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Archive for March 2012

Crossing the Bar to Get to the Party

March 19, 2012
Crossing the bar at Bahia del Sol can be a bit daunting, but with the help of a Jet Ski-mounted guide, its relatively safe and painless. Cirque
©2012 Latitude 38 Media, LLC Three years ago when organizers first announced plans for an annual El Salvador Rally at the coastal resort Bahia del Sol, the concept left some cruisers scratching their heads. More »

Clipper Race ‘Greeters’ Announced

March 16, 2012
The 10-boat fleet in the ’11-’12 running of the Clipper Round the World Race is on their way to Oakland from Qingdao, China. © 2012 Karl Monaghan/onEdition Despite San Francisco Bay’s reputation as one of the finest sailing venues in the world, it has rarely been chosen as a stopover for around-the-world races. More »

Nuku Hiva Murder Suspect Update

With a lot of Puddle Jumpers having left or getting ready to leave the West Coast of the America’s for French Polynesia, lots of cruisers are probably wondering whatever happened in the case of Stefan Ramin, the German cruiser with the 46-ft catamaran Bayu, who was found murdered last October. More »

La Gamelle Touches the Caribbean

March 14, 2012
The heck with ‘Where’s Waldo’, where’s La Gamelle? This already being late in the season, most boats aboard the Dockwise ship had been picked up in Florida or St. Thomas for shipment to the Med. More »

Tall Ships Move to Sausalito

"As we were headed to South Beach Harbor on Saturday morning, we saw two antique-looking tall ships leaving the City and heading toward Sausalito," writes Jan Wigle of the Brickyard Cove-based Ericson 38 Wiggle Room. More »

Prime Resource for Cruiser News

Since many long-term cruisers now have their own blogs — which tend to detail every tiny moment of every single day of their travels — sailors new to the cruising life may find themselves smothered under an avalanche of information, in contrast to a couple of decades ago when topical cruising info was relatively hard to find. More »

The Parade of Luxury Yachts

March 12, 2012
We’re at Latitude‘s cruising editor’s spring office aboard ‘ti Profligate at St. Barth in the Eastern Caribbean, where the busy youth sailing program starts at 7:30 a.m. every morning, where you can tell the cruise ships from the private motor yachts by the fact the cruise ships are the small ones, and where there’s a constant parade of magnificent sailing yachts, including two from Silicon Valley’s Jim Clark, the 295-ft three-masted schooner Athena and the 138-ft J Class Hanuman. More »

Solo TransPac Comm Seminar

You don’t have to be racing to Hawaii this summer to attend Wednesday’s free ‘Communications’ seminar presented by Paul Elliott as part of the Singlehanded TransPac seminar series. Elliott has sailed in the last three Pacific Cups aboard his Sausalito-based Pacific Seacraft 44 Valis and will be once again acting as comm boat for this year’s running of the race, as he has for the last two years. More »

Cruisers at the Crossroads

Every year between February and May roughly 400 cruising boats from all over the world head west from Panama to French Polynesia. Some are in the early stages of a circumnavigation and some are in the latter stages, while others are setting off on a Pacific circuit where they’ll eventually circle back to homeports in the Pacific Northwest or along the California coast. More »

Ouch! That Had to Hurt

Doh! A boater trying to avoid paddleboarders at the entrance to Ballena Bay wound up high and dry last Saturday. © 2012 Nathaniel Penn It’s easy to assume from this photo that the powerboat pictured simply cut a corner last Saturday and ran up on this concrete pipe on the north side of the entrance to Ballena Bay. More »