What Qualifies as a Modern Sailing & Cruising Memoir? Here’s how I am defining modern cruising memoirs for the purpose of this blog post: View my suggestions on Amazon. Orca Who: John Pennington and his now-wife, Kara PotterThe boat: Cape Dory 30Where: Sailing around the world, starting from coastal California, down to Mexico, across the…
The biggest project on our 2022 refit was an electrical reimagining that was centered around our new solar panels. We had several goals we wanted to accomplish to set us up to cruise the next five years. What We Had in December 2021 Since 2014, Starry Horizons had 1060 watts of semi-flexible solar panels spread…
One of the first projects we tackled in the very early stages of outfitting our boat for cruising was to add folding propellors to our sailing catamaran. Now, after nearly 45,000 nm of total sailing – including a world circumnavigation – here’s our thoughts on folding propellers, and more specifically, our Flexofold propellers. What are…
Snorkeling is one of our absolute favorite activities when we are cruising. When the water is clear, I like to get in at least every other day for a snorkel. It’s great exercise and exposes us to the marine wildlife around us. Since we’ve been cruising for almost 5 years, we’ve racked up hundreds of…
I wrote a while back about unboxing my new Drift Paddleboards I got in Australia and taking them for a spin. Since then, I’ve had a blast paddleboarding with the Gemini Twins (or the singular, Lord and Lady Gemini) all over Southeast Asia. However, after my first few paddles, I learned quite a bit about…
I was already a huge fan of my Magma Products nesting cookware set. I had brought a set over to France when we moved aboard the boat and easily fell in love with them. However, after four years and some mistreatment on my part, my pans were not doing so well. Thankfully, while in Langkawi…
One of the things David and I love about cruising is being out in remote locations, away from cities and towns. During our world circumnavigation, we’ve been able to go to some amazing places like the Lau group of Fiji and the Ha’apai group of Tonga. This also means we’re away from professional repairmen, chandleries,…
Cruising Southeast Asia has made me so angry about plastics. It’s horribly depressing to realize that while plastics and waste, in general, are an issue in the United States, it’s nothing compared to the issues in countries like Indonesia. The prevalence of single-use plastics is overwhelming. For example, at cultural events we were given snack…