Blog » BOOKS

Books to take your family cruising

Kathy Parsons — Thu, 24 Nov 2016 15:25:28 +0000

There is no topic that we have covered as often and as thoroughly as going sailing with children aboard.

Why? The answer lies in the children that we have met living aboard boats with their families.

The cruising kids that we have known have been active and knowledgeable, curious about the sea, other people, and the great big world they sail. They tend to have loving, respectful relationships with their parents, and are at ease with adults as well as children of different ages and backgrounds. We have seen them grow up to be creative, engaged, caring adults.

Society is all too ready to discourage families that want to go cruising. So, we want to counteract that by giving families as much information (and inspiration) as we can to help them decide whether to go sailing, and if so, how to do it.

Quite a few cruising families have told their stories and shared their advice on Women and Cruising. 20+ families have participated in our “12 Questions for Sailing Families” series in the past 6 years.

Five children so far have written in our “Cruising Kids Speak” series. And a growing number of cruising Moms and children have written for the Women and Cruising blog.

If you are thinking about going cruising as a family, explore the Women and Cruising site and get to know these sailors through the articles that they have written.

And here is another resource: Several of these cruising families have written books that will inform and inspire you in pursuing your dreams and your plans. Enjoy!

Voyaging with Kids – A Guide to Family Life Afloat
By Behan Gifford, Sara Dawn Johnson and Michael Robertson, 2015

Behan Gifford and the s/v Totem family were one of the first contributors to our “12 Questions for Sailing Families”.

When they first wrote in 2010, they were just starting out.

Since then, they have circumnavigated, maintained an excellent blog, and together with two other cruising families, written an excellent, thorough guide on voyaging with children.

The book is available in both print and ebook.

Lesson Plans Ahoy (Third Edition): Hands-on Learning for Sailing Children and Home Schooling Sailors
By Nadine Slavinski, 2013, 2014, 2015

Nadine Slavinski and the sv Namani family have taken two extended “seabatticals” aboard their 1981 Dufour 35, sailing from Europe to the Caribbean, North America, and on to Australia.

A Harvard-trained educator who home schooled her son aboard, she has developed a series of excellent lesson plans and activities for children.

Nadine also wrote:
- Lesson Plans To Go: Hands-on Learning for Active and Home Schooling Families
- Cruising the Caribbean with Kids: Fun, Facts, and Educational Activities

Merlin’s Voyage
By Emmanuelle Buecher-Hall, 2014

Emmanuelle and the Merlin family also contributed to the original “12 Questions for Sailing families” series.

They built a catamaran in South Africa, then sailed away crossing the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans, before settling in Australia.

Inspired by the voyage, Emmanuelle wrote the delightful Merlin’s Voyage, a book written for young children. In the story, Merlin is a curious catamaran which carries a family with young kids from South Africa to the Pacific.

It is available as an ebook or paperback, in French and in English.

Child of the Sea: A Memoir of a Sailing Childhood
By Doina Cornell, 2012

In 1975, when Doina was 7, the Cornell family left their home port in London, England, and set off cruising.

Over the next 6 years, the family circumnavigated. This is the story of their experiences from the child’s perspective.

Doina is one of the many wonderful examples of the formative effects of a cruising childhood.

As a mother, teacher, writer, and district councilor in England, Doina is a passionate champion for the environment and for tolerance and diversity.

Child of the Sea is available in paperbook, ebook and audiobook.

Boat Girl: A Memoir of Youth, Love, and Fiberglass
Melanie Neale, 2012

Melanie and her family lived aboard a 47-foot sailboat, from birth until she she left for college. During the 1980’s and 90’s, the Chez Nous family spent their summers along the US East Coast and their winters in the Bahamas.

Melanie has written two memoirs of her experiences growing up aboard – one oriented toward adults, and another for children.

Melanie continues to be active involved in boating, as a boatowner and as a boat broker.

She still regularly has fiberglass in her hair…

Melanie also wrote:
Boat Kid: How I Survived Swimming with Sharks, Being Homeschooled, and Growing Up on a Sailboat

Convergence: A Voyage through French Polynesia
By Sally-Christine Rodgers, 2014

This beautiful book written by Women and Cruising contributor Sally-Christine Rodgers comes with a bonus: all proceeds from the book are donated to marine conservation.

Sally Christine and her husband, Randy Repass, founder of West Marine, designed and built a custom Wylie 65 ketch.

Sally-Christine describes the design of the boat and then the 3,000 mile voyage to the Marquesas they undertook with their new boat, accompanied by their 9-year-old son, and another family with two 4-year-old twins. She describes their experiences in the beautiful islands of the South Pacific, which she illustrates with superb photography.

The journey she recounts is both descriptive and personal – throughout she writes as a sailor, wife, mother, lover, and passionate advocate for care of the marine environment.

Next week, I will highlight another collection of books for sailors and sailing wanna-be’s on the theme of Voyage Planning.

Book Review – SeaWise Safety Checklist / Emergency Action Guide for Sailing Yachts

Gwen Hamlin — Sun, 22 Nov 2015 13:02:49 +0000

Book Review – SeaWise Emergency Action Guide and Safety Checklists for Sailing Yachtsby Zvi Richard Dor-ner and Zvi Frank. Cornell Maritime Press, a division of Schiffer Publishing, Ltd.

An ‘action guide book’ for mariners,
inspired by the aviation world’s discipline of thorough checklists for everything.

What if….?

“What ifs?” are dark questions that lurk in the minds of many sailors, and not just those new to sailing, but those new to a particular boat, signing on as crew for an ocean passage, perhaps, or just relaxing as a guest for a weekend.

Safety Checklist side

Too often, “What ifs?” are questions that get left unasked, shoved aside by blind trust in the skipper or in the face of sunny reassurances and thus left to fester in the musty corners of the imagination.

Even responsible captains who plan carefully and brief thoroughly can fall prey to assuming their crew will somehow know what they need to know in the unlikely event an emergency arises.

Left unaddressed, especially for those who come aboard nervous to begin with, “What ifs…?” can lead to anxiety if not disaster.

The SeaWise Emergency Action Guide and Safety Checklists for Sailing Yachts, from Schiffler Publishing’s Cornell Maritime Press, brings all this out into the bright light of day in a handy, new flip booklet brought to reality by a duo of Israeli sailors – Zvi Richard Dor-ner and Zvi Frank – who have come together to create what they dub “action guide books” for mariners.

Emergency Action Guide side

These action guide books – there’s a SeaWise Emergency Action Guide and Safety Checklists for Motor Yachts, too — are inspired by the aviation world’s discipline of thorough checklists for everything.

Spiral bound, tabbed, and printed on waterproof paper, the SeaWise Safety Checklist for Sailing Yachts read one direction is a collection of safety checklists divided into twelve sections.

Flipped over and read the other direction, it becomes the SeaWise Emergency Action for Sailing Yachts, with guidance addressing fourteen different emergency scenarios.

The Safety Checklist side begins with a checklist for every captain for pre-voyage planning: reminders of information that should be written down in the logbook for each specific passage.

This is followed by checklists for pre-departure safety briefings about procedures and equipment – briefings that go two ways, so that the captain obtains information about the crew as well as the crew about the boat.

Safety Checklist: On Watch

The next section is on the responsibilities of the watch keeper, for both day and night passage-making, and summarizes, in a helpfully concise and accessible format, the Rules of the Road, buoyage, vessel lights and sound and distress signals.

This is followed by a checklist for heavy weather preparation, reminding crew of many small preparations to take before the bad weather hits that are all too easy to forget while worrying about the bigger preparations.

The next four sections provide boat owners a place to assemble in one place the specific specifications of their boat for the crew’s reference. This includes pages to sketch in your boat’s sail plan, deck plan and stow plan (but, unfortunately, no pages for electrical or plumbing). There’s even a page for your boat’s polar diagram, a neat graph of your boat’s potential performance in given wind speeds and points of sail, so that you can calculate if you are making the best of the conditions.

Wrapping up the checklist section are lists of materials and tools to inventory for damage control, medical needs, sail repair and engine maintenance. This last category, of course is general, and should be customized for your engine and/or generator.

Emergency Action Guide: Medical

Taking all the preparations recommended by the Safety Guide will reduce the chances of ever having to use the Emergency Action Guide side of this book, but bad things can happen to even the best prepared mariner.

When those bad things do happen, they require prompt and appropriate response, and the Emergency Action Guide is constructed to provide “concise and direct guidance” for dealing with each possibility, in those very moments when one can hardly think straight.

In an “If…, then…” flowchart format, the Emergency Guide addresses flooding, collision, running aground, fire, loss of steering, engine failure, emergency communications, medical emergencies, man overboard, extreme weather, rig failure, abandon ship, rescue and disabled skipper scenarios.

All this information is packed into a compact 8 ½” x 6” package that will easily find a place in the cockpit on passage, handy for constant review and reference. The pages can be marked on with pencil to customize and update lists and diagrams, and used in conjunction with a seagoing logbook to record specific information for each region travelled.

We of Women and Cruising have long advocated the use of checklists aboard for responsible organization. Here is a book that gives cruisers a huge head start.

SeaWise Emergency Action Guide and Safety Checklists for Sailing Yachts by Zvi Richard Dor-ner and Zvi Frank. Cornell Maritime Press, a division of Schiffer Publishing, Ltd.

Also on this website

More book reviews

Book Review: The Boat Galley Cookbook, by Shearlock and Irons

Gwen Hamlin — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 12:31:17 +0000

Although it is a hefty paperback, The Boat Galley Cookbook by cruisers Carolyn Shearlock and Jan Irons is likely to help raise your waterline, because it consolidates in one volume many culinary resources cruising chefs have previously felt obliged to carry.

Indeed, no cruising cookbook I have ever seen has so deliberately set out to be a comprehensive examination of how to meet the challenges of cooking afloat. “We each faced a huge learning curve when we first began cruising,” say the authors, “so, we’ve tried to pass on all the things we wish we’d known!”

The Boat Galley Cookbook is divided into two main sections. In the first – “A Galley Frame of Mind” – the authors present tips on how to adjust your thinking from land to sea. They advise on how to outfit your galley from scratch, make good provisioning choices for your voyage (including figuring out options available in foreign markets), and effectively store and protect various foodstuffs for passages.

Possibly the most important section in the whole cookbook is the one on how to make intelligent substitutions when some important recipe ingredient – like buttermilk or sour cream — is not available. (I can’t tell you how many times in a remote location this chapter would have been a godsend!) Another chapter summarizes all the measurement equivalents and conversions you’re likely to encounter moving from country to country. There is even a chapter introducing some less familiar cooking techniques that we cruisers pick up – like cooking in a thermos or baking in a pressure cooker. Before The Boat Galley Cookbook cruising cooks had to collect this information willy nilly.

Two other helpful chapters in the section zero in on the very pertinent issues of planning meals for underway consumption and on the special concerns when stormy weather is on the horizon.

The Recipes section of The Boat Galley Cookbook shows equal consideration for cruisers’ needs. The section starts “Meal Ideas for the Boating Life” with nine lists of recipe “inspirations” for different situations, for example, ideas for breaking the monopoly of sandwiches for lunch, good one-pot meals, hot weather meals, and five-minute appetizers. They have even specifically cross-referenced recipes for creatively using such cruiser standbys as pasta and cabbage!

Finally, running my eye through the recipes themselves, it seems like they have covered almost everything anyone could ever want to do. Nineteen sub-sections of recipes run from beverages and breakfasts right through desserts, plus there’s a section on using canned meats and one on meatless main dishes. I was pleased to find many cruiser favorites typically shared around the fleet like Chinese Cole Slaw and Fish Sausage, and I particularly double-checked the recipe for the “Tropical Painkiller” – what could be called the national cocktail of the Virgin Islands (and so often over-looked) to be sure it was accurate. It was!

About the only remotely critical observation I could make on this wonderful compendium is that the recipes seem based primarily on ingredients already well-known to North American cooks without exploring the unusual vegetables, fruits, products or dishes we encounter in the lands we have sailed to visit. Although the authors encourage readers to be bold in asking about unfamiliar vegetables in open markets, include some tips about shopping in Central American “mercados”, and provide a useful key to deciphering cuts of meat in Spanish (you will need a magnifying glass to read this section), they do not go much into specifics. In a book this comprehensive about everything else, this would have been a welcome inclusion.

On the other hand, cruisers spend a lot of time trying to reproduce the flavors of home in situations far from home, and The Boat Galley Cookbook will prove itself a valuable aid in so doing.

The Boat Galley Cookbook: 800 Everyday Recipes and Essential Tips for Cooking Aboard is available on Amazon.com.

More info

Buy The Boat Galley Cookbook on Amazon.com.
Learn more about the Boat Galley Cookbook: Boat Galley website
Watch this video to meet the two authors (Carolyn Shearlock and Jan Irons) and learn how the book came to be:
The Boat Galley Facebook page

Book Review: Tightwads on the Loose, by Wendy Hinman

Gwen Hamlin — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 14:33:23 +0000

After finishing Wendy Hinman’s Tightwads on the Loose, I placed it on my bookshelf next to Jana Cawrse Esarey’s The Motion of the Ocean and Torre DeRoche’s Swept: Love with a Chance of Drowning, because, like those two books, Tightwads on the Loose is a brightly-written sailing memoir by a young female cruiser from America’s West Coast.

All three books speak for a younger generation who choose to reach for the adventure of crossing oceans and exploring new cultures sooner rather than later, who go despite tight budgets in small, uncomplicated boats without waiting for the comforts and wallets of middle age, and who, because they are women, don’t gloss over the challenging dynamics of relationships shared and tested in the intense intimacy of cruising 24/7 in the confines of a small vessel

There are several differences, however, between Tightwads on the Loose and the other two books.

The chief one is that while Janna and Torre spent much of their time pondering the degree (and sanity) of their commitment to the cruising endeavor (while largely relying on their more experienced partners), Wendy is a full-fledged collaborator from the start.

She, too, has a serious, more experienced sailor for a husband, but from the start she is in it to win it. You might say that Janna and Torre are (or at least start out as) girly girls, but Wendy makes you believe that she was infected by a taste for adrenalin since childhood, inculcated, she insists, by her father’s library of disaster-at-sea stories.

I was thrilled at last to read a contemporary sailing saga where the woman aboard is so fully engaged.

Another difference is that Tightwads is the account of a longer, seven year cruise (pushing northward into the north Pacific, Micronesia, the Phillipines, China and Japan), an itinerary that required Wendy and Garth to stop and work several times along the way to replenish the cruising kitty and make repairs. Earning money is an issue many young couples considering cruising ask about, and this couple’s resourcefulness in finding employment should be inspirational as well as entertaining.

One might think, because all three authors set sail across the Pacific from the West coast, that the stories could feel repetitive. Certainly there are harbors all three visit, especially in the first legs of the journey, but it is testimony to the uniqueness of every cruise that each landfall feels fresh, each new character encountered a privilege to meet, and every adventure a stimulant to get out and do it yourself!

Tightwads on the Loose: A Seven Year Pacific Odyssey is available through the Tightwads on the Loose eStore, through your independent bookseller or amazon.com.

Book Review – Cornell’s Ocean Atlas: Pilot Charts for All Oceans of the World

Gwen Hamlin — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 16:37:50 +0000

Jimmy Cornell presents Cornell’s Ocean Atlas
Photo: Hasse Ferrold

It’s all too easy to follow the crowd on the well-worn rut around the world without doing your own diligent voyage planning and still expect to experience reasonable conditions doing so.

But the moment you think about bearing off left or right — treading the path less taken, as it were — when everyone else is going straight, having the knowledge to keep yourself in safe and comfortable sailing conditions becomes crucial.

An exceptional new tool has appeared on the scene to help every cruiser work out for him/herself the possibilities open to them to be adventurous while staying safe, and that new tool comes from one of the most respected names in cruising — Cornell.

World-renowned sailor and cruising author Jimmy Cornell and his son Ivan Cornell have teamed up to pair modern weather technology with the most classic of voyage planning tools– pilot charts. The result is Cornell’s Ocean Atlas: Pilot Charts for All Oceans of the World.

What is the difference between Cornell’s Ocean Atlas and traditional pilot charts?

U.S.N. Matthew Fontaine Maury 1855 (from en.wikipedia.org)

Pilot charts, first developed in the late 19th century by US Navy Lieutenant Matthew Fontaine Maury, consolidated weather, wind and current data gleaned from shipmasters’ logbooks. The purpose was to help captains plot routes across the sea that maximized favorable weather and sea conditions and avoided unfavorable ones. Prior to Maury’s efforts there was no reliable resource for this information.

In the decades since Maury, pilot charts have been relied upon by all serious seafarers. Though updated periodically since then, traditional pilot charts continued to rely on data provided by shipmasters. and cruising sailors often found themselves in conditions not in alignment with what the pilot charts predicted.

In part, those differences stemmed from recent climate changes and in part from the weaknesses of uneven data collection and uneven standards of reporting. Consider that the majority of those intrepid shipmasters whose reports contributed to the making of traditional pilot charts were sailing commercial routes with the result that the bulk of reports came from major shipping lanes, while less travelled regions like the tropics or high latitudes were under-reported.

Most cruising sailors quickly discover the inaccuracies of traditional navigation charts for the out-of-the-way places we like to explore, since the original explorers’ chartings have been little refined because the areas experience relatively light traffic. The same is true for pilot chart data. Think of any region you have sailed regularly and consider whether you would want to plan a voyage there based on the reports of just a few vessels.

Additionally, the large ships of a century ago needed more wind to sail, so that anything less than 12-15 knots might be considered a calm! At the same time, think how many open-sea tropical storm tracks which never made landfall or crossed major shipping lanes went unreported in eras before our modern weather-tracking eyes in the sky.

To present a much more accurate picture the Cornells have used computers and twenty years of the latest data collected from weather satellites constantly scanning all parts the globe. As they anticipated, this has revealed many areas of inaccurate information. In the Introduction, the authors highlight a very specific example of the difference this can make to sailors setting out on a Pacific crossing.

Pacific Ocean / March, Old

Pacific Ocean / March, New (Cornell’s Ocean Atlas)

For cruisers, there were also some practical issues with old-style pilot charts. A large ship with a big chart table in the bridge has plenty of room to lay out the charts needed to cover a entire voyage, but a private sailboat has more cramped nav stations. In a typical cruising boat like ours was, it was hard to lay out and compare charts for our course across the Pacific from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico to the Marquesas, because we needed pilot charts for both the northern and southern hemispheres. For a trip around the world one might need as many as eight sets of pilot charts!

So another improvement on traditional charts that the Cornells have made in their Atlas is that they have sized the set to fit comfortably on a sailboat’s nav desk, and framed the pages to present the data cruising sailors would need on typical passages. So, for example, a cruiser planning a Pacific voyage has 47 pages of pilot chart info for that crossing, with the whole Pacific shown on the right-hand page and on the left more detailed data for the sections cruisers typically are at any given month of the year. And, all the oceans of the world are included in just one book!

Furthermore, Cornell’s Ocean Atlas is annotated with commentary about climate patterns and conditions to plan for based not only on the Cornells’ extensive world sailing experience, but input from some of the most respected and familiar ocean weather experts from Europe, the USA, and New Zealand.

Even with all these improvements, pilots charts can still appear to be for the new cruiser a mind-boggling tool to master. Flip open to any page and there are all these small boxes with green arrows, red lines and mysterious wind-rose symbols that look like a child’s game of jacks!

However, the system is clearly explained in Cornell’s introduction, and with just a little application, it will soon appear intuitive.

Recently I sat in on Jimmy Cornell’s first SSCA (Seven Seas Cruising Association) webinar on using the World Atlas charts for voyage planning from which I picked up his simple yet ingenious technique for applying the pilot chart information to any passage. Simply lay a piece of string on the rhumb line from point A to Point B, then use you finger to curve the string into a course line that maximizes your passage-making conditions, then pencil in your final course and, of course, make note of the waypoints.

Cornell’s Ocean Atlas is a serious tool for any cruiser planning any ocean passage.

As the Cornells conclude in their Introduction, “Our main objective (in Cornell’s Ocean Atlas) has been to create the kind of publication we would have greatly appreciated if it had been available when we sailed on any of the five circumnavigations of the globe which we share between us.”

Ivan and Jimmy Cornell, Cape Horn

More information (external links)

Read also on this website

If you have a book that like us
you would like to review,
let us know!

Email kathy@forcruisers.com or leave a comment below.

Try a FREE Sample of The Boat Galley Cookbook

Carolyn Shearlock — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 14:00:10 +0000

Looking for some new recipes that you can actually make in your boat’s galley? Good food, but not gourmet? Ingredients you can actually find and store on your boat? Recipes that don’t require a bunch of electric appliances?

The Boat Galley Cookbook, due out in October, promises all that plus information on food storage, substitutions, outfitting your galley and more. Carolyn Shearlock and Jan Irons, the authors, are experienced cruisers with a combined 21,000 miles under the keel of their respective boats.

But here’s the neat part – you can have a sneak peek of it right now, for free. And it’s not some fluffy marketing piece, but recipes and information you can use right now — 33 boat-friendly recipes plus info on solving oven hot spots.

Get your copy here: Sneak Peek Sampler of The Boat Galley Cookbook (33 recipes in a 28-pages PDF)
Or if you’re on Facebook: Free Sample of The Boat Galley Cookbook

The complete book, at 464 pages, is billed as “the one comprehensive galley reference needed aboard every cruising boat — and equally useful for RVers and tent campers. It contains over 800 everyday recipes made from obtainable ingredients without electrical appliances, plus in-depth information on unfamiliar cooking techniques, food storage, substitutions and more.”

But don’t take their word for it – try The Boat Galley Cookbook sampler yourself!

More info

Learn more about the Boat Galley Cookbook (Boat Galley website)
Watch this video to meet the two authors (Carolyn Shearlock and Jan Irons) and learn how the book came to be:
The Boat Galley Facebook page
The Boat Galley Cookbook: 800 Everyday Recipes and Essential Tips for Cooking Aboard will be published in October 2012 and is available for pre-order now on Amazon.com.

What the %$@$# are they talking about – Deciphering boat speak

Gwen Hamlin — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 00:37:38 +0000

Book Review – Mariner’s Guide to Nautical Information, by Priscilla Travis. Cornell Maritime Press

It is fair to wonder if there is any lingo more alien to a newcomer than the jargon of sailors? “Boat speak” appears to be English (most of the time), but so many terms consolidate reams of meaning and process. How’s a newcomer to even get started?

A handsome new hardcover book Mariner’s Guide to Nautical Informationby Priscilla Travis, has arrived on the scene to help you out.

It appears at first glance to be simply a glossary of nautical terms and expressions. It takes a second look to realize that many entries go well beyond simple definitions to include expanded explanations, common applications, and relevant advice accompanied by lots of photographs, diagrams and illustrations.

How this book helps you, the newcomer, is that its alphabetical arrangement makes it (as they claim on the fly leaf) “faster than the Internet” when you’re trying to identify what is meant by some word or phrase that has been tossed at you as if you should know. This, of course, is particularly true, when you are out at sea and have no Internet!

And it is nice for Women & Cruising that this sensible volume has been put together by a woman captain, cruiser and sailing educator.

I’ve always liked reading dictionaries (a habit acquired from my father), so just because this book is organized like a dictionary doesn’t mean you leave it on the shelf until you need to look some one thing up.

Sit back and scan the topic index in the back. Start with a word or phrase you’re curious about, find it in the alphabetized Guide, then scan up and down the page for connected expressions and explanatory material. Then follow threads to other topics or terms. It can turn into a fascinating cruise through the pages.

Or, for some fun, use the book over sundowners with other new cruisers for a sailor’s version of the parlor game “Dictionary,” and see who knows what! How many know the meaning of “Charley Noble”, “Coriolis effect,” “baggywrinkle, “hockle,” “jumper struts” or “sheet load?”

Absolutely do NOT let any of it make you feel stupid or let the fact of there being 400+ pages of material daunt you. With just a little effort and this nice reference you will absorb the vocabulary and all the meaning faster than you can imagine, plus, in the back of the book, the author’s personal annotated bibliography can help you take your curiosity further.

In my column Admirals’ Angle, I wrote a piece awhile back about “Nautical Lingo.” The point of that column was that the very particular vocabulary of seafaring – which may sometimes seem to newcomers to be “an antiquated language perpetrated by old salts merely to be difficult, to set us late-starters apart from old hands, or to close the door on an exclusive (male?) club,”— actually enables precise communication, often in high-pressure moments, and, once learned, makes all you do aboard go more efficiently.

Plus, knowing your nautical vocabulary allows you to make better sense of what you read, what you hear in seminars, what catalogues are offering, and what is being said around you in conversations on the dock or on the radio.

Indeed, like learning any language, accomplishments here boost your confidence in participating fully the cruising lifestyle and your new floating community. Pricilla Travis’ Mariner’s Guide to Nautical Information would definitely be a useful tool in this pursuit.

Mariner’s Guide to Nautical Information by Pricilla Travis can be purchased from Amazon.com through this website, womenandcruising.com. Remember, every item you purchase through our Amazon portal benefits this website ….which gives newbie cruisers like you better resources for a better cruising experience!

Memoir: Cruising Conversations with a daring duo!

Corinne Kanter — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 20:21:10 +0000

In their new book Cruising conversations with a daring duo! Corinne and Chuck Kanter delve through their 30+ years of sailing experience, especially their 15 years as full-time liveaboards. In this memoir, they share their learning experiences, the wonderful people they met, and the joys of the lifestyle outside the proverbial box.

The following excerpts are from the chapter “Woman to Woman”.

My life style

Cruising was a new way of life for us and our family. It bore little relationship to anything we ever did before and totally shook up our three children. Sure, we had plenty of family sailing, racing, fishing and other outdoor activity, experience, but living aboard and cruising? Decisions, decisions, some of the considerations we had were, think about selling the house or renting the house, unloading stuff to kids or relatives or storing goods.

Beginnings

We began as weekend sailors with our three small children and a trailerable sailboat. That boat, a Venture 24 swing keel, didn’t have all the shore side comforts and was simplicity on board but we were self sufficient and willing to depend mostly on wind and sail power. However it was a dramatic improvement over our eighteen-foot cathedral hull Sport Craft power boat in which, a year earlier, the five of us, to stave off perceived hypothermia, had slept in the same sleeping bag while anchored in Rockport, Massachusetts harbor. (In August!)

“If you haven’t got it, it can’t break!” became our watch word.

In 1969 we trailered our 24ft. Venture, swing keel sailboat to Miami Beach and launched it at Haulover Park to begin a three-week cruise. The children were then seven, eight and nine year’s old. On board there were a hand bearing compass, parallel rules and TEXACO marine maps; there was no VHF.

We sailed from Miami Beach to Key West and half way back to Key Vaca, Marathon. Chuck then got on a Greyhound bus back to Miami to get our station wagon with attached boat trailer to come back to get the boat and family. We then headed home to Annapolis, MD and used the boat on the trailer as an RV on the way up north, but that’s another story.

When we decided to go cruising full time, our first cruise lasted six months. I left my travel agent job, untied the dock lines with the words from my boss, “your job won’t be available when you get back” ringing in my ears. Well, came spring, I returned along with the migratory birds, tied up to the dock, and within hours, I was welcomed to my old job. Wow, I thought when you are good at your profession, there’s always a job.

More than anything I learned quite a bit about myself on that sixth month cruise. When autumn rolled around I didn’t hesitate one bit and left for 15 years without any regrets. I learned that consideration, thoughtfulness on what I gave up or exchange was with compromise. At the time I did not realize what sailing would bring, of the new adventures would lead up to. I know now it has given me a lifestyle of adventure along with wonderful memories.

What is the cruising way of life?

The cruising way of life to me is a delicate balance of communication and respect for each other. There will be times when someone must obey an order. It’s nothing personal, just another compromise. Each one of us has disagreed at times and will disagree again. The most important thing for you to do is talk, plan, discuss, even compromise with your partner, you will become a new lifestyle together, if you disagree entirely, you may wind up sailing alone.

Some folks are unable to adjust to reality when it does not match up to their expectations. For example, I remember when we arrived in Georgetown, Bahamas, seeing signs, “Boat for sale.” One of the partners on board was pushing too hard. My advice on that is to listen, respect the other’s position without shouting. Make a list of basic questions and thoughts that come into your mind. Talk it out with your mate. Your new lifestyle is just around the corner. Believe me. It’s really a new beginning for all. I always feel if one has a goal and you reach it, there’s another goal. On the other hand, it has often been said that it is the journey rather than the destination that is important.

Perhaps you’re asking yourself, will your new lifestyle be today here, tomorrow there, or will you have a set plan to be in certain areas during certain times of the year, perhaps circumnavigation, voyaging long overnighters or you can choose to do it gradually along the coastline, anchoring or going into a marina, or once you get to one’s destination you may want to settle in for a while. You may have to fill the kitty along the way, you’ve got talent and there are lots of jobs available even part-time, for any hardworking, honest, reliable person.

Marathon, in the Florida Keys is our home port, and we see many boats anchored in Boot Key Harbor, some of those folks who work onshore are filling their cruising kitty before jumping off to their next destination. Some folks will leave the so-called security of a house, apartment or condo, with no more grass to mow, no more taking care of an automobile, leaving a regular 9-5 job, with ease others can’t.

Research, do some soul searching before you make the final decision for full time cruising, if there is any hesitation on your part, try it for six months, but try it. Then if the lifestyle fits you’ll have had that time to consider how to handle it full time. Ask yourself, will we be on a strict budget, or a high budget so we can eat out when we want, have folks onboard for dinner, take in the side trips on land in the new places, travel by local bus, bikes, etc. This will become a new beginning to your lives by doing it on the water. You may want to do it in the boat you already have. Others may want to trade it in for a larger boat. I bet you’ll have no regrets about casting off the land lines.

Setting virtually unattainable goals and then attaching them to unrealistic expectations is one of the initial mistakes common to some aspiring cruisers. Of the fellow dreamers-turned-doers we have met, many like us set their sights on long-term circumnavigation but downplay it from a goal to a dream thus not setting themselves up for possible failure.

Chuck and I do take time to stop and smell the roses. We had stepped out of a world controlled by daily planners, traffic lights, elevators and phones into a world where there is often no awareness of the date, time, or season. Sometimes it is confusing to us and if it wasn’t for the need of some of that information for navigation, we really would lose all track of time.

Cruising Conversations, with a daring duo! can be purchased from sailcopress.com or amazon.com.

Charles and Corinne kanter will be speaking at

St. Petersburg Sail and Power Show: December 1-4, 2011

St. Petersburg Forida, MARINAS INTERNATIONAL: January 19-22, 2012

Strictly Sail Chicago Boat Show: January 26-29, 2012

Miami International Boatshow: February 16-20, 2012

Oakland Pacific International Boatshow: April 12-15, 2012

About Corinne Kanter

Corinne C. Kanter, affectionately known as the “Waterway Hostess with the Mostess” for her years of entertaining fellow cruisers aboard her catamaran, La Forza.

She is the author of two cookbooks, first, the Galley K.I.S.S. Cookbook and her latest book, The Cruising K.I.S.S. Cookbook, which is a monumental five books in one. It is in its sixth printing and far and away the most popular cruising cookbook ever published. Corinne is well known for the decades of her bi-monthly cooking column, Corinne’s Culinary Corner in MULTIHULLS Magazine. Her theme is: Delicious, Nutritious and Economical.

She publishes articles in many of the popular sailing magazines and often is a panelist with various sailing organizations including SSCA (Seven Seas Cruising Association), where she is a Rear Commodore.

More information (external links)

Visit the Kanters’ website
Buy Cruising Conversations, with a daring duo! from sailcopress.com or amazon.com

What are your favorite cruising memories?

Email kathy@forcruisers.com or leave a comment below.

Book review – Swept: Love With a Chance of Drowning, by Torre DeRoche

Gwen Hamlin — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 14:51:15 +0000

I’m a sucker for a well-told tale, and Swept: Love With a Chance of Drowning by Torre DeRoche is just that. Decades ago, sailing sagas were told by weathered men sailing solo on distant seas; today they are told by the women convinced to go along.

Not unlike Janna Cawrse Esarey’s Motion of the Ocean, Swept is the true story of a young woman who falls for a guy who has a dream of sailing the world. She doesn’t know he has the dream when she falls for him, and, when he falls for her, he doesn’t believe her when she confesses she is deathly afraid of the ocean.

Somehow love counterbalances terror just enough to get her aboard for passage to the South Pacific

Torre’s fears are realistic, and her experiences — good and bad — are as well. This makes Swept a particularly timely recommendation for WomenandCruising.com readers as her experiences and insights partner perfectly our current feature collection addressing Fear. She evokes vividly and accurately the worries of brand new sailors.

What is also realistic — and unfortunate — is the strategy the man in her life, Ivan, uses to persuade her aboard. It’s the “I will do everything,” “nothing will happen, so “don’t worry about it” three-prong approach. Torre is smart enough and has the right instincts not to buy into all that, but she has the bad luck not to find good mentors until she is well into her voyage. Her trials and tribulations make for great drama, of course, but I found myself thinking over and over, “What a shame she didn’t find Women and Cruising to turn to!” and so smooth out a whole lot of the bumps!

On the other hand, her portrait of Ivan is even-handed and insightful into all the complexities that make Ivan the man he is. He isn’t just a guy who read Moitessier’s sailing sagas and wanted that for himself; his motivations are more complex. He’s no villain. He just wants something so badly he sometimes overlooks practicalities and realities and jumps over important items on the To Do List in his eagerness to get going which results in some unnecessary crises.

Like all cruising sailors, Torre discovers the great magic of the lifestyle: that the wonderful times wipe away the memories of the tougher moments. And, what is fun for newbies and old hands alike is Torre’s well-evoked sense of the Coconut Milk Run, the places, the characters, the cravings and the rewards, and, yes, the misadventures as well as the adventures. An artist, Torre’s word pictures bring alive on the page scenes so many of us have experienced.

Swept: Love With a Chance of Drowning can be purchased in regular book or Kindle e-book format from Amazon.com through www.WomenandCruising.com. Remember, every item you purchase through our Amazon.com links benefits this website ….which gives newbies like Torre better resources for a smoother experience!

More information (external links)

Visit the ‘Swept’ website
Visit Torre DeRoche’s blog: The Fearful Adventurer: Exploring the world one terrified step at a time
Buy Swept: Love With a Chance of Drowning in regular book or Kindle e-book format from Amazon.com

If you have a book that
like us you would like to review,
let us know!

Email kathy@forcruisers.com or leave a comment below.

Book Review – Bull Canyon: A Boat Builder, A Writer and other Wildlife by Lin Pardey

Gwen Hamlin — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 02:03:21 +0000

In a foreword to her new book — Bull Canyon: A Boat Builder, A Writer and other Wildlife – Lin Pardey asks fans of her sailing adventures aboard Seraffyn to hang in with her through this transition book, the story of Lin and husband Larry’s four years ashore during construction of their new boat Taleisin.

Her fans should not be worried. These four years in an out-of-the way canyon in California, immersed in the strange culture of rural iconoclasts, trying to do their own thing, their own way, for as little money as possible, is as much an adventure as any they have had in foreign waters.

And, Lin and Larry, endeavoring to build a new boat from scratch and doing it the hard way – far from boatyards, without even such fundamentals as mail, phone and electricity and in the face of adversities like flood, fire, and packrats – in their own fashion fit right in.

A cruiser’s openness to the other ways people choose to live, their readiness to band together to help neighbors in need, their gameness to throw together food and music to celebrate, well, just about anything, their focus on getting done what needs to be done, makes them good neighbors in the unusual community of Bull Canyon.

But this is a transition time for Lin and Larry in more ways than one. In addition to stepping up from a smaller boat to a larger one, it is a time set aside for Lin to step up to challenges she has set herself as a writer. Her goal is to actually support them with her craft while Larry exercises his in the boat shed. Lin explores those challenges – the doubts, the thrills, the ego bruises – with great honesty.

It also becomes a time for them both to reflect on things they left behind when they sailed away, decisions they made blithely in the flush of youth and love, conventions they have easily ignored. Those things range from connections to family, children and pets as well as to capital, place, conveniences and things. Land life, even the rugged version the Pardeys have opted for, has its seductions, and, despite good intentions not to get too attached to any of it, they do begin to put down roots.

It’s a hardly a spoiler to say they choose sailing again. We know that they do. The process by which they make this transition brings a new maturity to their choice of lifestyle and reaffirms its values, in particular the durability of cruising friendships, for all of us.

Lin and Larry’s satisfaction in each hard-wrought accomplishment – whether is it devising a means to bring running water to the cottage, producing a beautifully crafted rib for the boat, nurturing a garden from rocky soil, or completing a satisfying book project – reaffirms their commitment to their lifestyle choice and to each other.

It is always bittersweet to leave things behind, but when Taleisin rolls out of the boat shed, we feel along with Lin that frisson of excitement for what lies ahead.

Lin and Larry Pardey Return to US for Autumn Sail Boatshows and SSCA Gam

For the first time in seven years, the two voyagers and sailing authors who have been called, “the enablers” will be presenting seminars and participating at four Sailboat shows in September and October. They will also be signing copies of Lin’s latest book Bull Canyon, a Boatbuilder, a Writer and Other Wildlife. Just released this spring, Publishers Weekly labeled Bull Canyon “significant, highly romantic and admirable” and adds “readers may feel as if they’re following the fantastic adventures of an old friend.” Midwest Book Review calls Bull Canyon “A riveting memoir of a path less taken.”

Confirmed dates for these shows are:

Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival – September 8-11

Newport International Boat Show – September 15-18, booth and seminars hosted by Blue Water Sailing Magazine

Seven Seas Cruising Association – Annapolis Gam – September 23-25

United States Sailboat Show, Annapolis – October 6-10

Seminars hosted by Cruising World Magazine, Booth hosted by Thesailingchannel.tv

Along with presenting seminars on several topics including, Storm Tactics, Writing and Video afloat, Cost control as you Cruise, Lin and Larry will be available for six hours each day during these shows and festivals to answer questions and sign books people wish to bring along. For descriptions of seminars and further information about these appearances, go to www.landlpardey.com.

More information (external links)

For further information on Bull Canyon: A Boat Builder, A Writer and other Wildlife visit www.linpardey.com or email jim@paracay.com

If you have a book that like us you would like to review, let us know!

Email kathy@forcruisers.com or leave a comment below.

Blog » BOOKS

Books to take your family cruising

Book Review – SeaWise Safety Checklist / Emergency Action Guide for Sailing Yachts

Book Review – SeaWise Emergency Action Guide and Safety Checklists for Sailing Yachtsby Zvi Richard Dor-ner and Zvi Frank. Cornell Maritime Press, a division of Schiffer Publishing, Ltd.

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Book Review: The Boat Galley Cookbook, by Shearlock and Irons

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Book Review: Tightwads on the Loose, by Wendy Hinman

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Book Review – Cornell’s Ocean Atlas: Pilot Charts for All Oceans of the World

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Try a FREE Sample of The Boat Galley Cookbook

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What the %$@$# are they talking about – Deciphering boat speak

Book Review – Mariner’s Guide to Nautical Information, by Priscilla Travis. Cornell Maritime Press

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Memoir: Cruising Conversations with a daring duo!

My life style

Beginnings

What is the cruising way of life?

About Corinne Kanter

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More information (external links)

Book review – Swept: Love With a Chance of Drowning, by Torre DeRoche

Read also on this website

More information (external links)

Book Review – Bull Canyon: A Boat Builder, A Writer and other Wildlife by Lin Pardey

Read also on this website

More information (external links)