On Thursday, November 22, the winds are veering northerly and beginning to build. Hopes of avoiding gale conditions fade by Friday evening, and I end up heaving her to for several hours during the overnight as we get buffeted by powerful squalls. The str...
After a decent overnight run south toward Cape Hatteras, we enter the Gulf Stream late in the afternoon on Saturday, November 17. As usual the Stream tosses us about until we finally exit early the following morning. Winds then become southerly ahead of ...
I move into a slip at Hampton Public Piers for a night, primarily to charge up my battery bank as the shorter days and persistent cloud cover have cut my solar generation to a trickle. So the first challenge is to get the boat back out on anchor without ...
Our ship has been swinging to her anchor in the Hampton River (Virginia) for over a month now while I search for a weather window to set off for the Virgin Islands. We are in an active and persistent weather pattern of cold fronts exiting the US East coas...
We return to treating our barrier coat blisters with epoxy and fairing compound and then give the bottom another thorough wet sand in preparation for painting. After having antifouling paints fail before the one year mark, this year I will put three coats...
The dinghy gets some de rigueur black paint to match the mother ship. We splice on a new painter using a backsplice, and put the name decal on. Then it's on to replacing the leather on the sculling oar using the double-needle baseball diamond stitch.
We finish up the repair to the rudderhead, and then return to the mast. Twelve coats of varnish are the order of the day--or fortnight, really--but not to worry, dear viewer, I will not make you watch varnish dry. Then we are on to the rigging, where I t...
I haul the boat out for painting and maintenance once a year, but the mast only comes out about once every five years. Well the five years since the last pull is up, so ... I also discuss usual haulout issues such as dealing with blisters, sanding and pre...
We are up at the crack of dawn to catch a fair wind for the 90-mile run from Annapolis to Deltaville. We have good luck with the winds--though some thunderstorms disrupt our pleasant overnight sailing--but then leave us drifting at the mercy of the tide j...
In 2008 I built a 7'7" Nutshell Pram as a tender for s/v Ruth Avery and proudly sailed away to the Virgin Islands. A few months later a careless speed-boater ran me down and destroyed it. Almost miraculously I was not injured. Determined not to let it s...
Write and record music, anywhere in the world, from the comfort of your own boat studio! The marine environment does, however, present some unique challenges to the aspiring musician ...
I give a brief history of the boat, talk about modifications I have made, and then we are up on deck for a short tour. We will go below decks in Part Two.
Just a short afternoon sail from the South River to Annapolis on a humid, early summer day. We get out to Thomas Point when NOAA starts broadcasting warnings of a severe thunderstorm . Looks like it will pass north of us, then perhaps it will graze us, t...
I've received lots of questions about handling a gaff rig, enough to make a separate video on the subject. This video turned out to be much harder to make than I thought, between the awkward camera angles and trying to explain what I'm doing at the same ...
With light winds after midnight and into the morning of May 16 go our hopes for a late day arrival. Moderate winds out of the south develop in the afternoon to help us on our way but also bring in showery weather. We enter the Thimble Shoal Channel aroun...
Miami to Virginia, Part Two. Fair weather persists, and so does a diurnal wind cycle--southeasterlies at night backing to light northeasterlies the following morning. Progress would be painfully slow if not for the Gulf Stream current pushing us along at...
Thursday, May 10, and we are off for Virginia. We end up having to tack out of the Old Florida Channel to reach open waters. The winds stubbornly remain east to northeast, pushing us westward until we close the coast around Lake Worth the following morni...
No engine? No problem ... but a few moments of arrested breathing as we sail off the anchor at Miami Beach and proceed down the winding waterway into Biscayne Bay. This includes transiting three narrow bridge passes. All doable with patience and plannin...
Well it's nearly time to put to sea again, to escape probable hurricane paths, to return to the typically tranquil waters of the Chesapeake Bay. I must confess that I have slacked off with the video blogging, but managed to scoop up what I have and put it...
My recent discovery for those of you who still insist on varnish ... here's a varnish which has the same look and (so far in my experience) durability as the premier marine varnishes for less than half the price.
Several of you requested more details on the sculling oar I use. In this vid I talk about the size and construction of the oar, where I stow it at sea, and how I deploy it with an oriental lanyard.
We transit the Providence Channel through the Bahamas and enter the Gulf Stream Thursday morning, Feb. 1. By the strong north setting current we end up closing the Florida coast just north of Ft. Lauderdale and I discover that you have to get within the 1...
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