Sail Far Live Free

Normally my "Picture This" posts are one picture and one caption, but this past weekend we anchored out for the night under the perfect rainbow and the setting was so impressive I had to share two photos. There are no captions this week because these pictures are truly worth at least 1,000 words each.

" I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether ." - Socrates Sailing is a very sensory dominated activity. You can feel the wind heel the boat and heal your worries. You hear the music of the water in waves lapping at the hull. And you see shades of blue in nearly every direction. Senses working to capacity are a big part of what makes sailing so rewarding, and so, I think it's wise to protect those senses. You have a lot of choices when it comes to eyewear and protecting and enhancing your vision on the water. ZEAL Backyard sunglasses ZEAL Optics offers a unique product with their line of sunglasses. Many sailors relish the sustainability of sailing as a means of transportation (i.e. no motor/gas required), so it's only natural that bio-based plastic ("Z-Resin") sunglasses made from castor bean oil instead of crude o...

"I've always wanted to sail to the South Seas, but I can't afford it!" What these men can't afford is not to go. -Sterling Hayden from Wanderer I've read Hayden's quote countless times and I'm always left on the other side feeling inspired and full of questions about what I really want out of life. You can read Hayden's full quote in this blog post I wrote back in 2009.  The premise of the quote is that a tiny budget and the lack of a shiny new sailboat shouldn't stand in the way of making cruising dreams a reality. Or to use more of Hayden's blunt words, "Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?" If you read any of the mass circulation sailing rags like SAIL Magazine or Cruising World you're left thinking that there simply aren't any suitable cruising boats available if you can't write a non-rubberized $X00,000 check. Want evidence? Here's a few of the cruisers recently review...

The Perfect Window to the World (photo credit: K. Walters) Bonus: Free bottle of 3M Marine Finesse-It II Glaze to the first person to correctly name the make/model of the sailboat pictured above using the comments section below 

If you've been following SailFarLiveFree.com lately, you know that Ted Brewer has graciously been sharing some very interesting and educational content in response to my question asking him to name some of his favorite personal designs.  What follows below is what Ted shared with me about his Goderich 35 design (often also called the Huromic 35).  If you need to catch up on Ted's previous responses in this blog series, check here  and here . Goderich 35  ( Huromic 35 ) by Ted Brewer The Goderich 35 is a rather straight forward, double headsail cruising sloop (some will call it a cutter), and may seem a strange choice to be one of my three favorite designs, but when you consider that two of them circumnavigated the globe the hard way, below the Cape of Good Hope, Australia and Cape Horn, you may begin to understand my reasons. But more about that later. Goderich/Huromic 35 Sail plan By 1976 I'd had a fair bit of experience in metal yachts including s...

Beam Reaching Towards the Sun

Sailing apps are finally starting to become numerous in the Apple App Store so recently I've been experimenting with Theodolite.  You check here , here , and here for more of my sailing app reviews.  Theodolite is a multi-function app (for iPad/iPhone) that can serve as a compass, GPS, zoom camera, rangefinder and two-axis inclinometer. The basic premise behind the app is that realtime GPS position and bearing information is potentially useful when overlaid on the iPad's live camera image. There are also options for several different reticles and screen lenses, including a couple of "night vision" lenses. Typical Theodolite screen image Perhaps the most useful tool for sailing is the rangefinder function which can be used to calculate distance, height, heading and bearing using algebraic equations and triangulation. Need to quickly estimate the distance to a landmark such as a lighthouse? Assuming you know the height of the lighthouse from your charts, you can b...

Earlier this month I asked Ted to share his top 3 favorite personal sailboat designs ( Click here for his previous response  or simply browse the Sailboat Reviews page and read Ted's other guest posts). What follows below is Ted's response for his number 2 all-time favorite design: Black Velvet II Black Velvet II by Ted Brewer I moved to Maine in '67 and designed a couple of fiberglass production sloops and a number of larger custom wood yachts including, amongst others, the 64-foot Traveller II , (her ending is a story in itself!). Bob Wallstrom joined me in Maine in '69 and we were doing fairly well with custom work. Then, in the spring of '71, I was approached by a Quebec client, Fred Chevrier, to design a modern 43 footer for use on Lake Champlain with occasional trips down the Hudson River to the sea and points south. Fred stressed that the boat had to be weatherly since, when sailing on Lake Champlain, the winds always seemed to be on the nose; no matter ...

Sisters on the Bow

I've never put too much thought into my shore power cord. It brings electricity from the dock to my boat, so what else is there to say? Sure, it adds another step to docking and undocking because the cord has to be screwed on or off the shore power connector on the boat, but without it we wouldn't have refrigeration or fully charged batteries for the next trip. As far as I know, shore power cords have pretty much looked and functioned the same way ever since I've been boating. Shore power that connects easily and quickly w/ one hand That is until Marinco introduced their new EEL ShorePower . The acronym "EEL" turns out to be very appropriate because this new shore power cord truly has what is best described as an " E asily E ngaged L ocking System". If you've ever fought with cross-threaded rings, broken rings, or poor sealing when connecting to shore power, EEL ShorePower may come as a "Why did it take so long to come up this?" mom...

This month I asked Ted to tell me about some of his all-time favorite sailboats that he personally designed. What follows is Ted's first response (more to follow soon!). One of My Three Favorite Designs: Mystic  (By Ted Brewer) In the autumn of 1965 I was working at Luders Marine in Stamford, Conn. when Marvyn Carton, a New York investment banker, asked if I would be interested in designing his new yacht.  At the time he owned a sister ship to Irving Johnson’s Yankee II, the 50 foot, steel, centre cockpit, shoal draft, centerboard motorsailer ketch that Johnson had built after he gave up operating his famous world cruises aboard the brigantine Yankee .  Marvyn’s new yacht was also to be a motorsailer, similar in style, but 6 feet longer, with 2 feet more draft and a centerboard. He wanted a pilot house as well as a wheel on the poop, akin to an old clipper ship! Also, it was to be aluminum construction to reduce weight for better performance. Mystic 's sailplan...