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Confessions of a Long-Distance Sailor
- Rodeoclash 1mo agoReminds me of Tom Neale's "An Island to Oneself" - https://harpercollins.com.au/products/9781775492979 https://harpercollins.com.au/products/9781775492979
- ljf 1mo agoAn amazing book - well worth a read - I found a first edition years ago, and hadn't expected it to become quite so valuable. Luckily you can read the entire book on his daughters site, or at least you could in the past. Unrelated but similarly enjoyable is: Shrimpy: A Record Round-the-World Voyage - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shane_Acton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shane_Acton
- AntiRush 1mo agoI was reminded of this book today when I read some comments here about the popularity of “sailing log” manuscripts. This one is written by Paul Lutus, of Apple Writer fame. https://arachnoid.com/administration/index.html https://arachnoid.com/administration/index.html
- EvanAnderson 1mo agoPaul has come up on HN a lot recently. I didn't recognize the domain and didn't immediately realize this was him. It sounds like he's had a heck of an interesting life.
- whitepoplar 1mo agoLoved the book as well!
- fancy_pantser 1mo agoI've always wished the program was called Lutus Notes.
- interludead 1mo agoThat connection makes it even more interesting
- emmelaich 1mo agolutusp here on HN
- ggm 1mo agoVale Evi Nemeth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evi_Nemeth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evi_Nemeth
- jeffrallen 1mo agoIndeed. An excellent sailor, an excellent prof, and an excellent woman.
- agentultra 1mo agoTania Aelbi wrote a good one of her trip. I’m working towards a solo circumnavigation myself. Love reading about the stories of others.
- dieselgate 1mo agoRight on, where are you based out of and what kind of boat? Cheers from wa state
- Aeroi 1mo agoIn my spare time I message people of means to fund a 100ft carbon maxi sailing campaign to break ocean records at the major offshore events around the globe.(www.msailing.org) I call it my moonshot, something I spend a few hours on a month, and you'd be amazed how many people actually politely decline. I wish more people knew the joy and the rawness of the ocean.
- interludead 1mo agoThere are worse ways to spend a few hours a month than trying to talk rich people into funding an absurdly fast sailboat
- kirrent 1mo agoI'll bite. How does Gitana 18 and the general continued technological progress in the Ultim class fall short? If you had something to contribute, couldn't you just get involved in one of these projects?
- HeyLaughingBoy 1mo agoThat's like asking "why are you starting your own project. Couldn't you just contribute to an existing OSS project?" Some people need to do it themselves.
- Aeroi 1mo agoits a monohull.
- trillic 1mo agoIs the intention to use/charter "Skorpios" which you use on the site or are you proposing a full new program from the ground up?
- Aeroi 1mo agonew build, just images and renders for reference. most people have no context of what the latest large monohull builds are/have been.
- Jun8 1mo agoOh boy, this reminded me of The Boy Who Sailed Around the World Alone by Robin Lee Graham, which I randomly found and read in my school's library when I was 12 or 13. Still remember it 40+ yrs later.
- bitwalker 1mo agoI too loved this book, though my copy is titled _Dove_ - one of my all time favorites. My dad, who gave me the book, knew Robin during his own solo sailing days, and figured I could relate to a lot of what he wrote about. Sadly I never got a chance to meet him myself though.
- dannyobrien 1mo agoAlso in this genre: Moxie Marlinspike (yes, that[1] Moxie Marlinspike)'s documentary about anarchist yacht-squatting, "Hold Fast" (2007) https://vimeo.com/15351476 https://vimeo.com/15351476 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moxie_Marlinspike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moxie_Marlinspike
- qzw 1mo agoSeems unlikely for there to be two different Moxies Marlinspike in any case, but appreciate your confirmation. Indeed his Wikipedia page didn’t need a disambiguation section.
- nowittyusername 1mo agoThat was a nice video, huge balls on all four in doing this...
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- ButlerianJihad 1mo agoThere was, a few years ago, a nascent blog and a project by a lone sailor to make some sort of daring, record-breaking solo trek from, like, SF bay to Hawai‘i. This gentleman had christened his extraordinarily tiny craft “Chubby Girl” perhaps ironically, and also named his blog after it, “Chubby Girl Cruising”. Now for some reason apart from my proclivities as a landlubber hetero guy, I was intrigued enough to follow the blog’s progress as he prepared Chubby Girl and set sail. Sadly, he was nearly immediately turned back, by weather, mechanical failure, or some such. I was disappointed and, while he apparently took down his blog right away, I continued to poke around to find out if he’d try again soon. But the terrible reality of the Internet and search engines being what they are, the search term "chubby girl cruising" never again turned up any results relating to sailing or the ocean, and trust me, you don’t want to try it, even with SafeSearch engaged…
- IncreasePosts 1mo agoWil Spaul. He's in his mid 70s now and probably won't be trying again. AFAIK you can purchase chubby girl from him - it's still at the Berkeley marine center
- sandworm101 1mo agoA few years ago I was part of a national-level rescue chain, the chain that starts with a phonecall and snakes it way up through different first responders. The group I worked with were at pretty much the far end of the chain. I am all for people doing great things, but for every great-thing-doing long distance sailor there are a hundred rich idiots. 50ish, got rich, bought a boat and is out on the open ocean ... and something goes wrong. Fall off your motorcycle and you need a ride to the hospital, maybe an ambulance. Fall off your horse or a cliff and you need some burly volunteers with good knees and strong backs to haul you to the nearest road. A little more extreme, say you are stuck up a big cliff, and you might get a 90-second ride in a small helicopter to the nearest road. But when anything goes wrong out at sea, from a broken mast to a broken arm, you are in for the deluxe package. It starts with ships in the area diverting towards your position. Then a fixed-wing airplane the size of a small airliner launches to put eyes on you and coordinate the next bit: the granddaddy helicopter, the all-weather one with a winch, night vision, two pilots, two SAR techs, maybe three turbines and four or more blades the length of a bus. Think you are low-carbon because you are using a sail? Don't ask how many tons of fuel are spent keeping that helo in the air. (They often have to make multiple fuel stops during ocean rescues). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_MH-60_Jayhawk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_MH-60_Jayhawk https://www.airbus.com/en/products-services/helicopters/military-helicopters/mh-65https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AgustaWestland_CH-149_Cormorant https://www.airbus.com/en/products-services/helicopters/mili... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EADS_HC-144_Ocean_Sentry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EADS_HC-144_Ocean_Sentry https://www.canada.ca/en/air-force/services/aircraft/cc-295.html https://www.canada.ca/en/air-force/services/aircraft/cc-295.... My point: Don't romanticize the sea to the point that rich idiots start playing around out there. Always take it seriously and do not ever expect help. Always have backup plans for your backup plans. Buy the EPIRB BEFORE you buy the boat. Buy the expensive one. At least when Harrison Ford got rich he started buying and crashing light aircraft. He knew to crash on a golf course so the doctors didn't need to walk very far. (Not a joke. That happened.) https://golf.com/travel/penmar-golf-course-venice-california/ https://golf.com/travel/penmar-golf-course-venice-california...
- cudgy 1mo agoSeems like a good role for a drone rescue ship that targets the EPIRB location.
- interludead 1mo agoThere is something wonderfully old-internet about finding a complete 3,5year solo circumnavigation memoir sitting on a plain HTML site
- jodrellblank 1mo agoHe is a pre-internet guy, used to live in a cabin he built in the mountains, which he ran a long electricity cable to, and kept his backup floppy disks in a fireproof cannister as a guard against forest fires, in the early Apple days when he wrote columns for magazines and programmed Apple Writer.
- jocoda 1mo agoJoshua Slocum (February 20, 1844[1] – on or shortly after November 14, 1909) was the first person to sail single-handedly around the world. He was a Nova Scotian-born ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Slocum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Slocum
- jimmcslim 1mo agoAnd Sir Robin Knox-Johnston[1] was the first person to sail single-handedly around the world _non-stop_. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Knox-Johnston https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Knox-Johnston
- 27183 1mo agoAnd Chay Blythe was the first to do it the wrong way around (westabout).
- jodrellblank 1mo agoIncluding the bit where he built his own boat in India with his brother to sail back to the UK, his brother didn't go, so he sailed it alone. Then he tried to get a company to sponsor a new boat for the round-the-world race and nobody did, so he took his homemade boat. Entered the Southern Ocean at roughly a third of the way around, took damage and lost all his water supplies, and had to do the rest of the race by rationing his beer cans. 1960s battery and valve radio technology failed somewhere in the Indian Ocean and he could receive but not transmit, and had to send a status update by throwing a message in a bottle to a passing ship. There's a related link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Crowhurst https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Crowhurst who entered the Golden Globe race without the proper equipment, backed himself into a corner, planned to cheat to save his home, and didn't survive it.
- HeyLaughingBoy 1mo agoI have a DVD somewhere about Donald Crowhurst's "attempts." I felt sorry for the poor guy, but he really should have just admitted that it was beyond him and given up.
- contingencies 1mo agoAlways wanted to do this but enjoying land-lubber life a bit too much at the moment. I'd like to think I've built most of the skills (sailing, electronics, mechanics, sewing, rigging, drinking amicably with strangers, radio, cooking, botany, etc.) but am yet to find a wife who's OK with sailing life: maybe just go anyway?
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- zikduruqe 1mo agoMaybe HN will like this, 100 Rabbits. https://100r.co/site/home.html https://100r.co/site/home.html It is a mix of sailing, low tech, art.
- akeck 1mo agoThey also have a "sailing log" book, "Busy Doing Nothing". https://100r.co/site/busy_doing_nothing.html https://100r.co/site/busy_doing_nothing.html
- throwawaypath 1mo ago[flagged]
- sib 1mo agoA different but equally interesting book about extreme sailing (solo race around the world in the 1960's): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6055.A_Voyage_for_Madmen https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6055.A_Voyage_for_Madmen
- deltarholamda 1mo agoI read this many years ago, it is fantastic. The tale is very matter-of-fact, but interspersed with hard-hitting extremely personal bits. It's a great read. The boat itself is an odd duck, a Pacific Seacraft double-ender, which was only built for a few years. Somewhat similar to the very popular Westsail 32. Many cruising sailors recommend the smallest boat that will do for you. A larger boat is more comfortable, sure, but expenses do not scale up geometrically in boats. A 60 foot boat is not twice as expensive as a 30 foot, it's more like 4 times more expensive. Other commenters have noted other similar books (Tania Aebi, Joshua Slocum). The Pardeys, Lin and Larry, have many books on this lifestyle as well. All are very good.
- jimnotgym 1mo agoI bought a 25ft boat. Wish I got a 17ft trailer sailer! I know I will want a bigger boat, but I seriously recommend going a small as possible, dinghy or dayboat, then a small trailer boat, then when you are sure you are going to cross oceans go bigger. Joshua Slocums Spray was only 36'9. Robin Knox-Johnsons Suhaily is only 32 foot! Both went round the world single handed, the second one non-stop and before freeze-dried food!
- deltarholamda 1mo agoSingle-handed sailing definitely limits your boat size. You have to be able to set and retrieve sails, anchors, etc., and you can't always depend on mechanical assist. Things break at the worst times. Even couples and small families have to work within those limits somewhat, as during any long passage one person will be on watch, not two or three.
- ratelimitsteve 1mo agopiracy is a lot less charming than i imagined it to be. they weren't even singing...
- d00wgnir 1mo agoI can't remember when I read this journal, but I credit it with being one major influence in a decision to do something similar. I spent my 20's living aboard and sailing up and down the east coast and wouldn't trade the experience for anything.
- HardwareLust 1mo agoThank you very much! I appreciate the free book, and I love reading about sailing.