Ocean Voyaging

Work by the light of headlamps

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…

Combatting seasickness

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…

Transdermal patch

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,…

Award Cropped

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…

Coast Guard Lights Led Upgrade To Oak Island Lighthouse, N.c.

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 Paddle Smart Pnw

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…

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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…

1 Mmcintyre 0040

Into the Denmark Strait

The crew of the Arctic expedition sloop Aurora from left, Corinne Prevot, Ilka Hadlock, Keree Smith, Mary McIntyre (author), Camilla Edwards, Florence Gross, Marie Charpentier, Not pictured: Julia Olsen. Photobomb: Voychek, one of Aurora’s deckhands.

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Survitec launches virtual museum

The Survitec company, a manufacturer of survival and safety products, has launched a "virtual museum." The museum is a joint effort of the company along with the Museum of Godalming, located in Surrey, England. The museum showcases inventions and patents that…

Seamanship & Navigation, September 2020

Preparing a sailing rig for going offshore For the voyaging sailboat, your rig is your primary propulsion when offshore and should be given top priority when preparing to go offshore. The rig you have been using on weekends may have…

3. Bella Signora

A cultural and visual spectacle

For those in search of fair winds, an umbrella-laden beverage and an increased sense of adventure, Cuba provides. U.S.-Cuba relations easing in December of 2014 provided an opportunity for voyagers to sail the island. One year later, we arrived to our charter in the southern Cuba port of Cienfuegos to begin a 600-nm voyage to Havana.

The Ocean Race postpones next start

The Ocean Race, a crewed race around the world that has held two other names and sponsors since its inception (Whitbread Round the World Race, Volvo Ocean Race), has announced that the 14th running of the race originally scheduled to start in October 2021 will be pushed back one year to October 2022.