The fate of the four crew members aboard Cheeki Rafiki was confirmed on Friday when the U.S. Navy again found the overturned keel-less hull and inspected it closely enough to determine that its liferaft was still onboard. So with much drama and angst and effort we have at least confirmed what the U.S. Coast Guard...
After a truly amazing public appeal by a number of British public officials, well-known sailors, and 200,000 random civilians who signed an online petition, the U.S. Coast Guard yesterday resumed its search for Cheeki Rafiki, a Beneteau First 40.7 that went missing on Friday while returning to the UK after racing at Antigua Sailing Week....
The U.S. Coast Guard are coming under major pressure today after they announced yesterday they were suspending their search for possible survivors from Cheeki Rafiki, a Beneteau First 40.7 that went missing in the North Atlantic about 1,000 miles east of Cape Cod on Friday. On Saturday a container ship participating in the search, Maersk...
Back when I published my blog post about abandoning the Alpha 42 Be Good Too in January, I told Gregor Tarjan, president of Aeroyacht, builder of the boat, that I would publish in full any statement he cared to make about the incident. He declined at that time, but he has decided to make a...
As the saying goes: what goes around comes around. Last time I posted about French cruisers Pascal Ott and Monique Christmann, they had finally been towed away Oriental, North Carolina, and then quickly disappeared in time to evade a court judgment that had been entered against them for defrauding a local chandlery manager. Since then...
Eric and Charlotte Kaufman, who evacuated their boat Rebel Heart last month with their two young children, at last broke their media silence and have described some of what happened onboard to Ira Glass in a radio interview on This American Life. You can read the transcript or stream the broadcast here. The substantive facts...
I really really hope this turns out not to be true. You'll recall I published a rather long post last spring about Thomas Tangvald, son of the famous traditional-boat cruiser Peter Tangvald. Thomas, who lost his dad and half-sister Carmen on reef off Bonaire when he was just 15, had started publishing a series of...
Lunacy got launched and rigged at Maine Yacht Center on Monday. I was up there yesterday and managed to get all the sails on before the rain squalls started up. As you can see from the photo up top, I've scored some new canvas, courtesy of Richard Hallett: a replacement purple dodger, a new bright...
What do you do when a dead 81-foot blue whale washes up on your beach? Hold your nose and wait for it pop. So it goes in Trout River, Newfoundland, when the local population of 600 souls has been has been waiting on pins and needles for their whale to burst since it washed up...
