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Splash
Since our boat is currently in the Great Lakes, we pull her out every autumn and place her into heated storage. The mast comes down, the sails all come off, and we work on the punch-list throughout...
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Where There Is No Doctor
Up the mast Janet is an Emergency Medicine Physician and I’m a Paramedic, so suffice it to say that we pay a lot of attention to our medical kit aboard Tortuga. We keep track of our medical kit...
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Sea Sickness Protocol
Since we have a lot of first-time sailors as guests aboard Tortuga, we’re particularly sensitive to people getting seasick. Nothing can ruin a day faster or potentially turn someone off from sailing...
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Commissioning Week
Starboard clutches It’s Commissioning Week for Tortuga, coming out from a long winter’s nap, dipped gently back into the still chilly waters of Lake Michigan, and painstakingly reassembled. This is...
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Do the Hard Thing
I’m essentially a lazy sailor. Sometimes I’ll just set the mainsail and jib to about the correct point of sail and move on to something else… set it and forget it, time for lunch. The result is that...
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Splash One…Drone
Yesterday, we moved Tortuga from her winter home, 70-miles south to Chicago. The conditions were spectacular, 25+ knots of wind on our aft beam pushing us at over 8-10 knots the entire passage. We put...
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Zero to Hero – A Path to Sail
I began sailing late in life. I never sailed as a kid, never crewed nor raced, never had any exposure to sailboats or sailing of any kind. It wasn’t until my late forties when we decided that instead...
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USCG Masters License
I’m spending the winter months working on my U.S. Coast Guard 25-Ton Master Captain’s License with the U.S. Maritime Academy. The class meets three days a week for 8-weeks here in Chicago and covers...
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Upgrading PFDs and Other Safety Equipment
Inflated pfd’s to ensure they hold 24-hours of air While we have a plethora of safety equipment aboard, it all needs to be checked and updated periodically. We have a Kannad EPIRB that is...
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