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One of the first things Rick Rodriguez did after his boat started to sink was text his friend. "Tommy this isn't a joke," he wrote. "We hit a whale and the ship went down." He really wasn't joking. Rodriguez and three of his friends were on a three week sailing journey. They had started near the Galapagos Islands and were on their way to French Polynesia. Just shy of two weeks into their journey, however, they found themselves in a lifeboat, floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, The Washington Post reported. Read on....

The Environment After back-to-back January atmospheric rivers dumped rain on Los Angeles, the Ballona Creek Trash Interceptor 007 was in rough shape. Debris swept downstream by high, turbulent water had damaged one of the barrier system’s two nets at the mouth of Ballona Creek near Playa del Rey, allowing garbage to flow out to the Pacific until crews could connect a “temporary floating barrier” in late January to guide trash into the collector, a county website said. Interceptor 007 has fared far better during the storms that have slammed Southern California in recent weeks, catching thousands of pounds of trash even after an older boom system failed upstream. Read on. Title thanks to The New York Dolls....

A Ukrainian-crewed bulker has rescued a disabled Russian sailing vessel on the high seas of the Pacific, the sailboat's skipper told U.S.-funded Russian news outlet Sibir Realii. The inflatable trimaran sailboat Russian Ocean Way has been sailing around the world since mid-2021, and it has completed about 13,000 nm of its planned 32,000 nm route over the past two years. At the end of February, the boat set out for a Pacific crossing from the port of Talcahuano, Chile, bound for Easter Island. It was underway about 1,000 miles to the west of Chile when it got hit by a storm, and the wind and waves damaged the vessel's steering. A steering box was bent and broken from the strain, according to skipper Stanislav Berezkin, and its attachment mount began to crack. Read on....

Karly Zinga became the Australian 18 Footers League's Queen of Sydney Harbour when she teamed with John Winning, Fang Warren and Josh Porebski on Yandoo to win the annual event today. Yandoo's crew grabbed the lead soon after the start and led for the entire course before crossing the finish line 20s ahead of Smeg (Michael Coxon, James Dorron, Tom Anderson and Nicole Mensforth) with The Oak Double Bay-4 Pines (Ryan Ewings, Matt Doyle, Dave Ewings and Caitlin Hartnett) finishing a further 27s back in third place....

François and Marine Rouvrais share a passion for navigation like brother and sister, so much so that they completed the same studies at ENSTA Bretagne in order to work in naval architecture. After years of sailing together, in an Optimist, in a J80 or on the family Muscadet, the young people of 23 and 24 years old are giving themselves a new maritime challenge.  Marine explains: "We wanted to build a boat together, with the aim of making it habitable and eco-responsible." His brother adds: "The idea is to get your hands dirty and understand the constraints behind the plan that we have drawn." The two young naval architects François and Marine Rouvrais are working on a 6.50 m bamboo plywood sailboat. A boat that must serve as a proof of concept for this unprecedented material in yachting. Read on....

How about something a little uplifting for a change? To me it's clear USS is suffering. Theories abound but instead of getting caught up in this "failure" how about just moving on in our own little worlds and hep'ing where we can? In the 5 years I was involved as ILCA D12 Secretary we enjoyed great success and I never had one interaction with a US Sailing representative, (However, nearly ALL of the RC at our events and many area coaches came through US Sailing training which is I feel was/is a success at USS). My theory is we can focus on our own little worlds to bring on change. Little by little these little worlds grow and could eventually collide as they merge at regional regatta events. This past week I was asked to conduct an onshore educational segment to support a STEM based "Simple Machines" curriculum being taught at a local school. The goal was to help kids understand "Simple Machines" concepts, (levers, pullies, wedges and the like). My wife teaches there. Her co-workers are well aware of my sailing hi-jinks. When the lower school teacher reached out to me my initial thought was, "Sure, I'll do it. Just drag the ILCA down and let kids crawl on it for an hour and go home." The day before the event it hit me that I could possibly, maybe, actually influence someone with this "gig". So, I thought about a talk track. Decided to take an Opti and ILCA, (showing progression opportunities as kids grow and bigger boats to support bigger bodies/STEM). Read on and comment....

In the past week, you may have seen stories in the news about a massive blob of seaweed heading toward Florida. If you throw "sargassum" into the google and press enter, buckle up for one apocalyptic headline after the next. So what's the deal? Have the seaweed overlords come to take what's theirs? Yes and no... This floating brown salad is actually a collection of algal species in the genus Sargassum. It forms far out in the Atlantic in a stretch of water called the Sargasso Sea, and in normal conditions, it stays on its side of the fence, and we stay on ours. BUT like seemingly every environmental process these days, new "normals" are upon us. Since 2011, scientists have observed large floating swaths of Sargassum drifting out of the tropical Atlantic into the Caribbean sea and Gulf of Mexico every spring and summer. What is causing this is still being examined, but increased ocean temperatures and nutrient loading from coastal runoff are thought to be key contributors. But unlike the harmful algal blooms that create red tides, sargassum algal blooms aren't entirely bad. At moderate levels, like having a single glass of wine at dinner, sargassum brings life to the party. It creates habitat for many species and is a constructive contributor to the ecosystem. But at high levels, like polishing off a whole bottle of cab sav solo (no judgment, we've all been there), the scene can get ugly. Island nations can become overrun with it, corals can get cut off from sunlight, and the gases it emits while decomposing can cause health risks. It's still too early to tell how big this year's algae invasion will be, but according to the February 2023 Sargassum Outlook Bulletin (yes, that's a thing), there are "glimmers of hope" that this year won't be as bad...

Big Pimpin' There is plenty to shout about in the racing world, particularly for those who are involved at the cutting edge. Pro-Set has a long list of clients that are right in the thick of it, building boats from the blisteringly quick to the jaw-droppingly beautiful. Among them is Maguire Boats, a small builder in a niche market based on the UK’s south coast that has enjoyed an impressive run of success and has played a huge part in shaping the high-performance world. The company is famous for its International Moths, in particular its Exocet. In almost 10 years it has built 170 boats and won pretty much everything in the Moth world. But many believe that the influence of the Exocet was down to far more than simply a straight line and argue instead that it redefined this popular foiling class while raising the bar among the fleet. And a look at their route to success over the last decade makes it easy to see why. Read on....

Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa. Yes I know that’s a Christian (Catholic?) saying but I got it from the Jimmy Buffet song ‘Fruitcakes’. It basically means, ‘I was wrong.’ And I was wrong.  I wrote an article a few years ago about how ridiculous I thought that the new America’s Cup designs were. They were going back to monohulls when I was a huge fan of multihulls. I thought that the AC72 catamarans were just awesome, and I might have said at the time, well in fact I did say at the time, that the new AC monohulls looked like a dog taking a piss. I got some hell for my article and in fact, got a call from a New Zealand sports talk show asking me to come on and explain myself. The host gave me a hard time. It was a Saturday morning show and my brother, who lives in Auckland, caught it purely by chance. He told me later that the calls that came in after my interview were 10:1 against me. Maybe they knew something that I didn’t. My point was this. There had been a clamor for the days of old when the 12-meters used to have tacking duels up the windward leg, the boat in the lead slam-covering the boat behind. I understand longing. I long for the days when I first circumnavigated back when the world was flat, but things have moved on since then, sailing too. I really did circumnavigate back when the world was flat. It was in ’81. With the multihulls, it was pretty much bang a corner, both upwind and downwind, and hope that you had picked the right side of the course. The longing for the old days when you tacked on each shift were long...