We watched the movie ‘Captain Phillips’ the other night which is about a freight ship being attacked by pirates. It is an excellent movie and had us all sitting on the edge of our seats! One of my hero’s – Peter Blake, was tragically killed by pirates boarding his yacht up the Amazon River. Pirate…
I started writing this blog back in February 2014 and I have learnt so much in that time. If you are planning on having a blog for keeping track of your sailing adventures I would recommend that you start early to enable you to get your head around a few things before you head off. My…
Ugh this is not something I even want to consider to be a possibility! However from what I have read it is something that we need to be aware of and prevention is definitely better than an explosion! Prevention Gas bottles should be located in a dedicated locker and should be well secured (refer to…
“Safety is thinking about the problems you might encounter and ensuring you have considered your options” – quote from Yachting Monthly magazine. I guess it is what I am hoping to achieve by researching what has worked for other people and tying them all together in to a safety plan. It will help us decide…
From what I have read about dis-masting, it sounds like retrieving the mast from the water to use as a jury rig would be almost impossible for a cruising couple to do. The conditions aren’t likely to be particularly favorable either! Try and keep the mainsail and boom to use as a jury rig. But…
The first rule of seamanship – Keep the water on the outside of the boat… Possibly every sailors worst nightmare…?! Although many of the other scenarios I have researched in the safety section also sound equally non-appealing.
If you own a New Zealand registered yacht and are planning on sailing it offshore, you need to comply with the Yachting NZ Category 1 safety regulations. As NZ is many hundreds of miles from any other countries, these safety regulations mean that boats are seaworthy and equipped with all the gear needed to make an…
We recently did a trip up the coast on Wildwood and I downloaded the Navionics app on my iPad. It cost about NZD$50.00 for the app with the Australian and NZ charts on there. I was really disappointed when it didn’t work! My iPad didn’t have the GPS built in, but after chatting to someone…
In this day of being connected to our mobile phones and internet connections just about everywhere we go, it can feel like you are a bit cut off when you go to sea and suddenly that connectivity disappears! So what are the options? Well actually there are a few: SSB Radio Satellite Technology Some friends…
A ships log is actually a legal document, a record of your journey detailing the course you are steering, weather conditions etc. If there is any kind of incident, the information you have in the log can be used as evidence, so it is important to keep in up to date. I prefer to have a…
Astrolabe Sailing 