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Anemone Fish in the Andeman Islands Hacking Family in Seattle for the holidays Ocelot on the hard, at Coconuts Boatyard, Phuket, Thailand Sunset at Kuah Harbor, Langkawi, Malaysia
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The Hacking Family
Cruising the world on Yacht Ocelot


Site Description:

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 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.

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.


Chris 2008 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. Amanda 2008

Arthur just hanging out on Ocelot Where is Arthur? Our beloved sailing cat was going to suffer greatly crossing more oceans and sitting out months of quarantine in Australia.  In March 2005 we flew him "home" to Northern California to live with Jon's brother's family where he is now happily climbing trees and warming laps in a non-floating house.
More about Arthur the Sea Cat...

  WHAT'S NEW  

----- August 2012 -----

We had a wonderful vacation in the states for June and July, watching Amanda graduate from the University of Washington (cum laude!) and attending Mike & LJ's wedding in Maine.  Now we're back in Thailand, in Week 42 of Ocelot's Refit.  New updates & photos go up every night, with a new page each week (the nav‑bar on the left side shows additional pages).
We've also published a Summary Page for a quick overview.

----- May 2012 -----

In May we were in Week 31 of our huge Ocelot Refit.  We're posting updates every night of our progress that day, with several new photos every day and a new page for each new week.

----- April 2012 -----

Sue has updated some of her Log entries: an older one from India in 2011 and a new one about being visitors in the States and the Top Ten Things We Like about Cruising.  See Sue's Log

----- 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

----- January 2012 -----

We've just returned from a lovely 8 week trip to visit our family over Thanksgiving & Xmas.  Now we're back in Phuket, Thailand, helping Golf with our huge Ocelot Refit.
See our new Xmas Break page

----- November 2011 -----

Our massive Thai Refit has now begun!  After 10 years & 40,000 miles, Ocelot is getting some well deserved TLC.  We've started some bloggish pages on how the work is progressing, including some videos.
See our new Thai Refit pages

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

----- September 2011 -----

We've now written up several pages on India, with articles & great photos on the Andaman Islands, the West Bengal Hills, Sikkim, & Trekking in the Himalaya.
See our new India pages

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

Sue's latest book - Take A Walk 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

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


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...


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

Welcome to the Hacking family website with Sue, Jon, Chris, and Amanda on Ocelot, our Kronos 45-foot (14m) 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, then back to Asia.

LATEST NEWS: We'll be in SE Asia for most of 2012.  We're currently giving Ocelot a major refit, and the work will probably last into November.  In 2013 we're thinking of heading around to the east side of the Malaysian Peninsula, where the water is clear.  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.


LJ visited in January 2011. Phi Phi Islands
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 700 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.

Where's Ocelot?  Find the blue marker for our latest position (map may take a few seconds to appear).
Courtesy of Winlink.org and the Amateur Radio Safety Foundation.
To see our positions further back in time, check out ShipTrack.org


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