Concerned about sailing overnight? Learn how to navigate safely after dark and to stand night watch at sea.
Seven Seas University presents ….
Night Sailing webinar
Date: Thursday March 10 at 8pm EST (7pm CST)
Instructor: Nancy Erley
Duration: 1.5 hours
This fairly technical webinar covers night vision, navigation aids and lights on shore, identifying ships, collision avoidance at night, night time deck safety protocols, watch scheduling and crew overboard. Just in case, for any number or reasons, the onboard electronic navigation tools fail, learning the lights will help you find your way. Knowledge can turn feelings of uncertainty into profound appreciation for the wonders of the night sea.
Visit Seven Seas U to register today for Night Sailing!
As we begin a new series on Women and Cruising discussing fear and how we deal with it, we asked Lin Pardey for her thoughts. As she is overwhelmed with repairs following the flooding in New Zealand as well as preparing for her March USA seminars, she is sharing a relevant chapter from her book “Capable Cruiser“. In this chapter, Lin asked 11 pairs of willing volunteers to share their thoughts on predeparture worries, the gear that worked, failures that occurred, and thoughts they wanted to share with those waiting to set sail. We are publishing this chapter in two parts. Part 2 will appear next week.
Arriving in Apia, Samoa
It felt wonderful, no concerns about a wind shift turning our anchorage into a lee shore, no rattle of anchor chain across coral heads, the boat lying still enough to use long-stemmed glasses instead of tumblers for our wine.
Even better, arriving in Apia, Samoa, meant we had woven our way past the hurricane belt between Hawaii and Mexico, through the doldrums and south of the equator. Now we’d completed the longest passages of our voyage from Ventura, California, through the Line Islands and back to our home base in New Zealand.
As Larry and I savored this latest landfall in our 42 years and 185,000 miles of wandering together, I mentioned my sense of relief at arriving here. “If you feel so good about it,” Larry commented, “can you imagine how pleased some of these first-time voyagers must feel?”
I already had some idea. In only a few hours alongside in the first marina we’d seen in several months, I’d met half a dozen of these newest voyagers and enjoyed their excitement at having made the break from life ashore and safely crossing a major ocean. …Read more
I don’t have a pressure cooker and have never used one. Do you think it’s worth it to get one?
We will be sailing in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. I love to cook but currently cook most things at home and then freeze them for longer vacations or bring them to the boat for the weekend. We tend to eat on the boat primarily. I am a bit concerned about having the oven running all of the time to cook in the heat of the Caribbean.
Just curious about what you think are the biggest advantages to having one.
Janet
Gwen Hamlin, Beth Leonard, Kathy Parsons and Lisa Schofield answer.
For the first time in four years, the two voyagers who have been dubbed “The Enablers” will be returning to the United States this March to introduce Lin’s long-awaited book, Bull Canyon—A Boatbuilder, a Writer and Other Wildlife.
The Pardeys will be speaking at:
the Northwest Maritime Center Spring Symposium in Port Townsend, Washington;
Spaulding Wooden Boat Center in Sausalito, California;
and OCC School of Sailing and Seamanship in Newport, California.
Topics for each venue are different, ranging from “Encouraging your partner to love cruising”, to “Handling storms at sea”. A complete list of seminar topics, dates, and times can be viewed at the Pardeys’ website, www.landlpardey.com.
What do I most like about cruising, let me count the ways…
… being on watch for sunsets and sunrises, sailing under star laden, moonlit nights with a shooting star here or there, and seeing the Milky Way on clear dark nights. …Read more
Please join us for a lively interactive learning session about everyone’s favorite topic: anchoring. Don’t be intimidated by anchoring bullies. Here are the details:
Education for those long winter months – Seven Seas University Presents:
Happy Hooking – the Art of Anchoring
with Captains Daria & Alex Blackwell
Saturday February 12 at 1000 CST (1100 EST, 1600 GMT)
Whether you are sailing your own vessel locally or chartering in the Caribbean or beyond, knowing how to safely and effectively anchor is one of the most essential and liberating skills you can have.
Knowing about anchors, rodes, anchorages and anchoring techniques is a prerequisite for enjoying an evening in a magically beautiful setting as well as getting a good night’s sleep while swinging from the hook.
I have always said the two things most cruising women agree they miss most are their children/grandchildren and their gardens.
I dealt with the gardening issue by bringing aboard window boxes and potted plants.
My outside garden, always changing
I put a layer of heavy pebbles in the bottom of the boxes, then put in potted plants in their pots (if they are only going to bloom for a few months), or actually plant them (if they are long bloomers like geraniums).
The rocks are to give enough weight so the box doesn’t tip over or blow away, since the potting soil is so lightweight. …Read more
Cruising gives me the opportunity to travel in a way that allows me to slowly savor a place.
I’m not a tourist on a five day “try to see it all” trip.
Instead I have the opportunity to be immersed in the culture, meet the locals, enjoy the unique atmosphere of a cruising destination. I not only taste the local dishes, I learn to cook them.
There is no such thing as too many handholds, especially as you or some of your special friends and relatives get older.
Following are some illustrations of ours.
1. My “Granny Rail”
The single most important addition is what I call my Granny Rail, a simple stainless steel tube bent to mount into two stanchion bases, which gives me something to hold onto while climbing into the dinghy, …Read more
When my husband Mark and I started writing cruising guides,
we called them “enriched” guides because we wanted to include more than just the “mileposts and signposts” of transiting from one port to another.
When we cruised, we most enjoyed the learning experiences along the way. Although we were busy piloting, we were curious about the stories behind the island’s names, the birds and plants we were seeing, and the local history. But the existing guides didn’t fill in enough details. And I couldn’t tote along enough field guides, nature books, and regional history reading to cover the miles! …Read more
The Women and Cruising Team — Kathy Parsons, Pam Wall & Gwen Hamlin — is going online LIVE for our first ever Women & Cruising Webinar, through the auspices of Seven Seas U, the online seminar project of SSCA (Seven Seas Cruising Association.) The date is January 19 at 2000 EDT (8pm East Coast time).
If you haven’t already participated in one of the Seven Seas U webinars, this amazing technology will bring all three of us right into your living room…or salon…or wherever your computer is set up. And just like our live W&C seminars, you will be able to ask any questions you have about the cruising experience and hear responses from the point of view of three experienced cruising women — whose ideas are sometimes similar and sometimes quite different. If we manage to keep all our ducks lined up onscreen we will even be able to include feedback from members of the audience just as we do in our live groups.…Read more
For the last five-plus years, I’ve been living almost exclusively on a boat.
My husband, Jim, and I sold our home and somewhat naively hit the water running. Not exactly sure what we were running from and most definitely in the dark about how this change would alter our life’s predetermined path.
We retired rather early from our professional lives, mine as an art director/designer and Jim’s as a financial advisor. We knew that we wanted to travel and see more of the U.S. and the world; we dreamed of adventure; we craved anything to do with boating and we knew we wanted to do all of the above with each other. So, we combined these “wants” into one jointly shared plan – by hopping aboard our boat, Kismet, a 40-foot (at the time, Silverton Convertible), and shoving away from the dock for an adventure of a lifetime.
What we found out was that it really wasn’t quite as easy as it initially sounded; we were innocent in our assumptions and planning.
Join us ("Like"us) to be the first to hear about what's going on on Women and Cruising!
Do your shopping with Amazon.com through WomenandCruising and help us out while helping yourself!
All you need to do is enter the Amazon store through the search box below.
Then shop through Amazon as you normally do. We will get a small commission on almost anything you purchase - book or other item - during that session.
(If you have pop-ups disabled in your browser, the Amazon search box may not display for you.)
For the first time in four years, the two voyagers who have been dubbed “The Enablers” will be returning to the United States this March to introduce Lin’s long-awaited book, 
Cruising gives me the opportunity to travel in a way that allows me to slowly savor a place.
