Stay on course with electronic charts

by Bill Morris Staying on course under sail, particularly within 100 miles of any coast, is a lot easier with a modern, GPS-controlled chartplotter. With the latest generation of chartplotters, you can navigate to virtually any point on the world’s oceans while staying on course and out of harm’s way. To start off, there are two types of digital charts: raster and vector. Raster charts are digitalized copies of paper charts, such as those published by NOAA and the British Admiralty. On the other hand, vector charts are purely digital, capable of changing the amount of chart detail depending on…
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Log books

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…
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Latest BOLO from Boatwatch.org

Latest BOLO from Boatwatch.org

For voyagers in need of some help, the website Boatwatch.org does a great job of keeping track of vessels with distress issues and those boats that for some reason are late in arriving from passages. Below is a recent "be on the lookout" (BOLO) announcement from Boatwatch. Check in with Boatwatch.org to see their latest posts. You might be in a position to lend assistance. A Non Emergency Bolo has been issued for SV Breeze who left Curacao on January 5, 2022 and was due in at Shelter Bay Marina on January 9th or 10th. SV Breeze is a 44 foot…
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Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from J.R. Williams’ upcoming book on his sailing adventures, Tales of A Blue Water Cruiser. In the first few days of January 1999, I was busy getting my 59-foot steel ketch Havaiki ready for my first passage from Honolulu to Papeete in Tahiti. I discovered that the boat was close to being dismasted as it sat at the dock! We found one of the drawbacks of wooden masts. Even after fixing that issue, we still almost lost the mast while en route to Tahiti. Both times I was lucky indeed. The Good Lord…
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Yes, you can still get Dacron

Yes, you can still get Dacron

Our new Ocean Voyager 2021 annual issue has an informative article by Jayme Okma Lee for which she interviewed sailors on three voyaging boats about the decisions they made in replacing their cruising sails. One of the sailors interviewed was the cruising instructor and author John Kretschmer, who has long worked with Peter Grimm at North Sails in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., for sails on his and his wife Tadji's Kaufman 47, Quetzal. During a recent phone conversation, Grimm mentioned to me that North Sails — well known for its high tech racing products, its sails were used by various boats in the recent…
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Our new Ocean Voyager 2021 annual issue has an informative article by Jayme Okma Lee for which she interviewed sailors on three voyaging boats about the decisions they made in replacing their cruising sails. One of the sailors interviewed was the cruising instructor and author John Kretschmer, who has long worked with Peter Grimm at North Sails in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., for sails on his and his wife Tadji's Kaufman 47, Quetzal. During a recent phone conversation, Grimm mentioned to me that North Sails — well known for its high tech racing products, its sails were used by various boats in the recent…
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