Sail Far Live Free

Chart Art  (Lake Michigan) by K. Walters

"I hate storms, but calms undermine my spirits." -Bernard Moitessier, The Long Way Moitessier had a way with words. I would like to have been a fly on the bulkhead to hear the conversations he had with his sailboat on the long solo passages that define his sailing legacy. Consider his quote above. It wasn't heavy weather and storms that challenged his inner self, but rather the monotony and silence of being becalmed. Storms on the other hand, have a way of shaking us to the core and tossing us out on the other side a little scared but often a better sailor for the experience. And frankly, the threat of storms can sometimes undermine my normally free spirit. How do you deal with storms while sailing? What follows is merely my overview of options for dealing with heavy weather while sailing, rather than a deep discussion about the particulars of each storm tactic. I personally don't have extensive experience with all of these tactics nor do I have offshore heavy

1,000,000 pageviews. That's the number that SailFarLiveFree.com recently surpassed, thanks to you all! Actually, I'm officially at 1,035,614 as of today, but who's counting? And in reality 900,000 of those pageviews could be directly from my mom for all I know.  In any case, I want to sincerely thank anyone who's been a reader of my musings here. Pageviews are nice, but I prefer this view. I started this blog in 2007 to simply chronicle the restoration of our first sailboat , keep myself accountable for my dreams and keep a journal of our adventures for my kids and I. I never intended to build an audience, but you've shown up nonetheless. And you've brought with you tons of inspiration and encouragement. Again, THANK YOU! To show just a smidgen of my appreciation, I'm offering a pair of brand new recently published cruising books, As Long as It's Fun by Herb McCormick and A Sail of Two Idiots by Renee Petrillo , free for two random read

Purple Haze by K. Walters

"If a man's fortune does not fit him it is like the shoe in the story; if too large it trips him up, if too small it pinches him." - Horace This is starting to look bad. I never intended it to turn out this way. However, I can no longer deny that my collection of boat shoes has now surpassed my wife's total amount of shoes. The latest culprit to push my tally past Erin's? The Porter shoe from Astral . Astral is probably best known for producing lifevests and shoes for kayaking and river water sports, but the Porters can easily cross over to sailing. In any case, the crew at Astral seems to know water and water recreation quite well. I was first drawn to the Porter by their simple looks and color combinations, so apparently my vanity initially ruled over my sense of comfort and function. But it didn't last long because the Porters are SOOO comfortable to wear. They're light and airy (much more so than they look in pictures) and for once have ze