Ventura CA to Turkey via South Pacific, SE Asia, Red Sea

[svbillabong]

For potential followers: We've been keeping track our our actual GPS route since New Zealand which may be helpful for anyone following in our track (use our Google Earth file, it's got some pretty remote undocumented anchorages). We did a great trip north from Fiji through Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Marshalls and then had a hellish 1800 nM beat to weather at 45 apparent for 16 days to get back to Fiji. We use satellite photos to augment our charts (see www.creative-cruising.com for details) since a lot of areas have either no cruising guides or horrible charts that are off (Indonesia was great but the charts were awful, same with portions of the Red Sea).

For armchair sailors: You can check out all the photos, videos, journals and blogs.

It is an amazing world out here and the best way to really get into is on your own boat. The world becomes your backyard and you get to sleep in your own bed each night.

 

[Karl]

Saw your site!

Hey Billabong! Saw your site as it was a link on a site for the svBlue Sky. Jim and Emma are friends of ours, and it looks like the both of you are having way too much fun.

 

[John Nantz]

Be Careful with French charts

Just a heads-up. There were some French charts that had what could be mistaken for the Greenwich Meridian only they were based on some place in France, like Paris???

Someone was using one of them in the eastern Indian Ocean or eastern Africa area and didn't check the basis for Longitude. Needless to say it caused a problem for them.

 

[svbillabong]

Electronic/Paper Charts AND Google Earth at Sea

You can't have enough chart data, especially in remote untraveled cruising grounds.

We always back up our paper and electronic charts with Satellite photos through Google Earth (or Mr Sid files in OziExplorer). There are still a lot of places that don't have good cruising guides and most of the charts outside the major shipping routes/ports are horrible. They figure, why update charts when nobody important (ie. paying for it) goes there. Eastern Fiji is off 7/10 nM, Tuvalu and Kiribati off by 2 nM, Indonesia and lots of the Red Sea have soundings with lack of detail.

Now even with all this data, we rarely have our computer on while we are entering an anchorage. I'm on the bow, standing on the bow pulpit, giving directions by hand signals. I've also got a wired remote for our nexus system that gives me depth up there (and then in our cabin), so there is no yelling back and forth.

See the link below for our boat software writeup ..