One of the best parts of preparing for a cruise on Ganymede (and on Capella before her), was the day the charts would arrive in the mail and we could begin to inspect and organize them. It has usually been a pretty big project, since we try to buy in bulk and get discounts that …
Passage Preparations
It is, by all appearances, the dead of winter. There’s piles of snow all around—not as big as when we had the big blizzard two winters ago,but these piles have been around for longer now than those were, and keep getting added to a couple times a week. Nor is it as long a winter …
Going to captain’s license school is kind of like getting a college degree in English: it’s absolutely useless for any practical purpose, but a necessary evil if you want to do something that requires a certificate stating that you can spell. Or operate a boat for hire, in the case of the former. If you …
There’s a lot of talk, in online forums, on blogs, and in magazines, about what exactly constitutes ‘Good Seamanship’. For some it seems to boil down to having more stuff: good seamanship is about having three or four independent navigation systems in lightning-proof Faraday cages scattered throughout the boat; a second liferaft; AIS; personal and …
We had begun to despair, some of us, that spring would ever arrive. As the season advanced into what should have been balmier temps and calmer weather, the onslaught of winter in New England raged on unabated. “Remember how we thought last winter was bad?” the guys at work kept saying. “It wasn’t nothing compared …
Every so often, an aspiring seafarer will log into an internet sailing forum and ask, “Exactly what is the perfect cruising boat?” Unless they’re ‘Trolls’ looking for mischief, they usually receive a giant heap of contradictory and subjective answers, since everybody has a different idea based on various levels of experience, competence, and mostly, preference. …
“Dig out some more rice while you’re down there,” I called, upending the last little bit out of the ready jar into a pot. “There isn’t any more down here.” Danielle puffed, straightening up red-faced from the depths of the forward locker which she’d been organizing. “No more at all?” This could be serious. Of …
To the very end, I think, we did our utmost toward the big transatlantic plan. Rushing through Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island at breakneck speed, skipping one pleasant-looking harbor after another; overnighting to St. Pierre to jump off from there, rather than exploring the south coast of Newfoundland, getting everything in readiness—even to pre-rigging …
“Ready to go yet?” I heard the question over and over today. Fair enough—we’ve been ‘getting ready to cruise’ ever since leaving the boatyard several blog posts ago, and have Tuesday as our target sailing date. And in a sense, we are ready, since there’s nothing big left that HAS to be done before we …
I’d like to say that we’ve accomplished much in the week and a half since Ganymede relaunched and we returned to the marina—and we have, a truly heroic amount, really—but in light of everything we still need to do it seems less than it is. Our return was uneventful, except that the crucial engine shifter …