December 11, 2001

Photos of the Day

December 11 – Sea of Cortez, Mexico

It’s been our good fortune to have visited
many of the best sailing areas in the world, and there’s none
we know of that has better sunsets than the Sea of Cortez. They
are spectacular! And the sunrises aren’t bad, either. Check out
this one captured by Mike Miller of the Vanguard 32 Uhuru
as he was leaving Agua Verde to sail across the Sea to the mainland.

Big Yard for Really Big Boats

December 11 – Richmond

Bill Bodle, past owner of Stone Boat Yard, and Rick Wood, past
owner of Sanford Wood Boat Yard, have teamed up to open the Bay’s
first dedicated large yacht facility. Located on the Richmond
Canal, the two have improved 760 feet of shoreline that was once
a transshipment point for sugar barges offloading on the Bay.
The sugar dock, once serviced by rail for bulk sugar deliveries,
burned to the water in a large fire over a decade ago.

The facilities will provide docking for
boats up to any length – over 200 feet – and a draft of up to
34 feet. That should take care of most sailboats. While not a
boatyard, the facility has a large crane to facilitate the stepping
and unstepping of masts, the loading of engines and cargo, and
that kind of thing. With an increasing number of large yachts
being built worldwide, and more of those visiting the West Coast,
San Francisco Bay has been one of the more difficult layovers
because of limited deep water berthing.

Sydney to Hobart Healthy

December 11 – New South Wales, Australia

Despite several years of rough – even tragic – Sydney to Hobart
Races, the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia reports that they’ve
received 76 entries for the 57th running of their prestigious
event. The race starts on Boxing Day, December 26. This year’s
fleet is of very high quality, with yachts entered from many
foreign countries. It will also include the boats participating
in the Volvo Ocean Race.

Bentley’s Opinions No Longer Needed by
Volvo

December 11 – Sydney, Australia

As reported in ‘Lectronic Latitude on November
30, Peter Bentley raised a ruckus by writing an opinion piece
suggesting that Amer Sports Too – the women’s entry in
the Volvo Ocean Race – were “cruising” rather than
“racing.” Bentley’s piece appeared in madforsailing.com,
for which he writes. It just so happens that madforsailing.com
has a contract with the Volvo Race for providing editorial coverage,
and there’s the rub.

Apparently, the piece got Amer Sports
Too skipper Lisa MacDonald – whom Bentley had accused of
wasting time on cooking rather than running the boat – bent out
of shape. According to dock talk, MacDonald – after enlisting
the help of Nautor, which has two of the seven boats in the event
– immediately began to lean on the Volvo Race to do something
about Bentley. She was apparently successful, for Bentley, despite
having excellent nautical journalism credentials, has been sacked
from the Volvo editorial team. Not for anything he wrote for
the Volvo site,
mind you, but for what he wrote for madforsailing.com. Assuming
that all the dock talk is accurate, this is a major gaffe and
embarrassment for all involved, from MacDonald, to Nautor, to
Volvo to madforsailing.com.

The real irony is that many people – including
some of the crew aboard MacDonald’s boat – think Bentley was
correct. Two months ago we published an excerpt of a letter from
Melissa Purdy of Tiburon and Amer Sports Too, in which
she expressed displeasure that they were sometimes “sailing
like girls.” And in an interview on the Volvo Web site last
weekend, our old friend Emma Westmacott said that in the last
Volvo (then known as the Whitbread) the women aboard EF Language
pushed their boat harder. “I’m quite a pushy person,”
said Emma, “and Lisa often says ‘chill’.” Westmacott
says she would have liked to have seen Amer Sports Too
pushed harder in the Southern Ocean.

Fossett on Full Bore

December 11 – St. Malo, France

It was the case of ‘another sail and another world record’ on
Monday for Steve Fossett and his 125-ft maxi cat PlayStation.
After Fossett and his crew had been honored at an awards dinner
in Paris on Sunday night, they decided to go after the 138-mile
Cowes, England, to St. Malo, France, record of 6 hours and 49
minutes – held by Tracy Edwards of Royal & Sun Alliance
(ex-ENZA). Despite lighter than ideal weather at the
start, and missing some of their key crew, they averaged 21.69
knots to break the old record by by almost an hour.

“The weather wasn’t quite ideal,”
said Fossett. “Especially at the start when we had a 10-kt
NE wind that meant we were slow out of the Solent jibing eight
times. We only averaged 16 kts for the first hour and so spent
the rest of the trip catching up to the record. But the mild
sea state and average winds of 18 knots meant it worked out well
in the end.”

YOTREPS

December 11 – The Pacific Ocean and Cyberspace

Who is out making passages in the Pacific
and what kind of weather are they having? Check out YOTREPS –
‘yacht reports’ – at http://www.bitwrangler.com/yotreps/

Weather Updates

December 11 – Pacific Ocean

San Francisco Bay Weather

To see what the winds are like on the Bay
and just outside the Gate right now, check out http://sfports.wr.usgs.gov/wind/.

California Coast Weather

Looking for current as well as recent wind
and sea readings from 17 buoys and stations between Pt. Arena
and the Mexican border? Here’s the place – which has further
links to weather buoys and stations all over the U.S.: www.ndbc.noaa.gov/stuff/southwest/swstmap.shtml.

Pacific Winds and Pressure

The University of Hawaii Dept. of Meteorology
page posts a daily
map of the NE Pacific Ocean barometric pressure and winds.

Pacific Sea State

Check out the Pacific Ocean sea states
at: http://www.mpc.ncep.noaa.gov/RSSA/PacRegSSA.html.

For another view, see http://www.oceanweather.com/data/global.html.