From our crew to your’s - Sheryl and I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

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Continuing from the last podcast we are reminiscing about past Christmases - in Malta! What a lovely place to celebrate the Holiday season! We filmed a procession for “Our Lady of Immaculate Conception” in the historic centre of Valletta. Fabulous. This is an excerpt from season 1 of Distant Shores.

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As Christmas approaches I remember a very rough sail to the protection of Malta a few years ago. We left Siciily in early November and made a passage to arrive just after midnight. It was rough downwind blowing 40 knots. We had a problem with our downwind pole and with just the main up we slewed around a lot. Sheryl was very brave and was filming!! Here’s a shot of the lee rail underwater - yuch!


I think that because it was a rough passage it made the arrival more special! Plus Malta is a great place to be around Christmas!

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Season 7 of Distant Shores is now available on DVD. This is a trailer with excerpts from the season.
Season Seven: Channel Islands to Scandinavia & San Blas Islands - In 13 new fun-filled half-hour episodes, we take you aboard our new Southerly 49 sailboat, Distant Shores II, for commissioning on the south coast of England sailing to ports in Chichester Harbour and around the Solent and also try narrowboating on English canals. Next is a shake-down cruise across the English Channel to the Channel Islands off the coast of France. Then new adventures begin sailing to Holland through the shallow Wadden Sea to discover the wonders of the Frisian Islands, then through Germany's Kiel Canal into the Baltic Sea to explore beautiful cruising grounds in Denmark and Sweden. On the return voyage, travel through the Dutch Canals from the North Sea inland to Amsterdam. Then we fly to Panama to sail with friends through the San Blas Islands. 6 hours.

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What would you do if your boat went up on the beach? This is an excerpt from our Season 1 DVD sailing in the Spanish Balearic Islands. A cruising boat was washed up on the beach in a gale when his anchor dragged. See how a 35 foot boat can be refloated from a position high up on the beach using just a dinghy and a small outboard!!!



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This is an excerpt from the third episode of Distant Shores (Season 1). All 78 episodes are available on DVD.

If you are planning a trip south down the coast of the USA to Florida the Bahamas or the Caribbean this set of 3 DVDs are for you! We voyage from Lake Ontario down the Erie Canal to New York City, then hop down the ICW bound for Florida. Along the way we meet the Caribbean 1500 Rally and talk to them about their plans for the direct Caribbean Route from Norfolk. We stay on the ICW to Beaufort, then jump to Charleston and Florida before crossing the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas. Then we jump offshore to Antigua and enjoy Caribbean cruising for a few months before returning to Eleuthera and the Abacos in the Bahamas in spring. Disk 3 includes some adventure in the Chesapeake Bay as well as a special episode called “Secret Places” with some hints for travellers to get the best from their trips!

Includes extra commentary tracks for sailors to plan their own ICW and Erie Canal trips.

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For many sailors, an ocean crossing is a dream to be accomplished. This is an excerpt of our Transatlantic Crossing episode of Distant Shores. I think it gives a bit of the feeling of starting off on an ocean passage. It is Christmas 2007 and we are getting ready to sail our Southerly 42 from the Canaries to Antigua. We have done 3 transatlantic crossings before but always with just the two of us. It was great to have extra hands on this passage since we could do shorter watches with more rest. Much less stress. The whole episode is 24 minutes long. This is just a short web sampler. If you are in Europe you might be able to catch the show on Travel Channel, or in the USA on WealthTV. Or you can order our programs on DVD.


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Sheryl and I are back in the studio in Canada working on the TV new TV shows, and today we had our first snow of the year. So I thought I would put up a podcast to warm you up in December! This was shot in the Exumas island group in the lovely Bahamas. We made 4 half-hour TV shows about the Bahamas last season, including 2 on the Exumas. If you dream of the perfect shallow tropical waters this is the place!!

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Exactly 2 years ago we launched our Southerly 42 Distant Shores! So for the anniversary I have put up this excerpt from the Season V DVD set. It is cold in England now and 2 years ago we were facing a cold sail south to the Canary Islands before heading across the Atlantic!


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Fall is here so we were thinking of the trip south down the waterway. For us the first leg of the trip is a cruise down the lovely and historic Trent-Severn Waterway in Canada. This is an excerpt from the show we shot last fall as we sailed south going through one of the spectacular Lift Locks on the Trent System.

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The Great Bahama Bank stretches for hundreds of miles. We were sailing up from the Caribbean and came from Crooked Acklins Island over to the tip of Long Island, then onto the Bank. It was 40 miles to Georgetown most of it very shallow water over perfect sand. We sailed all day in water barely 6-10 feet deep like a giant swimming pool. Once when it got less than 5 feet deep I jumped overboard to see how close our keel was to the sand.



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This was our first time beaching the boat. We stayed overnight on the sandbank and next day pulled off with the rising tide using our Fortress stern anchor.

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How to beach your boat! This was one of our first times to deliberately beach our Southerly 42 in the Bahamas.

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A look at our Variprop feathering propellor. It reduces drag under sail but still produces full power when motoring. Since it is a 4 bladed prop it produces the most thrust in the aperture we have between the skeg and the hull of our Southerly 42. We got some nice shots showing it actually feathering.

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We have just got back home from another wonderful cruise in the Bahamas. We stopped en route from the Caribbean up to the Chesapeake Bay and were lucky to be able to spend almost 6 weeks in the Bahamas. For anyone who hasn’t considered the islands as a cruising destination - here is a primer on sailing in these shallow waters.

Destination Bahamas Video Podcast

AIS - Using Raymarine’s AIS unit in crowded New York Harbour

Show Notes
Raymarine
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