The 21st running of the Pacific Cup (co-sponsored by Ocean Navigator) from San Francisco Bay to Kaneohe, Hawaii is in the books, with 56 boats finishing out of a fleet of 60 starters. Overall winner and first to finish was Roy P. Disney’s Pyewacket 70. It also recorded the fastest elapsed time, and first in Alaska Airlines Division A. Just behind Pyewacket was Stu Dahlgren’s Santa Cruz 70 Westerly, which claimed second place in the division and also second place overall. Westerly also won the Bill Lee award for the fastest of the Bill Lee-designed yachts. Amazingly, Westerly suffered keel…
The 2022 Camden Classic Cup on July 28-30 was a reminder of why Maine is one of the most celebrated sailing coastlines in the world. During two days of racing, 92 boats, including some of the region’s most beautiful historic sailing yachts, navigated Western Penobscot Bay under sunny skies and mostly westerly 15-knot winds for the 6th successful iteration of this classic yacht regatta. “Yesterday was the kind of day that sailors live for, the chance to sail yachts of this caliber on Penobscot Bay in a good breeze mints the kind of memories that last long after the racing…
In early June one ship crossed half the Pacific Ocean and one ship crossed the entire Atlantic Ocean while not under command of a human captain. The success of these two very different artificial intelligence (AI) voyages has the potential to change not only the future of global shipping, but also the playing field for ocean-going recreational boats. On June 5 after a 40-day passage from Plymouth, UK, Mayflower Autonomous Ship entered Halifax Harbor in Nova Scotia. Named after the original Mayflower to commemorate the 1620 pilgrim crossing, the new ship is powered by twin 20 kilowatt permanent-magnet electric motors…
The Global Solo Challenge is set to go a year from now, taking singlehanded boats around the world via the Southern Ocean. A half dozen circumnavigating races that go south of the three great capes are planned for the near future, but the Challenge takes a slightly different approach. The brainchild of Marco Nannini, an Italian sailor who gave up a banking career to sail in the Global Ocean Race of 2011-2012, the GSC is a Southern Ocean handicap race. Boats will head off from A Coruña, a port city on the northern Atlantic Coast of Spain, with slow boats…
At the request of the Newport/Bermuda Race organizing committee, U.S. Sailing convened a panel in early July to investigate the death of Newport Bermuda racer Colin Golder of New Providence, New Jersey. Golder, who was skippering the boat Morgan of Marietta, a 42-foot sloop, died on June 19 when he fell overboard 325 miles from Bermuda in strong winds. Following an extensive search, the crew of Morgan of Marietta was able to recover Golder’s body. According to a post on the Newport/Bermuda Race web site: “The panel looks to fact-find on contributing factors including, weather conditions, crew experience, safety regulations…
The Five-Year Voyage: Exploring Latin American Coasts and Rivers by Stephen Ladd Seekers Press 241 pages; $16.95 This is not a book written in the tradition of the great classics of blue-water voyaging—tales of writer-adventurers battling heavy Atlantic seas or running free before the Pacific trades in their wood-or-steel schooners, yawls or ketches. The Five-Year Voyage is hardly a sea story at all. It is instead a riveting account by author Stephen Ladd of the pleasures and pain of international coasting and river cruising in the equivalent of an oversized fishing dory. Based on an old Herreshoff design, Ladd’s 1985…
A key electrical system component for many voyaging vessels is a diesel generator, commonly known as a genset. While gensets may seem, at first glance, just like diesel propulsion engines, they actually have unique operating parameters that differentiate them from an engine designed to turn a prop. Have recent trends in diesel propulsion engines — high RPM operation, common rail fuel systems and integrated circuit electronic control — found their way into the more specialized needs of gensets? A propulsion engine, of course, is called on to provide power across a range of throttle settings — because there are times, like…
“It’s the result of a bad ground!” How many times have you heard this when someone is evaluating a corrosion or electrical problem? But what exactly does that mean, why is it important and can it really be the cause of so many of these issues? In my experience, while it can be the source of a problem, this is a fallback phrase, used when folks really aren’t sure what the problem is or how to evaluate it. If it’s corrosion related, then whoever is making this pronouncement should be able to draw a diagram representing the scenario, and that’s…
It’s perhaps the largest global cleanup initiative in human history, one that will eventually benefit the health of almost every living thing: ridding the world’s rivers and oceans of the discarded plastic that flows into the water at an ever-increasing rate. Every day about 2,700 tons of plastic enters the ocean; much of that washes up on beaches, but a significant amount catches a ride on ocean currents and makes its way to the most remote spots on the planet. On its way it breaks into progressively smaller pieces until it becomes micro plastics which are ingested by many pelagic…
Our first week sailing our Sabre 30 Ora Kali home to Maine, we noticed a web in a corner of the Bimini frame. At sunset a spider appeared and when she was done with repairs she sat in the center of a beautiful creation, swaying gently on the zephyr which was all we got on those heatwave days of mid-July 2021. By morning she had disappeared and the web was bedraggled. We traversed Long Island Sound and after we dropped anchor, she reappeared. Exactly when she signed on is unknown though she likely climbed up from the dock before we…