Sailing adventures on a Hallberg Rassy 40 in higher latitudes
Spire, once praised by PredictWind for its accuracy in remote ocean forecasting, is quietly disappearing from the app. Meanwhile, new models like ICON, AIFS, and PWAI are appearing without explanation. Users are left confused, with major features removed and no clear communication from PredictWind about these significant changes
As long-time advocates and professional subscribers of PredictWind, we’ve relied on its advanced features: tracking, over-the-horizon AIS, AI polars, and high-resolution data, to plan safe and comfortable passages. However, this year’s voyages from Newfoundland to Iceland exposed critical shortcomings in the product’s most essential functions: departure planning and weather routing.
We depart the USA and are greeted in Canada with a fine on arrival. Despite the rocky start, Nova Scotia turns out to be an incredible place to sail and paddleboard. We explore stunning anchorages, navigate the shortest canal to Canada’s inland sea, and emerge into a world of lobster traps, big ships, and a giant fiddle.
Sailing to the Statue of Liberty was a fantastic experience, but also stressful due to the amount of traffic and river currents. The trip down the coast offers a lot of historic places, but cruising in the US has become very expensive. An app for booking spots at the marinas has strange terms and conditions, that don’t really fit the cruising life.
In this post, we take a moment to vent some of our frustrations with the current technologies and cartography that we sailors rely on to safely navigate the seas. These tools are critical for keeping us off the rocks, yet all too often, they fall short in quality, reliability, or usability.
After a pleasant crossing from Labrador to Newfoundland, we explored St. Anthony’s and the historic L’Anse aux Meadows, marking the end of our Viking Route. Stops in Lewisporte, Twillingsgate, Bonavista, and finally St. John’s offered scenic hikes, vibrant local culture, boat maintenance, and incredible encounters with local hospitality and 2 difficult harbour entrances.
Upon arriving in Canada, we revamped our boat’s power systems for compatibility with North American shore power and propane. We installed a Victron isolation transformer for voltage adaptability (120V/230V) and updated propane fittings for refillable cylinders. This setup allows seamless connections to various power supplies while optimizing heating and appliance use.
Our sail to Labrador, Canada, was across the notorious Labrador Sea where we encounter some stunning marine life. We share our experiences with the border control and how to shorten the trip from Greenland to Canada. We also visit the historic Battle Harbour, which is a must see!
Our trip to Greenland took a few unexpected turns leaving us with some unanswered questions about our radar! The weather is sometimes an evil master. We had plan A,B and C ready but it turned out to be a very hard sail and we share some lessons in this post
For the last 3 years we have been using a great app for automatically keeping track of Snow Bear’s journeys. In this post you can read about our experiences and see which app we are using. This is one of the few boat extras that will not put a hole in your pocket.