Search results

The recent abandonment (and sinking?) of the 72’/22m Barlovento (all hands rescued in apparently 60 kts and 20 ft seas).  https://www.latitude38.com/lectronic/vessel-abandoned-off-crescent-city-after-uscg-rescue/#comments Those huge windows look very undesirable offshore...and yet she once...

This is making me think, and remember back to refit stuff about 4 years ago.  A looong, looong thought... :-) I replaced my two rudder bushings about 4 years ago when my boat was in my yard/by my house - part of a larger refit, a very busy time, what with work, parenting, and lots of other...

Thanks for all your thoughts on Patagonia - much appreciated, Evans!  Yeah, I’m sorta thinking that heading up to the Aleutians in the next couple years would be a sort of “prep” for down there (but mostly I just want to get up there, as it’s actually pretty close to here).   Re: down the S...

That’s a fun-looking little boat - I was actually looking at one of those on the Gig Harbour Boats site the other day - I’d like to have something max 17 ft that sails and rows well - to pop over to local Gulf Islands around here, pull it up on the beach in summer to camp, gear stuffed in a dry...

BTW (and somewhat randomly, but not really b/c I just happened to be reading about Chile), did you pass through the canales W-E (i.e., coming down the Chilean coast), or from the Atlantic?  And what time of year was it?  Apparently winter is said to be calmer?

For sure a thing for vessels with positive inverted stability (is that what’s it’s called?).  But I never would’ve thought for a vessel as large as Estar’s (47’) and such a tall mast.  Interesting concept - obviously designed for SO passages where “all bets are off”.  My boat has a...

What can I say - LOL!  Take it to PA :-). (I had a pony tail then, not messy but very GQ-styled a la Fabio of the early ‘90s.  Learned that lesson - no long hair at the border :-) ) (Unless you’re actually Fabio in your early ‘90s heartthrob prime... [thread drift alert] )

That happened to me on the Amtrak coming down from university in Montréal once, headed back down to DC.  US border dude rifles through my bag.  Finds a metal tin of Chinese jasmin tea.  (I think I must’ve been moving back home for the summer between years of school, having vacated my apartment.)...

Watertight flotation compartment in the mast?  Cool idea. Is that a “thing” on the IMOCAs, etc?  I’ve never heard of this before.  (I presume you never had the misfortune of putting the mast in the water to try it out!)

Which is why many of us come here to learn from those with the experience and willingness and ability to pass it on - from a large variety of skill sets and backgrounds. I’ve finally got my new, longer boom installed.  Need to measure for mainsheet tonight. Sail will arrive in a week or two...

John Vigor’s book, “The Seaworthy Offshore Sailboat”, has a nice little sidebar in each chapter entitled “Think Inverted”, where he outlines roll ‘preparation’ - various considerations in case the boat goes past 90*.  It’s good for those who’ve never “gone down that road” in their minds...

I finally nixed the pressurized stove-too espresso maker - you know the ones I mean?  It was a hardship making coffee for the two of us, Leah and I - since it was too small to make enough coffee for two people - so you’d have  to set it up and make another one after making the first one.  Ugh...

Must get down there...one of the coolest bits of modern seamanship ever.  Like being on Pitcairn Isl. Must get south of Canada first :-). (Currently sorting boom, awaiting new mainsail, planning solar panels.  I’m sure I left out something else required to give the boat more desirable...

I used to walk to the former bookstore in the former WTC (from my old office at Moody’s on Church St. in lower Manhattan) to escape the corporate office madness, and came across “Antarctic Oasis” there.  I bought it immediately then- it helped light a fire in my mind (along with “North to the...

“Antarctic Oasis” - fantastic and beautiful book.  Some great pics (and history) of Curlew in there.  One of my favourite books.  (I believe they talk in some detail about the Kauri sheathing.) 

Can’t recall if Curlew’s second hull was cold moulded or glassed.  I want to say glass, but probably cold moulded. Re: James Caird, that would’ve been a very uncomfortable trip (but at least she [he?!?] had the very desirable feature of being decked over :-)

I’ve come to feel that varnished wood on a boat is a stylistic affectation, like mega-houses that drip with ornamentation.  An undesirable characteristic. Unless the boat itself is wood.  (I have, somewhere in me, a mad desire for a wood sailboat, a serious one like the famous Taliesin, but...

The entire BC Coast Range is far more easily accessible - by flights in North America - yet has many, large extremely isolated wilderness areas. First ever Coast Range ski traverse, from Vancouver, BC to Skagway, AK was in 2001.  Good article: ...

Good god - I never knew there was another, previous boat named Tin Can!!  (Speaking of desirable and undesirable characteristics of offshore yachts...do you recall the other Tin Can, of 2008?  Hard for me to believe that there was previous boat with that terrible name (in order to try to keep up...

Drifting with the Arctic pack ice has already been done (a re-enactment of the original Otto Sverdrup Expedition in the Fram)... :-) :-)