Feb. 24/2023: Elvis Francois, originally from the island of Dominica, was making repairs to his boat at St. Maarten back in December, when he somehow got swept out to sea. Twenty-four days later, in late January, after drifting across much of the Caribbean basin, he was rescued about 120 miles off the coast of Colombia,...
Oct. 27/21: Inevitably, I suppose, I’ve been driven to dive deeper into the question of what happened to my old Ruta de Morgan skipper, the inestimable Eric Thiriez, on his last voyage in 2017. I have been in touch with some of my contacts in Cartagena, Colombia, Eric’s homeport, from which he set out for...
Dec. 28/2020: I am sure I wasn’t the only one who noted with raised eyebrows that Tim Severin, aged 80, passed away in Ireland earlier this month. When I was much younger, I was fairly blown away by his first successful book and the great adventure that made him famous. The Brendan Voyage, first published...
Jan. 22/20: I’m dying to learn more about this. Seems a commercial vessel, a “geared bulker” in merchant marine vernacular, name of M/V Sunda, stopped to rescue the crew of a certain sailboat, along with a dog, somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, on January 10. The lack of facts is striking. We don’t know the location...
OK, I lied. I'm doing one more post before taking off today. I just watched this press conference with members of the California Air National Guard team who rescued the Kaufman family off Rebel Heart and wanted to make a few points about the rumpus this has inspired.
Goodness gracious. Do I feel sorry for Eric and Charlotte Kaufman! Not only have they lost their home, Rebel Heart, the Hans Christian 36 they've been cruising on for two years, which they had to abandon yesterday when they boarded a U.S. Navy warship about 900 miles west of Mexico, and which the Navy subsequently...
The National Transportation Safety Board released its report on the infamous October 2012 loss of HMS Bounty yesterday, concluding "that the probable cause of the sinking of tall ship Bounty was the captain's reckless decision to sail the vessel into the well-forecasted path of Hurricane Sandy, which subjected the aging vessel and the inexperienced crew...
"I can say for certain that was the best helicopter ride of my life. It was also the best shower." --statement by Gunther Rodatz to U.S. Coast Guard airbase personnel; Elizabeth City, North Carolina; Jan. 14, 2014 THERE HAS ALREADY BEEN a lot of buzz about what happened Tuesday morning approximately 300 miles off the...
Should taxpayers have to spend large sums of money rescuing overzealous sailors who get into trouble they might easily have avoided? Should they pay to rescue sailors who don't actually need rescuing in the first place? Questions like this are bubbling up into the public consciousness, thanks to teen sailor Abby Sunderland, who was...
