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Michael Moradzadeh Crosses Oceans and Launches Websites

What to do when you’re not sailing on the ocean or organizing the Pacific Cup so other people can sail on the ocean? For offshore racer Michael Moradzadeh, the answer is to help build a new website for the Cruising Club of America — to serve its members, who are “a collection of passionate, seriously accomplished ocean sailors making adventurous use of the sea.”

Cruising Club of America
When not sailing or planning to sail in the Transpac or Pacific Cup, Michael has been busy relaunching the CCA website.
© 2020 Cruising Club of America

The October issue of Latitude 38, coming out tomorrow, tells of Michael’s eight prior Pacific Cups and his 2019 victory in the Transpac aboard his Santa Cruz 50 Oaxaca. Michael also described for us the building and launching of the CCA website, just ahead of starting the 2019 Transpac.

“Working alone, I could have done pretty good,” he says of the website, despite the additional challenge of constructing components that enable far-flung members to conduct club business securely. But encouraged by club leaders, Michael engaged an outside consultant “to do a lot of the heavy lifting and fine points of website transition. With the help of people with the necessary skills,” he says, “we were able to get an extra, several-percent improvement.”

Racing Oaxaca
Michael Moradzadeh (left) had a crew including top-notch women sailors Liz Baylis, Dee Caffari, and Molly Noble. As Michael told a reporter after winning his class in the 2019 Transpac, “We pretty much let the women run the show.”
© 2020 Oaxaca

Whether racing or building a website, Michael says, “It’s necessary to accept the input and judgment of somebody else and allow that individual to guide your activities. Despite having the nominal final say, you really want to consider when and whether to exercise that. It’s often wisest to defer to their expertise and allow those dedicating themselves to the job to have their effort respected.”

More challenges lie ahead, of course. As CCA Vice Commodore Chris Otorowski says, “Like most websites, there are things that could be improved at any given time, and Michael, as well as setting up the current website, has been continually updating and making it more user-friendly. And I think we know that there is much more potential in using the website that is untapped.”

Pick up the October issue to get ‘the rest of the story.’

3 Comments

  1. Chuck Cunningham, TransPac Safety Inspector 3 years ago

    Michael is a sailor for all seasons.

  2. Jim Quanci 3 years ago

    Michael is a real “renaissance man”! Seems not that long ago Michael was a lawyer who thought being a geek sailor might be more fun… he was just getting started coding and learning to race in the ocean on his Passport 40 “Cayenne”. What a long strange trip its been… to the great benefit of at first the local sailing community… and increasingly on the national and global sailing stage.

  3. Cecile Schwedes 11 months ago

    Michael has also significantly contributed ocean research projects by coordinating many of us Pacific Cup racers to provide Citizen Science volunteer effort in dropping off research buoys while we sail our Pac Cup race boats back to the West Coast-including to Seattle, Portland, and of course, northern and southern California homeports.

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