Joshua Slocum and the Birds
My thanks to Pertti Pesonen for reminding me of these passages in Joshua Slocum’s classic, ‘Sailing Alone Around the World’: On the 12th, some hundred…
Tag: sailing
The Colour of the Sea as a Map
For thousands of years, sailors have used the colour of the sea to help them make sense of the waters they travelled through. In many…
Where the Rocks Aren’t
I spent a very enjoyable Friday evening at the Hornet Services Sailing Club in Gosport. I was there to listen to a talk being jointly…
Nature’s Radar
Nature’s Radar, my academic paper on natural navigation observations during a small boat voyage in the North Atlantic has just been published by the Journal…
The Shape of the Land
The week is already feeling full with the task of collating and writing up observations from the sail north. At the end of the month…
Back from the Arctic
Yesterday I arrived back home after sailing north from Scotland via the Faroe Islands into the Arctic, finishing at Reykjavik. I used the trip to…
Nature and Technology
Following on from my last blog post about the windvane self-steering marvel, comes another wonderful piece of sailing technology. Although this one also works closely…
Windvane Self-Steering
Although microchips have a childlike tendency to steal our attention away from almost anything else, I am not against technology itself. Once we have steeled…
Flutes, Forces, Fires and Force 7s
I was interviewed by Susan Gray on behalf of the Ramblers yesterday. We chatted over tea, blasts of icy December air and then some more…
The Marine Quarterly
Congratulations to Sam LLewellyn on the launch of The Marine Quarterly. A more handsome nautical vessel would be hard to find. (The Marine Quarterly that…
A Riddle for Sailors
Just back from a bracing and invigorating couple of days on the water. My wife and I sailed from Chichester to Cowes, where we met…
Mares’ Tails
A weekend of sailing has just passed, one that was full of meteorological kindness. Nature was generous in two ways over the weekend – perhaps…
Mysterious Green Fan
My thanks to everyone who came to my talk last night at the Weald and Downland Museum. What a wonderful place to spend a summer’s…
Wind, Water and Mr Bernoulli
The land’s wind shadow can be seen in the smooth water nearest the foreground of this picture of Nutbourne Marshes. This is an effect sailors,…
Millennium Mist
On Sunday morning, when sailing off the south coast, visibility came down to a few hundred metres at times. The sun played some of its…