{"id":256,"date":"2013-09-26T12:00:58","date_gmt":"2013-09-26T19:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/?p=256"},"modified":"2014-06-22T07:06:50","modified_gmt":"2014-06-22T14:06:50","slug":"family-relies-upon-technology-for-two-year-sailing-trip-from-san-francisco-to-the-mediterranean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/?p=256","title":{"rendered":"Family relies upon technology for two-year sailing trip from San Francisco to the Mediterranean."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"With<\/a><\/p>\n

(This article was written by my pal Ken Kaplan at Intel. \u00a0To see original article go here<\/a>.)<\/h2>\n

Across San Francisco Bay, from where America\u2019s Cup yachts used\u00a0<\/span>space age sailing technology<\/a>\u00a0to reach unfathomable speeds, another sailor is counting on technology to prepare for his own epic sea voyage.<\/span><\/h2>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of this\u00a0great technology<\/a>\u00a0and 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\u2019t have had the confidence that we could safely do it,\u201d he said. \u201cNow they have that confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Massaro has been sailing in the Bay Area since he was 5. He\u2019s augmenting that lifelong experience with modern technologies such as Google Earth, weather apps for his mobile devices, satellite Internet service and a\u00a0blog<\/a>\u00a0where family and friends can\u00a0track the journey<\/a>\u00a0through the Panama Canal and across the Atlantic in near real time.<\/p>\n

To prepare, the family has sailed Benvenuto, a\u00a0Pacific Seacraft<\/a>\u00a0cutter, up and down the California coast to sharpen their skills, calibrate their technologies and build confidence to spend two years before the mast.<\/p>\n

\"Darold<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a bunch of different apps,\u201d said Massaro. \u201cI usePredictWind<\/a>,\u00a0Buoy and Tide<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Surf Watch<\/a>,\u201d which he said are very useful for his iPhone and iPad, but limited to where he has cell or Wi-Fi coverage. \u201cThey 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\u2019s chart plotter, which shows the boat\u2019s position relative to the weather.\u201d<\/p>\n

That more involved process provides critical information about whether or not it\u2019s 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 \u201cfocus on what we\u2019re really out there to do, which is have fun sailing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like many sailors, Massaro uses\u00a0Google Earth<\/a>\u00a0to quickly understand distances between stops and find ideal places to anchor the boat.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith Google Earth, we could gain situational awareness of places we will navigate through, like the Panama Canal,\u201d he said. Using his iPad or iPhone, he zoomed into the canal to understand what to expect if he boated through different locks. \u201cIn the old days you\u2019d have to buy a pilot guide, which lists every port you can stop in and if you\u2019re lucky there might be a photograph of that port.\u201d<\/p>\n

\""We<\/a><\/p>\n

That situational awareness helped him fill an excel spreadsheet with\u00a0useful data<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to make sure we\u2019re out of particular places when\u00a0hurricane season<\/a>\u00a0starts and we have to be across the Atlantic Ocean before the winter storms start,\u201d he said.\u201d There\u2019s navigational equipment onboard that we\u2019ll integrate with the weather data we\u2019re collecting and the PC computer that runs applications.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though he\u2019s 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. \u201cIf our bearing changes from any fixed landmark, we can tell that our anchor isn\u2019t dragging,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Despite all the preparation, Massaro\u2019s wife and first mate, Jennifer, admits to being nervous, but takes both assurance and inspiration from her husband\u2019s safety first, detail-oriented approach. She said, \u201cThe 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.\u201d.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(This article was written by my pal Ken Kaplan at Intel. \u00a0To see original article go here.) Across San Francisco Bay, from where America\u2019s Cup yachts used\u00a0space age sailing technology\u00a0to 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sailing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":412,"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions\/412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/easethemain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}