Soon after announcing our new agreement to teach navigation seminars aboard the schooner Virginia (whose quarterdeck is seen in this shot by John Kettlewell), we received a message from a former schooner trip participant who fondly remembers our previous teaching trips aboard the schooner Ocean Star. Here are some of his remembrances: "I was delighted to see that Ocean Navigator is re-entering the navigation/seamanship training with renewed vigor in the partnership with the Schooner Virginia. I was privileged to be a student aboard what I think was the delivery voyage of the Ocean Star from Norfolk, VA to Portland in 1994. Cameron Bright was skipper and Alex Agnew the bosun. It was a wonderful and educational trip, enhanced by the sight of mother & calf humpbacks breaching together in the…
What goes in, must come out. That basic problem has haunted marine plumbing designers and boat owners since the beginning of seafaring. In the age of sail, answering the call of nature meant hanging one's nether regions off the head of the boat near the bowsprit &mdash hence the term "using the head." That was a simple way to get rid of the unpleasant business, and the technology was easy to use, quick to repair, and self cleaning. I'm not sure the same can be said for many contemporary below-decks heads installed on the latest boats. Instead, boat owners are typically faced with various primitive toilets &mdash most not in any serious way different than those used by sailors for the last 100 years or so &mdash attached to equally…
There is nothing quite so amazing as tweaking a tiny joystick, as if one is playing a video game, and watching the bow of your awkward craft pivot effortlessly in the direction you want to go. A bow thruster is a welcome addition to a voyaging boat. There are both electric and hydraulic thrusters available, with the latter generally found on larger, heavier craft or those that already have hydraulic pumps for windlasses or propulsion. There are also single and double propeller designs. Control options for most thrusters include a small joystick or a keypad, with digital control nearly universal, meaning that a single, dedicated control cable can be plugged in, simplifying installation. There are even wireless remote controls available — though I’m not sure I would want to be far…
If you've spent any time cruising you have encountered one, and probably many, of those hairy docking situations that make great bar-side stories. I not-so-fondly recall motoring down a long marina channel in New Jersey, lined with docks on either side and a stiff wind blowing on my stern. The width of the channel was less than the length of my boat, and the fuel dock was sideways at the very end with other boats on it. The only way to turn onto the dock and get between the other boats was to pull into one of the side channels and then back and fill to get the boat sideways to the fuel dock, while the wind relentlessly blew us sideways towards the pilings and other boats. The shifter cable…
What does the recession mean to voyagers? I've heard tails of voyagers having to return to the U.S. due to dramatic drops in their retirement funds. I suspect that a lot of these folks will stick out the recession outside of the U.S., but they will probably be flocking in greater numbers to the really cheap areas like Mexico or South America. Strangely, in the U.S. I have yet to see much impact on prices for boating equipment or dockage. Marinas seem to be mostly full up, but possibly some folks on waiting lists are finally getting their chance for a space. I did detect many fewer cruisers out in New England waters at the beginning of the summer, but things seemed to pick up towards the fall. To compensate…
As I buttoned my boat up for the winter, I noticed some crud on my solar panels. I got a wet rag and cleaned them up so my batteries will stay topped up all winter: no power cords, no worries about trashed batteries, no worries about someone unplugging things while I'm gone. It's great to pop down to the boat and have everything electrical working perfectly, even after a long lay up. I've owned one of my panels for about 20 years and it is still going strong. The only maintenance performed in all that time was a simple cleaning. How many other marine products, or land products for that matter, come with a 25-year warranty and last even longer? In those 20 years, I've received thousands of watts of…
When cruising to foreign waters, one of the necessary boat chores is the sometimes-elaborate process of checking in and checking out of each country. One of the joys of cruising is discovering the many unique and different cultures in the world. These differences are often first encountered across the desk of the customs or immigration officer as you make your first official appearance in the country. A little preparation can make this initiation into a new culture relatively painless. Though there are many different variations, some themes run through almost every country’s requirements. Two basic things must be established: the identities of the people on the boat and the ownership and nationality of the boat. These necessities are generally covered by the passports of you and your crew and the…
Anyone who has voyaged offshore has had this nightmare: the boat is sailing fast on a black night when you notice someone is missing from the cockpit. Or maybe it’s you, gasping for air as you bob up behind a rapidly disappearing stern. It does happen, and even to the most experienced sailors. Eric Tabarly, the famous French long-distance racer, was knocked overboard by a swinging gaff as he prepared to set a trysail. He was not wearing a life jacket and his crew was unable to find him in the lumpy seas. Without a working radio it took some time to contact help, which eventually included another yacht and professional rescue services. Five weeks later a fishing trawler discovered his body.Despite grim stories and thoughts like these, boating is…
I can vividly remember watching a whole string of sailboats, under full sail, following the leader in the Exumas, Bahamas. Exuma waters are notoriously shallow and reef strewn, and they were headed toward an area of coral heads. I called with a warning on VHF channel 16 and quickly received a brush off — they were following someone who “knows what he is doing!” I watched the whole fleet sail close by the dangers, and they did miss everything, but only by a few feet.Group-think can sometimes be a dangerous thing. It happens when members of a group, in this case voyaging sailors, stop analyzing situations for themselves. Maybe everyone is talking about crossing the Gulf Stream to get to the Bahamas and the consensus is to go when the…
I've just returned to New England after a two-year cruise down to the southwest Caribbean and back. We covered more than 7,300 nautical miles and visited six countries, and in that entire time, with the VHF radio on nearly continuously, we never heard one legitimate VHF digital selective calling (DSC) radio call. We did occasionally hear a DSC distress alert, but they all turned out to be false alarms with no voice communication. We heard many commercial vessels, large and small, talking in the open on the VHF, but never once did they send a message via DSC. We passed through major harbors and we sailed across major shipping lanes, including Norfolk, Charleston, Savannah, Ft. Lauderdale, Miami, Colon, and Cartagena, and we never heard a peep on the DSC. Twice…
