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

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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

D'oh. Again? These guys are getting good at cutting loose a felled mast:

More here.

Tourist visas for Mexico are good for six months. Ali and I need them, our Mexican children do not. There is an alternative, the FM-3, but it’s time consuming and by most accounts ends up being rather expensive.

When your six months are up you take yourself up and over the border, turn around, and come right back in to start the clock anew. There is an alternative for this as well. The alternative is to meet a tall guy, with glasses, named Julio, at McDonalds, at ten o’clock.

Ali: “We’re meeting who? Where?”

Me: “It’ll be fine I’m sure.”

All right, so that thinga-ma-bob was indeed a tachometer sending unit. When I removed it the brittle sealed wires immediately broke off, so there wasn’t much work to be done in trying to fix it. I’ve seen this thing all along and always just assumed it was an oil pressure gauge or something along those lines, so never gave it much thought. Always figured a tach would have to come off the alternator. Anyway, I’ll order up a new one and hey, who knows, by next season I may actually know what RPMs I’m running at. For now I’m just going to throttle it back a bit.

Stability, fundamentally, is what prevents a boat from being turned over and capsized. Whether you are a cruiser or a racer, it is a desirable characteristic. A boat's shape, particularly its transverse hull form, has an enormous impact on how stable it is. This so-called "form stability" is one of the primary reasons you should be interested in the shape of a boat's hull.

I've got a vault filling up with good stuff, and the weekend transition day is a good day to start watching.

First up, a teaser for the Global Ocean Race 2014-2015. Who knows if it will really happen, who knows how many boats will show up if it does. But here's what they have in store:

And how about another beautiful kitesurfer, doing her thing, since that seems to be such a popular genre:

Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean from Manuela Jungo on Vimeo.

And finally, we should take note of the fact that the fabulous Francis Joyon just broke the East-West