SAIL.SailMagazine

Without young kids the months just sort of disappeared without anything to mark them. Now I feel the passing of each month deeply. The changes happening faster than I can do anything to stop them.

We joke with Ouest all the time that we don’t want her to get any bigger, that we want her to stay our little girl. And she comes firing right back with, “No, me big girl. I want to be a big girl.” And I remember childhood the same way—as kids we just want to be bigger, more grown up, with every passing day.

Categories: Cruisingchildren

It's been a while since we've indulged. Also, it's Wednesday. So let's take a break from tragedy, America's Cup navel-gazing, and billionaire fantasy, and engage our inner sailing lust.

Because that's the primary emotion that results from peering through the internet window at the sleek, sexy, hybrid-electric,TAG 60 catamaran.

It's enough to make you want to sell your soul. But let's bring it down a notch, and lie back with a soothing, virtual, cigarette, courtesy of "The Following Sea" Tumblr blog. It is a daily source of exquisite photographs of

MiscellanyBoats and GearTAG 60Following Sea

It isn't often that I really miss "land" things.  But every once in a while, I'd like to have a bath.  Unlike the kids, I can't fit in a five-gallon bucket.

I once made the mistake of musing aloud that I would like to take a bath.  Erik, fixer of all problems, immediately started offering solutions.

Categories: Cruisingbathing

Settled in to our new digs today: washed the boat, played at the other marina’s playground, hit the OXXO for iced coffee, and screwed around on deck. That’s it.

Written by Ben Ellison on Mar 12, 2013 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

Categories: Boats and Gearelectronics

We all know offshore sailboat racing can be dangerous. But the southern Californian sailing community certainly is enduring some tragic times.

Last summer, it was four dead aboard Aegean during the Newport-Ensenada Race. And this past weekend a young father was killed during the Newport-San Diego Island Race, when the boat he was sailing on--James Gilmore's Uncontrollable Urge--apparently lost its rudder coming off a big wave, and eventually ended up wrecked in big surf.

Here's Latitude 38 with the details: 

"The California sailing community has once again been thrown into mourning. San Diego's Craig Williams, 36, died this weekend during the Islands Race. Williams was crew aboard James Gilmore's San Diego-based Columbia Carbon 32 Uncontrollable Urge for the 130-mile race from Newport Harbor YC to San Diego YC, which leaves Catalina and San Clemente Islands to port. According to crew reports, the brand-new all-carbon boat had come off a particularly large wave when the rudder exploded, leaving the boat disabled.

Gilmore and crew — Mike Skillicorn, Doug Pajak, Craig Williams, Ryan Georgianna and Vince Valdes, the

RacingUncontrollable Urgetragedynewportsan diegoshipwreck

We gathered ourselves up this morning and finished motoring the last ten miles or so down to La Paz. We’re trying to get some things checked off the boat list once and for all and have a long list of mostly minor things that we’re going to buckle down and finish up on this stop. The plan then was to head in to Marina de La Paz, but it seems that too many people have turned that marina into their permanent home for any short-timers to get in.

Categories: PeopleMiscellany

It's a taste of things to come. At least, what you can see of it in this video of Emirates Team New Zealand lining up against Luna Rossa. 

Nice gallery here.

And ETNZ tactician Ray Davies talking about it, and saying little, here (though the footage is excellent):

The America's Cup teams have been in the desisgn phase, and will no doubt stay that way through September. But eventually they will have to race against other boats, which is why you see the teams going head-to-head

Racingamerica's cupEmirates Team New ZealandLuna RossaOracleArtemis

  It's that time of a year when a young woman's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.  By that I mean I just had to pay the boat insurance.  And what says love like transfering risk to a third party?  Categories: Boats and GearCruisingboat buying

I took the kids out for a dinghy ride around the bay this afternoon. We hadn’t been toddling along for more than five minutes before Ouest announced with some urgency, “I have to poop.” I raced back to the boat, threw her up on deck, and she stomped downstairs to the bathroom where Ali joined her and asked, “What’s going on?”

“I had to go poop. And papa turned the dinghy and went really fast. And Lolo’s hat fell in the water. And papa said, ‘Shoot.’ And papa turned around and got Lolo’s hat.”

“Papa said, ‘Shoot?’” Ali asked incredulously.

“Yeah, Papa said ‘oh shoot’” answered my sweet little girl.

I don’t know what happens some nights. We spent the day in water so calm we could clearly see the bottom at twenty-five feet. I went to bed at ten and only a slight breeze rippled the water. And by 11:30 the bowsprit was dipping into the waves as we bobbed up and down—over and over and over again. Ouest slept through it for a while but eventually the noise—combined with nearly catching air on every bounce—woke her up. Which is how I ended up sleeping on the floor the rest of the night. The two girls, snug as bugs, aside from the fact that Ali can’t sleep a wink in conditions like that.

Written by Ben Ellison on Mar 9, 2013 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

Categories: Boats and Gearelectronics

Thanks to relentless investigative reporting by the SAILfeed staff (Charlie pointing out the obvious to me), we have deduced that The Road Warrior and Hans Klaar are brothers. The Road Warrior is Alex Klaar. I'm a bit slow on the uptake.

PeopleThe Road WarriorHans KlaarAlex Klaar

Today was one of our beach days. Nothing was done all day really other than playing on the beach and in the water. In the water takes on a whole new meaning in this strange bay. From our boat it is a hundred yards or so to water that is just barely deep enough for the dinghy. From there the bay goes inland for what must be close to a mile—a mile of knee deep or less water.

Categories: Cruisingsea level rise

Swimmers, surfers, and sailors worry about them. But science knows surprisingly little about where they go and what they do. That's why a research group called Ocearch is out putting sophisticated tracking tags on great white sharks.

Here's the latest tagging operation:

As you can see, the tagging procedure is a big deal, and not an easy experience for the shark. But the team

Miscellanygreat white sharkOcearch

We have a friend on another boat who is obsessed with "keeping the weight down".  This isn't directed at any of the crew (luckily for him - you take your life in your hands with that kind of action,) but rather at the boat itself.  Every few months, a sort of fever grabs Mr Light Boat, and he starts sorting through their possessions with a grim and critical eye.

Categories: Cruisingbooks

Night of the Imp, Cove House, The San Francisco Yacht Club

Once upon a time ocean racing was going gangbusters. Every new boat seemed important, and the new boats kept on coming. In the 1970s, the racing yacht Imp was born in a sketch on a napkin at the bar at The San Francisco Yacht Club. No one could have imagined what was coming.

Categories: RacingImpSan FranciscoCal Maritime

I HAVE ALWAYS been very attracted to junk rigs, first, I suppose, because they seem so very strange and archaic. As one early Western proponent, a British cruiser named Brian Platt, who sailed from Hong Kong to California under junk rig in the late 1950s, once wrote: "Nobody could have designed the Chinese Sail, if only for fear of being laughed at. A device so elaborate and clumsy in conception, yet so simple and handy in operation could only have evolved through trial and error."

Categories: Boats and Gearsails and rigging