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February 15 - Key West, Florida
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There's nothing exceptional about a boat rotting gently in a boatyard," writes Miki G. of the Santa Cruz based catamaran Miki G. which is currently in Key West, "until you discover that the owner is happily living aboard! The yard workers describe the Key West wreck in the accompanying photo as the boat with the 'flow-through air-conditioning'. Actually, the owner looked like a respectable dude, neatly dressed, who showered and disappeared to work each day in his pick-up. "By Northern California standards, housing isn't excessively pricey, but by Florida standards, it's off the chart. So people actually live aboard their boats in the yard(!) at Peninsular Marine on Stock Island. The rates start at $8 a day with a $5 liveaboard fee. After a couple of months it goes up to $12 a day, for a liveaboard total of $17 a day. It's still tons cheaper than renting a room. |
Photo Michael Beattie"We saw several houseboats chocked up, as well as sailboats, which had been in the yard for years! But this one took the biscuit. Check out the shorepower cord snaking into the boat for evidence of a liveaboard." |
February 15 - Pacific Ocean
Yesterday two PHRF divisions left on the 1,000-mile Marina del
Rey to Puerto Vallarta Race. Today the 50s take off and tomorrow
it's the big guys such as Phillipe Kahn's Andrews 70 Pegasus
and Jake Wood's Mull 83 Sorcery. Including the cruising
fleet - which started right after a rare Southern California hail
storm back on February 9 - there's a total of 36 boats. For a
guide to the race, check out February's
Latitude 38. For daily standings, check out www.dryc.org.
February 15 - Pacific Ocean
"I had lunch yesterday with some cruiser friends of mine who told me a story of a cruising yacht that sank en route from the Galapagos to the Marquesas," writes George Backhus of the Deerfoot 62 Moonshadow currently in Australia. "They told me the boat that sank was Italian, and carried no liferaft, no EPIRB and no SSB radio. The story was that she developed a sudden crack in the hull and took on more water than could be pumped out. The crew were rescued by two nearby yachts. . . that happened to be listening on VHF 16 because they were, get this, playing a game of Trivial Pursuit over the radio. What luck! We're off cruising the New South Wales coast from Pittwater to Jarvis Bay."
Can anybody confirm the basis of this story and/or know the boats involved?
Perhaps the Whale Thought She Was Ahab's Great-Great-Great-Great GranddaughterFebruary 15 - Kauai, Hawaii Photo Courtesy |
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February 15 - Treasure Island
A year or two ago, an overenthusiastic spokesperson for the city of Oakland suggested that Oakland was fast approaching the cultural equivalent of Paris. Having grown up in Oakland, we know that much of the city is actually quite nice, but let's get real. Broadway is hardly the Champs Élysées, and Rockridge is no St. Germain de Prés.
And now Navillus Associates and Treasure Island Community Development are guilty of yet another case of hyperbole, seemingly inspired by feelings of Euro inferiority. For while presenting their vision for Treasure Island, they suggested it would end up similar to Monaco. Could they have come up with two places more dissimilar? Monaco has extremely steep hillsides covered with high rises full of wealthy tax evaders who overlook the Med. It's also very warm in the summer. Treasure Island, on the other hand, is flat as a pancake, currently home to people who have no money, and has a 360° view of urbanity. Plus it's cold as hell in the summer. Based on their analogy alone, we would deny them the right to develop the island.
The Race UpdateFebruary 15 - Atlantic and Southern Oceans With a lead of more than 1,000 miles over second placed Innovation Explorer, Club Med was sailing slowly this morning, 400 miles to the east of Uruguay. A particularly tricky part of the course for any boat, not because of fickle winds, but because of the difficult sea conditions. Club Med skipper Grant Dalton had this to say to his shore team by satellite telephone this morning: "We've had to slow it right down. We are sailing in 20-25 knots of wind, but we can't let the boatspeed rise above 12 knots. We'd just destroy the boat if we did. As a result we are sailing with three reefs and the storm staysail set. The waves are not enormous, about 2.5 meters high but have a really short wavelength. On a monohull the rig would be the part that suffers the most, but on a multihull it is the crossbeams that take the loads and shocks. The hulls are so far apart that they are always in different wavetrains, one is rising whilst the other is falling. The beams are the parts that keep them together, and they are working over time right now. |
 Repairing broken bits and drying out Photo Courtesy Club Med "Next up for us, situated on the top of the South Atlantic High, is an increasing breeze, all the way up to 30 knots on the wind. We are on port tack heading northeast, we will be headed and headed and will eventually tack onto starboard and sail up into the Trades. This will be in about 36 hours. At this point we will be doing real damage to Innovation Explorer as it is relatively straightforward sailing from then on." Ranking of Feb. 15, 2001, 15:00:00 GMT 1. Club Med / dtf 5,279.3 miles |
February 15 - The Pacific Ocean and Cyberspace
Who is out making passages in the Pacific and what kind of weather are they having? Check out YOTREPS - 'yacht reports' - at www.bitwrangler.com/yotreps/
February 15 - Pacific Ocean
To see what the winds are like on the Bay and just outside the Gate right now, check out http://sfports.wr.usgs.gov/wind/.
Looking for current as well as recent wind and sea readings from 17 buoys and stations between Pt. Arena and the Mexican border? Here's the place - which has further links to weather buoys and stations all over the U.S.: www.ndbc.noaa.gov/stuff/southwest/swstmap.shtml.
Seas are normal in the Pacific. But you
might check out the Pacific Ocean sea states at: http://www.mpc.ncep.noaa.gov/RSSA/PacRegSSA.html.
For another view, see http://www.oceanweather.com/data/global.html.
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