Our Destinations pages, divided between the Caribbean, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, highlight where we've been and our impressions of each place.  We're converting some into "travel blogs" with info on how we traveled and where we stayed ashore.  Amanda has done an extraordinary job with the 'hot-spotted' maps throughout, making the geography much more intuitive.

Our Newsletters section has been split into Pacific Ocean Newsletters and Indian Ocean Newsletters.  Both contain newly illustrated copies of the email newsletters we send out.  These reflect our at-the-moment thoughts and feelings, often written on passage.  If you want to receive our newsletters as email, you can now sign‑up and manage your subscription yourself.  Our mailing list is as private as we can make it, and never shared with anyone.

Our Cruising Information section contains valuable cruiser-specific info for sailors following in our wake: A whole Equipment section, articles on cruising with teens, transiting the Panama Canal, yacht provisioning and recipes, FAQs, as well as pages on specific areas like Australia and Indonesia.  We've also added links to other cruiser sites and some downloadable Track Files.

The Flora and Fauna section documents many of the plants and animals we've encountered, broken down by region.  There's also a Marine Mammals section.

The Underwater pages showcase our underwater photography, reef life and scuba diving.  Dive sites include GPS locations so others can find these sites as well.

On our Ocelot pages you can see pictures of the original boat from the deck, cockpit, and inside, her layout, specifications and even some of the modifications we've made to turn her into an ocean cruiser.  More recent pages take you through the details of our major Thai Refit.

The Boat Guests pages are designed to make everyone jealous of our visitors and want to come down themselves!  We've even included a What to Bring page.

Jon is an Electrical & Computer Engineer (see his resume) so his pages include his technical slant on some of the boat systems as well as a collection of stories from when we cruised in the 1980s.

Sue's pages give insights into the cruising life and include things like provisioning information.  Sue, aka Sue Muller Hacking, is a writer (see her bio) with several published books and hundreds of articles to her credit.

Christopher graduated from the University of Washington (UW) in Computer Science and Engineering in June, 2010!  He is now working as a software engineer and loving it.  It's so nice to have someone in the family earning real money!  While no longer aboard full time, he he wrote about our inland travels, underwater photography, his projects and schooling during his 3.5 high school years aboard Ocelot.

Amanda graduated cum laude from the University of Washington in 2012 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Oceanography!  She lived aboard for 6.5 years and logged more than 20,000 miles on Ocelot.  While no longer aboard full time, she's shared her unique teen perspective, logs of our travels and her high school projects.

Sue's new guidebook is now out!  Take A Walk details 110 parks and walking trails within 30 minutes of Seattle and Puget Sound (Olympia to Everett).  This is her 3rd edition, with better illustrations, better layout, new maps, and lots of new and updated trails. See Sue's Take A Walk Book

----- November 2013 -----

As of Week 107 of Ocelot's refit we're painting the mast and finishing up the salon varnish.

See our Summary Pages for an overview of our many months of work.

Ocelot now has a new Facebook page.  Check it out!

We've now added a way to comment on any page - just click the Make a Comment link at the bottom of each page.

----- October 2013 -----

As of Week 104 of Ocelot's refit we're varnishing the salon and floorboards!

----- September 2013 -----

As of Week 99 of Ocelot's refit we're getting ready to spray gelcoat on the port side‑deck

----- August 2013 -----

As of Week 95 of Ocelot's refit, the guys are going gung-ho on the varnish and Houa has finished this stage of the teak decks in the cockpit!

----- July 2013 -----

As of Week 91 of Ocelot's refit, we're putting the epoxy barrier coats on the hulls!

----- June 2013 -----

We're now in Week 86 of Ocelot's refit, and have most of the nonskid down!

----- May 2013 -----

On Week 82 of Ocelot's refit, Amanda is freezing in the NW US and we're hoping to start laying nonskid next week.

----- April 2013 -----

Cruisers: Do you know the difference between cut‑thread & rolled‑thread turnbuckles?  Or which type you want? Or how to check which you have?
Before you buy your next turnbuckle,
Check out our new Turnbuckles page...

Cruisers: We've published a page on OpenCPN, our navigation program of choice, with detailed instructions on how to use it with Google Earth, even when you're offline.
Check out our new OpenCPN page...

As of Week 78 of Ocelot's refit, we've decided to focus on getting the nonskid stuck down to the deck.

----- March 2013 -----

As of Week 73 of Ocelot's refit, we're mostly finished polishing the new gelcoat and now preparing the sugar‑scoops and cockpit for gelcoat and antiskid.

----- February 2013 -----

Ocelot's Refit is rolling along.  As of Week 69 we've sprayed gelcoat on most of the decks and both outer topsides.  We also epoxied in our rudder bearings!

----- March 2012 -----

LEDs are rapidly becoming the lighting of choice.  They're much more efficient, affordable, and now they come in eye‑pleasing warm‑white.  But before you run out to buy, there are things you should know.
See our new LED page

Cruisers: We have now updated several of our Cruising Information pages with superbly detailed satellite photos of our anchorages, live Google Maps & new Track Files.
See our Cruising Madagascar page
See our Cruising Indonesia page
See our Andaman Islands page
See our Cruising Marquesas page
See our Cruising Galapagos page

Cruisers: We are now publishing track files in both OpenCPN & MaxSea formats.  We are also asking cruisers to email us their tracks so other cruisers can download them.  Lets start a Track File Bank!
See our updated Track Files page

Where's Ocelot?  See our new position tracking map at the bottom of this page!

Want to build your own website?  Jon has published 2 pages of tricks and traps for others attempting to put together a website like ours.
Read Jon's FrontPage 101 and FrontPage FAQ pages

LATEST NEWS: We'll be in SE Asia for all of 2013.  We're currently giving Ocelot a major refit.  When we splash it will probably be the NE monsoon, so we'll be staying put right here on the Andaman Sea side of Thailand and Malaysia for a few months.  Great cruising grounds!  And a good place to shake out the wrinkles after the refit.  Other possible adventures include more inland travel to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, a trip (or series of trips) we've wanted to do for some time.  After that the crystal ball gets fuzzy, but the Philippines have been mentioned several times.  Stay tuned...

Our trip has had many goals, but a primary one has been to teach ourselves, and especially our children, about the different cultures of the people in our world, and the values those people live by.  Many people never learn what's important to other cultures and too often feel that other people should feel as they do.  But we know that other cultures have very different values from our own, and we feel it's important, especially for the coming generation who will be leading our society in only a few years, to know this as well.  We hope that with better understanding, future generations will be better equipped to defuse some of the strife that threatens world peace.

Although sailing to Australia was our original goal when we left St. Maarten in 2002, we joined the Darwin-Kupang, Indonesia Rally which left Australia in July 2006.  After cruising Indonesia for 3 months we sailed up the Straits of Malacca cruising through Malaysia and Thailand.  Christopher, taking time off from university, re-joined us there for 3 months and sailed with us to Sri Lanka.  Jon, Sue and Amanda spent the rest of 2007 on the voyage across the Indian Ocean, switching continents from Asia to Africa, with stops in the Maldives, Chagos Archipelago,  Seychelles, Madagascar, Mozambique and South Africa.

Although we had planned to go around the Cape of Good Hope in 2008 and up to the Caribbean we realized that we weren't ready to stop cruising.  We enjoyed more than a year in South Africa, and 9 months in the States visiting family and friends.  We settled Amanda into the University of Washington as an oceanography major in September 2008.

In April, 2009 Jon and Sue returned to Ocelot.  After much boat work, and once the pirate activity in the western Indian Ocean calmed down, we sailed north to Mayotte, Madagascar, Seychelles, and east across the Indian ocean back to SE Asia.  In the Spring of 2010 we left Ocelot in Malacca to go trekking in Nepal with Chris and Amanda.  Then we sailed down the Malacca Straits and around Singapore to cruise the north coast of Malaysian Borneo and Brunei, returning to western Thailand in 2011 and continuing across to India.  The SW monsoon wouldn't let us cross to Africa so we returned to Thailand to give Ocelot a major refit which has had us "on the hard" for over a year.

LJ visited in January 2011. Phi Phi Islands

Ongoing improvements to photos -
In general, if you see a border around a picture, or if your mouse-pointer turns into a hand when you mouse-over a photo, then clicking on the picture will bring up a larger version.  Use the Back Button to return.
Click on the example above

Ongoing

We are continuing to put Google Ads on selected pages.  This has been a difficult decision as our site has always been completely non-commercial.  But at 800 pages, it also requires significant maintenance.  We're hoping that Google's reputation for appropriate ads will not detract from your experience.  Your feedback here would be appreciated, especially if you see an inappropriate ad (we've eliminated several already).  If you want to contribute to maintaining this website, click on some ads - it costs you nothing and we get a few cents for each click.

We've now trashed our old, automatically generated site map in favor of a much more compact and intuitive page with explanations.
Check out our new Site Map...