Family relies upon technology for two-year sailing trip from San Francisco to the Mediterranean.

With Google Earth, we could gain situational awareness of places we will navigate through, like the Panama Canal,

(This article was written by my pal Ken Kaplan at Intel.  To see original article go here.)

Across San Francisco Bay, from where America’s Cup yachts used space age sailing technology to reach unfathomable speeds, another sailor is counting on technology to prepare for his own epic sea voyage.

Darold Massaro, his wife and 9-year-old son are setting out from San Francisco in a 40-foot sailboat bound for the Mediterranean. Massaro, 46, has dreamed about this journey for decades, but access to sailing technology is allowing him to make it a reality.

“All of this great technology and access to detailed weather are allowing me to fulfill a lifelong dream and do it with my family, who 10 or 15 years ago might not have been willing to do it because they wouldn’t have had the confidence that we could safely do it,” he said. “Now they have that confidence.”

Massaro has been sailing in the Bay Area since he was 5. He’s augmenting that lifelong experience with modern technologies such as Google Earth, weather apps for his mobile devices, satellite Internet service and a blog where family and friends can track the journey through the Panama Canal and across the Atlantic in near real time.

To prepare, the family has sailed Benvenuto, a Pacific Seacraft cutter, up and down the California coast to sharpen their skills, calibrate their technologies and build confidence to spend two years before the mast.

Darold Massaro, his wife and 9-year-old son are setting out from San Francisco in, Benvenuto, a 40-foot sailboat bound for the Mediterranean. Massaro, 46, has dreamed about this journey for decades, but access to sailing technology is allowing him to make it a reality.

“There are a bunch of different apps,” said Massaro. “I usePredictWind, Buoy and Tide and Surf Watch,” which he said are very useful for his iPhone and iPad, but limited to where he has cell or Wi-Fi coverage. “They are good for coastal cruising or sailing around the bay, but for more extended cruising I need to rely on pulling down the weather data via my radio to my PC and then the PC is connected to the boat’s chart plotter, which shows the boat’s position relative to the weather.”

That more involved process provides critical information about whether or not it’s safe to sail the boat from one leg to the next. Having current information to make critical decisions means that Massaro and his family can “focus on what we’re really out there to do, which is have fun sailing.”

Like many sailors, Massaro uses Google Earth to quickly understand distances between stops and find ideal places to anchor the boat.

“With Google Earth, we could gain situational awareness of places we will navigate through, like the Panama Canal,” he said. Using his iPad or iPhone, he zoomed into the canal to understand what to expect if he boated through different locks. “In the old days you’d have to buy a pilot guide, which lists every port you can stop in and if you’re lucky there might be a photograph of that port.”

"We need to make sure we're out of particular places when hurricane season starts and we have to be across the Atlantic Ocean before the winter storms start," said Darold Massaro, who is sailing with his family for the next 2 years.

That situational awareness helped him fill an excel spreadsheet with useful data, including distances between stops, how much fuel his boat will require on each leg of the trip, estimated battery power consumption, food rations and education plans for his son. The most critical information he gathered helped him understand weather windows.

“We need to make sure we’re out of particular places when hurricane season starts and we have to be across the Atlantic Ocean before the winter storms start,” he said.” There’s navigational equipment onboard that we’ll integrate with the weather data we’re collecting and the PC computer that runs applications.”

Though he’s counting on modern digital technology to guide him, Massaro still relies on an older analog sailing tool. He has a ham radio on board and a bearing compass, which he uses to site three fixed points 90 degrees or more apart. “If our bearing changes from any fixed landmark, we can tell that our anchor isn’t dragging,” he said.

Despite all the preparation, Massaro’s wife and first mate, Jennifer, admits to being nervous, but takes both assurance and inspiration from her husband’s safety first, detail-oriented approach. She said, “The only difference between someone who says that they want to do something big and someone who actually does something big is not genius or inspiration, but the drudgery of planning and working the plan.”.