Sites
General Cruising
forcefiveadventures.com We met Curt and Allie in the Caribbean, and buddy boated with them for a few great months. They are a couple from CA who flew out to St Maarten, bought a Lavranos H 34 called Force Five, sailed around the Caribbean, and finally trucked it back home. Allie writes for SailJazz.com. Curt, apart from being the compiler of the little known Red Wine Songbook, works on internet start-ups.


sailjazz.com Also in the Caribbean we met another couple- Mark and Laurie, off Althea, a 36ft S&S design. We travelled with them from the Windwards, through the Panama Canal and onto the South coast of Panama, where we parted company. Apart from playing a mean guitar, Mark wrote and edited SailNet.com, and is now doing the same thing for SailJazz.com. Both are great sites, with a lot of general cruising content as well as resources for the American market.
These guys all now live in Santa Barbara, CA.


Noonsite.com is the home of Jimmy Cornell, who wrote the excellent ‘World Cruising Routes’ and ‘World Cruising Handbook’. It contains updates to the books as well as up-to-date information on formalities, security, procedures and general notes on pretty much any country in the world. Both the books and the site are great.

Books
‘Mechanical and Electrical Boatowner’s Handbook’ by Nigel Calder
What can you say about ‘Calder’? My favourite was the time I had a broken manual windlass. I looked it up in Calder and there was an exploded diagram of my exact model. My copy has greasy prints all over it from numerous jobs. I cannot recommend it strongly enough.


'This Old Boat' by Don Casey
This is a great book for updating an aging fibreglass boat, which is exactly what we have. Coincidently the author is the owner of another Allied Seawind. It gives a gentle introduction to the dozen or so skills you need to fix your boat, and then takes each skill a surprising distance. For example, the chapter on sewing goes right through to sailmaking.


'Sensible Cruising: the Thoreau Approach' by Don Casey and Lew Hackler.
I read this book before we bought our boat, and it was instrumental in making our trip possible. While we have indulged in things like refrigeration, the attitude that simpler is better meant that we set up so as not to rely on technology. We see complex devices as luxuries, and if they break they can wait.


'Maiden Voyage' by Tanya Aebi and Bernadette Brennan.
We have had a couple of copies of this book – I keep giving them away to women who are considering long distance cruising. It tells the story of Aebi’s solo circumnavigation on a Contessa 26 as a teenager. It is very inspiring, well written, and also allows us to look around our 32 footer and feel for a second that we have a big boat.

'The American Practical Navigator' by Bowditch.
How to navigate, and available free online at US NIMA. Also very cheap to buy.