ende

2011
01
May

Building site

Only 3 weeks to go until we move to our new swimming home, but Pitufa still resembles a building site. We’ve worked our way with angle grinders half across the deck (the layers of paint, filler and primer seem to be an extra resistant material, probably developed by NASA in order to annoy us…), but the painting will have to wait until later… Christian has installed the water maker (the item on board that’s supposed to give us the freedom to stay in remote places) successfully, but the maststeps, deckshower, etc. are still piled up in a heap on the livingroom floor in Graz ;-)
Most organisational stuff is finished, but there remains enough to do for the “final phase” of our landlubber lives!

2011
05
Apr

Shopping Tour

The last couple of weeks we’ve been busy ordering all sorts of boat equipment: water maker, sails, life raft, mast steps and thousands of little but important items. There is so much to think of…

While loading our boat with tons of needful things, we are throwing off ballast like memberships, insurances, standing orders, furniture, etc. It’s such a relief! Less than two months to go :-)

2011
31
Jan

Gale Probability KMZ File

Pilot charts are certainly of great help for planning ocean routes and fortunately, the U.S. Defense Mapping Agency makes their Atlas of Pilot Charts available for free (get it here. you may find their server somewhat slow and rather try it here).

I’ve recently generated kml/kmz files that show the prevailing ocean winds (get more info here). Viewing them with Google Maps (as in our map at Pitufa.at) or Google Earth is really convenient. So I decided to put more information from pilot charts in kml/kmz files. For a start the gale probabilities are done. Read more »

2010
05
Dec

Prevailing Ocean Winds

Recently, I have discovered world-wide ocean wind data collected over ten years from the ‘SeaWinds’ scatterometer onboard the ‘QuikSCAT’ satellite on the Internet at Oregon State University: COGOW. The site offers an interactive atlas to view prevailing wind maps and wind roses. For blue-water cruisers, the site is definitely a great source to aid route planning. Read more »

2010
13
Nov

Total Solar Eclipse of November 13, 2012

According to NASA there will be a total solar eclipse in the South Pacific when we plan to cruise there from French Polynesia to Chile. Read more »

2010
12
Nov

Planned Route (Part 1)

The planned route for our first year is shown in the map attached to this post. Leaving Pula in summer 2011, we’d like to spend a couple of months cruising the Mediterranean before heading out into the Atlantic Ocean. Read more »

2010
18
Oct

Crew page has been updated

The Crew page has been updated. Click here.

2010
21
Sep

Hello world!

Welcome to Pitufa.at. This page provides info on our trip around the world aboard SY Pitufa. We started out from Croatia in June 2011. To learn more about us, see “The Crew” page. There, we also describe, how the idea to sail out towards the horizon was born.

» Newer posts