Have You Seen Our ‘Circ’ List?

Latitude 38‘s website may not be the slickest site on the Internet, but you don’t have to do too much digging to stumble onto some pretty cool stuff — and a number of improvements are being discussed for the near future. 

One section that we’re particularly proud of is our ‘official’ West Coast Circumnavigators’ List, comprising boats and sailors who’ve either begun and ended their lap around the planet on the West Coast of North America, or are based here.

The latest request for inclusion comes from Vancouver, BC-based Evan Gatehouse, his wife Diane Selkirk, and daughter Maia, now 15, who completed a six-year rounding at La Cruz, Mexico, aboard their 40-ft Woods Meander catamaran Ceilydh. If our memory serves us, starting from bare hulls, Evan greatly modified the boat using his own design.

The Canadian family set sail in the spring of 2011 from La Cruz (in Banderas Bay), and we caught up with them a few months later at the Tahiti-Moorea Sailing Rendez-vous. There, we learned that Diane is a successful freelance writer whose published work helped resupply the family’s cruising kitty. (Google her.) Maia, then 9, seemed to have made friends with many other kids in the fleet — and that was a pretty big year for ‘kid boats’. 

We’ll add Ceildyh and her crew to the master list this week, and we invite you to have a look at the impressive list of those who’ve been all the way ’round — beginning with the legendary Harry Pidgeon, who soloed aboard a wooden boat that he built on a Southern California beach. Also, a good place to meet some West Coast circumnavigators will be at the Latitude booth at the Pacific Sail and Power Boat Show in Richmond (April 6-9), during our Friday evening booth party. In the meantime, our congrats to Evan, Diane and Maia!