The Yara Website: Why You Should Look at It and How to Read It

London, ON
2011 01 02

With the recent correspondence from friend Poll Van der Wouw, some of it quoted here in the second wifi post,I really must urge upon you the virtues of the website of the travels of the sailing vessel Yara.

It takes a small amount of adjusting your internet browser but the effort will pay dividends for years.  I tell you below how to navigate  to the site and translate it.  The url is http://www.seayara.net/wordpress/.

Poll and Kyra sailed their Dehler 36 across the Atlantic Ocean from native Netherlands and cruised the Eastern Seaboard and Caribbean for a while.  We met them first in Annapolis, where Kyra had just taken possession of her new Sailrite sewing machine.  Several weeks later, listening on SSB to Chris Parker's weather, we heard Poll asking for weather routing information .  Yara was enroute to Hemingway Marina navigating the Southern waters of Cuba.  At the  time of the radio call we were sailing the North waters of that beautiful island also enroute to Hemingway.

Let's just say we had a most interesting time at Hemingway.  

The website is chock a block with great sailing information, equipment reviews, assessments of harbours and people all across Europe and through much of the commonly travelled east coast of North America and the Caribbean. 


Not one to spare the inept or faulty Ven der Wouw discourses with a razor sharp mind and terse delivery.  If you are thinking about cruising Europe or the Caribbean take a good look at his site.  It will fill an entire winter with armchair sailing.


There is but one small adjustment you must make. The site is written in Dutch.  No longer a problem.

Do this:

• Go to this website: http://translate.google.com/translate_tools
• Three quarters of the way down the page (scroll a bit son) you will come upon a grid of small buttons each with the name of a language in the middle.  
• Put your cursor on the button that says "english".  Put your cursor right over the word "english". 
• Push the left mouse button on and drag the button labelled "English" to the toolbar on your browser.  
• Release the button.

Now you can go to Poll and Kyra's website at http://www.seayara.net/wordpress/.

When you get to the site just click on the "English" button on your toolbar and voila - a decent English translation.

If you want a review of watermakers, hydrovane self steering or the duogen waterdriven generator you will find a fair comment from Poll or Kyra.

After you have installed the "English" button it will work on most foreign language sites.  I prefer Babelfish but the ease of the Google translate button trumps all.