Welcome back, we hope that you will enjoy and learn a lot from this third volume of our
Sail Vicarious series.
In this volume, Kathleen and I will cover most of the work that was done in our final
year of preparation getting ready for our cast off.
We hope that we will cover most of the areas to help you prepare for your own journey one
day.
We had a very long list of things that we needed to get finished before our cast off.
Some things like electronics we put off until the last month because the technology is always
getting better and less expensive.
We'll start off with an unplanned boarding and inspection by the U.S. Coast Guard.
We had a new set of Tam Park sales made with stack packs and that is really made handling
those sales easier for me.
What happened?
Water is coming out of the air intake, at least a couple gallons, I think we've got back
low.
After I shut down the engine, it could be tragic, catastrophic.
We all love a peaceful, secure anchorage where we can sleep all night confident that our
boat is going to stay where we left it.
In this chapter I'll show you our well proven anchoring system.
Like all boats, our primary means of communication is through a VHF radio.
The difference with our setup is that we have two of them and it's fantastic.
For navigation we use a 5 inch Garmin, a 14 inch Rain Marine and even our iPad which
I'll have built in GPS antennas and great charts.
Here's a quick look at our house banker batteries which is three AGM batteries equaling 600
amp hours and this was covered in the last volume.
Some things that make life aboard more comfortable.
Starting with this pilot house that provides great protection from the elements and good
visibility all around.
And a covered cockpit with a barbecue with comfortable seating and deep storage underneath.
The typical dinghy used by cruisers is a 10 foot long inflatable with a 6 to about 10
horsepower four stroke engine.
Checking in and out of countries is a relatively simple process.
The captain goes ashore with the passports and the boat papers and typically spends
about 15 to 30 minutes filling out some paperwork.
Now go get your boat ready and cast off on your own fantastic adventure.
