|
|
|
|
|
|
The Hacking Family |
WHAT'S NEW ON THE SITE
 |
Newcomers, see our Welcome to the Hacking family website with Sue, Jon, Chris, and Amanda on Ocelot, our Kronos 45-foot Wauquiez designed catamaran. We've been on this trip since December 2001, sailing from the Eastern Caribbean through the Panama Canal, across the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean to Africa. Our trip has many goals, but a primary one is to teach ourselves, and especially our children, about the different cultures of the people in our world, and the values those people possess. 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 in July 2006. This put us deeply into SE Asia, and formed a commitment to continue on around the world! After cruising Indonesia for 3 months we carried on 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. While we'd originally planned to go around South Africa and continue on to the Caribbean to sell Ocelot and move ashore for a while, we've recently decided that we'd like to continue cruising. So we're heading back to SE Asia! We plan to sail from Richards Bay, South Africa, in June (after cyclone season has ended) for Mayotte, a small French atoll just west of northern Madagascar. The route from there leads into the northern Indian Ocean to catch the monsoon across to the northern Maldives and back to Langkawi, Malaysia. There we'll leave Ocelot in a marina and fly home to put Amanda in university. Sue and Jon plan to return to Ocelot in November - but like most cruisers, our plans are prone to change on short notice! Stay tuned!
Ongoing improvements to photos - |
||
|
----- July 2007 ----- We've arrived in the Seychelles, in the western Indian Ocean,
and have posted illustrated versions of the newsletters we sent while on passage. We've now started a whole new Indian Ocean Destinations section with almost 20 new
pages! This is our first new ocean in 3 years, and includes: Our Reef Animals (previously Underwater Photos) section has been considerably
expanded with the many new species of fish that we've photographed in the Indian Ocean We've now trashed our old, automatically generated site map
in favor of a much more compact and intuitive page with explanations. 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.
|
----- June 2008 ----- We've now completed our Madagascar Destination pages, including
reports on the interior & cruising the NW coast. We've now added 5 pages on Madagascar's Flora & Fauna, including a
full page on their fascinating Lemurs. Amanda has now posted her amusing journal entries from when we
toured Madagascar's interior. ----- May 2008 ----- We've now completed our Chagos Destination page, with another of
Amanda's superb maps. We've also added some Cruising Info on
Chagos for those wishing to spend time in this paradise. Sue has added several pages on SE Asia Flora & Fauna, with
pictures and descriptions of many of the animals and plants that we saw
while we were there. We've added several pages on our Seychelles Destination, including
maps and descriptions of some of the outer islands. We've also put
in some Cruising Info on the Seychelles (tip: bring cash). We've updated our Africa coverage with an excellent map and more
newly illustrated newsletters. Our latest was a Game-Park
extravaganza spanning 4 countries and 8,000km. We've recently decided to put some Google Ads on selected pages. This has been a difficult decision as our site has always been completely non-commercial. But at well over 600 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. ----- April 2008 ----- We've been in Richards Bay, South Africa, since late November 2007 doing boat work
and taking numerous inland trips in Southern Africa. We've posted
illustrated versions of 9 newsletters we've sent over the past 6 months. ----- September 2007 ----- Sue has just completed 3 new pages on Sri Lanka Flora and Fauna.
But the artistic credit goes to Amanda and Chris who did the photography
of these beautiful birds and animals. |
||
 |
Check out our Destinations pages, divided between the Caribbean, Pacific, and Indian Ocean to see where we've been and our impressions of each place. Amanda has done an extraordinary job with the 'hot-spotted' maps throughout the destinations section, making the geography much more intuitive. |
|
Our Newsletters section has now been split up 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 new Cruising Information section contains valuable cruiser-specific information for cruisers following in our wake, such as articles on cruising with teens, transiting the Panama Canal, yacht provisioning and recipes, frequently asked questions, as well as pages on specific areas like the Galapagos, Marquesas, Tonga, Fiji, Australia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. We've also added links to other cruiser sites and some downloadable MaxSea Layer 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 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. |
|
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. |
|
Chris, while no longer aboard full time, has written about our inland travels, underwater photography, his projects and schooling. |
|
Amanda brings her unique teen perspective, logs of our Asian travels and school projects. The awesome interactive maps throughout the site are her handiwork. |
|
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. |
Ocelot's Cumulative Sailing Statistics for 2002-2007 |
Sailing Stats: As of 16 August 2007 we've been
cruising for 5.6 years (67 months or 2,054 days) (Note - A hard-disk crash wiped our data so this section is out of date):
|
Home | Destinations | Cruising Info | Underwater | Boat Guests | Ocelot | Sue | Jon | Amanda | Chris | Site Map
Copyright © 2000-2009 Jon and Sue Hacking -- HackingFamily.com. All rights reserved
