SAIL.SailMagazine

Well, they certainly should know what they are doing by now, because they've built an awful lot of them:

Kids are recuperating from this latest bout of whatever the hell it is. Bacteria-itis will be my new term for any illness that results in puking or pooping. I tell you what, a boat can feel like one heck of a small place with two sick kids onboard.

Emirates Team New Zealand has been ahead of the pack with foiling, training, and overall preparation. So it's almost unfair that they have found yet another level of performance following a wildly creative design breakthrough.

I'd say all the other teams are toast and Larry could save a lot of money by simply shipping the Cup to Auckland right now:

Multihull sailors have been saying it since the sixties: “If you want to sail fast, get the lead out!”

Now the monohull world has caught on, and lead keels are being ditched like old dishwater.

“I got rid of seven tons of lead in my keel, now replaced with foam, and hey, big surprise, my boat sails way faster, especially off the wind,” says Francis Scupper, a weekend racer from Tampa, Florida.

One thing that has changed since the last time I cruised these waters in the late 1990s is that now everywhere you go in the Spanish Virgins and the east coast of Puerto Rico you see these tsunami warning signs. I wasn't aware that tsunamis are a serious threat in the Caribbean, so I'm wondering what the point of these is. Maybe it's the fruit of some kind of sweetheart deal between the sign manufacturer and the local government.

Here's the full readout on what happened and the consequences:

At a hearing 30/05/2011 at Southampton Magistrates the Officer of the Watch of a fishing vessel pleaded guilty to one safety charge brought under Section 58 of the Merchant Shipping Act 1995. He was fined £1,700 plus costs of £6,435.

On the 20th August 2010 the Andrea had finished fishing and was returning to port in the Netherlands. The skipper and rest of the crew were below leaving Jan Baarssen alone on the bridge in sole charge of the vessel. The Andrea is a 36.5 metre beam trawler registered in the UK but is based in the Netherlands.

The Alexander von Humboldt was returning to Germany after a training voyage with a crew of fifty nine (59) consisting of thirty three (33) trainees and twenty six (26) full time crew. She is a large three masted sail training vessel registered in Germany. 

The visibility on the day was good (10 Km +), wind was southerly force 5-6 with weather being grey and overcast. 

During the afternoon of the 20th August 2011 the Alexander von Humboldt detected the Andrea on a steady bearing on its port side. The Andrea was not fishing and was the give way vessel. The

The Vancouver Maritime Museum tees it up,  and Colbert hits it out of the park:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,Video Archive

Five a.m. is not my best time of day.  I know this.  And yet, when Bob May of Bob's No Wake Zone Boating Radio Show out of Clinton, Missouri asked me to be a guest on his show, we agreed that a 5 o'clock taping was going to be the best fit for our different time zones.  We all need to be flexible, after all.

This morning Ouest asked in a hopeful voice, “We go sailing today, Mama?”

Ali: “No, remember Grammy is coming to visit? We’ll go sailing after that.”

Ouest: “Grammy go sailing?”

Ali: “No, Grammy isn’t going sailing.”

Ouest: “Why Grammy not go sailing?”

Ali: “Grammy doesn’t know how.”

There are lots of details still to come (and possibly to be corrected). But Sailing Anarcy has posted a report that suggests possible loss of life aboard the spanking new, VPLP, 109-foot catamaran Mouse Trap.

Here's SA:

The Coast Guard is standing down their response to a vessel with nine people aboard approximately 500 miles southeast of Bermuda, Wednesday. Coast Guard 5th District watchstanders initially received an emergency position-indicating radio beacon distress signal at 1:15 p.m. registered to the 109-foot catamaran, Mouse Trap.

The Mouse Trap’s crew had made contact with Rescue Coordination Center Gris Nez, France and reported that their vessel was in distress after losing their mast, and that one crew member was deceased. At approximately 4 p.m., watchstanders received notification from the International Emergency Rescue Coordination Center reporting that the Mouse Trap’s crew were no longer in distress, had been able to get their engine started, and were currently en route to the Cayman islands.

The Coast Guard update is here.

There will no doubt be more details to come, and the chain of events leading to the dismasting will be examined. Of course, there is always plenty that can go wrong at sea. And Mouse Trap reminded me to post

I got my spider-wire in the mail today. That's the name we've given this stuff. This length of 5mm Dynex Dux along with the deadeyes and pelican hooks will become double lifelines for the boat.

Over the weekend I had a chance to watch Maidentrip, the new documentary film about Laura Dekker, after Jillian Schlesinger e-mailed me a private Vimeo link on Saturday. This is Schlesinger's directorial debut--her "maidenfilm," if you will--and whatever Laura might think of it, I thought it was pretty damn good.

Written by Ben Ellison on Mar 26, 2013 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

ETNZ's Rod Davis tells it like it is when it comes to the game of spying and misinformation. Or does he? 

Either way, it's fun to read:

Last year when we were finalizing our foiling on our scaled down 72 boats Oracle was sniffing around and being a general pain in the backside.

We definitely did not want them to know that we had figured out how to “fly” at that point, but we needed to test so we had to sail.

The boat with the flying (foiling) package appeared to break down, slowly being towed home. The other boat, with lots of interest from the shadowing chase boat, started sailing in the other direction, to draw the Oracle flies away.

Once separated, the boat with the foils could do their thing, without the spies knowing. The mistake Oracle made was not checking who was going with which boat … had they done that they might have seen through the smoke screen.

There's more, about secret masts, superlight booms, and reading other teams' notice boards. And there is no question that teams are still at it.

Sort of bad news on the engine today. Good news if you look at it another way. So yesterday when I was messing around with the tachometer I started up the engine while the engine compartment was open. I noticed a noise and traced it to a loose bolt on an engine mount that was allowing one of the engine lift hooks to vibrate. So I noted that, continued with some other work, and then went back to it today.

Written by Ben Ellison on Mar 25, 2013 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub