Sailing Ah Ma Archives - Page 5 of 6

All aboard!

January 29, 2020 jkool Sailing Ah Ma

A few more days before we set off on the first leg of the long journey to the other side of the Pacific. The last few days were spent finishing off some of the last tasks on the to-do list. The running backstay has been replaced with a fresh string[…]

Last preparations

January 19, 2020 jkool Blog posts, Sailing Ah Ma

Two suitcases filled with almost 50kg of bounty from TaoBao and local shops accompanied me from Macau back to Holland. Here I’ve picked up two life vests and my Marcom/B Radio license documents and said my goodbyes to my parents and brother. It is now time to head out to[…]

What’s in a name

August 23, 2019 jkool Blog posts, Sailing Ah Ma

I saw this post on a facebook group, asking, what is the name of your boat and why. It made me realize I never posted this draft in how Ah Ma became Ah Ma. And as we are still stranded on Curacao, waiting for engine parts I thought let’s finish[…]

Water

August 13, 2019 jkool Blog posts, Sailing Ah Ma

Our air-conditioning,an Italian made Clima, has been acting up since we took ownership of the boat. The previous owners claimed they had hardly used it, so I figured it just needed a little tlc. A local AC company had a look at it in February when we bought the boat,[…]

The little engine that could..

August 9, 2019 jkool Blog posts, Sailing Ah Ma

What an eventful couple of weeks it has been. We haven’t left the marina for a single day, as our engine doesn’t have an exhaust elbow at the moment. This is a piece of metal tubing to guide the black clouds out to the hole in the stern. Our pristine[…]

The bimini story.

July 28, 2019 jkool Blog posts, Sailing Ah Ma

The first couple of weeks back on the island of Curacao were full of chaos and to-do’s. When I arrived I took a couple of days at the hotel near the marina to give me some time to prepare the boat for living aboard. As I saw her there lying[…]

Only a couple of days..

July 5, 2019 jkool Blog posts, Sailing Ah Ma

Only a couple of days more before I once again undertake the 30 hours journey from Macau to the place once I called home, Curacao. It has been about three months ago that we left our lady at the docks of the Santa Barbara Marina. My friend, Willo, has been[…]

Klein Curacao, part 3 (A little help from our friends)

April 3, 2019 jkool Blog posts, Curacao, Sailing Ah Ma

The crisp and clean morning air was invigorating. And just bobbing around there on the calm waters in front of your private island was simply amazing. I took my morning shower by jumping off the transom into the crystal clear waters, lapping the boat to inspect the mooring and rinsing[…]

Klein Curacao, part 2 (Boat Hook)

April 1, 2019 jkool Blog posts, Curacao, Sailing Ah Ma

As we planned our approach we found that we couldn’t find a boat hook to grab the mooring line on the buoy. This put a bit of a dent in our mooring plans as there was no easy pickup from the front. We figured that if I would lead a long line from the front of the boat to the back, and lower the transom. We could just back into the buoy we could easily grab the line from the transom and hook on. The wind would then swing us around and we could pull in the line to an acceptable length from the bow. Sounds perfectly alright on paper, but it turned out to quite an exercise.

Klein Curacao, part 1

March 30, 2019 jkool Blog posts, Curacao, Sailing Ah Ma

It was time for our first duo trip. Linda was a bit nervous as it would be the first time out for her alone with me on the boat. We planned to head out to the nearby island of Klein Curacao, a small uninhabited island/sand bar, a popular destination for[…]