First Time User

Welcome to our web site! We hope that you enjoy meandering through the information and photographs that we have collected. This page is our effort to assist you in understanding our thought process as we developed the web so that you can navigate through it easily.

Enjoy!

Navigation:

To avoid getting lost in endless web loops, we suggest that you use your browser's "Back" button, our topical buttons, or text hyperlinks underlined in blue to move between web pages and web sites.

Our topical buttons are displayed in light blue with a description of the topic centered in the button. For example, you should see "First Time User" to the left of this text with a small dot on the left side of the button. This indicates that you are viewing the page associated with that button. Buttons are displayed either to the left or above the main text on each web page.

To provide navigation to more detailed information about a topic we are discussing on the web page, we underline the text for that topic in light blue. This allows you to follow the link when you click your left cursor once on the underlined text.

If you become confused, you can simply click the "Home" button on any page to display the original signon screen. Then you can restart your journey on our web site!

If you follow a web link to secondary web site external to ours, just click on your browser's "Back" button to return to our web site.

Purpose:

As time passes, the uses for our web site increase.

	To communicate our adventures aboard SHIBUMI as we venture off-shore
	To share our successes and failures as we interface with foreign cultures and boat equipment
	To describe our vessel features and specifications
	To document our voyages
	To document cruiser amenities in the ports we visit
	To provide a means for you to send us feedback
	To provide links to other web sites for information such as weather updates
	To occasionally offer SHIBUMI for charter
	To occasionally offer crew positions for offshore passages to qualified sailors

Structure:

The Meridians web site is actually three separate webs, each formatted to fulfill a special purpose:

	Our "Main" web site describes the vessel, crew, bits and pieces about seamanship, charter opportunities, and other topics of interest to cruisers and others interested in the sea. To answer the question, "where in the world are they now?", click either "ShipTrak" or "Winlink" as both systems load the last position report we send by SSB each time we anchor. On long ocean voyages, we transmit a position report daily.
	Our "Voyage Logs" web site details individual legs of our trip. The initial page displays a table of contents for individual voyage logs. When you click on a Volume Number highlighted in blue, the system displays a web page for that particular voyage. When you click on the name of a port highlighted in blue, the system displays detailed information about that harbor.
	Our "Port Summary" web site details the location of our major stops and identifies the support systems we discovered ashore. The initial page displays a table of contents for individual ports. Finding adequate suppliers of everything from food to engine parts is time-consuming. Knowing where to go and what to do for a specific port reduces the anxiety when first going ashore. We hope that other cruisers in our wake will be able to use this information to their advantage.