Support and Race the Sailing4Parkinson’s Regatta On April 12
We attended the recent Parkinson’s presentation at the Corinthian Yacht Club with one of our regular sailing crew, Tom Woolly, who’s currently managing his own challenges with Parkinson’s. Since we lost both a parent and an uncle to Parkinson’s, we were not really surprised by how many people, either with Parkinson’s or with a close connection, were in attendance. It’s a growing scourge that is impacting far too many.
The presentation was in connection with the Sailing4Parkinson’s Regatta, which is being held on Sunday, April 12, at the Corinthian Yacht Club. The event is a fundraiser to benefit the Michael J. Fox Foundation and the Parkinson’s Association of Northern California. Both are dedicated to finding a cure and helping those managing the condition, along with the families that are also impacted. The Saturday night gala precedes the Sunday regatta with a dinner, an auction emceed by KPIX Sports broadcaster Vern Glenn, and special presentations by Paul Cayard, JP Conte, Bertrand Delhom and Tan Raffray. Also coming to the event is Don McIntyre, creator of the Ocean Globe Race and the recently completed Mini Globe Race.
We love to race on San Francisco Bay, but it only adds to the reward when you can race for a good cause that will help support so many other sailors. For us, this includes helping our long-term friend Tom, a Bay Area sailor and regular Friday night beer can crew. We asked Tom to share some thoughts. “It is said that with Parkinson’s Disease, exercise is medicine. So, I suppose I was fortunate, when diagnosed with Parkinson’s at age 65, that I had a daily exercise habit from 50 years of competitive running and cycling. I am also a lifelong sailor, and for me, Friday night ‘beer can’ races with John on Finistere is my Superfood! Crewing requires all kinds of neuroplasticity and multifunctional activities that mitigate PD symptoms.”
“While they’re supposedly just for fun, the Corinthian Friday races can be exhilarating! With winds that often gust over 25 knots and later die into a dead calm with 4 knots of current, the crew is always engaged. I can see and feel the beneficial neuromuscular activities at work: cognition to understand the course and communicate tactics, all while speaking the language of sailing. I use strength to tack and trim sails and agility to scramble across the deck to the rail and back for tacks and mark roundings. The camaraderie of putting away the boat and enjoying post-race refreshments is a great connection, making me feel very much alive, and [I] can forget about Parkinson’s for a while.”
Who doesn’t love a good April sail on the Bay and helping a good cause? A fundamental way to participate is to join the fleet and sign up to race here. You could also make dinner reservations for the Saturday night gala here. Another option is to join Marquis Yacht Charters for a spectating cruise aboard their 70-ft power yacht. However you decide to participate, you’ll have fun and connect to a great community of sailors who are committed to helping sailors, friends, family and everyone who is facing the challenge of Parkinson’s.
At the Corinthian speaker series, Parkinson’s expert Dr. Ray Dorsey discussed the challenges of Parkinson’s, telling the large crowd the “fastest growing neurological disease in the world” is largely man-made and driven primarily by pesticides such as Paraquat. He suggested the best people can do to help protect themselves is to eat organic and to stay active. Like many of our environmental challenges, it’s a race to make the changes necessary to protect the environment that supports us.
April 11 is World Parkinson’s Day, if you want to help solve the problem of “fastest growing neurological disease in the world,” but can’t get out to sail or join the Gala evening, perhaps there are other events that may suit your calendar and location.
To be part of the local solution and get out in our beautiful, local environment, sign up for the Sailing4Parkinsons regatta and gala coming on April 11–12.
Good Jibes #236: Chris Jester on Starting a Sailing Business, With Host Ryan Foland
This week we chat with Chris Jester at the intersection of sailing and entrepreneurship. Chris has started not one, but FIVE sailing businesses, starting with SailTime Newport Beach.
Tune in as Chris shares with Good Jibes host Ryan Foland about the French sailing trip that changed his life, how to find the type of sailing business that’s best for you, how to get to know your customer base, how to go from boat sales to boat company owner, and Chris’s fun future sailing plans with friends and family.
Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:
- Quitting jobs, selling everything, and traveling the world for a year
- COVID sparks business #4
- The Duffy vs. ElectraCraft rivalry
- The empty-nest plan: taking the Lagoon 450 cruising on the Baja Ha-Ha
- Fractional boat ownership explained
Learn more about Chris at SailTimeNewportBeach.com and Ryan at Ryan.Online
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots — follow and leave a 5-star review if you’re feeling the Good Jibes!
Check out the episode and show notes for much more detail.
Visit Naos Yachts for Full Sales and Service
How a Drifting Sailboat Led Us to ‘Women and the Wind’
While casually scrolling the internet this morning, we came across an interesting social media post — a request for information about a seemingly abandoned boat out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The post itself was only a couple of days old, but the accompanying images were taken in 2022. Our curiosity piqued, we began looking into the background of the photos and the callout for information.
We expect many of you will go down the rabbit hole of trying to find out what happened to the crew, and when. There are a few suggestions that the boat is an Allied Seawind, and that the crew were likely rescued and the boat left abandoned. But, as we all know, we can’t rely solely on social media to give us the facts. The photos may not be clear enough to decipher the boat’s registration number, but commenters are leaning toward “UT 02572C.” If you do know anything, or discover anything, please let us know. We, of course, will share anything we learn.
In the meantime, the other thing that caught our attention was the origin of the photos, Women and the Wind — a project, a documentary and a philosophy of helping others in certain endeavors.
In 2022, three women embarked on a 30-day voyage across the North Atlantic Ocean. The map shows them sailing along the coast from St. Augustine, Florida, to North Carolina, before jumping off at Beaufort on June 27, 2022. Their boat was Mara Noka, a James Wharram design Narai MkI built in Whitby, England, and launched in 1974. They were on a mission to document the prevalence and the path of plastics in the ocean. What they also found was the raw energy and emotion that comes to the fore when confronted with the magnificence of nature. Their journey has been documented in a feature that is now traveling the independent film festival circuits.
We’re only a short way in and are already captivated by what we feel is a unique perspective of crossing an ocean aboard a sailboat. We’re looking forward to watching the rest of the film and will tell you more about that soon. In the meantime, perhaps among us all we can find out about the boat pictured above.
If you can’t wait for us and want to know more about Women and the Wind, follow this link.
Major West Coast College Sailing Regatta on the S.F. Cityfront
On March 21 and 22, 20 college sailing teams from up and down the West Coast converged on the San Francisco Cityfront to sail the Pacific Coast Collegiate Sailing Conference (PCCSC) South Designate. The regatta was officially hosted by St. Francis Yacht Club (StFYC) and the UC Berkeley team.
The regatta was sailed in FJs, with each school fielding an A- and a B-division team. The national powerhouse that is the Stanford Cardinal were ultimately victorious, totaling 53 points between the two divisions in 20 combined races.
Sailing in A Division for the Cardinal was the sophomore duo of Thomas Whidden and Caroline Geiger, who totaled 20 points from their 10 races. They never finished outside of the top three, and recorded three bullets. Stanford’s B-Division team, the freshman duo of Samara Walshe and Avery Baldwin, were nearly even more dominant, winning six races and finishing second in three more. Their point total was ultimately inflated by an OCS in race nine B. That was Stanford’s only non-top-three finish in the regatta. The OCS ultimately didn’t matter in the grand scheme of the regatta, as Stanford still finished a comfortable 17 points ahead of second.
Coming in second was the team from the University of Hawaii, with 70 points from the 20 races. The Rainbows were anchored by their A-Division team of senior skipper Erik Anderson and junior crews Amanda Turner and Arden Rathkopf, who totaled 27 points from their 10 races, winning four of them (one more than their Cardinal counterparts). The Hawaii A-Division team might have edged the Cardinal, at least for their division, were it not for an eighth-place finish in race one.
Rounding out the podium in the regatta was the team from UC Santa Barbara. The Gauchos have often played the role of second-best college sailing team on the West Coast, behind Stanford, over the past few years. They totaled 74 points from their 20 races, and likely would have been second in the event were it not for an OCS in race six B. The Gauchos’ only non-top-four finishes were the aforementioned OCS and a fifth in race 10 B.
The PCCSC is guaranteed two automatic bids to the ICSA College Sailing Fleet Racing Nationals (in both the open and women’s divisions) later in the spring, given to the top two finishers at the Conference Championship regatta in late April. Thirty-six teams qualify from across the country for college nationals, with 14 slots being awarded automatically to the top two teams in each of the seven conferences. The PCCSC recently hasn’t received many at-large bids, as those have mostly gone to the powerhouse conferences in New England and the Mid-Atlantic.
Join the Sailing4Parkinsons Regatta at CYC
