Category: Uncategorized
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Gear Review: Mantus Chain Hook
Cruising is a strange word when applied to living aboard a sailboat. From my limited experience, most of the time (especially with kids) is spent in the same place. Perhaps a better name would be “anchoring”. If you are using a chain rode, a critical part of a successful anchoring…
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New Sails: Local Loft vs Rolly Tasker
The engine of a sailboat is its sails, and we need new ones. These things are not cheap, for a 41′ boat like our Tartan, you can shell out $4000 – $9000 for a single mainsail. For a budget conscious outfitting like ours, we need to think hard about the…
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My Children Are Worth $2,600
Or are they? With the beginning of our trip 8 months away, we are doing more and more gear buying as we work through our lists of needs. One of the lists I have been working on this week has been safety gear. Specifically, I have been figuring out the…
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Gear Review: Vaavud Wind Meter
Let’s face it, if you are sailing, there is a critical piece of information you need to know. How windy is it? Many boats, mine included, have an onboard wind meter, or wind vane, that will give us this information. These are expensive though, from $500-$1000. Wouldn’t it be great…
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What are Your Dreams?
It’s official. Sometime in August 2014, I’ll be packing up my family onto about 200 square feet of fibreglass and sailing to the Caribbean for a year long exploration of pirates, tropical islands and ourselves. Taking a year to do this has been a dream of ours for a while…
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22nd Century Learning
A most common phrase you might hear in schools today is “21st Century Learning“, and how schools and teachers are (or are not) preparing students for a 21st Century World. At UVEI we even use a prompt related to this during admissions for prospective teachers. The title of this post…
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Fun With Sugru and Oogoo
I am not sure if I am the only one that doesn’t know about this new product, but Sugru is an amazing rubber that you can mold into any shape. I got some last week and played with it. It comes in a pack and when opened, you have 30…
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Gear Review: GPK Car Charger for Apple Macbook
If you have a Mac laptop (or any other laptop come to that), it can be frustrating trying to charge it from a 12V plug, like that in a car or boat. The draw on a Mac power source can be high, as much as 85 watts for a MacBook…
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Lake Champlain’s Burton Island
A couple of weeks ago we took the whole week as a family to explore some of Lake Champlain’s best kept secrets, Burton Island, Knight Island and Woods Island. These are three islands in the “inland sea” of Lake Champlain that are also Vermont State Parks. Each is quite different…
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How to Make a Hawaiian Slingshot Speargun
This is a video about a Hawaiian spear gun for under $15. We got all the parts from walmart. The parts were an arrow, hunting arrow tips and an exercise band. Tagged: fishing, frugal, gear
Compass Designs 