The Tahina Expedition

New Ocean Floor Imagery in Google Earth

2009-01-19T02:39:46Z

This weekend Google released new imagery of the ocean floor in Google Earth. It has higher resolution, and more accurate, representations of the underlying terrain. The ocean floor is colored to reflect the terrain features of the sub-sea surface. The new rendering is a bit higher resolution (much higher in places) and is presumably more accurate than the previous version. According to the copyright messages the new ocean floor is coming from "SIO, NOAA, US Navy, NGA, GEBCO". These entities are dedicated to getting the best ocean floor surface data they can. You don't have to do anything special to see the new ocean floor, just open up Google Earth (it's not visible in Google Maps yet). Unfortunately, the new ocean floor in Google Earth is NOT 3D - yet. This could be the first part of the release of new data for the rumored "Google Ocean".

Unfortunately, Google has ruined some of their own previous data by actually covering up some imagery of remote islands and atolls with the new ocean floor imagery. Not only that, but their selection process has covered satellite/aerial imagery of shallow waters like those in the Bahamas and around island chains. This is particularly bad news for boats, divers, fisherman, and others who value being able to see the waters around important places around the world. For boaters, we can use the visual imagery to see changes in water color which help identify shallow areas, locations of reefs and undersea obstructions, and the location of boats at anchor (indicating good anchorage locations). I'm hoping Google will listen to the feedback and re-instate missing island imagery and more waters with visual imagery instead of bathymetry.

Day Sail St. Marys - 10-January 2009

2009-01-11T12:00:00Z

On Saturday, I invited my brother and his family to come down to the boat for a sail. The weather turned out near perfect. We had light winds in the morning, but it was expected to pick up to the 10-15 knot range in the afternoon. And, the temperature was going to be in the low 70s (F). Not bad for mid-January!

Using GPSVisualizer.com I've colorized our GPS track of the sail according to the speed of the boat. If you load the track in Google Earth , you'll see a legend on the left of our speed. I've also added some placemarks describing where we raised sails, had wind change, etc. I may have to think about a way to recording wind speeds when we are visualizing our tracks for the circumnavigation.

We started out at about 11 AM and motored down the St. Marys river out to sea. I timed it so we had the tide going out when we left, and tide coming back in as we returned. The winds were less than 5 knots at the start, but once we got out a couple of miles the winds picked up to a little over 7 knots. So, we turned into the winds and raised sail. There were a few other sail boats a few miles out. Once we were making way, we had some lunch. The boys had a great time running around the boat and playing like they were pirates.

There is a right whale protected area about 12 nm out. A cargo ship was headed around the protected area to go in the inlet to Fernandina Beach. After he passed, we turned around to head back in. The winds gradually picked up as we neared the inlet. The direction of the wind was perfect and we managed to sail most of the way back up river towards St. Marys. We dropped sails at the sharp bend to the south in the river.

As we headed to the marina, the dockmaster asked if we could park in a different slip. We had already set up our fenders and docklines on the other side of the boat, so we had to turn around a couple of times while we re-arranged. We pulled into the new slip and got some help from other boaters with our lines. Fortunately the power line just barely reached the power outlet near the starboard bow. My brother John and I watched the moon rise over St. Marys. It was a perfect end to a perfect day of sailing.

Dinghy loading/unloading and break-in runs

2009-01-10T04:07:23Z

Got up early to prepare for some runs with out new dinghy "Coconut". The dinghy is a 12-foot Apex Inflatable with hard bottom with a 25 hp Yamaha outboard motor. The first project was to drill the hole to pass the fuel line into the anchor locker . The 6 gallon gas tank fits nicely in the anchor locker with enough room left over for the anchor and rode (once I get one).

Spent a few minutes setting up to lift the dinghy back into the water (we keep her stored on the back platform of Tahina). For lifting/lowering we have a really cool setup with a sliding derrick in the boom which has two pulleys on the end. The 2:1 main halyard lines go from the top of the mast over the end of the derrick pulleys and then hook to the lifting harness I build last month for Coconut. We have a rope at the other end of the boom (near the mast) which pulls out the derrick so you can get the boat over the water. However, last month we realized the derrick is about 1 to 2 feet short of the length required to get the boat past the aft transom of the boat.

Here are some photos showing Coconut up on deck, the deck mats, and Coconut in the water:

Once I had Coconut lifted up, and the derrick out as far as possible, I worried about how to keep it pushed out from the transom so I could lower it. I ended up sticking the mop handle in a slot on the edge of the transom. The mop handle kept the dinghy pushed out just far enough. I began lowering and the dinghy went down just fine. With another person, this will be easier since they could simply push it out slightly. But, I will most likely have many times where I'm dropping the dinghy alone. I really want to get the derrick set up so it goes out another foot or two!

Once Coconut was in the water, I put away the derrick and halyard. Then I got things ready for a break-in run. I had a bit of difficulty getting it started with the rope lanyard. But, once I squeezed the fuel bladder a few times it finally got enough fuel to start. I let it run at idle for 10 minutes per instructions in the manual. Then I took it for a few short runs at half-or-less throttle. This needed to be done for 50 minutes. The good news is that this boat planes quickly (without too much throttle needed) when only one person is on board. And, it was plenty quick at even half throttle.

Later in the day, after it warmed up some, I took Coconut on a longer run at higher speeds (again staying within the manual recommendations). The first 10 hours of engine use are constrained a bit. But, I did notice this boat reaches its top speed well before full throttle with only one person on board. I suspect the boat is going 5-10 knots faster than we did at full throttle with the 15 hp motor we had on our earlier dinghy (same model/manufacturer dinghy).

Of course, I took my handheld GPS with me while doing the trial runs. You can see the dinghy trial runs in Google Earth. I used GPSVisualizer.com to colorize the tracks according to speed (in knots). Toward the end of the trials I did I was allowed to briefly open up the throttle. It looks like Coconut tops out at a little over 25 knots with just one person on board!

Drove down to Tahina

2009-01-09T04:56:13Z

Karen needed to stay home, but I decided to go down to Georgia and visit Tahina. I had some specific goals for this weekend:

Get the new dinghy in the water and begin the break-in process for the new Yamaha 25 hp engine.
Drill hole to put the fuel tank for the dinghy inside the anchor locker. Needed a 1/2 inch hole for the fuel line to go through.
Get painters (boat lines) for the dinghy. We use two so the boat can be attached between the hulls and stay in position without the dinghy motor hitting the hulls.
Get an anchor and rode for the dinghy
We had a problem with the water pump for the starboard heater. Try to find the problem.
Take my brother and his family out for a sail this weekend - weather forecast looks good.
Examine the boom derrick for the dinghy to see if it can be extended further.

I left about 9:30 from Raleigh and drove down to St. Marys. It took a good portion of the day to get there. But, I still managed to arrive before dark. I looked over the boom derrick, but could see no obvious way it could be extended. It does seem it can be unscrewed and maybe removed from the boom. I determined the size drill bit needed and bought one at the hardware store. Also bought some gasoline for the dinghy so I'd have enough for the break-in runs. Tried starting the starboard heater, but the water pump still is not working right. Had plenty of blankets, so I didn't worry about it for tonight.

Passage from Carolina Beach to St. Marys, Georgia

2008-12-30T12:15:11Z

On Saturday December 13, we left at about 2 AM from Carolina Beach to move Tahina south to St. Marys, Georgia. My brother John lives there, so it was a convenient place to move for a while. We'll be moving further south after the holidays. The route took us a little over 300 nautical miles which we completed in just over 1.5 days. We arrived at about 4 PM on Sunday.

Karen and I got up and left while the full moon was high and bright. We wanted to time our arrival to make sure we would be there during daylight hours. The winds were pretty strong for the first day - averaging between 20-30 knots, but gradually dropped as we continued south. We also had a tail wind for a good portion of the trip which made for good conditions to fly the big spinnaker sail. But, we have a policy of not flying the spinnaker at night, so our speed was a couple of knots slower slower on Saturday night. It is too risky flying the spinnaker at night because you have to leave the cockpit area to raise and lower the sail.

The entire trip was recorded on my Garmin GPS, and we even remembered to take some photos. I've now processed the GPS track and geotagged some of the photos. I used GPSVisualizer to convert the GPS track into KML and to colorize the track according to our speed. If you look closely at our track in Google Earth, you can see how the boat would surge with the gusts of wind and the following seas (which were in the 6-8 foot range). You can also see we had a broad range of speeds, but mostly averaged in the 8-10 knot range. At the end of the trip, we motored into St. Marys Inlet with an outgoing tide - which reduced our speed by 2-3 knots.

Below is a slideshow of photos showing parts of the trip down, and pictures from St. Marys, Georgia after we arrived. You can see St. Marys is on a river (called St. Marys) which is the border between Georgia and Florida. There's a large marsh just to the south of the town and the marina. St. Marys is a small southern town with nice little shops, a pretty park, old trees with spanish moss hanging from their branches, and very friendly people. Also at the end is a photo of our new dinghy "Coconut" taken after we first tied up at the back of the boat (it was after dark since that's when the truck arrived on Monday night).

You can view the photos in Google Earth as well.

Keeping up with Tahina

2008-12-20T13:17:59Z

The challenge of preparing for a five year circumnavigation is harder than any project we've ever undertaken. And, believe me, we've done some hard things in the past. I've started and run several businesses and any entrepreneur can tell you startups are really hard. And, it's been equally hard on Karen who has to keep things going when I'm off working on a business. Even when I start a venture, Karen is truly an equal partner. I've covered the topic of preparing for a circumnavigation before in an earlier post.

The catch 22 we're in now is juggling several parallel major projects: 1) Google Earth Blog - a more than full time job researching and writing; 2) Taking care of Tahina, fitting Tahina out, and moving it to warmer waters for the winter; 3) Finding time to work on the redesign of GEB and the design for this Tahina site; 4) Starting in earnest the projects to get our house ready to be sold; and 5) finding time to spend with family (especially now with the holidays). The problem is the scale of each of these projects is large, and it is hard to get any one project done effectively. So, things like finishing the blog designs have been slipping.

So far I haven't publicly announced this blog (because it is currently still using a default template without any real graphical design). And, so, posts have not been coming out regularly yet. But, I really want to share the trials and tribulations of our preparations. So, I'm going to try harder to keep up with this blog and make a greater effort to get the design at least acceptable for public consumption. The good news is that we've been trying to keep a faithful journal of our experiences, so it should be possible to back-fill some of the more interesting experiences with back-dated posts.

Now, if we can only maintain our sanity while we're trying to get all these projects done! Right now, we're in Colorado visiting family for Christmas. We'll soon be back to North Carolina, but will be making another run down to the boat - which is now in Georgia - to show more family and friends the boat. We'll have to keep it short though so we can get back and get work done on the house.

The goal right now is to begin our circumnavigation by April or May (before hurricane season starts). But, we're still unsure about whether we can get all the critical items completed in that time. If we're not ready by May, we will mostly likely have to postpone departure until the fall after hurricane season ends. Insurance companies won't insure a boat if they are taken into certain waters during storm seasons. But, keeping a house and a boat (which cost more than the house) both going at the same time is a financial strain. So, the incentive to leave sooner is strong. More on this topic in a later post.

Wish us luck!

Tahina Has a Coconut

2008-12-17T20:14:53Z

As mentioned on our "About Tahina" article the name for our boat was discovered because of a news story about a newly discovered palm tree in Madagascar. The tree was named Tahina after the daughter of the gentleman who reported the new tree. Tahina means "blessed" or "protected" in Malagasy (the language of Madagascar). We liked the connotations and the polynesian-derived aspect.

This Monday (on December 15th) we took delivery on our "new car", our rigid-bottomed inflatable dinghy (or boat tender) which will serve as our primary transportation to shore when we're at anchor or in a port. Soon I will write a post describing the delivery process and sharing some pictures of it. But, for now we just wanted to share that Karen came up with a great name for our smaller boat: "Coconut". An obvious name once you understand where the name "Tahina" came from. :-)

We Bought A New "Car"!

2008-12-10T20:24:09Z

Today was a major milestone in preparing for the trip. Tahina will serve as our house, and our primary means of transportation between locations. However, we will also need a means from getting from our house on the water, to other destinations nearby on land. Our "car" is a small boat (or "tender" is the term used for bigger boats like ours :-) ), which is commonly referred to as a dinghy. In our case, we have chosen a boat which is part inflatable, and part fiberglass (these kind of boats are called "Rigid Inflatable Boats" or "RIB" for short). Today, we ordered a dinghy for Tahina.

We had a 12 foot RIB designed by Apex Inflatables on our previous boat PatiCat (pictured above). We debated buying something a foot or two longer, and even one with a "center console" with a driving wheel and a seat. The advantages for the console is that you can sit forward and a bit dryer. Without the seat, you have to sit on the side of the boat on the inflatable tube while holding the tiller of the motor to drive. Sometimes you get splashed by water in this position. Reportedly you stay dryer with the seat and console. However, there are some disadvantages to the bigger set up: 1) the weight of the boat increases by a couple hundred pounds (making it heavier to lift, and harder to pull up the beach). ; 2) you have less room on the boat for people and payload because the console and seat take up room; and 3) the boat price more than doubles for the larger boat with the console. Part of the increased cost is the necessity for a larger motor as well (which also weighs more), larger fuel tank, battery start-up required, etc.

So, we decided to go with the same 12-foot RIB from Apex as last time, but with a slightly larger 25 hp motor. The nice thing is that the manufacturer happens to have one on hand and is making a delivery right past the marina we're moving to this weekend. They are also able to supply us with a motor and ready-to-go assembly. So, next week we'll have our new "car". We haven't picked a name yet for her, but I'll let you know here when we do.

Day Sail With A Frenchman

2008-12-08T01:26:02Z

My friend Gerard drove down early this morning from Cary, NC so he could go for a day sail. Gerard is originally from France and still has the distinctive accent despite having been married to an American for 20 years. The Frenchman came out to Tahina in October with his family, but the weather prevented us from going for a sail. Today the weather was pretty much perfect (excepting the temperature which was around 50 degrees F).

Karen opted to take the dogs with her while she did some shopping. She also took the dogs for a walk at the park while we went sailing.

The conditions started out with 10-15 knots of wind heading out of the marina - winds coming from the NW. This is an excellent direction for a sail up the coast since the winds are coming across the shore. No swells, just chop. The winds picked up to 15-20 out of the inlet where we raised the mainsail with one reef. As soon as we put out the genoa we took off to 10+ knots. It wasn't long before we were hitting the teens (Tahina's speed log reads a bit high, but our GPS had us at 13.7 knots at one point).

Here's a short video clip showing us moving along:

We had a nice sail up the coast past Wrightsville Beach. The sun was on our backs and with the helm on the lee side we were comfy in our coats, hats, hoods and gloves. Gerard was amazed how smooth the ride was even at the double-digit speeds. There was some 2-3 foot chop, but no real swells, so the ride was actually quite smooth. There was a bit of spray a few times, but not much hitting us. Tahina can handle that size chop easy.

We ended up double-reefing the jib and then cutting in closer to the wind so we could move back towards shore after we got over 3 nm offshore. I figured we would have a better point of sail if we got in close. We made some sandwiches inside for a few minutes as we gradually got in to about 1.5 miles offshore. The autopilot did a wonderful job of holding us in on a close reach.

After cleaning up from lunch we tacked back south. This tack was even better where we were able to go on a beam reach with a bit less apparent wind. We were still averaging close to 10 knots over ground the whole way back to Carolina Beach Inlet. On the way north the solar panels more than kept up with the power requirements, but going south the sails blocked the panels. So, we were eating up 10-15 amps average. Running the surround sound stereo system probably added to the power requirements - but, it was worth it! We had some rock-n-roll as we cruised along enjoying the sail!

Here are some photos from the trip (thanks to Gerard for his photos):

We were back to the marina by about 2:30 pm after a trip just over 30 nm. Gerard was more than willing to lend a hand helping me wash the salt off the boat. We gave Tahina a thorough bath and even wiped down all the stainless as well. I used GPS Visualizer to colorize our GPS track according to speed so you can view our track in Google Earth. You can see how we accelerated with the wind gusts especially on the way north. On the way back we pretty much steadily made 10 knots as I set the autopilot on a track for a waypoint at the inlet.

Moving Tahina

2008-12-06T12:54:18Z

Next weekend, we're planning to move Tahina to warmer waters down south. The plan has been to go down to Florida and eventually get to the Miami Boat show in mid-February. We have a part to pick up from St. Francis (the manufacturer of Tahina) which is impractical to ship around (it's a 10 foot "passarelle" - or gang plank - a ramp for getting from the dock to the boat at marinas). St. Francis put it on a new boat that will be shown at the boat show.

I was amazed when researching possible marinas for keeping our boat, that there are very few places down the coast that meet our conditions. The tricky part is that since Tahina has a mast which is 71 feet off the water, we can't go under the ICW 65 foot bridges. This reduces us to finding marinas near inlets to the ocean without bridges to go under (excepting a few taller bridges, or draw bridges). The next tricky part is finding a marina which has the right kind of dockages for a large catamaran (allowing for our very beamy width of 26.5 feet).And finally, trying to find a reasonable price in Florida is an issue.

I was able to use some nice tools to help research locations. I used Google Earth, Peio's Google Maps NOAA charts mashup, Marinas.com (which has very nice aerial photos of many marinas, and other useful data like links to web sites), and I would Google search for any feedback (positive/negative) on particular marinas. Anyway, we finally picked a location for our first stop - at the border of Florida/Georgia: St. Marys, Georgia. My brother John lives nearby, so he can keep an eye on the boat for us and we can visit with him while we're there. See the location of Lang's Marina . They have the right accomodations, and the price is right - it's even a bit lower than Carolina Beach.

We are back at Carolina Beach on Tahina right now. We're doing some final preparation, and basic maintenance in preparation for the passage. The trip to St. Marys is about 300 nautical miles (nm) by going to sea down the coast. We'll have to stay somewhat close to shore to avoid going into the strong gulf stream northward current. 300 nm is a little over 1.5 days on a typical passage (remember, our speed is dependent on wind conditions) for Tahina. We'll have to plan our departure to ensure we arrive during daylight hours.

Thanksgiving Family Visit on Tahina

2008-11-30T21:27:12Z

The day after Thanksgiving we invited a big part of the Taylor family to see (and hopefully sail) Tahina. Preparations started with the trip to the boat the previous weekend where we did some cleaning, taking down more linens, and asked someone to look at the autopilot issue. The autopilot issue turned out to be a simple loose wire. So that was easy.

On Thanksgiving Day, Karen and I left my Mom's in Winston-Salem around 5 PM and drove home. We packed and took another load of food/linens and drove on down to the boat (arriving around 11 PM). Next day, I got up early: tested the autopilot and started cleaning inside a bit. As it warmed up I began washing down the boat. Thankfully it got to be a beautiful and warm (60 F) day. It took more than 2 hours to wash. Karen was setting all the beds and planning food inventory. Karen came out and helped wipe the stainless and wipe windows. I began washing windows inside and out as well, and polished off a few marks on the outside.

The boat was really gleaming by the time the family arrived (all 9 including 5 adults and 4 kids). They arrived about 3 PM. After a quick tour, I looked at the wind and the nice weather and suggested we go ahead and go for a sail right away. Fortunately the seas were really mild (about 2 feet) so we managed to use Carolina Beach Inlet. Winds were in the 10 knot range. We had a nice sail after motoring out the inlet. We averaged over 8 knots and came close to 10 knots a few times. Unfortunately, we had to stop less than an hour out because of the approaching sunset. I had to put the fishing lines out right away because the kids were insistent. But, we didn't catch any. They sure enjoyed looking at the color sonar though and expecting every blip to result in a bite! Check out the GPS track in Google Earth .

That night we cooked up some dinner. It was a bit crowded because we didn't want to eat outside due to the rapidly cooling temperature (plus our daughter - who lives in Wilmington - came down to join us). The kids had a great time exploring around the marina. One of the boys managed to capture a nice-sized blue crab which they released later.

The next day we had planned to go out for a more lengthy sail. But, the weather turned worse than forecasted the night before. We had rain all day. So, we instead decided to visit the NC Acuaurium at Fort Fisher about 15 minutes away. Everyone had a great time. Afterwards we prepared a nice lunch and managed to get everyone (all 12) around the salon table. A short while later, the boat was peaceful as the family had to leave and start their trips home. It was a very successful, if brief, first visit from family on Tahina!

Back Home For Turkey Day

2008-11-26T03:40:36Z

We just spent a few days (since last Thursday) on the boat and accomplished several tasks. Just a sample of the tasks accomplished: Tahina name put on life buoy, finished temporary carpet install to protect wood floors from dog claws, got new Navionics card for Carolinas back (after previous one had problems showing 3D data for Carolina beach) - only problem was the new card exhibited the same problem, explored Raymarine RayNav software more, trouble-shooting on new autopilot problem, asked for quote on wind screen/spray dodger up front of cockpit, checked engines and topped off oils, bought water hose and filled port tank with shore water, and thoroughly washed outside of boat.

We also had one of our daughters visit over the weekend along with two of her friends. We took them for a nice afternoon sail on Saturday out about 4.5 miles off shore and back. It was a very nice sail considering early in the day the seas were pretty rough and winds were strong. Instead we had relatively small seas and nice light winds with a few fun stronger periods. We managed to go out and back in Carolina Beach Inlet for the first time (greatly reducing the motoring time to and from the marina). It helped that the Army Corps just finished dredging the channel and it was approaching high tide.

Unfortunately our autopilot stopped working - it kept saying "Drive Stopped" when it was barely turning. The manual did not provide strong clues on how to fix this problem. I suspect the problem has to do with the pump which drives our hydraulic steering, or the auto pilot control computer. Someone is coming to look at the system tomorrow.

It's important Karen continues to get comfortable driving the boat, so she drove a while as I put away the sail in its cover and put away the halyard, the blocks, and winch handles. I'm still doing the parking, but soon Karen will get some practice at that as well.

We also did some preparing for family visits expected after Thanksgiving Day. Cleaning inside and out, adding the water, making beds, taking linens home for cleaning, provisioning, etc.

We're getting more comfortable living and working on the boat. And the boat is becoming more like our second home every weekend we spend down there. Even the dogs are starting to get comfortable with the boat as well. They didn't even get seasick on their second time out. But, we have just as much to do at home as well, so we're back at the house catching up until Thursday when we go for Thanksgiving Day at my Mom's house.

Preparing for a Circumnavigation

2008-11-12T21:12:12Z

Preparing for a circumnavigation of the Earth by sailboat is not anything like a planning a two week vacation. First, you can't sail around the world in two weeks. Even if you went non-stop at an average 7 knots, it would take you about 150 days conservatively to get around the world. But, unless you're in a race, why would you want to go non-stop? The whole point is to stop and see unique places around the world. So, our plan is to take 5 years.

When you're planning a trip for 5 years away from home, you have to make a lot of decisions. In our case (as many circumnavigators do) we decided to sell our house and cars. We decided since the boat would be our home for the next five years that we should purchase something we would not only be comfortable with, but could also enable friends and family to join us. So, we concentrated first on buying a boat - in our case a 50-foot catamaran. Four queen-sized staterooms - plenty of room to invite a few guests. Still, it will be a lot less space than most of us are used to for living. A lot of our accumulated belongings will have to be stored for our eventual return. A great deal of it will need to be sold before we leave (we'll get used to Craigslist and eBay).

Preparations go way beyond just getting your house ready to be sold, and selling extra belongings. You have to figure out and handle many important personal details: healthcare plans, prescription medicine sources, insurance, wills, emergency contacts, mail handling services (someone has to open your mail and let you know if something urgent arrives, and arrange to forward an accumulated stack occasionally to your current location), how to handle taxes (yes, they follow you everywhere), and much more.

Thankfully with the age of Internet many things are easier than they once were on a long trip: Online banking, electronic payments, E-mail and Skype (for less expensive - or free - international voice communications), online purchases, online support for many products you'll break along the way, and don't even get me started on the travel planning tools available thanks to Google Earth! A lot of essential tasks and communications will be very practical compared to even 10 or 15 years ago.

Another big aspect to the preparations for the trip is getting the boat properly outfitted. Our boat came "blue water" ready. So, it already has many things like a lifeboat, a good compliment of sails, anchor, chartplotter, radar, freezer, stove, electric winches, watermaker, TV/stereo, BBQ grill, and more. But, every captain has his own ideas about essential equipment - and some things didn't come with the boat we purchased. A few examples of things we'll be adding: a dinghy (this is the essential "car" for our "house" - it will be a small partially inflatable boat with an outboard motor capable of carrying a few people and provisions between our boat and shore), AIS (Automatic Identification System - which is even better than radar in some respects), shortwave radio system, satellite phone/Internet access, a small washer/dryer unit, custom software and electronic charts, a couple of laptops, scuba gear, and of course digital cameras. The boat will also need a lot of spares in case some essential piece of equipment fails along the way. Then, we mustn't forget essential things like galley needs (dishes, flatware, cooking utensils, cleaning supplies, etc.), linens and beddings, curtains, and many other decorations. This will be our home remember. Oh, and lets toss in a few fun (but possibly essential) things like fishing gear, a kayak, bicycles, DVDs, books, etc., etc.

As you can imagine, planning, identifying, shopping, purchasing, installing, and testing these many systems is a complex job in itself. And you want everything important working properly before you leave. The boat will need one last visit to the boatyard to insure the bottom has fresh anti-fouling paint, and all the systems are in top condition.

Over the coming months, you'll get more of a taste of the complexity as we describe the trials and tribulations, joy and excitement as we go through the process of our preparations. And, you'll see there's a whole lot more than what I've just described.

Carolina Beach Inlet in Google Earth

2008-11-04T12:34:06Z

A couple of months ago, when I was planning to take our sailing catamaran Tahina down to Carolina Beach, North Carolina, I used Google Earth to research the new location before we made the decision to go down. Not only was I able to identify some candidate marinas, but I evaluated access to the ocean, where the bridges and roads were located, availability of stores, weather, etc. We ultimately settled on a recently re-built marina called Joyner Marina in Carolina Beach. They have nice facilities, a fuel dock, a beautiful view of the Inter-Coastal Waterway (ICW), and a great staff.

In order to reach the marina from the sea, there is a nearby inlet called "Carolina Beach Inlet". After some searching I discovered this inlet often needs dredging and you can see in Google Earth that the inlet mouth is not protected by a jetty. This is the reason why NOAA nautical charts do not show depth data for the inlet. The Google Earth imagery for the area is dated 2002. I discovered the inlet is regularly surveyed and maintained by the US Army Corps of Engineers. On their web site for NC inlets, they listed the most current surveys with a series of waypoints for the best route for the Carolina Beach Inlet channel (PDF). When I plotted the waypoints for the Carolina Beach Inlet route as placemarks for Google Earth, I was surprised to find they crossed over the land in the Google Earth imagery! For a moment, I jumped to the conclusion the imagery was mis-aligned (back in 2005 there was a misalignment of imagery in the Wilmington area, which has since been fixed). However, after checking with Google, they confirmed the imagery is not misaligned. So, I checked with other imagery providers and discovered the inlet has actually changed dramatically since 2002. In fact, the northern shore of the inlet has moved north by over 120 meters (400 feet)! I took a screenshot of the USGS imagery from Microsoft's Virtual Earth which is much more recent (I believe late 2007 or early 2008) and overlayed it in Google Earth . Select the overlay and use the transparency slider below the Places pane to compare how the inlet has changed. You can see in the screenshots below the comparison of the route with Google Earth (top) and more recent USGS image (below):

The Carolina Beach Inlet is best used with fair weather and when the currents are right. It's generally best to use the inlet when the surf is down, at the top of a high tide while the current is still headed in. But, if we need to go out to sea at other times, we can head up to the Masonboro Inlet a few miles north. Masonboro Inlet is charted, and sheltered by a jetty so you can get out under more conditions. You can read more about our first trip down to Carolina Beach here including a GPS track of our path viewable in Google Earth.

Introducing Our First Sailing Partner: Google

2008-10-02T13:48:08Z

During the past month I announced my grand plan for a five year sailing adventure around the world which will begin next year. My wife Karen and I have already purchased a boat called "Tahina", delivered it from the Bahamas, and are now working on a huge list of preparations. A big part of the plan is to share the experience with people through a "geo-documentary".

My vision is that we will use a combination of a blog, and extensive geo-spatially organized content to share where we go, provide information about our travel locations, and show the sights we see. You will be able to follow our paths on the sea, on land, and possibly even under water all from within Google Earth (and with Google Maps, the Google Earth plugin, and other tools - maybe Google Ocean?). Not only that, but I will be taking aerial photography of some of the destinations using a combination of kite aerial photography, remote controlled aircraft, and by flying regular planes. I figured the resulting high resolution aerial photography would make for some very interesting views in Google Earth of exotic or unusual locations around the world. Places where few high resolution aerial photos are available. My inspiration for this idea was the excellent work by Michael Fay in the MegaFlyover images already in Google Earth for National Geographic.

When I started envisioning the creation of all this content, I naturally was thinking it would be more useful if a larger audience could see the content. So, I approached Google and told them about my circumnavigation plans. The Google geo team has enthusiastically embraced the idea and we have an arrangement where they will be acquiring content from our trip for use in their products. Teaming with Google for our circumnavigation is the realization of a dream which started three years ago when I first started using Google Earth to document our sailing trip back in 2002-2003. It was during that first trip that my wife and I began our plans for the circumnavigation. But, leveraging Google Earth to share our experiences became an integral part of what I wanted to accomplish. We also have plans to help raise awareness about issues facing the world's ocean environment and marine life. All of this is more feasible thanks to the help we will be getting from Google.