A new IMOCA (International Monohull Open Class Association) 60 design by Guillaume Verdier and VPLP Design has raised the question whether the design will be a the future of ocean racing or whether it is a foil too far. In addition to the tall rig, sled hull, articulating keel and moveable ballast, the design features “L” shaped foils that some think bear a resemblance to Salvador Dali’s iconic mustache. VPLP-Verdier design has been described as the most complex monohull sailboats ever built. Several of the designs have been built for the upcoming Vendee Globe round-the-world single-handed yacht race with the hope of breaking the current 78-day record.
Will these boats survive a round-the-world race? So far, things do not look promising. In the recent Transat Jacques Vabre from Le Havre, France, to Itajaí, Brazil, five of the new VPLP-Verdier designs started the 20-boat race, but only one finished. Armel Le Cléac’h’s Banque Populaire VIII, a VPLP-Verdier design, finished second roughly eight hours behind PRB, a conventional IMOCA 60. One of the boats, Hugo Boss, sailed by Alex Thompson and Guillermo Altadill, suffered structural hull failure and sank after rolling and was dismasting. Thompson and Altadill were rescued.
The nuclear submarine 
In May, we posted that 
Alaric Bond’s new novel 
Today I saw the movie, “In the Heart of the Sea,” directed by Ron Howard and somewhat loosely based on Nathaniel Philbrick’s 
Today in theaters in the US, the movie 
This week, the beach in Melbourne, Florida was suddenly covered with 
I recently came across a sea story, that, like the best sea stories, has been retold enough times so that the details tend to wander from one version to the other. This much appears to be true. Thirty-five years ago, 
The
Minutes before the beginning of the attack on the warships of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Japanese Imperial Navy planes bombed the nearby U.S. Naval Air Station on the east coast of Oahu, destroying twenty-seven Catalina PBY seaplanes on the ground or moored on Kāne‛ohe Bay. Six others were damaged. The PBYs were a strategic target for the Japanese because the long-range patrol bombers could have potentially followed the Japanese planes back to their carriers. 
Ninety-eight years ago today, on the morning of December 6, 1917, the French freighter SS Mont-Blanc collided with the SS Imo, a Norwegian ship chartered to carry relief supplies to Belgium, in the Narrows, a strait connecting the upper Halifax Harbour to Bedford Basin. The collision at first seemed minor, the two ship hitting at only about a knot. Nevertheless, a fire broke out aboard the Mont-Blanc, which was loaded with munitions and high explosives. The fire burned out of control and ignited the cargo, causing the 
The state oil company SOCAR reports that over 30 are dead or missing after an Azeri drilling rig in the Caspian Sea caught fire yesterday. The fire started after a storm damaged a natural gas pipeline, causing the platform’s partial collapse. Rescue efforts have been hampered by the severity of the storm. One body has been recovered and 30 others are reported to be missing. 32 workers were evacuated safely from the rig. In a statement, SOCAR said that “The fire in the gas pipeline has not been completely extinguished and it has not been ruled out that it could spread to oil and gas wells near the platform…”