The hot topic of conversation in Sausalito this weekend wasn’t about which team would win ‘The Big Game’ but why it took nearly 20 hours for officials to notify the public that 2.7 million gallons of partially treated sewage from a Mill Valley treatment plant had spilled into Richardson Bay on Thursday. While it’s not unheard of for sewage spills to occur during times of heavy rain, one of this magnitude — 48 times larger than November’s Cosco Busan oil spill — seems worthy of being made public much earlier. Here’s the timeline:

• January 31, 5:30 p.m. — The spill begins. An experienced plant operator failed to leave enough pumps on to deal with the heavy rains, and the alarm system designed to alert the operators of a spill then failed.
• 8:30 p.m. — The spill is discovered by an employee monitoring the plant via computer.
• 11:16 p.m. — State officials are notified. Various state and local agencies communicate back and forth but no public statements or warnings are made.
• February 1, 2:00 p.m — The first public statement is released regarding the spill which then takes time to filter down to the public through various media. Meanwhile, divers are working in the contaminated waters and folks are taking advantage of the brief respite in the rain to head to the beaches.

Officials acknowledge there was a breakdown in communication and that the public should have been notified much sooner. They believe better protocol will be developed for future events. With contamination levels decreasing rapidly — possibly in no small part due to the continued rains — health officials are hopeful that beaches will be reopened soon.

Mike Harker of Manhattan Beach reports that he completed his circumnavigation with his Hunter Mariner 49 Wanderlust 3 yesterday in the Bahamas. (He’d completed his personal circumnavigation earlier in Antigua.)

Harker had hoped to "make it around" in 11 months, but did better than that, taking just 10 months and 23 days. As you’ll read in our interview with him in the March issue, it’s something he says that anyone with common sense could do.

To put Harker’s trip in context, he took just 10 days longer than did Sir Robin Knox-Johnston when he won the first singlehanded, non-stop, around the world race with his Colin Archer Suhaili in 1969.

Not to mix apples and oranges, Knox-Johnston went around Cape Horn and never used his engine for propulson. Harker, on the other hand, went around via the Panama Canal, and on occasion did use his engine to move the boat. On the other hand, Harker luxuriated in port about half the time, while Knox-Johnston never stopped. In addition, Harker’s Wanderlust 3 is the picture of luxury — five electric winches, microwave, two flat screen televisions, full electronics — to Sir Robin’s ultra-basic boat.

My, how the world of ocean sailing has changed.

Harker’s boat will be on display and available for sailing at the Miami Boat Show, which starts of February 15.

The 110-ft maxi cat Gitana 13 is stopped, waiting patiently ‘behind the door’ as they put it. The door in this case is the Lemaire Channel, the final passageway to Cape Horn and the Pacific. As this was written, they had been hove-to near the mouth of the Lemaire Channel for a full day, under bare poles with the wheel tied off and the 10-man crew alternately resting, inspecting the boat, keeping watch, and checking with their weather routers back in France for any change in the conditions. In their last report, the wind was blowing 50 knots, with gusts up to 65. Fortunately, they are in an area protected from the 20- to 30-ft swells rolling past the Horn itself, as well as pounding the coast of Chile along their northern route.

“Farther out, where we would be if we hadn’t decided to wait things out, it must be hell,” writes Nicholas Renaud. “And then the thought of sailors from bygone days who had to face the same storms . . . but they didn’t have any way to avoid them like we do today. How did they do it? Respect!”

Gitana 13 has covered 7,000 miles since leaving New York on January 16. She has another 7,000 to go to reach San Francisco on her quest for a new record for the Route de l’Or, the ‘route of gold’ named for the 49ers who sailed this route in the 19th Century. She was originally expected by February 20, although arrival anytime before about mid-March will break the current 57-day record, set in 1989.

The current bad weather is expected to pass through by Wednesday, and the Gitana crew hope to slip through the door and be on their way north before the next big low rolls in.

To keep up with their progress, log onto www.gitana-team.com/en/gitana10/homepage.asp