What’s it like to experience an open ocean sailing passage? The preparation and first couple of days of sailing are hard work but after that, it’s usually easy-going, relaxing, and non-eventful. Our longest open sailing passage was from Gran Canaria, off the west side of Africa, to St Lucian in the Caribbean. Crossing the Atlantic[Read More]
Videos
Boat Rules of The Road – The 10 Most Important Things to Know
It’s important to understand the sailing basics and the boat rules of the road—avoiding collisions with anything that might damage your boat. What do you look at before you leave an anchorage or port? Once you’re underway and sailing, how soon do you pay attention to known obstacles, like reefs and channel markers? What about[Read More]
Sailing Disaster – 50 knot gusts, shredded mainsail & snapped steering chain
We left the island of St Lucia in the Caribbean heading north for Antigua – a 27 hour/180-mile passage. Unfortunately, due to our buddy boat experiencing a massive sailing disaster, we didn’t make it very far. The good news is that everyone is okay. The bad news is all the damage that was done. Our[Read More]
Avoiding Ship Collisions Video
One of the scarier things about navigating by sailboat is dealing with cargo ships and cruise liners. As you’ll see in our avoiding ship collisions video we offer a situation where things didn’t go to plan. If you have an AIS system on your plotter navigating is easier because you know the CPA, or Closest[Read More]
How To Tie Onto A Cleat
One of the first things you’ll learn when becoming a sailor is how to tie onto a cleat. Like most things in sailing there are options. There are two main recognized knots used for fastening a line to a cleat. The first is the cleat hitch and the second is called the OXO method. American’s[Read More]
How To Make Your Boat Shine
Here’s how to make your boat shine – we demonstrate the best way to make your metalwork sparkle, remove rust from your Gelcoat, and make your engine nice enough to eat off of! How To Make Your Boat Shine Video Links to Products Mentioned in the Video Autosol Marine Products (From Autosol) Star Brite Rust[Read More]
What Tools To Have On My Boat?
We often get asked by aspiring sailing cruisers, ‘What tools to have on my boat?’ One of our guests wanted to bring his land-based man cave with him. He spent his life building up his tool collection and felt very attached to it – especially his lathe. This is totally understandable but ultimately not practical.[Read More]
Britican Sailing Lifestyle Video
In this Britican Sailing Lifestyle video, we provide an insight as to what we’ve been up to between all our Britican Experiences and big boat projects such as our marine Diesel engine fix and our installation of a new marine Diesel engine. It has been a hectic couple of months in St Martin. Boat jobs,[Read More]
Installing A New Marine Diesel Engine
What’s it like installing a new marine Diesel engine? Is it a small job or a big one? Well…any job on a boat seems to take far longer than intended. But what’s involved in an engine swap out? When my husband Simon said he wanted to replace our Westerbeke 7.5 kW with a Northern Lights[Read More]
Tips For Sailing Families
Discover why we decided to sail away. Find out if you have the same reasons! Here are some tips for sailing families that want to transition into the sailboat cruising lifestyle. Discover: Why we sold everything we had and went sailing? What was the hardest part in the beginning? What have been the best parts?[Read More]
