Mike and Beth's Adventures

Our summer of 2023 is being spent in a relentless, unstructured exploration of the waters of the Pacific Northwest.  We have ~16 weeks to visit, enjoy and experience as many corners of these wonderful cruising grounds as we can reach.  Our methodology is different than that employed on previous cruises.  Most frequently we have a destination in mind and our course is logically plotted so we can arrive at a particular time.  Destination focused cruising does not allow for much wandering off in different directions to visit landmarks, points of interest, cities, villages, bakeries, and pubs of renown.   In 2023 we intend to amble.  Our path will be northward until it is time to turn around and return to our port of origin, Kingston Washington.  As we travel, we will chat up whomever we encounter, read guidebooks, watch YouTube videos, and use other sources to make decisions about where to wander next.  This is not a trek.  It is more immer...

Amy Marie at the Ashland Oregon Highway 5 Rest Stop Amy Marie and crew are excited to be on our next trailerable trawler adventure!  Yes! the gang is together and headed to the Pacific Northwest for a summer of exploration.  To bring you up to date. We completed America’s Great Loop in October of 2022.  Since returning, we have been lavishing Amy Marie with some needed attention.   She is sporting: New upholstery, Relocation of the VHF radio to the top of the helm station for better “human interface” Thorough servicing of her Yanmar power plant. List Marine replaced the glow plugs, the impeller, and repaired damaged sound deadening and insulation on the engine cover.   I installed a new oil pressure sender and also an old fashioned analog oil pressure gauge. A new 220-watt solar panel with an MPPT controller.   Love it! New Yamaha 2-way speakers as an upgrade from the Factory installed Fusion speakers. Movie night will have better sound quality! A ...

Cruise Planning Tools We are currently doing the Loop and in the Chesapeake Bay Area.  With this page I will try to summarize the tools we use when planning our Great Loops travels.  I will update this with new tools and sources of information as they become available. Background Route planning and navigation is not mysterious if you have a process and have carefully selected the tools and resources required to make good decisions and execute carefully.  For my vessel, I have built my route planning and navigation process around the following tools. Navigation Hardware/Software Garmin 8612xsv Multi-Function Display (Chartplotter) Navionics application on both an Android and iPad tablet as well as my smartphone Aqua Map application on my iPad. Weather Sirius XM Weather subscription which requires a Garmin GXM54 satellite receiver connected to the MFD.  This allows me to receive real time weather information when cell phone coverage is not available. Navionics and...