Practical Boat Owner – June 2019

Vira Demir, tucked away in Selimiye Village

boasts boutique hospitality, a private beach,

a seaside restaurant and breathtaking coastal

views.

Learn how to sail with our accomplished

Captain or enjoy a cruise with your family

onboard ‘My Lady Funda’, to truly experience

the alluring power of the Aegean Sea.

Visit virademir.com.tr to reserve your stay.

Sunshinewarming your skin,

a gentle windblowing

through your hair while sea salt

freckles your face...

Taking part in regattas in
out of the way places is
extremely cheap and
excellent fun

safety and enjoyment of this lifestyle
requires you to forget all the nonsense of
achievements and the bragging rights that
supposedly go with them.
The worst thing you can do is set out to
sail around the world. Setting such an
obviously man-made goal like this means
only two things:

1. You are still a slave to that biggest
   enemy of happy sailing – goal setting.


2. You have added an obstacle to your
   enjoyment of sailing and an impediment
   to good decision making.
   The ‘around the world sailor’ can often
   feel frustrated sitting in an anchorage not
   achieving his goal, while the rest of us are
   happily playing volleyball on the beach.
   The desire to ‘achieve’ will soon melt away
   if you let it – and good riddance to it.
   To travel on the beautiful blue ocean is
   far more rewarding if it can be viewed as
   an adventure to be lived, rather than an
   achievement to be measured.
   ■ Watch Rick and Jasna in New Lives in
   the Wild: http://www.imov.to/watch/series/
   ben-fogle-new-lives-in-the-wild/s04e04/

RIGHT Hanging out

with fellow sea

gypsies is a large part

of the fun

Last year Jasna and I were hired to

deliver a $3million yacht 2,000 miles

from Tahiti to Fiji. When I asked the

owner whether he had paper charts on

board his reply was: ‘No. I don’t have a

steam engine either’. Fortunately for

him, we always bring our own paper

charts as the course he'd entered into

the electronic chartplotter would have

shipwrecked us three times.

Over-reliance on electronic charting is,

in my view, now almost epidemic. The

problem is that vector charts display

different information at different levels

of zoom, so even experienced skippers

are sailing straight into ‘uncharted’

reefs that are clearly marked on even

the large-scale admiralty charts. Used

correctly, electronic chart plotters can

be very useful indeed. By taking the

best of traditional navigation (paper

charts, emergency sextant and

watch-keeping) and the best of the

modern world (electronic chart plotter,

several independent GPS systems

including one protected from

lightning), you will have the safest

system ever available to navigators.

Safe navigation

CRUISING

Paper charts

are essential

for safe

navigation