This Cruising Information section is still evolving.  Its purpose is to provide cruisers following in our wake, including folks wanting to go cruising, with some more cruiser-specific information - stuff that casual readers of this site would not be as interested in.  Because of the interest this section has generated, we've decided to expand it and organize it better.  We moved our Cruising Recipes and Provisioning pages here from Sue's area and we've recently added our Equipment section, so we currently have 6 sections, with a handful of pages under each:

The Australian, Indonesian, Thailand and Madagascar Cruising pages are highlighted because they contain detailed descriptions of virtually every anchorage we visited in those countries, with Lat/Lon positions, anchoring depths, and photos of the anchorages and/or their approaches. Other countries we sailed may not be covered so completely, but we've written about what we thought we would have liked to know before going -- so we hope it's of some benefit to you, too.

Weather is a huge subject that we'll explore in more depth Real Soon Now (see our Pacific Ocean Weather page for a first cut).  We generally rely on GRIB files, but they're completely automated (no human input) so subject to interpretation, with a bit of a learning curve.  But there are companies that provide more comprehensive sailing wind forecasts.

What is Cruising?
This is the term we sailors use to describe the lifestyle of living aboard a sailboat and traveling, by sailing ourselves over the sea, to all parts of the globe.  It has nothing to do with being a passenger on a cruise ship!  "Cruisers" are the people who embark on this lifestyle.  We also fondly call ourselves "yachties" although many of us would refute the word "yacht" to describe our sailboats.  The term "yacht" somehow implies mega-fancy, expensive toys belonging to billionaires who don't work on their own boats (which all of us certainly do!)  Humorists Henry Beard and Roy McKie, in their delightful dictionary "Sailing" define the term yacht, in part, as a word used "by many boat owners to describe their vessel to persons who have never seen it and are never likely to do so."

Cruising as a Family
If you're a sailing family, or thinking of taking your family cruising, you might want to read Sue's article on Cruising with Teens, as well as what Chris and Amanda wrote about this lifestyle.  Chris has a big section with many pages on all aspects of the Cruising Life (written when he was 16‑18 and not edited by adults).  Amanda writes about her feelings about life on a sailboat, written when she was 18, looking back on 6 years aboard.  For us parents, we feel that this lifestyle turns out wonderful young adults, and we don't just mean our own, as we see it over and over.  Cruising kids are usually given many more responsibilities than shore-based kids, and the vast majority of them rise to those responsibilities, becoming more responsible themselves.  They tend to become a bit precocious, but that's not unexpected, given that they're living in an adult world.  But that interaction also makes them more used to dealing with adults in mature ways, becoming more mature themselves in the process.  Also, the opportunity to be with our kids so much of the time has been an absolute god-send to us.  It also limits a lot of the peer-pressure that kids are exposed to (for drugs, sex, alcohol, etc) in most high schools.

OpenCPN:
OpenCPN is a free, open-source navigation program (CPN stands for Chart Plotter Navigator) that's been in active development for several years now.  You can freely download versions for Windows (all versions, including Vista and Win7), Macintosh, and even several flavors of Unix.  It reads and displays several different chart formats, both vector and raster, including the CM93 chart database that covers the whole world.  You can annotate charts with new information, lay tracks of where you go, plan routes, display GRIB weather data, upload routes to your GPS and/or autopilot, etc, etc.  It also does AIS better than MaxSea, as the alarms can be extensively programmed.  MaxSea versions 10 and 11 had no AIS alarms to warn you of approaching vessels, and higher versions can't read CM93 charts, severely limiting the program's usefulness.  We've been using OpenCPN since 2010 and are very happy with it.  It is constantly under development so new features are being added by a dedicated team, many of whom are also cruisers.  Features can be requested and all such requests are seriously considered.  There are several active discussions on Cruisers Forum where features and/or problems are discussed and solved (the developers respond personally).  New releases come out once or twice a year and since the software is "open source" all new versions are also free (in fact, you are free to download the source code and add new features yourself if you want to).

Checking chart accuracy:
We never trust the accuracy of our electronic charts too much when approaching a new area.  For instance, even the 2006 version of the CM93 chart database has all of Tonga displaced by at least 1/4 mile from it's true position!  This can be very unsettling if you're approaching in the dark.  But how do you know, when you're just entering a new area, how accurate your charts are?  One way we've found is to use our radar, which is connected to our NMEA bus and therefore gets GPS positional information.  One method is to put our radar's cursor on a prominent landmark (like the tip of an island or peninsula), read off the lat/lon, and compare that to our electronic charts.  Similar in concept is to put a waypoint on a prominent landmark, like the end of an island or peninsula.  We've found that our JRC radar displays waypoints on the screen, so that is another correlation between our charts and reality (as measured by radar).  These methods are not super-accurate, but they'll give you a rough idea, which can be immensely reassuring when entering a new anchorage in the dark.

Checking the Dates of your CM93 Chart Database:
For folks using the CM93 chart database, it's sometimes useful to know how new your charts are.  Note that you cannot just look at the timestamps for the folders, as that will be the date you installed the charts.  Here's a good method to find your chart database date:  Open Windows Explorer and navigate to your CM93 folder.  This is usually under either the root of your main drive, under your C‑Map folder (if you've installed C‑Map), or possibly under My Documents.  You should see a long list of folders, all with names that are just numbers.  Pick any folder, open it, and you should see several folders with names that are just single letters.  Open the C folder and set your View to Details, to see file dates.  Click above the Dates column to sort by Dates.  The newest file should be the date for your chart database (most of the files should have very similar dates).  You can also check other folders to make sure of the individual file dates.

As of 2011 we've seen CM93 chart databases dated 2000, 2002, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009 and 2010.  All of them have noticeable improvements over their predecessors.  Obviously, it's best to have the latest charts.  We also carry paper charts for wherever we go, despite having 4 computers on board, all with electronic navigation packages, and despite having 5 GPSs on board.

Newer versions of MaxSea are moving away from the CM93 chart database, presumably because too many people already have it and I&M would like to sell their own electronic charts.  I&Ms new charts are certainly very nice, but they're also hideously expensive.  Their pricing scheme is OK for fishermen or those who only stay in 1 area, but it's very expensive for us world cruisers who keep needing access to new areas as we cruise around the world.  But now that OpenCPN reads and displays the CM93 charts (and does most everything else that we want a navigation program to do) we don't much care about MaxSea.

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