Category Archives: Environment

Can America’s Cup Improve SF Bay?

What a fright. Imagine if all the landfill planned for San Francisco Bay circa 1961 had been carried out. (ooo, creepy) (and I hope you “had” a HAPPY HALLOWEEN) In 1961, Cadillacs had tailfins. . . . . . bigger was better, and the city of Berkeley, for example, was planning to expand via landfill [...]

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From the Pacific, with Love and Fear
(for the future)

It was a hopping weekend, of course, with the opening races of the America’s Cup World Series in Cascais, Portugal, and that worked, but I am not going to attempt to add to those doings in this space, today. Let me take the day off, instead, by way of pointing out that the six vaca [...]

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Polynesian to Pomo

In this space I have celebrated anything and everything driving the technological future of setting forth upon the water. Now is the moment to appreciate a few unique efforts to preserve the heart and spirit of what went before, and what we hope will be a future for the waterways calling us to set forth [...]

Also posted in Construction & Technical, Sailboats | 2 Comments

Great Wastes, Considerable Irony

With 12 of 14 entries still racing the doublehanded Barcelona World Race and crossing their 30th day at sea on Monday, Ryan Breymaier joined a videoconference from sixth placed Neutrogena and expressed shock at all the plastic in the sea. “What really sets me off,” Breymaier said, “is that everywhere we sail we pass plastic [...]

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Define Heavy Weather?

In yet another example of racing when the most recent crop of America’s Cup boats would be huddled ashore, youngsters from up and down the West Coast spent last weekend sailing the Opti Heavy Weather regatta on the San Francisco cityfront. This is one place where locals can give an event a name like that, [...]

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From Planks to Lams

We don’t have to explain it the way Obi Wan explains The Force to young master Luke, but just the same, everything is tied together. Including traditional boatbuilding and carbon fiber lamination. For today’s take we drop into Thames Street, Newport, Rhode Island where . . . Photo by Tom Daniels/IYRS Clark Poston is the [...]

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Shaping Boats, and the Industry

Puzzling the problems of the day. Photo by KL Walking through door of the International Yacht Restoration School will likely affect you considerably. Speaking from experience. But I’ll let Jens Lange tell it his way. Jens is a grownup who had a successful but less-than fulfilling 18-year, Europe-based career in the auto industry that had [...]

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First Flags First

History often leaves loose ends. I have my own copy of this flag, the Serapis flag, that I like to fly from time to time, and the thought comes to mind on Memorial Day of the years when the Republic, and its emblems, were still being invented, and this could pass for the American flag. [...]

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BCDC Loves You, Baby

In San Francisco today, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office released a resolution passed by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission supporting an America’s Cup match on San Francisco Bay. Wow. This is huge. The Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) is on the list of government agencies where I imagined that AC-N-SF could founder. We owe [...]

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A Surreal Year (but let’s race)

A NOAA view of the Gulf of Mexico on a cloudy May 10 When Guy Brierre calls 2010 “a surreal year” that means something. I got to know this Finn (among other things) sailor in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, a time which surely qualified as surreal along the Gulf Coast—and for hundreds of miles [...]

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