The brand new, and heavily updated, edition of Jan and Bill Moeller's cockpit cruising handbook for the ICW is now available. (The Intracoastal Waterway: Norfolk to Miami. The Complete Cockpit Cruising Guide. $29.95. The McGraw-Hill Companies/International Marine.) I was fortunate enough to be able to take over the work on this book from Bill, with his blessing, and we've added a ton of new information. The descriptions of places, navigation, marinas, anchorages, and just about everything else, is expanded, improved, and updated. However, we retained the basic mile-by-mile format of the orginal book, which puts all the vital navigational information right at your fingertips. My wife and I first used this book when we headed south in 1985, and it has been on the market since 1979, proving its popularity.…
John Kettlewell has been voyaging and living aboard a variety of sailboats for about 27 years. In fact, he's owned eight very different voyaging sailboats and says, "I love trying out new boats." These boats have ranged from an Angus Primrose-designed, flush-decked cutter to a classic Aage Nielsen wooden double-ender, a 32-foot French catamaran to his current craft of choice, Minke, a 38-foot Finnsailer motorsailer. Kettlewell has lived aboard a series of boats for more than 12 years in a row, including several cold New England winters. Now in his second year of ownership of Minke, Kettlewell and his family have sailed the boat from Rhode Island down the East Coast to Florida and then across the Caribbean to Panama and now Colombia.Kettlewell and his wife Leslie first began voyaging…
By John Kettlewell We all have a tendency to blame the hammer when we hit our thumb with it. It's the same with anchors. You sail into a beautiful but crowded harbor, drop the hook while looking forward to celebrating with an evening cocktail, only to find the darn thing isn't holding and instead of that Marguerita you have to pull on a mucky chain. Sometimes this process is repeated several times until something goes right and you have a solid bite, or you give up and look for a mooring. Since I've been anchoring cruising boats for close to half a century I've had many moments of reflection around this problem. Perusing several online cruising forums recently, I am not alone in pondering why an anchor works sometimes and…
Certain harbors are gathering places for sailors headed offshore. Back in the good old days I met a lot of fellow cruisers while arguing about the weather as we holed up waiting for a weather window to jump offshore. The sources of information were few — pretty much everyone shared the same data. Here in the USA the main sources were NOAA Coastal, Offshore, and High Seas text forecasts, gathered by weather fax, VHF and SSB radio. Sometimes we downloaded small-scale (large area) weather maps that gave us very general information on huge areas of ocean. And sometimes we just walked up to the weather station, as in Bermuda. Offshore, many of us didn’t get further updates, except possibly some scratchy voice forecasts via SSB radio. We usually sailed with…
Refrigeration trends for voyagers Whenever cruising boaters gather marine refrigeration is always a hot topic. Back in the day it was a lot more controversial due to the prevalence of competing system philosophies, but what was once the new kid on the block now dominates. And the winners, by a long shot, are the many different 12-volt powered systems, either in self-contained refrigerators that are semi-permanently installed or as the cooling equipment for a custom built-in fridge. In the past you used to see a lot of rugged, long-distance cruising boats with refrigeration compressors powered by belts from the main engine, or in some cases running on 12/24 volts or 120/240 volts from a generator. These compressors were used to bring down the temperature of big holding plates that maintained the cold…
Using every resource available to get a comprehensive weather picture When it comes to weather information, ocean voyagers can never have too much help, and with today’s connected world there are many ways to gather as much data as you want or need. However, some of the tried-and-true sources that have been in use for decades or longer still form the basis of every voyager’s toolkit. Long ago a friend who voyaged regularly across the Atlantic and back on tiny, simple homemade boats gave me a piece of weather advice I have never forgotten and that still remains true today. When I asked him what he used to get weather while at sea he said he used nothing! Instead, he noted that even the best forecasts tended to be…
Now that many of us have learned the joys and perils of working from home (WFH) and the always-connected 24/7 life, you may have decided it is time to get away from it all and sail over the horizon. Sick and tired of receiving urgent text messages at midnight? Mad because there is no longer an excuse not to check in? Longing for the days when the phrase, “Sorry, I didn’t have a connection,” was a legitimate excuse? Thanks to the availability of satellite phones, being anchored in that fabled tropical lagoon in the middle of the Pacific is no longer an excuse for kicking back and relaxing. Look on the bright side. Today’s satellite phones, devices, software, and accessories mean you can now reach mom on her birthday, like…
[gtx_gallery] Now that many of us have learned the joys and perils of working from home (WFH) and the always-connected 24/7 life, you may have decided it is time to get away from it all and sail over the horizon. Sick and tired of receiving urgent text messages at midnight? Mad because there is no longer an excuse not to check in? Longing for the days when the phrase, “Sorry, I didn’t have a connection,” was a legitimate excuse? Thanks to the availability of satellite phones, being anchored in that fabled tropical lagoon in the middle of the Pacific is no longer an excuse for kicking back and relaxing. Look on the bright side. Today’s satellite phones, devices, software, and accessories mean you can now reach mom on her birthday,…
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 night departure with an overnight sail, which is what we were doing when voyaging from Palm Beach to West End, Grand Bahama. Unfortunately, one of our steering cable ends broke off in the middle of the Stream, with a stiff wind blowing and a lumpy sea — in the pitch dark. I had a sick feeling while hanging upside down below the steering box, peering at the loose cable end by the dim light of a flashlight. Then I noticed that the steering chain the cable was attached to had…
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced sailing organizations around the country to adapt to social distancing guidelines and stay-at-home policies. Here’s how two are dealing with the problem. We recently received feedback from one of our regular contributors, John Kettlewell, who is also executive director of Sail Martha’s Vineyard, “a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and perpetuating our island’s maritime heritage, culture, skills and the sea that surrounds us.” Like most community sailing initiatives, Sail MV’s big programs involve sail training for children and adults. With the ongoing pandemic, Sail MV has had to make major adjustments. Back in late April, Kettlewell wrote in an email, “We decided to cancel our regular summer programs, and we’re now trying to figure out how to fundraise enough to be back in 2021.”…
