This is a GREAT book and thornless to boot! It’s real title is “The Gentleman’s Guide to Passages South” by Bruce Van Sant. It has become known as the “Thornless Path To Windward” as it is a guide to making a smooth journey thru “the thorny path”. To a sailor, the thorny path is (basically)… [Read More]
Hurricane Irene
Hurricane Irene is coming – please, please, please turn away from the Fort Myers, FL area!!!! I am a couple thousand miles away from my sailboat and am terribly worried about her.
Dinghy Concert
Beautiful video! You just have to love the song, the singer, and how relaxing it is! Fabulous! 4th Annual Clarkes Court Bay dinghy concert in Grenada. Grenada is part of the Windward islands in the Caribbean sea. North of Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago; south of St. Lucia .
Garmin 441 GPS Chartplotter
I purchased the excellent Garmin 441s chartplotter in the spring of 2011. So far, I really like it. I would not claim to have fully utilized it or played with every feature – there are many! I agonized over where to mount it. I have seen a lot of installations with the unit inside the cabin… [Read More]
Fuel Pickup
I removed the pickup line from the diesel fuel tank of my Hunter 34 sailboat. I was hoping to find an obvious problem that would explain my recent “out of fuel” problem documented here. The fitting/assembly came out of the tank easily and I didn’t break or lose anything!! Yeah! Sadly, the “obvious” was missing. Even under… [Read More]
Naked
I hated to do it but it seemed like the right thing to do. I removed the canvas from my boat. The Bimini and Dodger both came down and are safely stowed below. I happen to be at the boat in Florida this week and saw the storms building in the Atlantic. I figure if… [Read More]
Weather Sites
There are a LOT of web sites available offering weather information for nautical, sailing, marine purposes. I figured an attempt to compile all of those sites might be useful. So, here goes… http://www.accuweather.com/ http://www.wunderground.com/ http://www.Passageweather.com http://www.sailflow.com http://wwwghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/GOES/ http://www.mwxc.com/ http://www.buoyweather.com http://l-36.com/weather.php http://www.intellicast.com/Travel/Weather/Marine/Sailing.aspx http://www.windguru.cz/int/ http://www.windfinder.com/forecasts/ http://bearpawsweather.com/ http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/marine/home.htm http://stormcarib.com/
Jacklines
I am pretty old school – I can’t help but laugh out loud when I see a kid sitting in a stroller wearing a safety helmet or riding a bike down the street wearing full body armor. I am not sure why people insists on these “precautions.” Perhaps it is because our society is so… [Read More]
LED Lights #2
I tried the led lights that I wrote about here. The results were mixed. LEDs are particular about postive/negative poles. It seems that automotive “1156″ bulb style fixtures on my boat are wired incorrectly for the LED bulbs. Bummer – strike 1. The good news is that this is fairly easily fixed, just requries a bit… [Read More]
Sailing Lessons
I went on a little sail a few weeks ago. My plan was to sail from Fort Myers, FL to the Florida Keys and back over the course of a two week period. In summary, it ended up being a five day sail and I did not make it to the Keys. However; it was… [Read More]