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Latest 'Lectronic |
Photos of the DayJuly 16 - Portugal
Todays Photo of the Day is of David and Tni Newhoff of the San Francisco-based Beneteau 432 Rosario, as seen motor-scootering around an island in the Bahamas during the early part of their one-year sailing sabbatical. We'll let Tni explain: "From the very beginning of our relationship almost eight years ago, we've had the dream of buying a boat and spending a year exploring on the water. To do so, we gave up our jobs - David in technology, mine in marketing - sublet our house and left San Francisco behind in order to fulfill our dream. Most of our mid-30s friends are back home buying houses and having children. Although we would love to cruise as a family someday, right now we want to do it just as a couple. After spending six months cruising from Florida, where we bought our boat, to the Eastern Caribbean via the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic, we joined the ARC Europe in Antigua for the trip across the Atlantic. Although we both had plenty of offshore sailing experience, this was our first trip across the ocean. We're now in Portugal after a very adventurous crossing, and plan to spend the next six months cruising in the Med. Our current plan is to then sell the boat and continue traveling by land."
We'll have more on David and Tni in the August issue of Latitude 38. - latitude / rs |
Slow Start for the Last Round of TransPac Boats
July 16 - Pacific Ocean
It was much ado about nothing yesterday for the third and final start of the 44th TransPacific Yacht Race. The breeze peaked at four knots off Pt. Fermin, and it took some boats as many as four hours to travel from Long Beach to Catalina, a distance of some 20 miles. Remember, these are the biggest and fastest race entries!
According to our remote reporters who were out at the west end of Catalina yesterday to watch the big boats go by, the breeze did fill a little as the boats passed their one mark on the course to Hawaii. While all eyes were on the impressive “new” Pyewacket, our spies noted that Roger Sturgeon’s brand new STP65 Rosebud looked particularly fast. We fully expect Sturgeon to repeat his Kalakaua Trophy victory for overall corrected time honors, though on a slightly larger Rosebud this time. (In 2005, he won the trophy with his TransPac 52.) The smallest boat in Sunday’s start, the Andrews 45 Locomotion, was also reported to be looking good as she passed the island.
The sparkling new Andrews 50 It’s OK looks more than just okay as she passes Catalina after yesterday’s start.
© 2007 Rob Grant
We’d love to report on where the rest of the fleet is headed, but the race tracking software on the TransPac Web site has been less than cooperative. However, according to today’s position report, it still appears to be slow-going offshore. The boats in the Santa Cruz 50/52 division appear to be in the best pressure, with most reporting 24-hour distance in the low 200-mile range. On the other hand, several boats in the Aloha divisions that started last week, and a couple in Divisions 1, 2, and 3 that started yesterday made only double-digit progress in the last day. If you’re feeling lucky or want to practice your chart plotting skills, you can track the fleet at www.transpacificyc.org.
Among the more eye-catching vessels in the starting area yesterday was the former record-breaking catamaran Cheyenne, which has been reconfigured to be the camera platform for Morning Light. The boat will tail the TP52 as the crew sails across the Pacific this week and into movie theaters near you next year.
© 2007 Rob Grant
On an unrelated note, Roy Disney, whose efforts to procure the Barn Door trophy with Pyewacket have garnered much attention, announced at the last minute that he would not be joining his crew of 21 for the race. No doubt this was a difficult decision, but one he seemed to feel was the wisest option. While Disney isn’t on board, they won’t be shorthanded. Days before the start, the team announced that Dean Barker was joining the team for the race. (For the record, this isn’t the first time a high profile Kiwi America’s Cup skipper has done the TransPac. Russell Coutts was on board Pyewacket rival Morning Glory in the 2005 race.)
And while we’re back on Pyewacket again, we have a quick postscript to Friday’s ‘Lectronic story about the controversy the boat has created. We misidentified the US Sailing representative who oversees TransPac ratings. That should have been Dan Nowlan, US Sailing’s Offshore Director. To the best of our knowledge, Pat Nolan, a partner in the Alameda office of Sail California, doesn’t have any say in TransPac ratings. As always, we apologize for the error.
- latitude / ss
‘Lectronic Available EverywhereJuly 16 - The World We’re excited to announce that you can now keep current with ‘Lectronic Latitude while under sail! Thanks to current Puddle Jumpers Steve and Susan Chamberlin, who planted the seed, and SailMail’s Jim Corenman, who provided technical assistance, ‘Lectronic is available for download via SailDocs, a service of SailMail (although you don’t need to be a SailMail user to get it). To try it out, send an email with the following line in the message: http://www.latitude38.com/LectronicLat/latest.html Within minutes you will get back the latest issue of 'Lectronic, converted to plain text. You won’t get any of the cool color photos that HTML users see when they read 'Lectronic on the Internet, and some longer issues will be truncated due to the 10K limit SailDocs places on file sizes. But as the song says, “A little bit is better than nada.” - latitude / ss |
Smoke on the Water
July 16 - Alameda Estuary
© 2007 Marty Lycan
A Clean Air Day on the Estuary.
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