Ocean Navigator - January/February 2025

Flexibility Enhances Solar Panels

Gavin Johnson was walking the aisles at the Vancouver Boat show when he came across an intriguing display. The owner of Ocean Performance, a yacht refit and repair company in Victoria, B.C., stopped in the Open Waters Solar booth to take a closer look at the company’s solar panels. “We got to chatting and I think I had three projects that we were working on with other solar panel manufacturers,” said Johnson. “The thing that really stood out was that no one else was making composite laminated solar panels.” Ocean Performance was working on a cabin top for a catamaran…

New Website Provides Sea Level Data

The U.S. Interagency Task Force on Sea Level Change and the U.S. Global Change Research Program have launched the U.S. Sea Level Change website. The new platform represents the first government-based resource for coastal residents and decision-makers on sea-level rise projections. The site provides research on sea-level change with educational content on how and why ocean levels are rising its impacts and actions that can be taken. “This resource puts the latest federal science on sea-level rise at people’s fingertips and helps identify, understand and address risks,” said Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., deputy director for climate and environment at the…

PredictWind Unveils New Weather Forecasting Feature

Every potential new cruising destination has preferred times of the year that make it more appealing for visiting. Wind strengths differ, chances of storms are higher or lower and the overall climate can be more or less inviting. PredictWind, a wellknown marine weather forecasting service in Auckland, New Zealand, has introduced a new Climate Data feature that it says can provide sailors and mariners the information to make smarter decisions about the best times to travel to a given location. Climate Data offers month-to-month insights into average, wind, wave and weather conditions for any location worldwide. Tom Tursi, president of…

Real-Time Ocean Data Enhances Hurricane Forecasting Accuracy

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Hurricane Center has partnered with a new technology provider to improve early warning systems for extreme weather events. Sofar Ocean makes ocean-data capturing sensors and has partnered with the National Mesonet Program, KBR and Synoptic Data PBC to supply real-time ocean sensor data to the NHC. The collaboration provides the center with ocean temperatures and atmospheric data, improving early warning systems for extreme weather events. Deployed in oceans around the world, Sofar’s spotter buoys deliver data on wave activity, wind sea surface temperature and atmospheric pressure. The buoys are airdropped into the paths…

Ocean Navigator Contributor Alan Littell Dies

Alan Littell, a longtime contributor to Ocean Navigator, died Oct. 12 at the age of 95. For more than 40 years, Littell wrote travel articles for publications ranging from The New York Times to Travel & Leisure magazine to Ocean Navigator. His work regularly appeared in The Buffalo News, The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and the Olean Times Herald. For 10 years, Littell was travel editor of The Hornell Sunday Spectator. He also wrote essays and opinion columns for The Ocean and Hornell newspapers and his hometown weekly, The Alfred Sun. Littell began his newspaper career as a reporter for…

Left for Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World by Eric Jay Dolin (320 pp; Liveright Publishing; $29.99) Have you ever left your boat at anchor and come back a few hours later to discover it was gone? If you’ve experienced this, you can relate to the five principal characters of “Left For Dead.” Award-winning author Eric Jay Dolin chronicles the true story of the foundering of the British ship, Isabella, which came to grief on the Falkland Islands in 1813. Like many tragic tales of the sea, this one begins with an inattentive crew, alcohol…

Satellite Compasses

Most long-range sail boats and motor yachts have a GPS or chartplotter for navigation, but for serious ocean-crossing voyages, vessel owners should consider adding a satellite compass for improved accuracy and fuel efficiency. “In boating, fuel and time are the two most important aspects,” said Satish Narayan, vice president of sales and marketing at ComNav in Richmond, B.C. “When you have a good accurate heading, the autopilot gets a nice straight course, saving time and fuel.” Garmin, Furuno, Simrad, B&G and ComNav all offer satellite compasses that can be installed on new boats or added in an aftermarket installation. Most…

Kadey-Krogen Yachts 60 Open: New interior concept makes main deck more inviting

This past September, Kadey-Krogen Yachts took Hull No. 1 of its 60 Open out for sea trials off the coast of Taiwan. Conditions were challenging with 20- to 25-knot winds and seas to match and the boat performed as expected. “We hit all out of our numbers and the boat handled really well,” said Ford Bauer, marketing director for Kadey-Krogen, before the start of the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show. The first and second builds of the new model are already sold and Hull No. 1 is expected to make it to the U.S. in December. The first two versions…

The Trent-Severn’s Highest Point and North America’s Only Marine Railway

In the September/October issue of Ocean Navigator we described our route from the Erie Canal. For this leg, we continue our 2024 cruise departing scenic Bobcaygeon, lock 32 en route to Fenelon Falls, lock 34, nearly halfway through the beautiful 240-mile (386 km) long Trent-Severn Waterway. More details on the Trent-Severn Waterway are at https://parks.canada.ca with much better photos than we can provide. For those who want to lay anchor or who arrive too late to get into the lock, there are many anchorages along the waterway clearly marked on the charts. Lots of boaters spend several weeks in this…

Cruising in the ‘Land Below the Wind’

The South Pacific Ocean is a wide and mostly empty space for long-distance sailors. It is also home on its western side to countries with challenging weather conditions where winds don’t conveniently blow from one direction, the cultures are varied and you can spend months, even years getting to know them and still not feel like a native. Sabah is a Malaysian state that sits at the northern tip of Borneo, the third largest island in the world. The rest of Borneo is split among Indonesia (Kalimantan), Sarawak (another Malaysian state) and the tiny sultanate of Brunei. Tom and I…