Day 146/24
Noon Position: 32 04S 154 12W
Course/Speed: N5
Wind: SSE4
Bar: 1027, falling (slowly)
Sea: S5, N3 (both old)
Sky: Puffy Cumulus
Cabin Temperature: 75
Water Temperature: 69
Sail: Motoring
Noon-to-Noon Miles Made Good: 96
Miles this leg: 2,949
Avg. Miles this leg: 123
Miles since departure: 20,193
I woke to a sea of glass.
We reached steadily north all night. Wind gave out occasionally–I could hear the slatting of the main from my bunk–but filled in again after a time. Then Mo would move silently through the silent heave of sea, making her slow way in time ...
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Day 145/23
Noon Position: 33 38S 154 22W
Course/Speed: N3
Wind: SSW5
Bar: 1029, steady
Sea: S6, N4
Sky: Clear, cumulus on horizon
Cabin Temperature: 71
Water Temperature: 67
Sail: Spinnaker and Main, Broad Reach
Noon-to-Noon Miles Made Good: 105 (again)
Miles this leg: 2,853
Avg. Miles this leg: 124
Miles since departure: 20,097
I think it is light wind sailing that separates the men from the boys as much as the heavy stuff. It is certainly as much work.
We’ve been running toward the blessed north, at least, but not with anything like speed. The forecast got the wind ...
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| The Open 60 “Imagine” |
Imagine… such lovely word but what a nightmare of a project it turned out to be. Imagine was/is (dunno if the boat still exists) an Open 60 built for an American skipper planning on participating in the BOC single-handed around-the-world race. He got his sponsorship from a Colorado aluminium company, the same one that makes the beer cans for Coors brewery.
...
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Isbjorn in Kirkwall, Orkney at sunset.
Isbjorn’s new crew will arrive in about 40 minutes. Mia & I have finished cleaning up the boat. Yesterday Mia did a HUGE provisioning run. I decanted a few bottles of propane into our American tanks. We went running in our downtime, ate Indian food last night for dinner and enjoyed the variable weather that is Orkney. I filled the outboard with the last of gas so I can top it off at the gas station, then proceeded to drop the outboard’s gas cap into the water behind the boat. Good thing that only ...
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Actually, as you can see above, SEAiq lets you overlay both ActiveCaptain and Waterway Guide info onto its chart display (and easily turn either or both overlays on and off). But as noted on the SEAiq website, the AC data will not be updated after May 23, though “We are considering updating SEAiq support for ActiveCaptain but do not have definite plans yet.”
As Panbo has been reporting, third-party app support for AC is uncertain for a couple of reasons, but I’m hoping that it will turn out to be reasonably easy for developers to adopt Garmin’s new ...
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Day 144/22
Noon Position: 34 39S 155 37W
Course/Speed: NE7
Wind: W15
Bar: 1029, steady
Sea: S6 – 8 (old rollers not from around here)
Sky: Squally
Cabin Temperature: 71
Water Temperature: 67
Sail: Working Jib (poled) and Genoa (free) and Main, all full; broad reach
Noon-to-Noon Miles Made Good: 105
Miles this leg: 2,748
Avg. Miles this leg: 125
Miles since departure: 19,992
“Monte, you are the horse in this relationship,” I said just after breakfast. I’d been reading and Monte was at the tiller with both hands as Mo was off at a gallop. He looked pleased.
“Ah ...
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Day 143/21
Noon Position: 35 09S 158 07W
Course/Speed: 0/0
Wind: WNW2
Bar: 1029, steady
Sea: SW4
Sky: Clear
Cabin Temperature: 74
Water Temperature: 66
Sail: Sails down; drifting last hour
Noon-to-Noon Miles Made Good: 106
Miles this leg: 2,643
Avg. Miles this leg: 126
Miles since departure: 19,887
Mom would not admit it, but she is partly responsible for my aquatic wanderlust. “How could this be,” she would ask, “when I told you never to sail that little ketch you had outside the San Francisco Bay?
But will she recall that going out the Golden Gate the first time ...
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#233. Nat Philbrick is the author of ‘In the Heart of the Sea,’ the famous story of the whaling ship Essex, which sunk in the Pacific after being attacked by an angry sperm whale. This true-life story became the inspiration for Herman Melville’s classic ‘Moby Dick’, and at the time, was one of the most well-know sea stories. Of course Nat’s book, which recounted the true story from the perspective of the ship’s cabin boy, went on to become a Hollywood movie of the same name. Nat’s also a sailor, and actually lives on Nantucket, the whaling capital of the ... Read More
Jamie periodically shares his expertise in a technical article: here he reviews typical problems cruisers experience with their sails, and how to address them. For more from the wells of this cruising sailmaker, see tagged posts on the topic.
Way, way back when I was designing sails for crazy people that sailed around the world in the Whitbread, BOC, and Vendee Globe races, the sail inventory budgets were dazzling! A maxi-boat (about 82’ long) mainsail in the 1989-90 Whitbread Race could be $35,000. Racing around the globe competitively required at least 4 mainsails. Add 25-ish headsails and even more ...
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Day 142/20
Noon Position: 36 10S 159 53W
Course/Speed: NE7
Wind: WNW17-20
Bar: 1026, steady
Sea: W3
Sky: Clear here, squalls to horizon
Cabin Temperature: 74
Water Temperature: 64
Sail: Working Jib, full; full main; close reach
Noon-to-Noon Miles Made Good: 137
Miles this leg: 2,537
Avg. Miles this leg: 127
Miles since departure: 19,781
The antidote to yesterday’s foul mood is wind, which began to fill in from the west at dusk. By midnight I had reefs in and Mo charged on like a horse feeling her oats. At day’s end (noon), we’d made a respectable 137 miles, good ...
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