Navigation

After nearly a year of gathering moss, Convivia and her crew are overcoming inertia and getting ready to cruise again. This week, we took advantage of the public holiday and school break and got Convivia out of the river and onto her anchor. Before we could do that though, there were a number of boat-list items that needed to be knocked off. Dodger repair Our dodger was hit hard during the big hail storm. Several large holes were punched in the old, brittle, windshield panes. We couldn’t go anywhere without fixing them. Unfortunately, this was a much larger task than it seemed at first blush. The old Sunbrela was worn out, and even if we could have salvaged it, the hardware was installed over the plexiglass, and the zippers were shot. The upshot was that the whole frame had to be remade. ...

Note: I wrote this post in September while making passage from Vanuatu to Australia. I was all fired up about it until Vick read it and crinkled her nose (or something like that). I relegated it to the drafts folder and forgot about it until now. Recently a bunch of this year’s puddle jumpers have asked about this topic, and I figured “what the heck” I’ll just post it in case it helps someone. If you aren’t about to go blue water cruising, I suggest you give this one a skip. If you’re leaving tomorrow, and you don’t already have an iPad, likewise, skipperoo. But if you are using an iPad for navigation and haven’t already learned these tricks, I think it would be a really good idea to read this, digest it and then ask me to fill in detail for anything that wasn’t clear. Please do leave a comment so everyone can benefit from the process. ...

iNavX is (as I’ve previously mentioned) a terrific product. It’s one greatest shortcoming is it’s inability to import grib files when the iPad is not directly connected to the internet. Since this is going to be our primary electronic navigation device, I needed to remedy that before we left. Luckily, the solution is neither painful, nor overly technical (one in the same?). It does require jailbreaking your iPad though, so if you have trouble breaking the rules, you had better stop reading here. ...

We arrived in Two Harbors last night, just after the sun went down. We left Marina Del Rey around noon and motored out of the immense harbor. When we got to Santa Monica Bay, I briefly doused the engine to get a sense of the wind. We headed up and set the main. The wind sustained us for all of 15 minutes (at a measly 4 knots) before it died out completely. I reluctantly conceded that there was no chance of making it to Catalina on wind power alone and powered up the diesel. ...