Monthly Archives: June 2010

Only in San Francisco

Okay, most places where people sail, you wouldn’t see this mix of geography, seabreeze, and sailing types. Beyond that, the quiz of the day goes, why is this truly, Only In San Francisco? As seen from Crissy Field, Andrew Koch (kite Blue #19) has just tacked short of the rocks and is setting up to [...]

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Solo in the Pacific

Solo sailors under way from San Francisco to Hanalei Bay are finding the breeze slowly filling in for them today, after a spell of difficult going in light air. George Lythcott on the Express 27, Taz, noted that some of his fellow racers had begun questioning whether or not they’d make the race banquet on [...]

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Protocols, Meetings, Pending

What jumps out at me from the 23 June Protocol is that a door remains open to a match in 2013 rather than 2014, which still seems more likely. Also, there’s item 24.4: Racing Areas to be Shared: The racing areas for the Challenger Selection Series and the Defender Trials shall be the same racing [...]

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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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Solo Transpac – Simplicity Counts

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RPGs and the Big Ocean

Walking toward his ride for the solo Transpac, Ronnie Simpson slowed us down to point out that the mast of his 30-footer is taller than the mast of the 35-footer next door. I like this guy. He made one fast passage through youth— Enlisted in the Marines. Got blown up by an RPG in a [...]

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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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I Failed

I tried to make “500 million euros and a city in Italy” go away, and I failed. It keeps coming back. But, while I thank you for the inquiries, dear reader, I don’t know a thing, and I am nostalgic for a time when I wasn’t sucked into rumors. I wouldn’t have been sucked into [...]

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FutureSailing: West Coast Wood

Giant, wing-masted trimarans in the America’s Cup, hydrofoilers busting 50 knots in the Med, these innovations open a window onto a gee-whiz future that turns me on. But they don’t answer one question: Will we, or will we not in that future, still have with us the racing classics of yore? For every Dorade that [...]

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