Pigeon Forge, Tennessee is a small town located in the Great Smokey Mountains of Tennessee, located just north of the Great Smokey National Park. It is one of the more unlikely locales in which to find a half scale recreation of the Titanic opening in early April as a “Museum/Attraction.” Then again Pigeon Forge is not your typical mountain hamlet either. It has a population of somewhere over 5,000 but is visited by 11 million tourists each year. It’s largest draw may be “Dollywood” a theme park owned in part by country music singer Dolly Parton, well know for her big hair, breasts, and voice. The town is also a center for car shows and various music and entertainment venues.
Titanic museum to open: Regis Philbin to host grand opening for $25 million attraction
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Barista Uno at the 
On April 14th Turk Film Services will be holding an online auction of up to 200 boats and floating craft ranging from the Cygnet, an iron steam launch built in 1873 to a “swan boat” which features a detachable fiberglass swan built onto a double ended Swedish sailing dinghy. The auction features a highly eclectic mix of water craft including boats used in the television and movie productions of Hornblower, Harry Potter, Swallows and Amazons, 633 Squadron and Three Men in a Boat.
Professional surfer and Stand Up Paddleboard (SUP) ambassador Jodie Nelson became the first woman to paddle 39.8 grueling miles from the island of Catalina to Dana Point in an effort to raise awareness and funds for breast cancer research and prevention. She has an unexpected escort for two hours of the nine hour paddle. A 30 foot minke whale swan beside her 14 foot board, often rolling and blowing bubbles and around and under it.
The moral of the story may be to identify the ship before you attack it.
Larry Ellison and Ernesto Bertarelli perhaps bear equal blame for a litigious and incredibly costly America’s Cup race which turned more on technology and court rulings than on sailing. Now Ellison is singing a different tune, saying ”We’d like this to not be a matter of who invests the most money in designing their boat but who sails the best.” If he is true to his word, this might open up the America’s Cup races again to mere millionaires rather than being so costly that only billionaires can play.
Farrell Lines was a grand old US steamship company. It had an office in downtown Manhattan full of ship models and paintings of ships. Behind the receptionist, as you came in the door, there was a world map with chains of white lights showing the various trade routes served by Farrell Lines ships. The world was illuminated by the white lights across the Atlantic, Pacific, the Mediterranean and the Indian Oceans. As the company declined I recall the sense of both sadness and impending doom as fewer and fewer lights lit the globe.
Disturbing news from Patagonia:
We are a week late in noting this but Franck Cammas and and his nine-men crew onboard their 105 ft trimaran, Groupama 3, have won the Jules Verne trophy by setting a new round the world sailing record of 48 days, 7 hours, 44 minutes and 55 seconds. The boat left Brest on January 31 and sailed around Cape Leewin, Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn.
Paul Janse van Rensburg’s sailboat, Tafadzwa, was found drifting near the Chatham Islands in the Pacific east of New Zealand. A search of the boat found van Rensburg’s dog alive and the boat’s life raft still aboard. No sign was found of van Rensburg who has been missing for 16 days.
An update from