Radio, radio...

I don't really like talking to people via electronic means much these days. So much so that when my last cell phone died I have not bothered to replace it. I never bother to talk to anyone on my Globalstar Sat phone and so far I have survived!

"So It Goes" has a ICOM M600 which is now surplus to requirements as we only would use it to receive, and as it takes up space and is somewhat power hungry, we decided to replace it with a Sony ICF-SW7600GR which allows me to get weather and the various cruising nets on SSB. Since I seldom have anything to say to folks on air, there's no real need for anything more than a receive-only unit. Add the fact that it takes up almost no room and hardly any power, you can color me with the happy camper crayon.


The big question everyone asks is "But what about asking someone for help in an emergency?" and my answer is two fold... I'm much more of a fix it myself and self rescue than ask for help kind of guy. And in the event that I do need help severe enough (FUBAR) to ask for rescue I am most certainly not going to spend time futzing with an SSB!

As I mentioned in an earlier post the SPOT I have is a great way to call home when needed and let them know all is OK or Not OK or HELP! Add an EPIRB/PLB like the new McMurdo which is under $300 and you have a pretty bombproof system that costs less than the ICOM it is replacing.

Such is the state of electronic communication on "So It Goes" as we head off towards Bermuda...

Fein and dandy...

Easily one of the most used tools on "So It Goes" is my Fein Multimaster, which pretty much gets used on every single job I do on the boat whenever power tools are called for. While pricey, the build quality and the just awesome performance of the tool make it one of the best buys ever in my overflowing tool boxes...

That said, I am not quite so happy with the various blades available for the Multimaster which are over priced and have some serious longevity issues. Every time I order replacements I cringe and howl at the moon. Some hope has arisen as now Dremel, Bosch and even Harbor Freight have clones of the tool and hopefully more affordable blades with a hopefully better variety will follow.

That said, right now Amazon has a sale on Fein Multimaster blades which are "nearly" affordable. While I will be experimenting in the near future on various clone blades for the Multimaster, right now I'll be stocking up on the Fein...

Evolution in hard times...

As the recession/depression deepens elsewhere and politicians reward those who got us into the mess while offering "tough love" advice to people who actually work for a living, the cruising fleet seems to be adapting and evolving in the Caribbean... It used to be that the standard outboard engine on cruising boats was the 15HP and while I have been noticing a trend towards smaller it was underlined yesterday while on a visit to the local marine store as every dinghy on the dock was 5HP or less... The new cruising standard?

Sadly as various islands keep raising rates and adopting more and more less-friendly to boat fees and red tape I am hearing more people talking about heading out to more friendly destinations. Just about every time I find myself in conversation I hear yet more plans of going back to the Med, heading towards the Pacific, or other out of the way places. You hear the word "Thailand" mentioned a lot. This is one of the advantages of living on a cruising boat and the nomadic existence... You can always move on to greener pastures, evolve and adapt.

Throw in the imminent opening of Cuba to US flagged cruising and charter boats and the only thing that comes to mind for some Caribbean locations is... Big storm coming!

An exceptional read...

Climbing and film were always the things my life revolved around. Film from the first time I went and saw a film and climbing the moment we visited Yosemite when I was a kid and I looked up at Half Dome and wanted to be on it.

Film (at best) was/is a part time job and the marriage of climbing/film meant that between film jobs I could climb a mountain in Pakistan, Alaska, Patagonia or wherever the need took me. Something of a match made in heaven!

The need was always there and in fact still cries out to be fed... Sailing is just a natural progression and a natural part of the mix.

One of the great things about the climbing lifestyle was that there were so many exceptional people involved. Guys who made sleeping bags and other mountain gear would converse on art, books and film on a higher level than was often found on college campuses... We all loved to read as I recall and hardly the thing of jock talk that outsiders expected.

Mountain Gazette magazine was the standard to Mountain writing and is still the yardstick all aspire to and never quite meet. Those were great days and Dick Dorworth was very much in the eye of the storm.

One issue, Mountain Gazette did a single story by Dick Dorworth and that story "Night Driving" took up the entire magazine! Which in itself was somewhat earth shattering... Can you imagine "Cruising World" deciding they had a story that was so good they would throw out all other content for an issue and just have one story? Brave and crazy stuff...

Dorworth had always been one of the best writers in the genre but with "Night Driving" he pretty much found his voice and set the bar so high that I still don't think anyone has topped it. He certainly rocked my world and if he had not written the story I'd most likely not be living on a sailboat, built boats or made a lot of lifestyle choices that have me where I am today.


"Night Driving... Invention of the Wheel & Other Blues" A lot of us have been waiting for this book for a long, long time.

200,000 thousand baby seals... Happy belated Earth Day

Yesterday was Earth Day and Sailing Anarchy pointed out something worth noting and more importantly acting on.

While the rest of us were thinking about clever and cunning ways to do more with less and use clean technology (you know that whole Earth day vibe?) but up in Canada well, some folks have a different way of celebrating... and it's not pretty pictures at all!

Horrible and awful, is it not?

Do something about it!

You know a lot of people get it wrong. We can't save our earth and we don't need to! The earth will take care of itself and if that means losing us in the process, I doubt Mother Earth will have any problems without us.

All this ecology stuff... The bottom line is we need to save ourselves.

An important 40th anniversary!

On the 22nd of April in 1969 Robin Knox Johnston completed the first single handed non stop circumnavigation, a voyage of 313 days... Big deal, right?

The other day someone told me that going to sea in a thirty-four foot boat was both stupid and unsafe... He pointed out that in all of the cruising magazines they all seemed to be sailing boats forty-five feet or over and that my boat is simply too small! The fact is the nay sayer was right... Not in that a thirty-four foot boat is unsafe, but that the yachting press do push the bigger and more gear you have, the more you spend the better off you are. One can only imagine what they would say nowadays about RKJ sailing off around the world non stop in a Colin Archer style boat designed by William Atkin in 1923 (hardly cutting edge!) and made in WOOD! It might not have been the optimum yacht for the job but it was the boat RKJ had and so it was the right one!

You really should read his wonderful book "A World of My Own" because he can tell it so much better than any of us.

What is even more impressive is RKJ is still doing it and doing it well. Just a couple of years ago RKJ finished fourth in a single handed solo round the world race at sixty-eight years old!

So YES it is a big deal and sailors everywhere owe Mr Johnston a debt of gratitude in simply showing us all it can be done...

For more on RKJ

a thought on food and boats...

Sad to say but a lot of people think of Spam when they think of food on a sailboat... Spam and all manner of food that most people would not dream of eating in their shore bound existence somehow become acceptable while afloat.

Except, the problem is, if you don't eat spam on land there is bugger all chance that you will develop a liking of spam or reasonable facsimile and be eating it afloat. What you will do is have a bunch of cans that from time to time you have to throw away as they begin to rust or worse!

Fact of the matter is almost all the people I know on boats out cruising are really pretty discerning on the subject of food and what they cook and provision with... If there is one thing you can count on in the cruising fleet is that most of us are pretty serious about our food and you are much more likely to overhear two cruisers comparing the merits of pan seared vs grilled Wahoo or homemade salsas than you will comparing the relative merit of Spam vs Velveeta...

So if you are in that starting to make lists phase of preparing to cruise and sail off into the sunset... Take a good long look at what you eat and leave off the things you don't because if you don't like it on land you ain't going to enjoy it anymore while sailing!

Making money cruising...

One of the big questions, right after "How much does it cost to cruise?" is the flip side of the coin "How can I make money while cruising?"

In my own case not being independently wealthy when we made our first foray into long term cruising we really did not have a clue. Figuring we were smart and had some skills and that something would come up... and to misquote that line from "Shakespeare in Love", something always did!

As far as the nitty gritty goes though, having all of the tools we used to build Loose Moose 2 and the skills to use them was a help. These days there are a lot of people cruising who don't have basic boatwright skills and are always needing something done. Having the necessary tools, I also made dinghies, self-steering gears and so on... On boats people always need something.

But you don't need lots of tools (well you do but that's another thing entirely) and for instance, if you wanted to set yourself up as a rigger, a couple of Crescent wrenches, a vise, a tension gauge or two, a hack saw and Bosun's chair is pretty much all of the tools you need to set yourself up as a rigger... Well you can't forget the skill set involved as that is the main deal... Your talent!

Since we also had a sewing machine, we did sail repairs and made flags (lots and lots of flags in fact)!

One of the things we had invested in was a Hookah rig and whenever I took it out and used it, people would find things they needed done underwater... Cleaning hulls, finding stuff, underwater repairs, salvage and such became a regular part of our income. That hookah was one of the best investments we ever made!

Of course its not all boat stuff... Over the years we have seen people supporting the cruising habit by cutting hair, doing computer work, building websites, baking, freelance Chef for charter boats, and running websites that bring in income. All sorts of stuff! By and large lots of services and products are needed in the cruising community, and more often than not a cruiser would be much happier buying hand-made fishing lures from a cruiser rather than a store.

While these days we have a Yacht Charter company, plus I still shoot and make films, so we're more of a nomadic sailing office these days as opposed to a sailing workshop, but as we begin another cycle of cruising and voyaging we still have the Tools, Hookah and Sewing machine because diversity is a good thing. And, in these difficult times, being versatile gives us confidence that we can make a decent living whatever the economy does! Fact is, we are looking at all sorts of alternate earning streams from website income producers to doing our own book and film publishing.

Mow your lawn Lady?

Piracy, a bigger picture....

I've always been cursed by the need to look at the big picture and as a student of history one thing that quickly comes to the front is that there is always a"BIG" picture...

Lately there has been all sorts of coverage of the piratical activities in Somalia, but like most media stories these days we are not getting that big picture... Just as those hearing the news back in 1690 were not getting the big picture. The why behind the piracy in far flung places like the Caribbean during the golden age of piracy was a complicated dynamic.

So it is in Somalia as well... People just don't take up piracy on a whim or a dare. There is almost always a thought process and reason behind it but of course that is boring while commandos storming yachts and suchlike are the eye candy of the media and not a lot of room for the whole story and the real "Big" picture.

Make no mistake about it piracy is wrong but to understand what is going on it is needful to have a bit more of that Big picture... Take a few moments and read about a different part of it from the Independent back in January "You are being lied to about pirates"

Sort of changes the focus... It's a complicated world.

In the galley...

Since we we were talking about money well spent...

Just about the most used item on the boat in the galley department is our pressure cooker and we use it for everything from chili and other bean dishes to BBQ ribs and roasts. Lately we have been cooking breads and cakes (Check out Simply Spicy for this great Walnut Bread recipe). Fact is, there is so much you can do with a pressure cooker, that one of the things on my want list is a second pressure cooker/fryer!

Another thing that pressure cookers do extremely well is it makes cooking dried foods, like beans, easy. But these days with it getting ever harder to find decent and affordable vegetables while cruising, we are finding that a stock of dried vegetables is a great way to provision for long term voyaging while keeping our budget happy.

Of course getting used to using dried vegetables, just like pressure cooking, has a somewhat steep learning curve. So, before you take off into the sunset, it makes a lot of sense to work both into your cooking pattern and menus gradually. For example, the whole TVP (textured vegetable protein) thing is new to us so in the not too far distant future we are trying out some of Harmony House's TVP products to see how they work and taste for us. What is really nice about Harmony House is they have sample kits of all their various products so you don't get stuck with a lifetime supply of dried beets if you decide they don't work for you... YUCK!

We'll keep you posted...

Windvane VS Autopilot...

Easily the best money I have spent for gear on a sailboat has been for the various windvane self-steering gears my boats have sported. Having a vane gear makes for easier, better and safer sailing. I'd rank the self steering gear as the make or break system for enjoyable and safe cruising.

Some folks on the other hand, see auto pilots as the answer. But my experience with autopilots has been less than wonderful in terms of durability and energy use, which is more than enough to keep me on the windvane team all by itself. For me, the big downside in autopilots has to be that on a sailboat there is a real advantage in steering a wind course vs a compass course in both terms of performance and safety (and yes, I am aware that you can have an autopilot steer a wind course but it is not their forte). Of course autopilots are the bee's knees for those who motor everywhere...

You might want to take a look at this article Windvane Vs Autopilot as it pretty much covers all the needful stuff, dots the I's and crosses the T's! Plus it has the great advantage of not being written by someone who is trying to sell you a vane or an autopilot!

An Ingrid of note...

A blog I have been reading for a while now, "The Adventures of Sailing Vessel Macha" is one to keep an eye on... Great content and a testament that lack of an engine is no big deal on a gaff rigged Ingrid (always a favorite design of mine).

Do yourself a favor and give it a read!

SPOT... I'm impressed!

Not being dumb, I took up the Spot folks on their recent free Spot offer. Our unit arrived yesterday and to tell you the truth, I am some kind of seriously impressed with the thing!

It's compact, waterproof and is a means of communicating in "I'm OK", "Not so hot" and "Really need HELP" modes. Very cool! It's too bad if you missed the free offer but they are still silly cheap. So if you want a SPOT, it won't break the bank!

While I should stress again that this is not an EPIRB but it does fulfill a certain need that has not been available without resorting to a serious investment in the likes of a Ham or SSB radio set up.

Speaking of SSB's... Anyone want to buy an Icom M600 and automatic Tuner?

Quick notes... On the new Electric propulsion!

I've been sitting on writing about the new Electric propulsion system from Electric Yacht which is now installed in So It Goes as I have not yet been able to do proper sea trials for a variety of reasons... Mostly having to do with other projects and there not being enough hours in the day! For the moment lets just say the Electric yacht system really does rock. Installation is a breeze (and I hear that steps are in process to make it even easier...) and it is drop in in every sense of the word.

Another nice thing over the old system I had is right away you notice how much quieter the belt drive is over my old chain drive... I'm not knocking chain drive as it still makes a lot of sense for the guy doing a prototype or DIY system but silence is not something that can be underrated. The problem is that it is so quiet it took me awhile to realize it was actually on!

As I said more soon come on a more detailed discussion on the installation and the sea trial findings as soon as I have had a chance to up anchor, do them and see what the system delivers...

In the meantime Electric Yacht is having a sale through the end of April which you might want to check out!

The short list revisited... 2

Truth be told the DIDI 38/40 fulfills the same requirements of a CAL 40... The CAL 40 is a boat that would, like the DIDI, be a great home for a couple. Being able to go anywhere in comfort, safety and not without being some kind of serious styler in the process!

Having a CAL 40 is not just having a great boat but a huge chunk of Yachting history as well. The CAL 40 is a classic of the first order. Lapworth certainly set the bar high!

Rebuilding and bringing a CAL 40 back up to brand new and cruise prepped would more than likely be a job akin to building a DIDI 38/40 from scratch. Something that should be factored into the pros and cons list...



That said the CAL 40 is one sweet ride!