Atlantic. In June, four short months away, my cousin Marta Downing and I would depart New England for Ireland in Far and Away, Ellen’s Cabo Rico 34. Preparing the yacht for a transatlantic passage drew on my experience at sea (many years of coastal cruising and blue water, but no passage longer than 1,200 miles), and also on guidance from authors and sailors Eric Hiscock, Hal Roth, Bob Griffith, Don Street and many others. This received wisdom, absorbed since childhood, allowed me to do a…