Besides a fire at sea, few things are more frightening for an ocean-crossing vessel than uncontrolled, and potentially undetected, water ingress. Safety Digest, published by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) of the British Department of Transport (www.maib.gov.uk), often contains reports of small boats sinking in minutes. Many might have been saved had their captains…
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Panbo Visit
During our stay in Belfast, Maine, Ben Ellison dropped drove up from nearby Camden to visit. Ben is the editor and owner of the Panbo marine electronics blog. If you haven’t spent time on the Panbo blog and you care about marine electronics, you really should. Ben covers most gear available, takes the time to dig…
Halifax Harbor Marina
Halifax Harbor Marina is among the closest marinas to Daytona International Speedway, which is the main reason we picked it. But we were so happy with our berth there that we extended our four-week stay to six weeks almost immediately upon arrival. It was an excellent base to attend the racing at Volusia and Daytona,…
Bike Week
Barely have the Daytona 500 crowds dissipated when Daytona Beach hosts the 76th annual Bike Week. The 10-day motorcycle event originated in 1937 and draws an estimated 500,000 people. From the marina we’d been hearing motorcycles pass all week, and after a morning of running errands with a rental car, we spent the rest of…
Route Planning
While in Florida earlier this year, we considered a variety of routes for our upcoming Atlantic passage. Some of the possibilities are shown in the screenshot above (click image for larger view). The waypoint east of South Carolina is Bermuda, and the one labeled Terceira Sao Miguel is the Azores. The other waypoints are mostly…
Daytona 500
We bought a four-day package for the Daytona 500 that included the Can-Am Duel on Thursday night, the NASCAR truck race on Friday night, the Xfinity Series race on Saturday and of course, the Daytona 500 on Sunday. We had great time watching the races, and being at the Daytona 500 was super-exciting. But a…
Nothing Runs Like a Deere
Most John Deere engines are scheduled to have the vibration damper replaced at 5 years or 4,500 hours. However, our Deere 6068AFM75 uses a viscous coupling with an 8,000-hour replacement interval so we went nearly 7 years before needing to make a change. We crossed 8,000 hours as we headed into Boston early last year,…
The Greatest Show on Dirt
We’d come to Daytona primarily to attend the Daytona 500, but that’s not the only major racing event in the area in February. Nearby Volusia Motor Speedway was hosting the season opener for the the World of Outlaws Sprint Car racing, “The Greatest Show on Dirt!”. The last dirt track racing we saw was in…
Miami Boat Shows
From Daytona Beach we made a road trip south to Miami for a couple of days to check out the Miami boat shows. While there we spent some time at sea on FBP 781 Cochise, toured the new Ranger Tug R-29 CB, and also checked out Nordhavn 92 Rest Assured. Trip highlights from Feb 15th…
ICW Miles 778 to 830: St. Augustine to Daytona Beach
We initially were planning to run offshore from St. Augustine to Daytona Beach, but decided to take the ICW for a couple of reasons. The nearest inlet to Daytona Beach is about 14 miles south of the city at Ponce de Leon Inlet and it looked like it might be a challenging entry. The breakwater…
