We plan on getting underway this weekend for Kinsale, Ireland. It’s a tiny bit early in the season but we have what looks to be a blocking high developing in the North Atlantic which will stall the steady stream of low-pressure systems that we’ve been watching for the past several months. Unfortunately the high is…
Archive | M/V Dirona RSS feed for this section
Stack Socket Replacement
A couple of days after we arrived into Newport, we found the breaker for the pilothouse 120V outlets had tripped. We investigated all the electronics plugged into the PH outlets but the breaker would still trip. We eventually unplugged everything and it still tripped so it had to be a bad breaker or a circuit…
Departure Planning
We’ve been studying the weather every day as we prepare for our Atlantic crossing from Newport, RI to Kinsale, Ireland. We use a variety of data sources, including NOAA surface analysis and 500MB forecasts. The sources we rely most heavily on are GRIB files containing data from computer-generated models such as NOAA GFS and WAVEWATCH…
Fuel, Option Value, Speed, & Safety
Boat range in ocean conditions is remarkably hard to predict but it’s just about guaranteed that your real range is far shorter than estimates or even careful measurement if it wasn’t done in real ocean conditions. Ocean swell slows boats remarkably. We had no idea how much impact this would have when we first got…
Thunderbolt to Newport
With a big push from the Gulf Stream and an evolving good weather forecast, an overnight run from Thunderbolt, Georgia turned into a three-night run to Cape May, New Jersey and eventually a four-night run directly to Newport, RI. Trip highlights from March 25th through 29th, 2017 follow. Click any image for a larger view,…
Flying over Newport
In January of this year, while walking in St. Marys, Georgia, we heard a drone and went to check it out. What really caught our interest here was that the person with the controls wasn’t even looking at the drone. It was a DJI Mavic Pro that had some really impressive features, including the ability…
Thunderbolt Marine
We’d never heard of Thunderbolt, Georgia, nor the superyacht yard there, until we were referred to Ian Anderson, an electronics installer at local Mackay Communications. Following an overnight run from Halifax Harbor, we spent three busy but enjoyable days at Thunderbolt Marine while we upgraded our KVH V7 mini-VSAT satellite data system to the latest…
Fighting Water Ingress
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…
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,…
