Four Dead After High-Speed Catamaran and Sailboat Collide in Croatia
A collision in the Splitske Vrata Passage in Croatia on Sunday, June 14, (local time) left four sailors dead. According to numerous reports, the high-speed catamaran Krilo Eclipse collided with a French-flagged sailboat carrying eight Czech nationals at around 11:40 a.m. Croatian-flagged Krilo Eclipse was carrying 118 passengers and seven crew and was en route from Split to Hvar. A search and rescue operation was launched quickly involving a helicopter, the coast guard, the Croatian Maritime Rescue Service and several other boats in the vicinity, Maritime News reports. Passengers aboard the Krilo Eclipse were disembarked at Milna and then transferred to another ship that took them to Hvar. Krilo Eclipse was towed to the Port of Split where investigators began an on-site investigation under the supervision of the deputy county state attorney. Maritime authorities examined the accident scene.
Initial reports stated three sailors had died. Four sailors were hospitalized with non-critical injuries and shock. A fourth sailor was missing. Search and recovery operations continued overnight, with police divers locating the sunken sailboat in around 50 meters (164 feet) of water and recovering the body of the fourth sailor on Monday.
Croatian charter group MorskiHR reported today that a criminal investigation is underway, with Krilo Eclipse’s 33-year-old first officer being arrested, “due to reasonable suspicion of committing a criminal offense against traffic safety. Unofficially, it is learned that he is charged with committing the crime through negligence.” The report says the sailboat had come from the direction of Trogir while the catamaran had set sail from Split. “Both vessels were sailing toward the island of Hvar at the time of the accident.”
This video has been widely circulated on social media and news reports:
Maritime News reports that the Split Port Authority is launching an operation “to recover both the sunken sailboat and the remaining wreckage from the seabed. The circumstances leading to the collision remain under investigation.”
IHA News reports that Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković has officially extended his condolences to the Czech Republic over the incident.
Good Jibes #248: 2026 Newport Beach International Boat Show, on Location With Host Ryan Foland
This week’s host, Ryan Foland, goes on location at the Newport Beach International Boat Show, the #1 boat show in the United States, in April.
Hear why you should go to a boat show, the coolest features on the newest boats out there, what to keep in mind when buying a boat, words of wisdom from Latitude 38 and Good Jibes fans in the wild, and about everything from waterproof bags to authentic shipwreck coins.
Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:
- First stop, a Hansa 388
- Valet deception, a skateboard, and a security guard who will not be fooled
- Why boat shows are the best place for anyone curious about sailing
- Boat financing, insurance headaches for older boats, and what to actually look for in the $50–60k range
- Why leasing beats YouTube for actually learning to sail
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!
Learn more at NBIBS.com and connect with Ryan at Ryan.Online
Check out the episode and show notes for much more detail.
Join Shearwater Sailing On a Two-Week Adventure to Hawaii
If sailing across the Pacific Ocean is on your bucket list, we invite you to sign on as crew with for this epic adventure on the sleek and beautiful Farr 53, Atalanta. Whether you are looking to improve your ocean voyaging skills, simply take in the vast expanse of this watery planet, or a combination of both, this trip is one you won’t want to miss! Listen to a Good Jibes podcast with skipper Kevin Wasbauer.
USCG Sector San Francisco Wins 2025 Sector Recreational Boating Safety Award
United States Coast Guard Sector San Francisco has been announced as the winner of the 2025 Sector Recreational Boating Safety Award. The announcement was shared in an ALCOAST bulletin that reached us via Bay Area sailor Jim Haussener. Jim was quick to congratulate the S.F. team via an email to Sector Cmdr. Capt. Jordan M. Baldueza.
“As a person who started an entire maritime career when I became a recreational boater in 1969, I find this to be an excellent recognition of the combined efforts Sector, and previously Group, San Francisco has done over the decades,” Jim wrote. “Thank you and your Teammates for your outstanding efforts to make the Greater Bay Area and Coast a safer boating environment.”
The ALCOAST announcement reads: “This annual award recognizes the Coast Guard Sector that demonstrated sustained superior performance in the execution of the Recreational Boating Safety mission during the 2025 calendar year. Sector San Francisco exhibited remarkable devotion to responsible boating and paddling through numerous recreational boating operations, boardings, and vessel safety examinations, as well as extensive public outreach, education, and unity of effort. Their efforts harnessed the collective efforts of Coast Guard professionals and volunteers throughout the Sector, involved all levels of government, and positively impacted responsible boating and paddling throughout Sector San Francisco’s area of operation.”
Sector San Francisco was chosen from the group of nominees that included USCG Sector Southeast Alaska, USCG Sector Lake Michigan, USCG Sector Miami and USCG Sector North Carolina.
The bulletin says of the decision, “It was extremely difficult to select only one Sector from the superb group nominated for this award. I commend the Districts that nominated the outstanding Sectors promoting Recreational Boating Safety throughout the Coast Guard.”
And that’s not all.
In a separate ALCOAST circulation it was announced that Auxiliarist Peter Gorenberg, M.D., a volunteer with the Sausalito-Tiburon Flotilla in the Coast Guard Southwest District – Northern Region (Northern California Bay Area), has been selected as the 2025 Auxiliarist of the Year. The message continues: “Auxiliarist Gorenberg is a District Captain of Response and an Immediate Past Division Commander. He has supported the Coast Guard Auxiliary since 2017, volunteering over 5,250 hours. He is qualified in both surface and aviation operations providing mission support across multiple operational domains. He has assisted Sector San Francisco as crew and coxswain for 34 patrols and has logged 21 air patrols for Air Station San Francisco as an Aircrew member. Auxiliarist Gorenberg is a physician and surgeon specializing in ophthalmology and also serves as a diving medicine consultant. He also is a commercial pilot with an instrument rating.” Formal recognition will take place in August at the Auxiliary National Training Event in Orlando, Florida.
We join Jim in congratulating the entire crew of Sector San Francisco on their well-deserved award. And we offer our congratulations to Auxiliarist Peter Gorenberg on recognition of his hard work and dedication to the safety and well-being of our maritime community.
Hope for the Embattled Gashouse Cove Fuel Dock in San Francisco
To most sailors and boaters who have spent years or decades on the Bay sailing, fishing, or taking friends out to discover the beauty of the Bay, the idea of pulling up to a fuel dock to top up the tanks is an afterthought. It’s like picking up sandwiches and drinks and making sure you have sunscreen. It’s no big deal. Or at least it shouldn’t be.
Today, finding a fuel dock on the Bay can be harder than finding an EV charging station a decade ago. The last remaining fuel dock in San Francisco has been threatened with removal in the midst of remediation and redevelopment plans by the San Francisco Rec and Park Department, which manages the marina. A recent letter being sent to the BCDC from the San Francisco Harbor Safety Committee is hoping to change that.
It would seem obvious to most people that a fuel dock is essential to maintaining people’s ability to go boating. This doesn’t just mean fishing or sailing. It includes police boats, fireboats, Coast Guard boats, bar pilots and every sort of commercial, safety, rescue, law-enforcement and recreational boat. The threatened existence of the Gashouse Cove fuel dock is caught up in much bigger machinations of waterfront management. As we wrote in 2024, there are plans to redesign both the West and East harbors. In addition, the San Francisco waterfront is in the midst of an enormous environmental remediation project, with PG&E paying to remove legacy toxic waste from the sediments.
According to Rec and Park, the remediation project would require the removal/relocation of the fuel dock, and the redesign of the project is aimed to bring the marina up to modern marina standards. Youth boating advocate and Captain Maggie Hallahan says, the term “modern marina standards” is an undefined phrase with no practical standard to provide clarity regarding what Rec and Park is planning. She is a CA Boating and Waterways commissioner and says there is a “California Layout And Design Guidelines For Boat Launching Facilities” published in 2021, but there is no reference to a channel needing to be 145 feet wide. In addition, Rec and Park has claimed that the fuel dock needs to be moved to accomplish the environmental remediation.
The letter being sent to BCDC from the Harbor Safety Committee makes clear the dock closure is not a regulatory necessity from the California Water Board. In fact, CWB staff report that the area around the fuel dock is not being dredged in the current SFRP plans. The maritime agencies that use the docks, the recreational community, and the public access provided for touch-and-go stops are all threatened by the proposed unnecessary closure. She also points to the 2021 California Layout and Design Guidelines for Boat Launching Facilities, which do not specify a requirement for a 145-foot channel width, as has been suggested in discussions about the project. In addition, Rec and Park claimed that the fuel dock needs to be moved to accomplish the environmental remediation. The letter being sent to the BCDC from the Harbor Safety Committee makes clear that the dock closure is not necessary, and the various agencies that use the docks, the recreational community and the public access provided for touch-and-go stops are all threatened by the proposed unnecessary closure.
To better understand the Bay in the Bay Area it would probably be helpful for more of the San Francisco Bay Rec and Park commissioners to spend more time in or on the Bay Area’s largest park — San Francisco Bay. Visiting the Rec and Park website, you can read their mission statement: “The San Francisco Recreation and Park Department’s Mission is to provide enriching recreational activities, maintain beautiful parks and preserve the environment for the well-being of everyone in our diverse community.” This is followed by a list of parks that include soccer fields, tennis courts and pickleball courts, but the glaring omission is the Bay and waterfront that surround three sides of the city’s perimeter.
It appears hard for most Bay Area municipalities, whose city halls are all located far from their waterfronts and whose park departments have a better understanding of mowing grass than parting waves, to recognize and appreciate the value of their waterfronts for local citizens. This comment about our recent story of new docks in Sausalito from reader Mike McCue reflects what most boaters feel about local waterfronts: “If there’s anything we can do to help boaters dock in beautiful Sausalito, I’m all in. After 30 years of sailing here in the Bay, it’s mind-boggling how difficult it still is to dock in Sausalito.” This remains a regional problem and not just a Sausalito problem.
There are numerous technical and practical reasons to keep the Gashouse Cove fuel dock open. The letter from Frederick Scott Humphrey, Chairman, Harbor Safety Committee of the San Francisco Bay Region to the BCDC, is supported by its board members, a who’s who of the local maritime industry from commercial to law enforcement, and many more who provide the critical infrastructure for the Bay far beyond recreational usage. The Harbor Safety Committee is recommending that the BCDC reject the San Francisco Marina plan in its current form.
The plans that surround this issue involve over $200 million of proposed remediation and redevelopment work. It’s hard to comprehend the scale of these debates and projects. However, what’s easier for us to understand is that a city surrounded on three sides by water with spectacular recreational boating opportunities ought to be providing the public with access to the Bay that’s as easy as a walk in the park. That doesn’t mean walking or riding a bike near the Bay. That means offering kids and adults the infrastructure needed to get into or out on the Bay.
If all goes well, the fuel dock will remain and it will be as easy to fuel up your boat as it is to get sandwiches and drinks.
Addendum – the map below is from the Harbor Safety Committee working group, which produced an extensive report on Gashouse Cove and San Francisco Bay fuel docks. See the full report here.
The Resourceful Sailor: “Is That Sailor Rock? Turn It Up!”
From time to time we share some tales about sailing tunes. We’ve even kicked around the idea of creating a Latitude 38 playlist on YouTube (someone dropped the ball on that one). But we have a new option. Our favorite Sailboat MacGyver, The Resourceful Sailor, wrote to say that he’s been busy curating a sailor-song playlist. “I’ve been helping refit a Hans Christian,” TRS wrote. “The lead bought me headphones and a Spotify subscription to help endure the tedium involved (sanding and filling, more sanding and filling, even more sanding and filling, taping, more taping …). Check it out!
A professor of mine in college would say that there wasn’t music that sucked, only music we didn’t like. Same thing. With that, I present a list of my top sailor songs. I would be amazed if anyone had the same list as I. Equally so, if anyone liked every song. I don’t present myself as an authority, or this as a definitive list. Rather, I’ve decided to take a risk and share my personal list to inspire the reader to wonder about theirs.
My sailor-song list stems mostly from my younger years, long before boats were even on my radar. Therefore, I came to realize while debating this list (with myself), boat bias wasn’t why I liked most of these songs. It was because they were catchy, popular, and accessible to an audience beyond sailors. They play literally or metaphorically on a long-standing historical and communal nautical mystique and psyche that even a landlubber with little boating experience could recognize and appreciate.
I consider these sailor songs, not sailing songs. They have some personal meaning or experience tied to them. Since my relationship to music was more prominent earlier in life, my list centers on that era and is genre-specific, which coincided with my rock-and-roll lifestyle.
Without further ado:
1. “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” – Gordon Lightfoot — A haunting dirge accompanying highly descriptive verse of a heart-wrenching event.
“When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck, sayin’, ‘Fellas, it’s too rough to feed ya’s.’ At 7 p.m., a main hatchway caved in. He said, ‘Fellas, it’s been good to know ya’s.'”
2. “Southern Cross” – Crosby, Stills and Nash — Yacht rock? Absolutely. This song very much came to mind when I saw the constellation on my way to the South Seas on Sampaguita, a Pacific Seacraft Flicka 20. “…19 feet of waterline, nicely making way.”
3. “Home at Last” – Steely Dan — At the time, the Odyssey reference (“I remain tied to the mast.”) was lost on me, but the imagery wasn’t. For a young, budding drummer of the ’80s, this track demonstrates the legendary Purdie Shuffle by drummer Bernard Purdie. Smooth.
4. “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)” – Looking Glass — Descriptive harbor bar imagery, sailor mystique, beauty and double meaning to highlight one’s yearning for something one can’t (or shouldn’t) have.
5. “Beyond the Sea” – Bobby Darin — The driving, prevalent drum track of Don Lamond is legendary and has stood the test of time. The two bombastic drum fills setting up the ensemble sections are textbook examples for a young drummer to “make the band want to play!”
6. “Sail On” – Commodores — For one, the group’s name. It is a sappy song to start, but when it finally kicks into the bridge, it releases the tension like lines from the dock. “Good times never felt so good.” And what about those bongo rolls??!
7. “Sail Away” – David Gray — More sap, more metaphor, more mystique. This crooner captures a vibe of desire and yearning accessible to everyone. Keep It Simple, Stupid. No rocket or boat science, just very catchy.
8. “Sailor’s Tale” – King Crimson — What? Who? Why? An instrumental off the album Islands. This band redefined what a rock band could be to me as a young musician.
9. “I’m on a Boat” – The Lonely Island — Let’s not take ourselves too seriously. This song is hilarious on many different fronts if you let it be. Poking fun at classes, stereotypes, race, language and perceptions. I suppose you either love it or you hate it. (You might pass on listening to this if you are sensitive to salty language.)
10. “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” – Iron Maiden — A bold and ambitious endeavor by an influential ’80s metal band, celebrating the prose of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The classic Maiden gallop, Bruce Dickinson’s operatic-esque vocals of Cook- and Nelson-era-inspired lyrics, remind us that the Age of Sail was not so romantic.
Honorable Mentions:
1. “The Ballad of Gilligan’s Isle” – Sherwood Schwartz and George Wyle — I watched reruns of this show while eating after-school snacks before I had ever been on a boat or an island.
2. “The Irish Rover” – Traditional — This is as close to an old-timey sea chantey as I get.
3. “Into the Mystic” – Van Morrison — A crooner who somehow gets away with inserting five synth foghorns into one song. (The fifth is on the final note.)
4. “Tahitian Moon” – Porno for Pyros — Sailing and boating themes were rare in ’90s alternative rock.
5. “Cool Change” – Little River Band — This direct message requires no imagination. If you know, you know.
6. “Firefly Main Title” – Sonny Rhodes — For those who can imagine what sailing could mean in a far-distant future.
Boats and music are very personal things. Remember, keep your listening prudent and safe, and turn it up.
For those with a Spotify account: The Resourceful Sailor – My Favorite Sailor Songs
Modern Sailing Now at Clipper Yacht Harbor
