Check out our Destinations pages, divided between the Caribbean, Pacific, and Indian Ocean to see where we've been and our impressions of each place.  Amanda has done an extraordinary job with the 'hot-spotted' maps throughout, making the geography much more intuitive.

Our Newsletters section has been split into Pacific Ocean Newsletters and Indian Ocean Newsletters.  Both contain newly illustrated copies of the email newsletters we send out.  These reflect our at-the-moment thoughts and feelings, often written on passage.  If you want to receive our newsletters as email, you can now sign‑up and manage your subscription yourself.  Our mailing list is as private as we can make it, and never shared with anyone.

Our Cruising Information section contains valuable cruiser-specific info for sailors following in our wake: A whole Equipment section, articles on cruising with teens, transiting the Panama Canal, yacht provisioning and recipes, FAQs, as well as pages on specific areas like Australia and Indonesia.  We've also added links to other cruiser sites and some downloadable MaxSea track files.

The Flora and Fauna section documents many of the plants and animals we've encountered, broken down by region.  There's also a Marine Mammals section.

The Underwater pages showcase our underwater photography, reef life and scuba diving.  Dive sites include GPS locations so others can find these sites as well.

On our Ocelot pages you can see pictures of the boat from the deck, cockpit, and inside, her layout, specifications and even some of the modifications we've made to turn her into an ocean cruiser.

The Boat Guests pages are designed to make everyone jealous of our visitors and want to come down themselves!  We've even included a What to Bring page.

Jon is an Electrical & Computer Engineer (see his resume) so his pages include his technical slant on some of the boat systems as well as a collection of stories from when we cruised in the 1980s.

Sue's pages give insights into the cruising life and include things like provisioning information.  Sue, aka Sue Muller Hacking, is a writer (see her bio) with several published books and hundreds of articles to her credit.

Christopher graduated from the University of Washington (UW) in Computer Science and Engineering in June, 2010!  He is now working at Microsoft and loving it.  It's so nice to have someone in the family earning real money!  While no longer aboard full time, he's written about our inland travels, underwater photography, his projects and schooling.

Amanda is in her 3rd year at UW, working hard on her Oceanography degree!  She lived aboard for 6.5 years and logged more than 20,000 miles on Ocelot.  While no longer aboard full time, she's shared her unique teen perspective, logs of our travels and her high school projects.

Where is Arthur? Our beloved sailing cat was going to suffer greatly crossing more oceans and sitting out months of quarantine in Australia.  In March 2005 we flew him "home" to Northern California to live with Jon's brother's family where he is now happily climbing trees and warming laps in a non-floating house. More about Arthur the Sea Cat...

Over 100 cruising boats arrive in Malaysia every year.  We've now published our thoughts on cruising Malaysia, complete with anchoring locations, depths, descriptions & photos.
See our new Cruising Malaysia page

Cruising to Nepal?  In the Spring we went trekking in the Himalayas with our kids.  This was a 30-year reunion for us, as our first wedding anniversary was 1 days' hike from Everest Base Camp.  These pages are loaded with photos and interactive Google Maps of our travels through the jungles, up to Everest Base Camp, and over several 17,000' (5000m) passes.
See our 11 new Nepal Newsletter pages

Cruisers: We've updated our AIS Equipment page with new information and photos of our display when we crossed busy shipping lanes.  AIS could be the best navigation aid since GPS.
See our updated AIS Equipment page

We've added a new page on Anchors and Anchoring under our Equipment section, with our impressions of both gear and techniques - what works under what conditions and why, from those of us who depend on our anchors.
See our new Anchors page

Sue has added a story from when Chris was a baby in Venezuela and a local woman wanted to "borrow the baby".
Read Sue's Latin Milk story

How do you put long-lasting copper-based antifouling paint on your sail drives?  Check out our new Sail Drives page to find out!  You'll also see how to prevent water from sneaking past your lower seals, and other good info.
See our new Sail Drives page

Can you repair inflatable dinghies with epoxy?  Yes, and it works even better than specialized contact cements!  Find out how on our new page on Epoxy Work, along with several other tips we've learned over the years.
See our new Epoxy Work page

Jon has added a new page to his Pre‑History section - a humorous piece on our introduction to the Spanish Main.
See Jon's new Spanish Main page

We've added a new report on Watermakers to our new Equipment section under our Cruising Info pages.  We've also updated our Solar Panel page to reflect Kyocera's excellent support policies.
See our new Watermaker page

We've added a new Equipment section to our Cruising Info pages.  Here we'll write about what's good & what's not so good, to help other cruisers make more informed buying decisions.
See our new Cruising Equipment pages

CRUISERS!  We've updated our cruising information pages on both the Seychelles and Maldives.
See our Cruising Seychelles pages
See our Cruising Maldives pages

We've now added to our coverage of Mayotte, in the Comoros, by adding 2 new pages to go with our 4 previously published newsletters pages.
See our Mayotte Home and Cruising Mayotte pages

Website improvements:  We've added headings to the navigation bars on the left side of most pages, to help show the relationships between the different nav-bars.  (Many pages have 3, and they're all related)
Comments appreciated - Tell us what you think!

We've now trashed our old, automatically generated site map in favor of a much more compact and intuitive page with explanations.
Check out our new Site Map...

Want to build your own website?  Jon has published 2 pages of tricks and traps for others attempting to put together a website like ours.
Read Jon's FrontPage 101 and FrontPage FAQ pages

LATEST NEWS: We've been back in SE Asia for a year now, cruising peninsular Malaysia, the Thai islands, and Malaysian Borneo.  We've had 3 months in Nepal and 3 months in the USA.  Next stop: the Andaman Islands, mainland India, and a return to Chagos.  Then we have to decide: do we return to SE Asia for more inland travel (Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam) or do we continue across the Indian Ocean to southern Africa?  Stay tuned...

Our trip has had many goals, but a primary one has been to teach ourselves, and especially our children, about the different cultures of the people in our world, and the values those people possess.  Many people never learn what's important to other cultures and too often feel that other people should feel as they do.  But we know that other cultures have very different values from our own, and we feel it's important, especially for the coming generation who will be leading our society in only a few years, to know this as well.  We hope that with better understanding, future generations will be better equipped to defuse some of the strife that threatens world peace.

Although sailing to Australia was our original goal when we left St. Maarten in 2002, we joined the Darwin-Kupang, Indonesia Rally which left Australia in July 2006. This put us deeply into SE Asia, and formed a commitment to continue on around the world!

After cruising Indonesia for 3 months we sailed up the Straits of Malacca cruising through Malaysia and Thailand.  Christopher, taking time off from university, re-joined us there for 3 months and sailed with us to Sri Lanka.  Jon, Sue and Amanda spent the rest of 2007 on the voyage across the Indian Ocean, switching continents from Asia to Africa, with stops in the Maldives, Chagos Archipelago,  Seychelles, Madagascar, Mozambique and South Africa.

Although we had planned to go around the Cape of Good Hope in 2008 and up to the Caribbean we realized that we weren't ready to stop cruising. We enjoyed more than a year in South Africa, and 9 months in the States visiting family and friends. We settled Amanda into the University of Washington as an oceanography major in September 2008.

In April, 2009 Jon and Sue returned to Ocelot. After much boat work, and once the pirate activity in the western Indian Ocean calmed down, we sailed north to Mayotte, Madagascar, Seychelles, and east across the Indian ocean back to SE Asia.

Kanji Sherpa and baby

Ongoing improvements to photos -
In general, if you see a border around a picture, or if your mouse-pointer turns into a hand when you mouse-over a photo, then clicking on the picture will bring up a larger version.  Use the Back Button to return.
Click on the example above

Ongoing

We are continuing to put Google Ads on selected pages.  This has been a difficult decision as our site has always been completely non-commercial.  But at 700 pages, it also requires significant maintenance.  We're hoping that Google's reputation for appropriate ads will not detract from your experience.  Your feedback here would be appreciated, especially if you see an inappropriate ad (we've eliminated several already).