Voyaging Tips: Adding crewmembers
Adding crew for a passage or longer raises issues for a voyaging couple or family. We look at this facet of voyaging in…
Ocean Voyaging
USCG says “stop right there!” to voyaging crew
In a chain of events that may have left its crew a little shell-shocked, the sailors aboard the ketch Wahu, bound from…
Gear thoughts after an offshore passage
Recently, I completed an offshore trip that included periods of heavy weather. We were aboard Nostos, a 2001 Sabre 402, departed from Jamestown, RI on…
The Magic of Landfall
So many of our words and expressions come from the world of ships and sailing: taken aback, by and large, hand over fist, a wide berth, a loose cannon, chock-a-block, and landfall. Landfall, to a seafarer, is the moment…
Optimizing Alternative Energy
A successful ocean voyage depends largely on the way we manage energy on our vessels, be it from the wind, the sun, the ocean, the auxiliary engine or a separate generator. As offshore sailors, our goal is to gain…
Digital tide tables online
In 2020 NOAA ceased publication of the printed Tide Tables in 2020. Another watershed in the move toward a totally digital world of navigational information. Working the Tide Tables was once an important part of any coastal navigation course (even…
CCA names Randall Reeves 2020 medal winner
Never count out creative thinking for devising new ways to explore the planet and establish a record. Sailor Randall Reeves conceived of a new way to sail around the world.…
Fatal dive boat fire attributed to operator’s oversight failures
Before dawn on Sept. 2, 2019, a crewman aboard the dive boat Conception, which was anchored off Santa Cruz Island, Calif., awoke to a…
A rescue from a ship captain’s perspective
On November 9, the 328-foot Finnish-flagged cargo ship Midas rescued three French sailors from the capsized 50-foot catamaran Hallucine in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Portugal. Included among the rescued sailors was French racer Regis Guillemot. A…
Float plan: an excellent safety tool
Filing a float plan is a valuable safety tool and its usefulness is regularly borne out by real incidents. Take the case of SV Bonobo. The owner filed a float plan with a friend regarding a voyage from Cozumel to…
Snagged anchors and empty gas bottles
Every corner of the world’s oceans has their own peculiarities. The roving squalls of the equatorial Pacific, the steep winter seas of the stormy northern Atlantic, the dreaded gales of the Gulf of Tehuantepec and the magically flat waters…
Light in a pinch
Routes from Florida to the Bahamas are as short as 50 miles, but they all involve crossing the Gulf Stream and hopefully arriving during daylight hours and early enough to clear Customs. For most sailors, this means an evening or…
It’s not easy being green
How can it be that something you love to do makes you sick? The ocean is a fickle host, at times benevolent and mild, then obstreperous and cruel — often within moments of each other. One minute you’re in…
Scopolamine patches: strong medicine
The scopolamine transdermal patch is a prescription medicine and very effective in the prevention of nausea associated with seasickness and postoperative nausea. By 2017, worldwide sales of the drug surpassed $370 million and have grown since. As with most medications,…
2020 Husick Award Winner
After consideration by our panel of judges (see below) the 2020 Ocean Navigator Chuck Husick Marine Technology Award goes to Raymarine for its Axiom+ multifunction display. Raymarine describes its Axiom MFD units this way: "The performance-tuned Axiom+ is a new…
Lighthouse with LED beacon
Lighthouses have come a long way since they were burning wood pyres on a seaside cliff. Now the USCG has turned on the first LED-based rotating beacon in a U.S. lighthouse. Light-producing technology progressed from flames to candles to lanterns…
Coast Guard urges small watercraft labeling
While not all voyagers carry surfboards, paddle boards or kayaks with them, some voyagers do. And many others bring a dinghy along, even when they're in home waters. If you have any type of small watercraft and lose track of…
Rebecca Childress and the journey forward
Rebecca Childress, live aboard voyager on the Valiant 40 Brick House and frequent contributor to ON, lost her husband Patrick to COVID 19 this past summer in Cape Town. She has posted a new video to the Brick House Youtube channel…
Solo rower breaks ocean record
Power voyagers have engines, sailors have the wind and ocean rowers have … muscles. In mid-September, British solo rower Lia Ditton finished a…
Instrumentless circumnavigator passes
Marvin Creamer, a sailor who performed a seemingly miraculous circumnavigation in the mid-1980s, has crossed the bar for the last time. A former geography professor at Rowan…
A North Pacific rescue highlights value of AMVER
Crew aboard the Matson cargo ship Mahimahi learned just after lunch on July 6 that a sailboat transiting from San Francisco to Hawaii was in trouble. The…
Autonomous Mayflower launched in UK
A 50-foot trimaran was launched in the port of Plymouth in the U.K. in late September. While 50 feet doesn’t usually a ship…
Sailing Hall of Fame inducts honorees in virtual ceremony
In a ceremony that was held…
Have you lost or found something at sea?
Editor’s note: this announcement is from Boatwatch.org, a website run by Glenn and Eddie Tuttle and associated with the Seven…
