So now the fat is in the fire. We have two pubescent girls on the loose bound non-stop around the globe via Cape Horn and the Southern Ocean with all the world watching and cheering them on. Abby Sunderland, age 16 (in the photo above), departed Marina del Rey in Los Angeles on Saturday,...

  Here's an oceanic news flash from the realm of geoscience: the Bering Strait is a valve that can play an important role in global climate trends. Open the valve (its current position; see photo) and the northern hemisphere tends to get cooler. Close the valve and it tends to get warmer. No, this intriguing...

  Happy New Year, sports fans. I'm just back from a post-Xmas family cruise on Lunacy down in the W'Indies, of which more later, but today I wanted to give you some quick updates on three evolving stories we were following back there in the tail end of 2009. First up the Cup. Ernie Bertarelli...

  NASA's Cassini probe, currently in orbit around the planet Saturn, has in recent years confirmed that there are large liquid lakes of methane, ethane, and propane on the s urface of Saturn's moon Titan. (The radar image seen here was gathered by Cassini in July 2006.) Titan also has a dense atmosphere, which, believe...

  Theory has it that publicizing teen suicides just encourages more kids to off themselves. So I've been a good little blogger and have kept my laptop shut about this neverending kids-who-want-to-sail-around-the-world-alone-and-break-a-record story. But this past weekend the whole phenomenon went beyond weird when the youngest and most enigmatic of the current trio of contenders,...

  There have been a few developments since my last tongue-in-cheek post about the America's Cup, so I thought I'd bloviate a bit more on the topic. Don't worry. I'll try hard to be serious this time. You've probably heard yesterday's news that a New York appellate court shot down Ernie Bertarelli's appeal of a...

  As of Saturday December 12 this past weekend my friend Reid Stowe has broken the record for the longest non-stop solo ocean voyage ever made.  The previous record (658 days) was set by Australian Jon Sanders when he completed his non-stop triple circumnavigation over 20 years ago in 1988.  Reid's "Mission Control" shore team,...

  As I mentioned in the last edition of the Lunacy Report, sailing to Bermuda from New England in the fall is always the hardest part of getting south for the winter season in the Caribbe an.  This year was no exception.  Though Lunacy made it in good form after a delayed departure (knock on...

  In yesterday's post on the boats abandoned in this year's ARC I mentioned how improved comms technology has made it easy for modern ocean sailors to bail out when the going gets tough.  In most cases, as with the ARC boats, the question is whether the crew instead might reasonably repair or jury-rig the...

  Organizers of the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers, the Big Daddy of all cruising rallies, with 223 boats currently en rout e from the Canary Islands to St. Lucia, announced Tuesday that a participating boat, a 53-foot Bruce Roberts cutter named Pelican (pictured here prior to the rally start), was abandoned Monday about 325 miles...