solo circumnavigation
Atlas Obscura Releases Podcast About My Time in the Doldrums
What’s it like to float alone for a week in the Doldrums, one of the remotest stretches of ocean on planet Earth? This week Atlas Obscura released an interview I did with co-founder Dylan Thuras about my experience exploring the Doldrums in my sailboat Sea Bird. You can listen to the interview here.
Becalmed in the Doldrums: Sailing the Atlantic Alone
This week, I had a great chat with Atlas Obscura co-founder Dylan Thuras about what it’s like to be stuck in the Doldrums. When I say the Doldrums, I don’t mean depression, a funk or a case of the mid-winter blues. I’m talking about the capital D Doldrums, the windless stretch of the Atlantic Ocean on either side of the equator that’s known for trapping sailors for weeks at a time.
Sailing Back to Horses
I have not always traveled by mule. When I was thirty, I decided that sailing around the world would be more interesting than sticking with my office job. I bought an old boat named Sea Bird and notified my employer that I was going sailing. I had just enough money saved to get going but not enough to make the whole trip without working along the way. I went anyway.
Sky Water: Catching Rain on a Sailboat with No Water Tank
Last week I wrote about how my wife Julia and I lost water at our cabin and I needed to figure out what was wrong.
This week, I was going to write about how my nephew Alvin and brother Christian helped repair the cistern that gathers the spring water before sending it to the house. Then I got restless and decided to write about how I used to catch rainwater while I was at sea… Continue reading
How to Rebuild a Katadyn Survivor 35 Desalinator
The email came from the Falkland Islands. “Do you have advice and information about watermakers?” It was from my friends, sailors Thies Matzen and Kicki Ericson aboard Wanderer III. A new Katadyn Survivor 35, the one they were interested in, costs around $2,400. In this post, I show you how I rebuilt a surplus Katadyn Survivor 35 Desalinator I bought on eBay for $150. It worked fine.
Droving Cattle in New Zealand: Old Slide Film Photos from My Circumnavigation
January 5 was my birthday and it got me looking back through my old slides. Funny how life changes. Thirteen years ago I was living in New Zealand chasing cows with Allan Crawford. These days I live on my farm in western North Carolina. I chase mules instead of cows. When I run to town, it’s for diesel, memory cards and wifi, not shark oil, scones and slide film.
How I Quit My Office Job to Sail Around the World
Until my late twenties, my life went like this.
Boats, horses, something else, boats, horses, something else, boats, horses…
There was the jockey phase, the Alfa Romeo mechanic phase, the running-out-of-money-in-Tuscany-and-spending-a-year-to-earn-a-plane-ticket-home phase, and then at age twenty-five I went to NC State University. I got a degree in Wood and Paper Science and a few years later started the phase most folks had a head start on. That was the Office Phase.
Control-Z
I went to work for a German… Continue reading
Over Under Over: Splicing Lead Ropes on the Atlantic to Pacific Ride
One of the finer things in life is splicing fresh rope.
Ross Pease back in Oriental, NC showed me how to splice twenty-five feet of 3/8″ anchor chain to Sea Bird’s anchor rode.
I promptly forgot how to do it and spent the next four and a half years sailing around the world trying to remember — was it “over under over” or “under over under?” And… Continue reading
Slower Than a Ripple: A Mule Rider Thinks of the Doldrums
As I was walking up through Fort Bragg, I noticed the sand patterns and thought of Sea Bird.
The sand in these regions is almost white, sort of like the powdery stuff you see at the beach between the high tide mark and the dunes.
But it’s a long way from the ocean here. It’s rolling land where the Long Leaf pines reign supreme. It’s like the heaving swells I used to plow with my sailboat Sea Bird had been… Continue reading
The Idea Germinated in a Gale: How Woody and I Came to Be
The idea of riding a mule across North Carolina germinated in a gale. I was off Madagascar in my sailboat Sea Bird, the sailboat that I sailed alone around the world. That night things blew up so nasty the mast hit the broken ocean and the portholes swirled with brine. I thought “Next time I’m home I’ll stick to the dry a while.”
Caribbean Christmas Under Sail: Aboard Sea Bird in Antigua
Merry floating Christmas (Melinda Penkava photo)
Oriental, NC
Traveling the Texas High Plains by wagon this holiday season, I think back to Christmas on the high seas. Click here for the nautical nativity scene….
