Latest Magazine Article -Ocean Navigator

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A woman sailor need not leave her boat behind when her husband passes away, while sailing around the world…she CAN continue on!

Leaving Cape Town after my husband died from Covid, across the biggest ocean yet, without the captain I sailed the last 75,000 miles with was daunting. The very thought of it causes immense anxiety in my life to this very day… but with some careful planning and assessment of the risks, I was able to prepare for a passage with another man…and to successfully cross the southern Atlantic Ocean, 6100 miles this past year. This is the story of what I did to prepare for such a task.

Well, I am finally back to writing articles after nearly 2 years of not…this time for Ocean Navigator magazine. Michael Hayward did much of the photography for it. You can view the article below on page 24

Click to access ON274_MarApr22_digital_edition.pdf

Did you know you can get free electronic copies of the latest editions of Ocean Navigator? Mine as well…Michael may have have an article in the next edition, and I will be writing more for the magazine as well…

One major mess up that Ocean Navigator did was to NOT give the photo credits to Michael Hayward… all but a few were from him..the best ones…

https://oceannavigator.com/digital-editions/

Predictwind & The Stormy Weather of Cape of Good Hope/Cape Aghullas!

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This was Rebecca’s most feared Sail to date…the stormy weather going around Cape of Good Hope and Cape Aghullas! And she was right…we experienced every kind of weather on this passage including a huge electrical storm where we still wonder why we were not struck by lightning! Luckily Predictwind gave us great forecasts through the Idirium GO, right on the Raymarine Chartplotter so we knew what weather was coming before it came! Patrick is t one to use an IPad, but having the wind and currents right on the Raymarine Axiom Pro chartplotter…well he couldn’t avoid looking at the weather forecasts when I downloaded them!
One thing we forgot to mention on the video, is that a Predictwind Offshore DID warn us of a stormy night ahead with its CAPE forecast. There was about a 4 hour period on the Cape forecast on Predictwind that there was a pretty big chance for squalls. Oops…forgot to tell the captain…I was psychologically prepped for bad weather, but he wasn’t. But the smart captain that he is…obviously he saw the dark clouds ahead, turned on the radar, and could see it coming, and got down sails ahead of Time! A perfect example of the bad communication at sea that we have sometimes. It’s not just on land girls…and it’s not always the captain!  The wind and waves were not so bad, but those lightning strikes were pretty darn impressive!
I am glad to have the Cape of Storms behind us, and all beautiful fair weather sailing up ahead…Ha-Ha who am I fooling!
We also forgot to mention we have an “ion dissipator” at the highest point on our mast. Can that be why we did not get struck by lightning? No idea…Probably not.

 






Using Our Electronics -From Predictwind to our Raymarine Chartplotter to our Monitor Wind Vane to Sail the Wild Coast of South Africa!

A Tour of our Valiant 40. The Bluewater Sailboat. What do we like about it? What would we change?

Preventing a Lightning strike on a sailboat : Lightning Protection

Sailing South Africa with Electronics…Predictwind, AIS, and Raymarine Radar…we used them all!

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In the old days, you used barometers, and GRIB files, and listened to SSB and VHF weather reports to round the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa.

Now there is just so much more to aid a sailor.

 

We used PredictWind Offshore for planning the trip when we had internet, and then during the trip using our Iridium GO! to get updates to know when it was time to seek shelter. This was probably our biggest tool for weather Routing using the ocean current models , as well as four wind and wave forecasts from Predictwind to make sure we got it right.

We would not sail any ocean now without the Iridium GO and the Professional version of Predictwind Offshore. I would simply refuse to leave the dock without it!

Latest Video

Here is the latest video with us sailing from Richards Bay, underway through lots of wind and speedy currents on the way to Cape Town. It’s part one of a 2 part series, as we need to seek refuge from an upcoming storm, in East London for a few days.