Sail Far Live Free

"If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever." -St. Thomas Aquinas What makes a good ship's captain? Is it someone who leads fearlessly in times of duress? Is it someone who knows all the USCG boating "rules of the road"? Maybe it has more to do with making a crew add up to more than the sum of their individual parts. Is a good captain someone with limitless courage? Or maybe the best captains are those that realize their fear is their only real courage? Sometimes the roles of captain and dad converge Since becoming a father to our third daughter in March, I've been thinking about how fatherhood feels a lot like being a ship captain. We as individual family members represent the crew, while collectively our family of 5 represents the ship. And just like ships on the sea, families on the sea of life need leadership, guidance and a cohesive crew. As if fatherhood didn't have enough responsibility, I...

"The sea's rules can be ignored only at real, physical peril, not at mere risk of social or financial penalty." -Tom Wicker from Rough Passage Sometimes being an aspiring blogger comes with the unfortunate consequence of reporting and editorializing heart wrenching stories. That's the case today as I write about the tragedy in the latest North American Rally to the Caribbean (NARC). Many bloggers and media outlets already reported on the sad story of the cruising vessel Triple Stars back in November of 2011. I refrained from blogging about the event at the time because I felt the story was well covered, and frankly, too sad to write about at the time. Now that time has passed and new details related to the story have surfaced, I feel compelled to share the tragedy of Triple Stars  here on my blog today. For those unfamiliar with the NARC, it's one of several cruising sailboat rallies that groups several boats together for a passage from the mainland United Stat...

Apple's iPad is quickly becoming a very versatile onboard tool able to serve up the functions of several more traditional pieces of boat gear and marine electronics. While I've highlighted many of my favorite iPad apps  and uses for sailing , I haven't yet blogged about useful iPad accessories for boating and sailing. Enter the iPad 2 Telescope from Brando , an iPad add-on that extends the viewing range of the built-in camera. The telescope accessory comes with a special iPad backplate and attachable lens. The lens adds 6X optical zoom capabilities and features manual focus by rotating the bezel. iPad 2 Telescope accessory Why on Earth would you want a telescope accessory for your iPad? Theoretically, the iPad telescope could serve as a back-up to your binoculars, which should be in every cruiser's inventory for making landfall, spotting ships, reading navigational aids, and much more. But don't go dumping your expensive Fujinons just yet. iPad 2 Telesc...

I've blogged before about the recent slough of record attempting voyages aboard sailboats. While I applaud the courage, endurance, and state of mind required to make some of these attempts, I'm not personally inspired to break any records or create a media splash. I quite simply hope to Sail Far and Live Free. I do, however, find some of the current record voyages and hype worth mentioning. One such voyage I did find interesting and worthwhile was that of the Around the Americas (ATA) expedition .  During 2009/2010, the crew of s/v Ocean Watch sailed her 25,000 miles literally all the way around both North and South America with the mission of inspiring, educating, and engaging citizens of the Americas to protect our fragile oceans. A worthy cause, right? My former life as a marine biologist has me believing so. s/v Ocean Watch with her goal printed on the big spinnaker The Around the Americas expedition raised awareness for an important issue...

You know this voice, but do you know the ones below? Jimmy Buffett has made a fortune over the years singing his nautical rhymes that give voice to many a cruising sailor. You know (and perhaps love) all of his sailing songs like Son of a Sailor and A Pirate Looks at Forty . But what about those smaller grassroots artists who also express the passion and beauty of sailing through song? I've found several that have inspired me to Sail Far and Live Free. They've earned their megabytes on my iPod through well written lyrics and "feel good" melodies. If you're looking for new tunes to echo across the water this summer, check out the songs/artists below. FREE by Jack Maynard "Serendipity sat in the boat boneyard with a broken mast and a broken heart. I think it was fate or my destiny. Did I choose you or did you choose me? We wanted to sail on the wind and the sea, over the rails on a hard-a-lee, take it off, leave it off, play in the sun, set our sails f...

"What's in a name? That which we call a boat by any other name would sail as sweet." -My adaptation from William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet It's no secret that many of us feel a very personal connection to our boats. They have personalities and character that often reflect their owner's good and bad attributes. When I read the name on a boat I often wonder what the inspiration was. Other times I simply wonder, "What were they thinking!?" Evidently, sometimes they weren't thinking at all. There are quirky boat names like the sailboat called Hot Ruddered Bum . Others are strangely embarrassing like the powerboat I saw named Helmroid . And some make you think a bit before you get the name, like Never Again II . BoatUS releases a "top ten most popular boat names" list every year based on orders they receive for vinyl boat name graphics. Usually the names aren't all that imaginative, as you might expect from some of the most ...

I've always said that my favorite boat is whichever one I currently own. Being able to call it "mine" makes it my favorite by default. My first boat was a $400 derelict that I loved (still love) deeply. And she loved me back. However, that doesn't mean there aren't other boats I love that I'd like to call "mine" someday. The following is my personal ranking of my favorite affordable (available for ~$50k) sailboats. I've rather arbitrarily set the price limit around $50k and called it "affordable" in hopes that one day one of these boats might fit my budget and help my family and I to sail far and live free. Also note that other than the top 3, these rankings change in my head almost daily and I really struggled to narrow the list down to just 10.   As you peruse my list, you'll notice that they're all bluewater cruisers . You won't find any modern designs, fin keels, spade rudders, sugar scoop transoms, carbo...

Gonna put the world away for a minute Pretend I don't live in it... Wishing I was knee deep in the water somewhere Got the blue sky breeze and it don't seem fair Only worry in the world is the tide gonna reach my chair Sunrise there's a fire in the sky Never been so happy Never felt so high And I think I might have found me my own kind of paradise Mind on a permanent vacation The ocean is my only medication Wishing my condition ain't ever gonna go away (From Knee Deep by Zac Brown Band) I have a daily ritual at our dinner table of asking my kids to tell me one thing they learned and one thing they enjoyed at school. I joke with them that I'll be asking the school for a refund if they can't come up with something they learned each day. But more times than not, they not only tell me what they learned but they also teach me something I never knew or something I long since forgot. It's great! I get to feel like I'm back...

"Our ship was now all cased with ice, -hull, spars, and standing rigging; -and the running rigging so stiff that we could hardly bend it so as to belay it, or, still worse, take a knot with it; and the sails nearly as stiff as sheet iron."   ( Richard Henry Dana from Two Years Before the Mast , 1840) I feel cold just reading that quote. Luckily, I'm quickly warmed looking out the window here in early March and seeing budding trees and an absence of snow. Even after one of the mildest winters I can recall, it's still incredibly energizing to get the first taste of spring. 'Tis the season for maintenance lists to take shape and local chandleries and yards to start crawling with shoppers and workers. If the weather wasn't enough to remind me, the giant catalogs from West Marine and Defender that arrived in the mail would do the trick. I'll be trying to stick with the two-blog-posts-per-week rhythm as sailing season quickly approaches. Here's what you...

The following is a reprint of an article I authored for SAIL Magazine's March, 2012 issue.  The pictures in the blog post are my own and differ from those that appeared in the magazine.  You can read our logs from this cruise by clicking here . Favorite Weekend Cruise: Beaver Island - An old Mormon kingdom off the coast of Michigan We left the hustle and bustle of Charlevoix, Michigan just in time to make the second drawbridge opening of the morning as we pointed the bow towards Beaver Island, an isolated destination about 32 miles offshore in the middle of northern Lake Michigan. There was a thick fog on the inland seas as a light drizzle fell from the gloomy sky. Thanks to our chartplotter, I knew our position and the proper heading to make landfall on the island, but I was weary of the fog without radar.  I also knew we were following the approximate route of the Beaver Island passenger ferry, so I raised the ferry captain on the VHF.  He confirmed he had us ...