IT’S AN AUSPICIOUS DAY. This blog has just notched up a million page views since its inception on October 20, 2008. Actually 1,000,116 page views as I write this, according to my Blogger stati...
I WELL REMEMBER the first time I smelled a yacht. I was 14, and because of a lucky meeting on the beach beneath our small-town home, I was the caretaker of a 28-foot, hard-chine wooden sloop call...
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-nose-always-remembers.html
CRUISING SAILORS undertaking long voyages need to be aware of the dangers of sleep loss. Apparently, a surprising number of sailors suffer from hallucinations caused by fatigue. And fatigue comes...
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/2016/10/lack-of-sleep-danger.html
SOMETIMES I FEEL VERY UNEASY when I see how dependent we have become on machines. Have we lost the art of working on boats with hand tools, or have we simply lost the will? I mention this becau...
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/2016/10/what-about-hand-tools.html
NAVAL ARCHITECTS tell me that nothing drives them crazy more than a client who wants “small changes” made to an existing design. “Just another three feet in length,” some hopeful says, �...
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/2016/10/driving-designers-crazy.html
I BELIEVE IT WAS JESUS who spread the unconvincing rumor about a red sky at night being a sailor’s delight. In the Bible, (Matthew XVI: 2-3,) Jesus said, “When in evening, ye say, it will be...
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/2016/10/not-always-sailors-delight.html
WHEN YOU’RE THINKING about buying a boat there’s always something you think of too late. Something that will keep you awake all night the very first time you drop the hook in a beautiful anch...
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/2016/10/when-mast-drives-you-mad.html
DEEP DOWN in the southern hemisphere scientists are trying to find out when the North Pole is suddenly going to become the South Pole. According to the British Geological Survey, a world-renow...
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/2016/10/reversing-magnetic-north-and-south.html
SOME OF MY BEST memories of cruising under sail go back to times when I woke up well after dawn and let my eyes dwell on the moving light show overhead. The water is sparkling this sunny morni...
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/2016/10/sinning-and-loving-it.html
WHEN PEOPLE ASK ME how to write a best-seller, I usually point them at E. Annie Proulx, who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1994 for her novel The Shipping News. This book deals with the...
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/2016/10/how-to-write-best-seller.html
EVERY NOW AND THEN we come across a situation under sail where someone has to give way to someone else, but nobody really knows who has to do what. Imagine, for example, if you are sailing on p...
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/2016/10/knowing-when-to-give-way.html
HOW DO YOU TUNE your standing rigging if you can’t afford those expensive tension gauges? Well, there is a way. It just so happens that the elastic stretch of stainless-steel wire increases...
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/2016/10/rig-tuning-cheaper-way.html
EVER WONDERED WHY it is that the magnetic courses shown by your compass and your GPS never seem to agree? It’s something that has puzzled most of us in the past, but there is a simple answer. I...
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-puzzle-that-is-leeway.html
CAN THERE BE ANYTHING WORSE than coming stone last in a sailboat race? I had finished way down the list before in all sorts of boats from 30 Square Meters to sliding seat canoes, but never,...
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/2016/10/first-time-coming-last.html
PEOPLE HAVE TRIED to persuade me that if you have a heater on your boat you can extend your sailing season by six weeks or so at each end. I have never been swayed by that argument. Having spent...
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-heater-that-made-ice-people-have.html
IF I WERE TO GUESS, I’d say the fixed steering compass is the most important navigational instrument on a boat. I know that GPS has tried to steal this title ever since it was invented, but I ...
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-importance-of-compass_27.html
WE DON’T OFTEN talk about heads around here, but Harrison Butler did. Quite a lot. T. Harrison Butler was the famous British naval architect perhaps best known for his metacentric theory of...
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/2016/09/time-for-some-potty-talk.html
IF YOU READ a lot of books about sailboats you will surely come across mention of a part of the boat called the truck. Quite often it’s in a phase such as: “She is a real sea-going vessel fr...
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/2016/09/were-no-longer-trucking.html
AUSTRALIANS cruising under sail have developed a well-earned reputation for contempt of authority. One lovely example I came across involved an Aussie yacht and an American warship. Not many ...
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/2016/09/when-might-aint-right.html
EVERY NOW AND THEN I come across someone who has never heard of Negley Farson. So I have to do my duty and educate them, as I have done with others many times before. Farson was an early 20th...
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/2016/09/voyaging-across-europe.html
ARE YOU A SAILOR who is happily agreeable to being overtaken? If so, you are a rare bird, for when another sailboat comes shimmying past it’s not easy to remain calm and let that little smile ...
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/2016/09/what-to-expect-from-boat.html
I SOMETIMES WONDER how yachts fit in with Darwin’s theory of evolution. I guess it’s fairly obvious that really bad yachts will sink and automatically remove themselves from the gene pool. O...
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/2016/09/darwin-and-yacht-evolution.html
I’VE MENTIONED this before, but I still don’t see enough flags flying on small boats these days. Hardly anyone even flies a burgee at the masthead any more, which is a great shame because th...
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/2016/09/lets-get-flapping-again.html
ARE YOU IN LOVE with your boat? I ask because love is temporary insanity. Love is hormones out of control. But above all, love is giving. It means new sails, new winches, new electronics, a ne...
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/2016/09/how-to-fall-out-of-love_6.html
IT OCCURS TO ME that we’d be better off if typewriters hadn’t been replaced by computers. I mean, it’s thanks to computers that government departments are getting hacked. Airline computer s...
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-beauty-of-simplicity.html