Sailing With Josh

Archives

“What did you call me!?” It’s another Resourceful Sailor installment brought to you by Latitude 38 and ‘Lectronic Latitude. This one covers the marlinspike craft of baggywrinkle and how The Resourceful Sailor applied it on Sampaguita. It was published on December 9th, 2024. Click here for the full article.

Thanks to Monica and Latitude 38‘s online version, ‘Lectronic Latitude, for publishing The Resourceful Sailor Says GPS Is Not Guaranteed Positioning System on October 23, 2024. It conveys an experience in the Port Townsend area regarding GPS and a new Standard Horizon VHF radio installed on Sampaguita, a 1985 Flicka 20 sailboat. Click the link below to be directed to the full article. Thanks for checking it out. https://www.latitude38.com/lectronic/resourceful-sailor-gps-not-guaranteed-positioning-system/

Have you ever skyed a halyard on your sailboat? Not yet? Give it time. Here we go again…‘Lectronic Latitude, the online version of Latitude 38, was kind enough to publish another Resourceful Sailor article called The Resourceful Sailor: Skyed Halyard Retrieval Made Easy for their September 13, 2024 issue and I really appreciate it. And there’s a video to boot. It discusses how I retrieve a skyed halyard on Sampaguita, a Pacific… Read More

Thank you Latitude 38 and ‘Lectronic Latitude editor, Monica Grant, for publishing the latest installment of The Resourceful Sailor with a rare hard copy appearance in the August 2024 edition of the magazine. In this piece I give experiential insight on Sampaguita’s solar energy solution while voyaging. I wrote this while at anchor in La Paz, Mexico waiting for the season to head for Marquesas.

This is pretty much what it is, except when it isn’t. The boat goes tick-tock from side to side as the following sea rolls under it. A soundtrack to fall asleep to. A motion to hypnotize you. It just goes on and on. The grey skies make it chilly and moist. Everything salty sucks up the moisture. Foulies keep you dry and warm. And a hot cup of tea……

Beam on and reefed down, charging across the trades. Beam on is wetter, but faster. Also, I was pinned down on the starboard tack, which made the ride more comfortable. Downwind sailing in the trades is a very rolly experience which makes for less predictable motion. I spilled more things going downwind in the trades than I did beam on. Just sayin’.

This is a pretty rare occurrence:

The thing about amateur video is that you don’t see anything really exciting. Because then the equipment would get ruined from salt water exposure. And if it’s amateur, who can afford that? So what you get is boring video like this.

This video is from the Southeast trades, headed north. My goal was to make as much easting as I could in the more easterly blowing SE trades. The further I could get, the better set-up for getting across the Northeast trades, which are truly NE, to Hawaii. I made about 120 NM easting over the SE trades. This proved to be enough.

Sampaguita had a couple Fin whales(I think) swimming with her for about a half an hour a few hundred miles west of Washington State. They clearly knew what they were doing and would get very close. In this instance I didn’t worry. No tails came up and they were clearly swimming WITH Sampaguita and fully aware of her. Unfortunately it was dusk, so no video. You’ll have to take my word for… Read More