SAIL.SailMagazine

MY LAST POST about that abandoned Swan 48 floating around south of Bermuda has created some buzz it seems and numerous people are now making noises about retrieving it. To help inform and inspire would-be salvagers, I thought I should share some of what I know about these boats. I've sailed them back and forth between New England and Caribbean several times and have also raced a bit on them—around the cans and in one Bermuda Race.

Written by Ben Ellison on Apr 18, 2013 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

“No way!” That is Ouest’s latest saying. She doesn’t say it like a valley girl or anything, she says it clearly and directly.

“Ouest, can I have a bite of your ice cream?”

“No way!”

“Ouest, instead of turning four on your next birthday will you turn two? I want a chico girl, not grande.” (She talks about her next birthday all the time. It’s eight months away.)

“No way! No! Me grande girl.”

Really hard to imagine that someone somewhere is gloating over the same images of the Boston Marathon bombings that are making me feel ill. Thoughts are with all those helpless innocent victims.

While all that is going on our lives proceed without worries. News like this only invades us at night after the kids are in bed and we have time to go online. We’re fortunate.

I spent a day hanging out with multihull designer Chris White a while back and came away all buzzed up over his latest idea. The basic concept, as you can see in the image from his website up top, is pretty simple: two jibs and no mainsail. What isn't immediately clear from the photo is that those aren't conventional pivoting wing masts behind the sails. The masts in fact rotate through a full 360 degrees and have controllable flaps on their trailing edges, so that they too can act as sails and create lift at any wind angle.

We arrived on Saturday morning, just before noon. Saudade​ made a faster passage than I'd expected, averaging about 7 knots for the duration of the 850 miles or so. In perfect weather. For photos, check out Mia's post here, at 59-north.com. 

Written by Ben Ellison on Apr 14, 2013 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

We got our first pet today. Ali and I have never gotten a dog of our own because of the responsibility. I mean, who wants to saddle themselves with something that could possibly be dependent on you for like eighteen years? Not us. But then today Ali and the kids went off to the Saturday market and came home with…

…a Betta. Yep. We’re looking at up to four weeks of daily feeding and attention. As if we didn’t have enough on our plates—now a fish too. I know, right?

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen; this is your captain speaking.  We have turned on the seat belt sign as we are experiencing light turbulence at the moment. We currently have a 101 knot tailwind up here in the jetstream...

HERE'S A HOT STORY from the Where Are They Now Department that blew my mind a bit while I was cruising around in the Spanish Virgins last week. Spotted a feature in All At Sea, a local Caribbean sailing comic, by a young blonde rasta-looking dude about sailing 2,000 miles to windward from Vieques to Brazil in a converted wooden fishing smack with a pregnant wife and young son. Byline: Thomas Tangvald.

Late last month, at the start of a race in Banderas Bay, Mexico, there was a collision between two boats Blue and Camelot (see above), with a pretty horrific outcome. Latitude 38 had the details:

Banderas Bay sailmaker Mike Danielson suffered two broken legs in an incident during the Class A start of race two yesterday in the Banderas Bay Regatta. Craig Shaw, driving his father Howard Shaw's Portland-based Hunter 54 Camelotwas literally in the middle of it, and gives this report:

"We — my mom, dad, sister Trudy, girlfriend Jane, and crew Jim and Laura Campbell — had a perfect start today. The Variana 44 Olas Lindas, with former J-World instructor Eugenie Russell at the helm, forced us up near the starting line about 10 seconds before the start. She had every right to do this, as she was the leeward boat. We were hard on the wind, maybe 30 or 40 feet from the Race Committee boat, when the J/160 Bluecame barging in — which is illegal — between us and the RC boat at about 10 knots. I yelled 'No room!' My crew tells me that I hollered it three times. Those on the RC boat said they heard me. Blue finally responded by heading up, going over the line early. But their transom came into our boat at about the shrouds. We didn't feel or hear any contact, but saw someone on Blue rush to the closest point of contact to help someone. We later learned that Mike Danielson had fallen while trying to cross the stern of Blue to fend off, fell overboard between the boats, and had both legs broken. Naturally, we all felt horrible about it."

The collision went to a protest committee, and Blue was found to be at fault.

Now, a video from Blue has been published, and Danielson, to his credit, has weighed in with his perspective.

First, the video:

And now, Danielson's comments, which were posted on Sailing Anarchy:

My next post was supposed to be about my six days in the boat yard (fascinating!) but something way more interesting intervened.

Written by Ben Ellison on Apr 11, 2013 for Panbo, The Marine Electronics Hub

One interesting wrinkle for the 2014-2105 VOR is that there will be an all-woman team (the 5th in the race's history), Team SCA. 

SCA has already selected the first five crewmembers. And it is smartly tracking the whole campaign in a series of webisodes (full playlist here). 

It's going to be interesting to follow.

Here are episodes 1 and 2.

Click "Read On" for Episode 2.....

Grammy said goodbye to the kids this morning and then the two of us hit the road. Everyone in La Paz likes to say it is a two hour drive to the Cabo airport, but it’s not. It’s two hours fifteen minutes if you drive with complete reckless abandon, two hours thirty minutes if you still drive crazy but stop passing cars on blind hills, and nearly three hours if you drive like a normal person and average seventy-five on the straight-aways. In other words, it’s a haul, and we won’t be doing that again.

The April issue of SAIL has a page of illustrations of Bird Scarers by Dick Everitt (page 76). If only I'd known. In 2007 I sailed to Peru. The country suffered an out-of-date reputation left over from the Shining Path era, and I was one of only eleven foreign boats to check in that year.