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

Under Cruising Information you'll find great info for sailors following in our wake: A big equipment section, articles on cruising with teens, yacht provisioning and recipes, FAQs, downloadable Track Files plus pages on specific areas like Solomon Islands, Australia and Indonesia.

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.  We have new dive information on Raja Ampat and Triton Bay, Indonesia.

On our Ocelot pages you can see pictures of the original boat plus her layout, specifications and 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.

Our Landfalls pages are divided by ocean -- Caribbean, Pacific, and Indian.  They're all about where we've been and what our impressions were.  They're as much for land travelers as cruisers.  Amanda 'hot‑spotted' most maps, helping to clarify the geography.

We've illustrated the newsletters emailed from the Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean.  Read about our travels and "passage notes" while at sea.  To get our e‑newsletters you can sign‑up and manage your own subscription. Our mailing list is never shared with anyone.

The Flora and Fauna pages document many of the plants, animals, birds and marine mammals we've encountered in our travels.  It's organized by geographical regions.

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 2001, sailing from the Caribbean through the Panama Canal, across the South Pacific and the Indian Oceans to Africa, then back to Asia and the South Pacific.  There's so much world to see!

  WHAT'S NEW on the SITE  

LATEST NEWS: Sue and Jon spent most of 2023 in Patagonia, South America, while Ocelot waited for us at the northern tip of Malaysian Borneo.  Upon our return, we repaired some of the gelcoat and some blistered paint on her aluminum forebeam that hadn't been properly prepared during our Thai refit. But just before we were about to launch, we discovered that our port engine had been badly damaged by leaking coolant. Since both engines are 29 years old, with 9,000 hours (equivalent to ~350,000 miles or 550,000 Km) we've decided to replace both engines.

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

For Folks in Washington State or with Friends/Family there:

Sue's hiking guidebook is selling well in bookstores and on-line.  The 4th edition(!) of Take A Walk (published by Sasquatch Books) features 120 parks and walking trails within 30 minutes of Seattle and Puget Sound (Olympia to Everett) and has lots of new and updated trails. A great tool for finding nearby walks. See Sue's latest Take A Walk book!

Everyone:

• Our Diving Indonesia page has dozens of dive sites through Raja Ampat and Triton Bay, Bali and Biak.  These unspoiled waters provide superb diving.

• We're always hunting for Nudibranchs so check out our Underwater Reef Animals section.  Picasso critters!

• We welcome your input!  Just click the Make a Comment link at the bottom of any page to share your thoughts.

Cruisers:

• We've added new pages on Cruising the Philippines, Cruising PNG and Cruising the Solomons, and we've updated our Cruising North and East Indonesia page with descriptions of more than 150 anchorages.

• After many requests, we've added a page where folks can download our navigational  charts (mbTiles)!  These are extremely accurate, high resolution charts covering the entire coastlines of over 40 countries from the Canaries off North Africa through the Eastern Caribbean, much of the South Pacific and all the way to East Africa and the Red Sea.  We also show you how to make your own extremely accurate charts for free!

• Sue has added a new page on Provisioning in PNG & the Solomons, and updated her other provisioning pages.

• We've updated our Sail Drives page with more modifications every sail drive owner should know about.

• We have pretty comprehensive Cruising Information pages with superbly detailed satellite photos of our anchorages, live Google Maps & new Track Files.  Check out our pages on Cruising Madagascar, Cruising S&W Indonesia, Andaman Islands, Cruising Marquesas, and Cruising Galapagos.

• We are now publishing track files in OpenCPN (.gpx) format.  We are also asking cruisers to email us their tracks so other cruisers can download them.  Let's start a Track File Bank!  See our updated Track Files page

Builders:

• 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 and many links back to the days we actually did the work.  See our new Bimini Building page.