Stay Gold Sails Again

After the two long and demanding passages that they endured while crossing from Victoria, BC, to San Francisco and then on to Hawaii as volunteer researchers for The Ocean Cleanup project, we’re impressed that Canadian sailors Jason Frechette, Nicole Belleau and Wayana Emanuelle are preparing to set sail again after just three weeks in the Hawaiian Islands. After sailing to San Francisco (where they earned themselves a story in the September issue of Latitude 38), the three young and intrepid mariners made a number of repairs and additional preparations while dockside at the South Bay’s Sequoia Yacht Cub before pointing the bow of their Rawson 30 Stay Gold toward the promised land: Hawaii.

Spending nearly a month at sea, the trio not only managed to conduct more trawls and Ocean Cleanup research than almost every race boat that participated, despite having a smaller boat and fewer crew aboard, but they also survived a couple of hurricanes! Lying ahull in 40 knots of breeze and 30-ft seas for two days, the Stay Gold crew came within 200 miles of the eye of late August’s Hurricane Ignacio, while also narrowly managing to escape Hurricane Jimena.

Stay Gold wasn’t the only boat challenged by the abnormal and dangerous conditions created by this summer’s ultra-warm El Niño waters in the Pacific. As reported in both ‘Lectronic Latitude and Latitude 38 magazine, Japanese solo sailors Michiaki Koga and Yasuo Abe — both in their 60s — survived four and five gales respectively while sailing solo and nonstop from Japan to San Francisco. Unfortunately for the Japanese singlehanders, the weather was no more calm on the return ride, as both of them sailed near the same storms, Ignacio and Jimena. Koga-san told us, “I had to heave to for five days! Abe-san did the same and after how long we were both at sea, he decided to come to Honolulu instead of sailing nonstop back to Japan as planned.” When we saw the Canadian vessel Stay Gold and the Japanese boats Tsuyotaka and Yukikaze II in Honolulu, none were looking much the worse for wear.

For more on this developing story, stay tuned to the Ocean Cleanup’s tracker and the Stay Gold blog (complete with great write-ups and lots of photos). With any luck and a quick return passage, the Canadians on Stay Gold will be crashing a Baja Ha-Ha near you in about a month’s time.