Posts

Stuff I have written.

Who Lives Aboard a Boat and Why Do They Do It?

Why would anyone want to live on a boat? There is no simple answer to this question because people live on every conceivable size and type of boat for many different reasons. I will boil down some of the reasons into a few categories beginning with dumbest, those who do it on the cheap, before moving on to cruisers and voyagers.

What Is It Like, Living on a Boat?

For every fulfilled dream of sailing off on some grand adventure there is a disaster caused by one of the many things that can go wrong on a boat. In our experience, the planning and anticipation of the great adventure is often better than the actual adventure itself.

Maintenance, Repairs, and Upkeep

We designed and equipped our boat with reliable mechanical equipment. There is plenty of it and it all must be constantly maintained and occasionally replaced or repaired. It is a full-time occupation.

Pets and Boats

In the past we cruised for months at a time with two cats aboard our thirty-five foot boat and we spent many weekends aboard my parents boats with dogs and cats, so I know something about pets and boats.

East Coast’s All Weather Anchorages

Fortunately, the East Coast has some great anchorages unlike anything that exists in Southern California. The difference is these anchorages provide 360-degree wind protection. I will describe a few of them here.

The more passages we make up and down the east coast from Florida to New England, the less interested we are in using the terribly slow Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). We have therefore chosen to make offshore overnight passages and leap frog over entire sections of coast. But that is not the only way to avoid the ICW. The subject of this article is how to make daytime point to point offshore passages with stops every night at secure anchorages.

It was around 0815 hours on June 8, 10 miles north of the Abacos, Bahamas. We observed a thunderstorm ahead visually and on radar and kept it on our port side. Both of us were standing up in the pilothouse. We thought we were well past it and in sunlight when a simultaneous bang flash surprised us. I said immediately, “We’ve been hit.”

How I Lost Bucket Bay

Bucket Bay was an incredibly special place in my life. I first discovered it when I was eighteen years old with my mom and dad aboard their thirty-five-foot sailboat. Also along for the cruise to Santa Cruz Island were my two best friends. My friends and I thought of ourselves as tough guys who played together on our high school football team.

A Long and Unusual Voyage

I was still trying to figure out life and understand myself when, during the summer after my sophomore year of high school, I climbed aboard the purse seiner Assunta Rose and was suddenly thrust into manhood working alongside Portuguese fishermen. Departing San Diego, the boat crisscrossed the Eastern Pacific Ocean with stops in Mexico and Costa Rica and finally ventured south of the equator searching for tuna that travel with dolphins. This is an excerpt from an unpublished Memoir that I wrote about my experience.

They Should Have Bought a Motorhome

We often hear entertaining calls, usually to the Coast Guard on the radio. Here is a sample of some of them.