AFTER 20 MONTHS IN CAPTIVITY a South African sailing couple, Bruno Pelizzari and Debbie Calitz, who were taken hostage by Somali pirates off the coast of Tanzania, have finally been freed. It's unclear how this happened, but according to the most detailed report I've seen, it seems the Italian and South African governments (Pelizzari holds...
It's been a while since I mentioned Reid Stowe, not because I've lost interest in him, but because he went dark for several weeks, not long after he and his family arrived in the jungles of Guyana aboard their schooner Anne back in early January. Now he's got his communications sorted and is again transmitting...
The legendary designer/builder Charley Morgan allegedly conceived this boat in a fit of pique when the IOR supplanted the old CCA rule as the racing rating rule du jour back in 1970. If so, it was an auspicious tantrum, as the Out Island 41 turned out to be an extremely successful boat and ultimately helped transform...
This innovative bluewater performance cruiser was one of a series of designs developed by offshore sailing guru Steve Dashew starting in 1978. Dashew's basic concept of a long, narrow, fast boat designed to be sailed long distances by a couple first saw fruition in his Deerfoot line, which he built in fiberglass and in aluminum...
Though I've participated in the ARC before, this was the first time I was able to attend the prizegiving. What a bash! The wind-up to the 2011 ARC this past Saturday was a celebration of epic proportions. After plying the assembled multitude of sailors with rum (clever tactic that), master of ceremonies Andrew Bishop (see...
When I first stepped aboard the bright orange Gunboat 66 Phaedo while chatting up ARC sailors here in Rodney Bay, I had no idea at first who I was talking to. A soft-spoken not-quite-clean-shaven young man in a t-shirt invited me aboard after I hailed the boat from the dock, and I naturally assumed he...
Good news: I've heard back from my people and can now share some pix and verbiage on how the voyage south went for Katahdin. Rather than paraphrase, I thought I'd share the raw dispatches.
Having been left behind on the dock, I've been obsessively following the progress of this year's Caribbean 1500 via the rally's online tracking page. For much of the fleet it has been slow going. After prudently waiting the better part of a week for Tropical Storm Sean to go away and then for a cold...
For some sailors this is simply a rhetorical question, but to many others it may seem like heresy. It is, however, a question worth discussing given recent events in this year's NARC rally. It should also help put some comments made by NARC rally organizer Hank Schmitt, which I published earlier here on WaveTrain, into...
The U.S. Coast Guard reported yesterday and rally organizer Hank Schmitt confirmed to me in a phone conversation this morning that Jan Anderson, wife of Rob Anderson, has been lost overboard from Triple Stars, an Island Packet 38, approximately 285 miles northwest of Bermuda. According to the Coast Guard report, an EPIRB assigned to Triple...
