Sail Further

Flying the "steal your face" flag tied to the town quay in Hvar (Croatia's St. Tropez). Met quite a few Americans who couldn't get over seeing a US sailboat with "Portland, OR" as its hailing port here in Croatia.

Nothing like making landfall in Lipari (the Aeolian Islands) and being greeted by dolphins. Or gazing at the red glow in the distance, from the volcano on the island of Stromboli, in the early morning darkness ("the lighthouse of the Mediterranean... It guided Odysseus towards the twin perils of Scylla and Charybdis... " Rod Heikell).

Can't stop addicted to the shin dig Cop top he says Im gonna win big Choose not a life of imitation Distant cousin to the reservation -- Can't Stop, Red Hot Chili Peppers They must have played this song twenty or more times celebrating the finish of the America's Cup in Valencia last July. I'd never heard it before. I Googled the few lyrics I remembered and found out it was RHCP. The spaniards sure know how to enjoy life. I just heard Larry Ellison won his lawsuit so Oracle will be the challenger of record for the next AC in Valencia (on multihulls!!! whaaa...???)

I finally got my Furuno weatherfax working here in the Med. Last year I used the frequencies and transmission times from Heikell's "Italian Waters Pilot" with no luck. This year I used the data from Imray's "Mediterranean Almanac 2007-08" which seems to work. The data available here is kind of disappointing. Compare the image above (actual size!) to what was available in Northern Europe from the UK Met office below (synoptics, wind barbs, etc.)

Name the man standing in front of the "Further" bus.

When I finally pulled the trigger on buying a boat directly from Hallberg-Rassy I became an unwitting currency speculator. Here's what I learned in the process. Because Hallberg-Rassy is a Swedish company they price their boats in their home currency: Swedish Kronor (SEK). In early 2006 when I first started looking at HR's the SEK/USD exchange rate was 7.8, by the time I made my first payment it had fallen to 7.3, today in the cash market it's quoted at 6.35. Not using a hedge of some kind would have been disastrous. Here are the options I evaluated: 1. Pay the full price in advance at the current exchange rate. The downside: All HR boats are built-to-order. The lead time can be anywhere from 9-months to 2-years. Big opportunity cost, even if the cash is just held in a money market account during the build. 2. Convert the purchase price to SEK and hold it in a deposit account until the payments are scheduled. Most commercial banks don't...

A few days ago I ordered a C-map SD card for my Furuno chartplotter to cover my intended navigation area: Eastern Med. I ordered the m-em-m003: Mediterranean, Aegean, Black Sea and much to my surprise I received a card labelled m-em-m917. Apparently C-map has updated their product line from "mega-wide" to "mega-max" and the retailers haven't bothered to update their online catalogs (I use Waypoint out of Alameda, CA). If you're in the market make sure and get the new mega-maxes they cover the area of two mega-wides for the same price.