August 2015

Chris checks his gauges diving in Raja Ampat.

Ocelot enters Wayag, northern Raja Ampat, Indonesia.

Ocelot at anchor, Wayag, Raga Ampat, Indonesia.

Red soft corals and bright tunicates are common in Raja Ampat.

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The Hacking Family
Cruising the world on Yacht Ocelot

----- Site Description -----

Amanda's wonderfully intuitive hot-spotted maps

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.

Chris prepares lines for anchoring at Phi Phi Le in Thailand

Our Newsletters section has been split into Pacific Ocean Newsletters and Indian Ocean Newsletters. Both contain 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 track in and out of Mooloolaba, QLD, Australia

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, divided into geographical regions. There's also a Marine Mammals section.

Brahmini Kite over Thailand, by Amanda Hacking

Our 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.

Ocelot anchored off Moorea, French Polynesia

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.

WHAT'S NEW

----- June 2015 -----

Want to Build a Bimini? We've now brought all our bimini building info together on just 1 page, for easier reference. It has over 30 illustrations & many links back to the days we actually did the work.
See our new Bimini Building page...

Ocelot now has a 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.

----- May 2015 -----

Cruisers: Looking for accurate charts? Now you can make your own groups of perfectly geo‑referenced navigational (KAP) files from Google Earth. All the tools are free, and we show you how.
See our new Google Earth / KAP files page...

----- March 2015 -----

We've updated our Diving Indonesia page with all of our dive sites through Raja Ampat and Triton Bay. These unspoiled waters provide superb diving.
See our updated Diving Indonesia page...

----- February 2015 -----

We've published a new page on Venomous Sea Creatures, like the deadly Stonefish (& Lionfish & Scorpionfish) as part of our Reef Animals series.
See our new Venomous Creatures page...

----- January 2015 -----

We've now illustrated our 4 latest Malaysian newsletters, as well as our 7 latest Indonesian newsletters. Check 'em out!
See our 4 new Malaysian Newsletters...
See our 7 new Indonesian Newsletters...
(Sign up to receive our newsletters here!)

----- August 2014 -----

In May and June we took an inland trip to the northern highlands of Laos (68 photos) and Vietnam (43 photos)
See our 4 illustrated Laos Newsletters...
See our 4 illustrated Vietnam Newsletters...

----- April 2014 -----

We're cruising! Read our descriptions as we cruise around Phang Nga Bay and down to Langkawi, Malaysia with cruising friends Dave & Gail.

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

----- Older -----

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 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

Welcome to the Hacking family website with Sue, Jon, Chris, and Amanda on Ocelot, our Kronos ~~45' (14m)~~ now 48' (15m) 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're currently in NE Indonesia, in Raja Ampat, enjoying the world class diving and snorkeling in this area. After our 3 March launch from our 2+ year refit, we transited the Strait of Malacca for the 4^th time, left the boat in Johor Bahru (near Singapore) and explored northern Laos and Vietnam for a month, a great trip! Back on Ocelot we rounded Singapore and sailed into the South China Sea, over Borneo with a jaunt up the Kinabatangan River to see the wildlife with Jon's father. Then we entered Indonesia, sailing over the top of Sulawesi and Halmahera with Chris. He got a week in Raja Ampat before we swapped kids, then had Amanda with us for all of October. Indonesia still holds a lot to bee seen. Stay tuned...

Our voyage has had many goals, but a primary one was to show our kids something of the world outside America and help them feel like citizens of the world. In that, we think we've succeeded. Of course, the other goal was to see as much of this blue planet as we could, enjoying people and destinations in far flung corners of the world. That's an ongoing process, and we'll be out here as long as we're healthy and having fun!

----- Ocelot's Intrepid Crew -----

The grey in my beard is from raising teenagers!

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.

Sue in glorious Perhos Banos, Chagos, Indian Ocean

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 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 3^rd 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? Find the red 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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