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NASailor Update

Posted by: Hill / April 8, 2012 @ 10:22 pm

Since our launch 18 months ago, we’ve had some fantastic support from this community and made great strides in growing the site to tens of thousands of visitors per month. Some of our best content – boat reviews, the best boat series, and more – generate tremendous interest even today.

But life moves forward; our new family and the rise of other professional opportunities are taking up more and more time. So, effective this week, we will no longer be regularly updating this site. We will still occasionally place new content here, but it will be more of a blog-style format, and will be done only when time permits.

Thanks for your support throughout this process. We’ll see you out on the water!

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Introducing The Triloboat

Posted by: Hill / April 4, 2012 @ 10:46 pm

Triloboat – a new conception of sailboat. Built at home, and essentially a flat barge (plenty of form stability), these guys are cruising Alaska with them. Is this the next wave of home-built sailboats? Shallow in draught, with two junk rigs and leeboards, these remind me of the old Dutch sailboats.

One boat owner notes:

Luna has no engine. We either sail, scull with a yuloh (1.5 knots at an all-day pace), pole ourselves in shallows or warp. Some days we make 80 miles, some we make 5 or less. We try not to have a schedule, and so find the time to poke around interesting looking ‘holes-in-thewalls’… secluded bays, shallow river deltas, narrow passageways through reefs… If we like a place, we stay a while. Read More »

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Cruising With Your Family: A 14-Year Hiatus And Return

Posted by: Hill / April 3, 2012 @ 9:59 pm

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This family of four left the rat-race of Washington, DC to live on a 40-foot cruising boat in Mexico. We found this heartwarming blog from S/V Del Viento via the Cruising World site. And you understand why – it accurately describes their decision-making process to pack it up, sell their house, and move onto their Fuji 40 for five years. Inspiring, and reminds me of the fun which we had during our cruising period. Warning: this may encourage you to walk away from it all as well.

In our twenties, we traded our boat for a house and our freedom for careers. In our thirties, we slumbered through the American dream. In our forties, we woke and traded our house for a boat and our careers for freedom. And here we are.
The Crew:
Michael (also goes by Mike and Miguel) is 42-years-old. He is an English major who wound up working in IT. He is eager to begin writing Read More »

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The Beautiful Sea

Posted by: Hill / March 26, 2012 @ 10:03 pm

NASA has put together this truly beautiful compilation of time-lapse video over a two-year period. Built off a simulation engine, it demonstrates an exaggerated flow of the world’s oceans. Beautiful. I love the currents shown crossing the Indian Ocean – you can visually see the old trade routes quite clearly.

The Scientific Visualization Studio at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center created this beautiful animation called Perpetual Ocean which visualizes the ocean’s surface currents over a 30-month period between June 2005 and December 2007.
Read More »

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“Next Time, We’ll Do It On A Better Boat”

Posted by: Hill / March 19, 2012 @ 10:51 pm

Latitude 38 has this riveting tale of three Canadian sailors rescued just 280 miles outside Hawaii in worsening conditions.

Three Canadian sailors, including a nine-year-old boy, are safe at home in Calgary after a harrowing rescue from their Yorktown 40 Liahona, about 280 miles northeast of Hilo, during the wee hours of February 8. Bradley James, along with brother Mitchell and son West, had left Puerto Vallarta on January 11 bound for Hawaii on their first ocean crossing. They planned to keep the boat in the Islands, as the family travels there regularly.
They report the weather was relatively uneventful until a few days before the rescue. By February 7, it had deteriorated drastically — 20- ft seas and 35-knot winds — and caused the forestay to part. Brad hauled Mitch up the mast to attach a “new cable,” but Mitch was thrown into the water when the shrouds came loose and the mast buckled. Brad was able to bring his brother aboard, but they feared he’d suffered a concussion in the fall. As the pair attempted a jury rig, the mast fell away completely. To top things off, the engine had overheated.
Read More »

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Cruiser’s Disappearance Remains A Mystery Off Mexico

Posted by: Hill / March 19, 2012 @ 10:40 pm

Med_Finesse found stripped1

Solo cruising takes a special kind of person. Donn Pinkney, and his Catalina 27, was that kind of person. A young home builder, he was cruising from California down to Mexico near Manzanillo before disappearing on board. The boat ended up washed ashore, but he remains missing. We certainly are hoping for a happy ending.

In mid-January a young house-builder, sailor, and surfer Donn Pinkney set off for an adventure sailing trip south from Dana Point in California with a friend on his 27ft Catalina sailing boat Finesse. By 20th February they had reached Manzanillo in Mexico, but his friend couldn’t go any further. He set out alone anyway and hasn’t been seen since.
His 27-foot sailboat washed up on Mexico’s west coast in late February, stripped and empty, with no sign of its skipper. Read More »

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Should Your Propeller Be Free-Wheeling Or In Gear?

Posted by: Hill / March 15, 2012 @ 10:27 pm

Leave it to the internet to come up with answers like these. In a great example of individual testing, MaineSail from Sailnet has some great research that he conducted to get the definitive answer to his question: does a fixed propeller generate less drag for a sailboat when it is free-wheeling or when it is in gear (not rotating).

There is a caveat (ahh..you thought this was easy). All sailors should look to their owner’s manual on their transmissions. Some engine manufacturers like my Yanmars allow the transmissions to be put into neutral under sail. Others may not.
Read More »

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This Man Lived His Life As A Pirate – And Then Got Out

Posted by: Hill / March 15, 2012 @ 10:20 pm

We found this interview of a pirate who has recently called it quits. He describes quite graphically the conditions and characteristics of life in Somalia. Interesting.

Youth are a largely curious and impressionable lot who are prone towards the more dramatic and popular occupations and lifestyles. Many young men in Somalia would be very happy to be called a pirate, a Mujaheed or a militiaman. These titles portray power, influence and most importantly spread fear. He may find it difficult to tell you what exactly he seeks to achieve through his heartfelt struggles and initiatives. These social groups constantly draw their strength from an endless supply of youthful recruits. Within Somalia’s poverty and battle ridden boundaries, a generation of youth who only understand the language of violence have emerged to claim these seemingly coveted and powerful roles in society.
Somalia Report interviewed Ibrahim Farah Osman, 26, who was once a pirate and is now reformed. He lives in Kakuma refugee camp, in Northern Kenya.
Read More »

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Cruise Ship ‘Anchorman’ Caught Red-Handed

Posted by: Hill / March 12, 2012 @ 11:14 pm

We reported on this earlier, but the Californian who ‘accidentally’ released a cruise ship anchor was recently sentenced. But the notable thing were the details caught on film – in this case he walked closely in front of the camera several times. It was also interesting that it was the stern anchor, and not the bow anchor which was dropped. Check out the video…

A California man was sentenced in Florida this week to two months in prison and house arrest after he drunkenly deployed the anchor of a Holland America cruise ship while the vessel was underway.
According to reports, Rick Ehlert, after a long night of drinking on Holland America’s MS Ryndam in November 2010, snuck into the cruise ships control room and released the 18-ton stern anchor which brought vessel, traveling at 18 knots at the time, to a sudden stop.
Luckily for prosecutors, the whole thing was caught on the ships surveillance camera leaving little doubt as to the identity of the perp. A federal judge sentenced Ehlert to four months incarceration — two months to be served in a federal prison and two months of home confinement — followed by three years of probation, a $7,500 fine and alcohol abuse classes. Read More »

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Fukushima and the Ocean

Posted by: Hill / March 12, 2012 @ 11:03 pm

The sea. If you’re a sailor, it is one of your loves. In all of its forms. But what happens when it becomes the dumping grounds for massive amounts of radioactivity? Well, Fukushima is letting us find out. In this article, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute researchers are tracking marine radioactivity – and the answer may surprise you.

One year ago, a series of events began with an earthquake off the cost of Japan that culminated in the largest accidental release of radioactivity into the ocean in history.
We have to be careful and say “accidental” because in the late 1950s and early 1960s, 50 to 100 times more radioactivity was released worldwide as fallout from the intentional testing of nuclear weapons. The word “ocean” is also important, since Chernobyl in 1986 was hundreds of miles inland, so it had a smaller impact on the concentrations of radionuclides in the sea than was measured directly off Japan in 2011.
Read More »

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Blogger Reflects On VOR and The South Pacific

Posted by: Hill / March 6, 2012 @ 11:21 pm

As the Volvo Ocean racers pass through the Solomon Islands, one blogger reflects upon his own travels in that region.

Last weekend, when three of the Volvo Ocean Race teams couldn’t quite fetch the eastern edge of the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, they were
forced to find a path through this territory of nearly a thousand obstacles. This brought back memories for the bloggers at Practical Sailor magazine, who envisioned what it must have been like when these two cultures collided:
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The remote and still poorly charted Solomon Islands offered a trickier-than-usual navigational challenge for the three boats that chose the route through the archipelago, but they seemed to skate through without too much problem.
Read More »

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Lost On A Night Watch

Posted by: Hill / March 4, 2012 @ 8:32 pm

This story is a sad counterpoint to the couple who had sailed for 36 years together and safely around the world. Accidents do happen, and stories like this make me want to get a personal EPIRB or electronic MOB system.

They lived a sailing life, even owned and operated a sailing business, then sailed off from Australia’s Whitsundays inside the Great Barrier Reef to live and sail in the waters off Malaysia. So how did experienced sailor Carmel Brookes, from Brisbane in Queensland, come to fall off her boat in comparatively calm and pleasant waters and be lost to the sea, her body never found? Read More »

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A Cruising Life: Couple Retires After 36 Years At Sea

Posted by: Hill / March 4, 2012 @ 8:21 pm

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Pretty amazing story of a couple who have been sailing the world for thirty-six years together. With over 100,000 nautical miles, and having circumnavigated four times on boats they built themselves. Makes me start to think…

After an incredible four decades enjoying life on the ocean wave, Bill and Laurel Cooper have now berthed back home in Blighty, England for good. The intrepid couple, who are in their 80s, have traveled around the world four times on boats they built themselves – ever since Bill quit his high-flying city job on a whim and they sold their home in 1976.

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Are You A Full-Time Cruiser? Take This Test To Make Sure…

Posted by: Hill / February 28, 2012 @ 10:44 pm

Brittany and Scott from S/V Rasmus posted this a couple weeks ago, and we thought it was a great example of the change in perspectives when you’re on the water about what really matters. Good stuff.

Scott gave me this idea for a blog post one morning when he was helping me get breakfast supplies and said something to the tune of “I wonder how many people sleep over cookies, granola bars and chips”. It was in that instant that this post was born. Of course this list is not finite, it could probably go on forever. However, just for fun today:
You *MIGHT* be a Full-Time Cruiser if… Read More »

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How To Decommission Your Boat

Posted by: Hill / February 28, 2012 @ 10:37 pm

Our friends down at S/V Rasmus have recently packed their boat away for the next six months down in Trinidad. In so doing, they’ve learned a lot about what you should and shouldn’t do when putting your boat away for a long period of time. Here are the top five items from their long list of tasks (over 50 items in all).

Good luck with the baby girl!

A lot of you have written with questions on how we prepared our Rasmus for her hiatus out of the water and I promised I would write more extensively on the subject. Decommissioning a boat is a very sad day (or in our case, days) for many a boat owner. Lucky for us we have a return ticket to Trinidad, a baby girl on the way, and very exciting cruising plans in our near future so there is a lot to look forward to! Even so, putting a boat “on the hard” as it’s called is not only a little depressing, but an incredibly detailed process and involves a lot more than just taking off perishable food, closing the curtains and battening down the hatches. Port of Spain, Trinidad is one of those harbors where you see the sad effects of boats that were “ridden hard and put away wet” as it were. Scott and I weren’t about to start cutting corners now and, as in everything we do when it comes to our boat, we went full-monty on the “hibernation of Rasmus”. Here is the list of what we did, and why (I should note that this list is not in chronological order): Read More »

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Heading South? Could Bypassing Bermuda Save Your Life?

Posted by: Hill / February 27, 2012 @ 11:12 pm

Don Street writes this fantastic article, well worth the read, which highlights the pros and cons of three major routes. He also notes the high risk of the unstable weather systems during the months of October and November. With weather predictions in those months only good out 48 to 96 hours, a route to Bermuda from Newport places you at risk of unforeseen and dangerous weather patterns. Definitely an remarkable article from someone with enormous experience at sea.

Going south in late fall from such New England ports as Newport, Rhode Island, by way of Bermuda is basically playing Russian roulette. In 2011, the bullet ended up in the firing chamber, and as a result, two boats and one life were lost. (See “Hard Lessons Learned in the North Atlantic,” February 2012.) This has happened many times in the past, and it will happen again if sailors keep following that same route. The North Atlantic is no place for a cruising boat with a shorthanded crew when fall gales rile the sea.

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Crash Of The Week: Backing, Backing

Posted by: Hill / February 16, 2012 @ 10:25 pm

This is a nice scene, recently placed up on the web, from way back in 1997. It shows a docking situation – repeated many times – which involves what looks to be a twin-screw power boat backing into a slip with the wind at a 90-degree angle to the slip. And not a little wind, either. I’d estimate it was blowing 20 to 25 knots.

During a portion of the clip, it looks like the boat is on fire. It appears that the only exhaust is on the starboard side, which in that breeze causes the smoke to roll right through the cabin and observation deck.

While it is difficult to manage these high freeboard, shallow keel designs, the skipper should have started over, approaching from the windward side of the dock moving with just a knot or two of speed on her. Then s/he could gauge the set caused by the wind, and, when s/he was clear of the boat in the adjacent slip, they could apply more power to quick back the boat into the slip. Never a good idea to approach at 40 degree angle. Yikes. Lucky the dock held together.

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Debating The Merits Of A Full Keel

Posted by: Hill / February 15, 2012 @ 10:28 pm

One of the age-old discussions online – and off – are the relative merits of a fin vs. full keel. There are many tradeoffs in any boat, yet this is a lightening-rod issue on many forums. So it was with interest that we found this extended Sailnet discussion about the topic. In particular, we found two posts – included below – to be most enlightening around the relative merits of these two designs choices.

What do you think – should full keels be banned forever? Or required?

Username “dacap06” offers the following note:

A keel is your underwater wing, just like your sail is the in-air wing. Remember, the sails generate lift around the leeward side of the airfoil, the angle of the boat as it moves through the water causes the keels to generate lift on the windward side of the waterfoil. The vector sum of these forces is what pushes you forward. As I understand it, the advantages and disadvantages are as follows.
Read More »

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RYA Withdraws Certification For Hot Liquid Southhampton

Posted by: Hill / February 13, 2012 @ 11:45 pm

We reported on the rescue of four Britons as part of a training program run by Hot Liquid Southhampton. Well, the RYA has withdrawn its certification – never something done lightly – following this, the latest of a series of three serious safety-related incidents.

The RYA has today (2nd February) removed its recognition of ‘Hot Liquid Southampton’ as a provider of RYA training courses. This means that Hot Liquid Southampton is now no longer able to offer or run RYA training courses.
The decision was made by the RYA following three serious safety related incidents involving Hot Liquid Southampton between January 2011 and January 2012. Read More »

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Around America Solo Sailor Nears The End

Posted by: Hill / February 8, 2012 @ 10:26 pm

The intrepid solo sailor Matt Rutherford’s trip looks to be ending soon. With no books, no solar panels, a hand-driven watermaker, and failing electronics, this solo adventurer has made it three-quarters of the way around the Americas – including the dangerous Northwest Passage to raise money for the Chesapeake Region Accessible Boating (CRAB), a nonprofit sailing program for people with disabilities, based in Annapolis. He is expected to arrive in Annapolis – assuming everything holds together – in April – from his current location off Brazil.

We covered his adventures earlier, but it is remarkable to see how far he has gone to date.

The Washington Post picked up the story this past weekend:

By now, some 20,000 miles into this audacious odyssey, nearly everything onboard Matt Rutherford’s boat is either flat-out busted, rotted through, waterlogged beyond repair or otherwise reduced to ballast. If the insidious Arctic fog didn’t do the job, seeping into every crevice of the 27-foot sailboat and all its humble contents, then the rogue waves near Cape Horn surely did.
Read More »

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