Cheminées Poujoulat Wins BWR
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Bernard Stamm and Jean Le Cam on Cheminées Poujoulat won the Barcelona World Race just as we were finishing up ‘Lectronic today. We’ll have a report on Friday.
Engine Colors Help Nab Thief
When we last reported on outboard motor thefts in Alameda in 2014, the Sightings article offered a popular deterrence tip from cruisers: paint your motor a distinctive color. Turned out that was pretty good advice. On March 6 distinctive engine markings played a role in the arrest of 42-year-old Alameda resident Thomas Waterman for the theft of two outboards from Barney Howard’s Outboard Motor Shop on Kennedy Street in Oakland.
What led the police to Waterman? Howard spotted Waterman’s sailboat and a skiff going down the Alameda/Oakland Estuary and noticed that the outboards sported a mishmash of colors that looked a lot like the refurbished motors stolen from his shop a few weeks earlier. He called the Oakland police, who picked up Waterman and found seven more motors in his possession.
In addition to being booked on receiving or concealing stolen property, Waterman was also booked for possession of a controlled substance. Bail was set at $25,000.
Does your outboard have a distinctive paint job as a deterrent to thieves? If so, we’d love to see of photo of it. Email here.
A Different Culture
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We stepped up to a portable bar on Quai Charles de Gaulle during a party following one of the St. Barth Bucket races, and were taken by the poster hanging on the wall in the back. As you can see from the accompanying photo of the poster, it features a sophisticated and haughty blonde woman, her hair up, holding a megayacht in her hand.
As much as we liked the art, we liked the caption even better: "No Passion Without Risk." Surprisingly, the poster was produced by Pantaenius, a big European insurer of yachts. Most U.S. insurance companies would have done a poster of a wrecked boat with a caption that said "BE CAREFUL ON THE WATER!!!"
We liked the poster so much we thought about ‘keeping it’ as a souvenir. We reluctantly decided against it.
©2015Latitude 38 Media, LLC
A couple of days later we walked into our local chandlery and saw this 7-inch by 4-inch artwork — see the second photo — enclosed in cellophane, by the cash register. As you can see, the artwork was similar to the first, but a little more racy. Indeed, this sophisticated blonde seems to be so stimulated by the sight of a megayacht sailing toward her that she’s — and correct us if we’re wrong — on the verge of removing the top of her dress! It’s not something we could see State Farm producing.
"Are these for sale or what?" we asked our friend Claudia the cashier.
"No," she said, "those are for cleaning your glasses. They are for free."
We would have taken two, but there was only one left. We’re looking for an appropriate size frame.
We don’t know about you, but we say, "Vive la différence!"