Dumb, dumber, and just plain stupid… So, yeah, yesterday happened. This morning, a quick glance at what passes for news these days confirmed that the excrement collided with the rotating blades and there will be far reaching repercussions for folks who plan to cruise and those out there currently cruising. What those may be are …
An important cartography lesson, something regarding homelessness, and, as someone born and bred in Los Angeles, I found this post rather compelling… Time’s a funny thing. It seems like just yesterday when we were in Las Palmas provisioning for our transatlantic crossing to Martinique aboard LM2. This morning, I woke up thinking that I need …
A needful Puerto Rico read, some roller coaster finality, and in the “when it’s time to get out of Dodge” department… So, here’s a thought on how we (the cruising collective) tend to deal with the various problems/issues/conundrums that make our lives complicated like power aboard, the need to be connected, and budget. As it …
Here’s a fun fact that occurred to me yesterday… Most carrots available for sale here in the USVI seem to come from Canada. Here’s another factoid you might want to consider… A lot of Caribbean islands buy groceries for resale in the USVI. Which is to say that, when shopping for a can of tomatoes, …
For starters, it’s a monohull somewhere between 26 and 38 feet long and, while there are a few outliers, the average falls somewhere around 30 feet. By current “Yachting” standards it is too old to be fashionable and its age is somewhere on the wrong side of 25. The main thing you can say about …
I’m not a big fan of bureaucracy but living or cruising on a sailboat it’s just part of the same old same. The best way, in my personal opinion, of dealing with the beast is to simply know what is required and follow the rules. Sure, I know many of those rules are dumb or …
OK, I’ll start with a phrase I really hate… “It costs what it costs” Sure, this inane assembly of words is correct but it implies that you have near zero control of what you have to shell out money for and that really pisses me off. The reality is that we all have a great …
The biggest issue confronting frugal cruisers is that, for the most part, no one really wants to have anything to do with us. We don’t quite fit the official model of what a modern cruiser is supposed to be and therein lies a big part of the problem in that we are just that little …
So, what’s your bottom line? A long, long time ago I think it was Lin Pardey who coined the $500-a-month-budget as a passing reference of the “Some people do it for as little as…” example. Back in the late 60’s, $500 was a doable, if tight, budget for cruising but today, according to a handy …
So it’s 2023 and a new year. For some of us, it comes with some musing over the state of things. As far as sailing and cruising goes, my musings seemed to be along the lines of that Dickens quote and I spent a couple of hours thinking about the good/bad reality after the ball …
