Latest Posts
-
Friday Harbor
Friday Harbor, in Washington’s San Juan Islands, is another easy weekend getaway for us. ...
-
An International Fall
This past fall we visited eight counties on three continents, starting and ending with ocean ...
-
Caribbean Cruise on the Celebrity Ascent
We’ve taken several trips with Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL), and really enjoy the ...
-
Point Ruston
Point Ruston, near Tacoma, is an easy weekend getaway for us at only a 60- to 90-minute drive ...
-
Ottawa
Ottawa, Canada has played a big part in our lives. James lived in Canada’s capital for ...
-
Peats Bite
We celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary and Jennifer’s 60th birthday in style with a ...
-
Trans-Arctic Cruise Across the Top of the Planet
The first cruise ship transit of the Northwest Passage took place in 1984 when the ...
-
James from the Early Days
James and I met way back in 1982 at the University of Victoria. Their alumni magazine, the UVic ...
-
Zoox Hayward Start Of Production
Celebrating the Zoox Hayward plant entering its start of production phase. This ...
-
Seattle World Cup
Seattle made its FIFA World Cup debut this month, cementing its status as a premier soccer ...
-
Longyearbyen
Longyearbyen has a real off-the-edge of civilization feel to it. The capital of Svalbard, a ...
-
Oslo
Despite living in Norway for many months aboard Dirona, we never reached Oslo. The farthest ...
-
Summer Music
An unusually large number of bands we like were touring this summer, and we attended live ...
-
San Francisco
After the great fire of 1906 destroyed 80% of San Francisco, the city rebuilt rapidly and in ...
-
90th Annual Masters Tournament
This year we attended the 90th annual Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club. It was ...
-
Bruce Springsteen: Land of Hope and Dreams
When James was living in Ottawa back in the 1970s, he saw pretty much every band that came ...
-
Not All VO2 Max Tests are Created Equal
In early 2024, we began a concerted effort to improve our physical fitness, partly with a goal ...
-
National Academy of Engineering
I love all forms of engineering so it’s a pleasure to have just been elected to the National ...
Hello from Katy and Chad Norris. We have been using your book since the end of June traveling the Secret Coast. As I’m writing this message we are in Finnis Nook. We have enjoyed so many of your wonderful anchorages. Alison sound, Ahclakerho island, Pruth bay, and so much more. We just want to say thank you for writing this fantastic book. We are having a spectacular summer staying in your awesome anchorages.
Thanks for taking the time to let us know. It’s great to hear that folks like you and Chad are actively enjoying it. Thanks for passing that along and we hope your trip continues to be rewarding.
The civilization museum is world class in Ottawa as are the Liquor stores, great wines from the world in somewhat competitive nature, which benefits the local people and travelers, like you both! I love Canada and had 3 wonderful years in Ottawa..sorry to hear about the Nordhavn corporate issues..been out of this loop a while but following since Spitfire days….i plan to get there to skate the canal this winter!!
Like you, we just love Ottawa. When we lived in Toronto, we used to return to Ottawa at least once a winter to skate on the canal. Hope you are able to head north for a skate this winter.
Ciao James !
Four years ago I asked in these comments whether your 2008 post email principles still held, and you answered that not much had changed. I just looked at yr recent trip photo — the laptop with a clean desktop and just four folders — prompts a follow-up, this time on to-dos rather than emails.
In this post you wrote that longer-lived items leave the inbox and go to your todo list. My question is: what is that todo list, concretely, today?
We all have corporate ticketing and project tools, but they share one trait: they are invisible until you deliberately open them, and for small activities the overhead of navigating their UX often exceeds the activity itself.
So I run a kind of middleware between those tools and my actual work: one plain folder per project and a simple txt file — cloud-synced and accessible anywhere, but deliberately simple and always visible. Very much in the spirit of your own advice against complicated folder hierarchies.
Do you also keep some lightweight layer of your own between the corporate tools and your daily work, or have the corporate tools become good enough that you rely on them directly?
I recently wrote about this on LinkedIn (apologies — it’s in Italian), building on an Economist article arguing that we don’t really know how to prioritize: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/santopaolo_un-articolo-delleconomist-link-in-commento-activity-7480712651464175616-19cU
Greetings from Napoli,
Raffaele
I translated and read your linkedin article. Looks like a simple but effective approach.
Grazie for translating it — that means a lot.
And the todo list itself? I suspect the answer is “a short flat list, nothing fancy” as the 2008 post implied. Am I close?
James, stepping back from the todo-list specifics — what I’m actually curious about is the bigger question underneath it.
You run infrastructure at a scale of complexity I can barely imagine. And for years you also carried Dirona on top of it: engines, systems, weather, trips.
So genuinely: how do you keep that load from becoming overwhelming? Is it still mostly about ruthless simplicity in the tools — short lists, (clean folders :-D), a boat maintenance log as the one you shared — or has something changed in how you decide what even deserves your attention, now that the complexity is higher?
I ask partly out of self-interest — I run an ISP/Telco, and complexity keeps climbing. I don’t think AI is making it simpler either, if anything it feels like another layer rather than one less. So I’m always genuinely curious how people running an order of magnitude above me – as you certainly do – survive !.
Saluti da Napoli, and thanks again for the exchange.
That’s a great question Rafaele. Don’t fall behind is my primary “go to” tactic. We try to be connected 100% of the time. Even going so far as to bring satelite equipment on our trip to the South Pole. The two advantages to staying connected all the time are 1) I never return to 3,000 messages and stay current, and 2) if I always have work waiting for me I can still 60 min and 20 min there and it’s amazing what you can get done if you stay focused and don’t waste time. Some love to get disconnected during vacations but, for me, I’m 100% the opposite. I find it way better to stay connected and to stay caught up. A little bit all the time is way more efficient and it helps those I work with be more efficient as well. I don’t want them waiting days for my perspective. The faster I can act on a request or offer a perspective, the faster the entire team as a whole can move.
I know it doesn’t work for everyone but staying current and always connected is, by far, the best approach for me and the roles I find myself in.
Staying current is best for those around me as well
Thank you James
that approach really resonates with mine.
I also find that disconnecting creates more anxiety than staying on top of things.
Even a weekend can be enough—not necessarily because something important happens Monday morning, but because, in the background, my mind keeps returning to all the open loops.
My very simple solution is a plain .txt file where every open loop is written dwn.
I’ve tried more sophisticated tools—even Excel, rather unsuccessfully—but the important part seems to be having one trusted place and not leaving things on your mind, or in your inbox. That alone provides reassurance and peace of mind.
I also agree about stealing 20 or 60 minutes here and there and stay current when travelling, although I’m much better with 60 than with 20. Task switching has a real cost for me, and I often need some time before reaching full focus. I’d love to develop your ability to make a 20-minute window genuinely productive.
In our company, I prefer to export actionable work and todos from emails into our (internally written ASP.NET) erp/ticketing system. That way, mails becomes tickets rather than getting lost in an always-crowded inbox. I’m curious whether email itself still plays that central role for you and do you still aim for inbox zero as 20 yers ago?
Thank you again for such a thoughtful answer.
I like your “it’s all in one place” approach where tasks not done are super clear and easy to see. It looks like a really good system.
Just noticed (last “office” pic) that Jennifer has also moved off ThinkPads — that’s a non-trivial decision.
I’d struggle to make that switch myself.
After a few years on HP, how would you evaluate the platform in terms of reliability and overall experience? Is Jennifer’s also the same HP model?
You’re right. I was a ThinkPad fan back in the early 90s at IBM. I’ve loved them for years and always made that choice. A few years ago, work really would prefer to see me running on one of their IT supported systems. I ended up deciding to give it a try and went with an HP Dragonfly (Currently a G4) and I ended up really liking the system. It’s super small with only a 14″ screen and it’s very thin. The battery life is impressive. I just came to like the system so much that I encouraged Jennifer to try one and she like it as well. We both like thin, light, and good battery life and neither of us need massive screens so the Dragonfly has been a good fit.
On the downsides of this design, every two to three months the USB type C charging port will get hung require a system reboot to charge. Rare and nothing permanent but a minor hassle.
Congratulations on being elected to the National Academy of Engineering! What an honor!
Were you able to obtain the publishing rights to your book Cruising the Secret Coast? We have been searching high and low for your book!
We enjoy reading your blog.
Thanks for the feedback on the blog and thanks for the feedback on the NAE. Much appreciated.
On your Secret Coast Question, we were not able to get the publishing rights for our book. Mark Bunzel owns Fine Edge Publishing and the rights to publish “The Secret Coast.” We have been unable to get publishing rights for our book. I think that is perfectly fine as long as the publisher wants to keep it in print. But it feels counter productive to not be willing to keep a book in print but also not be willing to release rights to allow someone else to print it. I’m disappointed by his decision.
Thank you for your fast reply! It is truly disappointing that Mark Bunzel will not release the rights to publish your book, “The Secret Coast”, yet at the same time choses to not keep it in print. There is an obvious demand for your book when you find that used copies are being sold on Amazon between $175 and $775. Amazon.ca has your book listed for $1.2K CAD! We found out about your book from seasoned cruisers we met while heading north on Inside Passage and have been searching for it! The cruisers who had your book knew about anchorages that were not even listed in the other Fine Edge Publishing books! Many will be disappointed by Mark’s decision!
Thank you again for your reply!
We agree with you. Mark runs a business so, if enough people ask for the book to be returned to print or released to the authors to print, he may chose to respond.
Rumor is Mr Bunzel is looking to sell the business-i/e everything Fine Edge prints.
Thanks for letting us know Al. We’ll keep an eye on the situation.
Did you create an Excell SS for maintenance reminders? If so could you share with me and with the NOG too?
Jim Frantz
ALBEDOS N52-74
Hey Jim. Its good to hear from you. Yes, feel free to use and/or share with the Nordhavn Owners Group: https://mvdirona.com/2018/11/updating-the-maintenance-log/
James, still enjoying the voyages. Are you able to send me a copy of your excellent maintenance tracking spreadsheet. It certainly beats anything I have seen. Thanks & Safe Passage Greg.
Thanks Greg. This posting has the maintenance spreadsheet and explains it’s use: https://mvdirona.com/2018/11/updating-the-maintenance-log/.
Jennifer and James
Buon Natale ! 🎄
All the best in 2026!
thank you for all the updates the past years Merry Christmas Jennifer and James
Thanks for participating in the discussion and all the best in 2026!
your welcome and thank you
The big tech news in the media is “AI” What are your thoughts on how that, if at all it will be applied to pleasure boating. And if it is coming, what are we looking at time wise for possible application by boat builders/electronics designers.
I expect that, over time, AI will impact just about every field. Some much faster than others. I don’t expect marine to be highly impacted by AI in the short term or at least not as quickly as drug discovery and materials science breakthroughs. But, the contribution will be there. Hull form efficiency and propellor design look to be areas where AI can speed innovation. Cargo handling, scheduling, and route planning is another. Weather, current routing, and transit speed tuning will likely have some opportunity as well. Machine learning will also play a big role in battery chemistry breakthroughs for all domains that use batteries including marine.
Do you see AI being capable of, say a foggy day using information from radar and plotter providing an image on a screen that shows the path ahead as clear-ie what you’d see on a clear day?
Yes, over time that certainly will be possible. Sensor fusion is a technique used in autonomous driving to bring together optical, RADAR, and LIDAR sensing. I could see using that approach to synthesize images of the area surrounding a boat even at night or in fog. So, technically yes, this will become possible but I don’t expect it to be safe and affordable anytime in the next 10 years.
Jennifer, James
I recently stumbled upon a second-hand book from the 1990s that I’d love to mention to James—although it’s very likely he already owns a copy.
It was written by a professional racer and engineer, Carroll Smith, who is sadly no longer with us (jist found out). The title is Nuts, Bolts, Fasteners and Plumbing Handbook, and it’s a true work of art before being a practical manual.
The level of detail is extraordinary—so meticulous that even the usually dull preface disclaimer (“it’s your responsibility…”) its a piece of art itself.
Ciao !
Wow, an entire book on fastners and plumbing! There are details to be learned in even fields that look simple from a distance. Thanks.
Happy Birthday Jennifer
Tanti Auguri !
Thanks Raffaele!
Jennifer
In reference to Prof. David Parnas, I completely agree: if you’re lucky enough to meet a true mentor during school or university — regardless of the subject they teach — you’re blessed for life. Their way of reasoning stays with you forever.
I had a similar experience with my Linear Algebra professor in the first year of Engineering. Of course, I remember almost nothing about the subject itself now, but I still carry his way of thinking with me.
I’ll never forget what he told us when we, as “kids,” asked what Linear Algebra was actually useful for. He said:
“we don’t study this for the rules of algebra, we study this to learn how to think.”
Couldn’t agree with you more. These early influences can be very powerful and long lasting.
Hello from Belgium, if you go back to boating, what kind of boat and brand will you choose ? Back to a trawler, steel like bering or polyster ? Will you go back to nordhavn or try maybe a krogen, a fleming, or a converted explorer yacht ? Will you go back to 8 knots cruising or plane at 20 hnots ? You had a bayliner or meridian i dont remember but will you go back to this kind of boat and brand ?
Smaller than 52 or bigger ?
Thanks a lot and take care
Hello! As you outlined, there are a wide variety of possible boat choices out there. The direction we take would be related to the kind of exploring we ended up deciding to do. If we were back to crossing oceans or doing the North West Passage or other high latitude work we would go with a Nordhavn or something similar. Probably would go a bit larger than 52′ for that mission. If we decided to cruise European canals we would probably go with a 40 to 50 footer. Speed isn’t an asset for this mission since canal speed limits are typically quite low. If we decided to do the US Great Loop, we would likely go a bit bigger — perhaps 60′ — and would like to have a boat that can cover the distances at a bit higher speed when called on. Say 20 knots when we we have distance to cover but we would want it to still be efficient at displacement speeds.
If it were possible to build a ice breaker down in the 60 to 70 foot range, it would be super interesting but it’s difficult to get capable ice breakers at sub-100 foot lengths.
For many missions that interest us a slightly larger Nordhavn would fit us very well.
If you dont cross oceans anymore and do great loop or europe inland waters will you stay with a main and a wing ? I dont really understand why cross oceans trawler run mainly on a main and a wing and coastals or inlands run on 2… i think it should be the opposite… coastal youre close to an harbour to get safe and repair instead in the middle of the ocean with your small wing with 2 meters swell in the nose..
Have you ever tryed your wing in uncomfortable sea ? Thanks for share
Ocean crossers need redundancy. You can go with a wing or twin engines. A single is always more efficient but the differences aren’t massive. I personally would prefer twins as a redundancy solution on larger boats but, on small boats, the space required for twins negatively impacts the fuel load that can be carried and make a wing a better choice.
I have run the wing in rough conditions. It can make way but it’s slow at around 3 1/2 kts.
Hope for you, youre gonna be again on sea for new adventures. For us next season is the last one, we sell the boat, my father will be 82 and its time for him to move on… he bought his 3988 in 1997 new.. times fly… take care and i ll follow your next adventures !
Thanks and all the best looking forward.
Hi James, would love to hear from you, your thoughts on Trac Network. A P2P, Blockless, AND ClOUDLESS network, for apps and services.
https://trac.network/
Would love to hear your insights.
The utility of communications networks is directly related to the number of entities using that network. In the case of Trac, usage is on the light site so I’m not that excited by it at this point. But for those not wanting to depend upon central authorities, using TAP on Trac for networking looks like an option.
Welcome to Australia – just caught up on your latest moves. Hope you get to Melbourne, finest food in Australia. Many wonderful restaurants.
Have you replaced Spitfire as yet? My new cat is almost a clone of my last who passed away with a stroke.
Have a wonderful stay in Australia and I hope Sydney does us proud.
Hey Tim. It was great to be back in Australia. This trip was a bit of an unusual one where we’re only going to be in the country for two days. It’s Jen’s birthday and she wanted to go back to Peats Bite for lunch/dinner. I couldn’t afford time off work right now so we did one of the longest trips ever for a restaurant visit :-). We’re already looking forward to a return visit!
Hi James! Thank you for all the great posts. I’m the current owner of 6229 and have built out my NMEA2000 network with great success and have used many of your posts to get great recommendations and N2KView layouts. One thing I haven’t figured out is how you have created “user” or “calculated fields” like NM/G which is showing volts. I was hoping to be able to store values in a VDR100, calculate new fields and present them in N2KView, but alas, no such luck. You have figured this out. Do you have the decoder ring? Many thanks!
Our system has evolved over the years and is specific to this boat electrical and electronics architectures but the good news is Kees Verruijt has written a wonderful interface to the NMEA2000 systems called CANboat. It is on Github (https://github.com/canboat/canboat) and that is what we are using. Kees has written a nice clean system that is very reliable.
Canboat works great for input operations and it’s super easy to use. On output operations, it’s more complex and bounded by idiosyncrasies in the PGNs you want to write, the hardware you are writing it, and how much you intend to write. So it’s a bit messy but with some trial and error, it can be done. The NMEA2000 spec costs something silly like $10k and, without that, you are stuck reverse engineering some of the PGNs you might want to write.
Overall, Canboat is a really nice system and it makes it all as easy as can be when working with resource constrained interfaces on a protocol where the spec isn’t reasonably priced.
Thank you! I just started reading the spec. So, you read values from the NMEA PGNs, do some calculations on your host PC and send the results out on a PGN (like battery voltage) for a certain instance such that it can be displayed in N2Kview?
Yes, exactly. Some synthesized PGNs were sourced external to NMEA2000. For example, satellite connection status. And, as you said, some data was received from NMEA2000 in one form and pushed back onto the network in another. An example of this use case is taking the Deere ECU computed fuel burn rate, correct it to my calibrated values, and push it back onto the network.
You got me started on this project. Is there a way to get data from Maretron, like total fuel remaining or consumption, out or do you have to intercept all the PGNs and calculate them externally? I think I understand how to generate new PGNs at a surface level.
Assuming you have an electronically controlled engine, the Maretron J2k100 (J1939 to Canbus converter) will get engine fuel consumption data. If you have a mechanically controlled engine, this data is unavailable. Note that fuel consumption data is bang on at rated RPM but, on our Deere 6068AFM75, it’s off by as much as 13% at low engine speeds so we read the data, compute the calibrated correction, and then put the data back on the bus. For total fuel, you need to read all the CANBUS fuel levels, sum them, and re-emit the total fuel back onto the bus. For devices where there is no data on the bus like our KVH satellite system, we would programmatically scrape the data from the KVH reporting page (e.g. signal strength) and then push that data on the bus. I believe I used temperatures for these computed values.
Hi from Greece on a sailboat, great site and a ton of info. I am looking at a 52 again after i toured her in 2015 and we are ready to change but honestly there are still some doubts. I still have the feeling that the hull, even if beeing quite tall and the design is superb, but the installation, plumbing can make life complicated. I know from dutch boats that they put all technical equipment from engine to aircon, heater, inverter water maker in one big engine room.,Looks overwhelming but you see problems easily. In the 52 it seems its placed all over the boat, in cabinets, under beds etc which make things not easier. Additional when boats get older parts have to be exchanged or some material like brass in aircon manifold or wrong gasket in tanks or cooler will show up after 10 years only and out of guarantee. So how to you see NH ageing over time and how often did you yell f****** why its so difficult to reach things…..,In the end the small bits can make it difficult. I have a oneoff with 90 pct superb installation but the last 10 pct drives you crazy…,,.Carsten
Many Nordhavns including the 52 look high and I’ve heard many observers concerned about the stability of the vessel but, what you don’t see, is the 6’7″ (on Dirona) of below-the-waterline weight. Dirona has over 6,000 lbs of ballast, up to 1,750 gallons (more 10,000 lbs) of fuel,as much as 400 gallons (3,200 lbs) of water, and an incredibly thick and heavy hull. There are downsides of all this mass including slightly lower fuel economy but it allows the boat to be incredibly stable in even very rough seas and to carry a lot of above the waterline space. The N52 is designed to pass Class A Ocean (highest rating). More data here: https://mvdirona.com/2019/03/deck-fuel-and-vessel-stability/
The short form is these boats are built tough and crazy heavy but, the more difficult the weather, the happier we were in that boat.
On service space, just about no boast is as big as you might like when servicing but Nordhavn’s are all serviceable. I did just about all service on our N5263 over the 10 years and more than 12,000 hours we owned the boat and I know it very well. I’ve also helped other Nordhavn owners over the years and I’ll admit that a N68 is much easier to work on than a N52. Smaller boats are almost always more challenging to service than large boats but the work can be done.
There were numerous times when more service space would have been really nice but Nordhavns of all sizes have been designed to be services and, in my opinion, the brand is above average by that measure. If you flip through the blog, you can get a rough perspective on how much service is required when a boat is used heavily with high annual hours and it’ll also give you good read on how accessible components are on the 52.
Dear James and Jennifer. Funny coincidence — I’ve been scouting for a good travel charger, and I just noticed in your photo (at the Granville Island Hotel) you’ve got one that looks like it could charge two laptops at once. What model is that? Looks like exactly what I need.
It’s a great charger and it can run two laptops at once if they are modern and fairly efficient. The max power delivery from this unit is 100W. It works perfectly for our two 13″ HP Dragonfly G4s. This is the Anker Prime 100W: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CZ6LXL8R.
Wow, I actually bought that one just last week—but I was a bit worried it might only offer slightly more power than my 65W ThinkPad charger.
By the way, do you usually rely on having power sockets available when you travel, or do you also carry a power bank for your laptop?
I was looking into this Anker model (A1340, ASIN B0BYP2F3SG) for that reason:
https://a.co/d/aMlud75
We also use this power bank that can drive a full 65W on demand: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DBHC9F8B.
I have liked your website for a long time. The content, layout, and especially the live and interactive map is fantastic. Can you give a bit of insight on how difficult this was to create and manage? Could a mid-level-technical (no computer programming) person manage/update this site? I am interested to have something similar but I am quite intimidated. Thanks ahead for any insights or recomendations.
A simple WordPress site is easy to setup and maintain. Other than the interactive map, that’s all our site is. You could easily do it. The map is a lot of custom code and would take time but the rest is easy for non-programmers. My recommendation is to dive in and chose a WordPress theme and bring up a site. Try changing themes as you learn more. Have book on WordPress to consult when you are stuck. It’s all easy and no programming expereince is needed.
Thanks for your quick response. It does seem like a basic site based on one of their templates shouldn’t be too hard. That is about my technical level. I was hoping you had an easy secret…. Thanks for sharing your adventures. I am super impressed that you have been to both poles. Happy travels.
When are you heading to outer space?? I am sure you have looked into it. It is about the only place left!
Yes, your right. If we could afford it, we would definitely do an orbit of earth.