Sail Far Live Free

"To know the laws that govern the winds, and to know that you know them, will give you an easy mind on your voyage round the world; otherwise you may tremble at the appearance of every cloud." - Joshua Slocum from Sailing Alone Around the World As sailors, we need to make our peace with the wind. After several years of sailing my boat, my feelings for the wind are still sometimes jumbled. When there's no wind I reluctantly fire up my old gasoline Volvo inboard and curse the swarming flies. And then there are times when I see a forecast calling for 25+ knots or I see the foam blowing off the top of a swell and my stomach tightens a bit as trepidation creeps in. I know the tremble that Slocum speaks of and apparently I've got more to learn about the wind. So how do you learn the wind? Well, there are plenty of books on the subject and I'm a firm believer in learning through doing. But there are some crutches available that will make your relationship wit

"Odysseus spread his sail...while he sat and guided the raft skillfully by means of the rudder. He never closed his eyes, but kept them fixed on the Pleiades, on late-setting Bootes, and on the Bear...which turns round and round where it is, facing Orion, and alone never dipping into the stream of Oceanus - for Calypso had told him to keep this to his left. Days seven and ten did he sail over the sea..." - Homer from The Odyssey , 700 BC My sailor's cap comes off to those of you who know celestial navigation and can competently find your way across oceans with little more than a sextant. I'd like to learn to navigate by the sun and the night sky and have my nav station uncluttered by wires and spent batteries, but until that day I'll be relying on electronics as my main means of navigating.  Mobile devices have rapidly leveled the playing field for the marine navigation market. It wasn't long ago that color LCD GPS chartplotters cost thousands of d

I've often said that one of my favorite aspects of sailing is the ease at which you can unplug yourself from the complexities and over abundance of technologies. However, I'm also a bit of a gadget junkie and have become very fond of my iPad, even while on the boat. What follows is a list of my favorite apps for sailing. All are available in Apple's app store (and likely in the Android market too) and work on both an iPad and iPhone. 1) Navionics HD: While expensive compared to most apps, Navionics HD is an outright bargain when compared to tradition chartplotters. The bathymetric charts are beautifully detailed and include the option of overlaying Google Earth, Bing aerial photos or topographic terrain maps for land. Functions include tracks, route planning and guidance, speed data and many other goodies you would expect from a gps plotter.  You can view my more in depth review of the Navionics app here . 2) Sail Master: This is a simple app, but it loo