The new Sail Training International website has gone live and it is quite impressive. Lots of great information, news and photos. Definitely worth a look. Sail Training International is a not-for-profit organisation with worldwide membership and activities whose purpose is the development and education of young people through the sail training experience, regardless of nationality, culture, religion, gender or social background.
This looks like a great symposium, next weekend at the Maine Maritime Museum at Bath, Maine. I have also heard great things about the fish-house punch served a the evening reception.
38th Annual Walker Maritime History Symposium, April 10, 2010 @ 8:00am
Big Ship Smack-Down: Who’s Got the Biggest?
Continue reading
The solar system’s innermost planets are about to put on a beautiful show.
This week, Mercury is emerging from the glare of the sun and making a beeline for Venus. By week’s end, the two planets will be just 3o apart, an eye-catching pair in the deep-blue twilight of sunset.
The best nights to look are April 3rd and 4th. Go outside at the end of the day and face west. Venus pops out of the twilight first, so bright it actually shines through thin clouds. Mercury follows, just below and to the right: sky map.
Venus is an old friend to most sky watchers; Mercury, less so. The first planet from the sun spends most of its time wrapped in painful sunlight. Seeing it so easily, and in the beautiful company of Venus no less, is a rare treat indeed. The next apparition this good won’t come until Nov. 2011.
One of the original "accumulators" used in the gold from seawater hoax. Currently located at the Lubec Historical Society.
Happy April 1st, which in many countries is also called April Fools’ Day. It therefore seems only fitting to look back on the Great Gold from Sea Water Hoax. In October of 1897, at the height of the Alaskan Gold Rush, two men, Prescott Ford Jernegan, a Baptist minister, and Charles Fisher, arrived in Lubec, Maine to establish a facility to extract gold from sea water.
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.
Larry Ellison: Make America’s Cup about sailing, not money
Continue reading
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.
Continue reading
Disturbing news from Patagonia:
MORE than 300 southern right whales, most of them young calves, have been found dead in the past five years in the waters off Argentina’s Patagonian coast, one of their most important breeding grounds.
Continue reading
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.
Franck Cammas and Groupama 3’s around-the-world sailing record
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.
Forty six crew members are reported missing from the South Korean Cruiser Cheonan which sank late Friday. South Korean officials are all but ruling out direct North Korean involvement in the sinking. Fifty eight of the crew were rescued.
An update from Sail-World. Abby Sunderland is close to rounding Cape Horn, while malfunctioning autopilots may threaten her circumnavigation attempt.
Teen sailor Abby Sunderland to round Cape Horn Tuesday
16-year-old Californian sailor Abby Sunderland, following Jessica Watson in her attempt to be the youngest non-stop circumnavigator, is only a couple of days away from sailing around her first big milestone, Cape Horn.
Continue reading
The HMAS Adelaide is still afloat, as much due to court action as to Archimedes Law. The HMAS Adelaide was the lead ship of the Adelaide class of guided missile frigates built for the Royal Australian Navy, not to be confused with the clipper ship City of Adelaide. She was scheduled to be scuttled as an artificial reef but an environmental action group has managed to stop the scuttling over concerns regarding possible PCBs in her electrical wiring and lead paint on the ship. This is notwithstanding that there was never any reported lead paint used on the ship and that tests performed on behalf of the Australian government showed no evidence of PCBs. In the mean time representatives of another Australian community have said, “You don’t want the HMAS Adelaide? We’ll take her!”
Dennis M. Powers’ Tales of the Seven Seas: The Escapades of Captain Dynamite Johnny O’Brien recounts the story of a larger than life sailor who rose from being a bullied sixteen year old ship’s boy sailing before the mast to become a ship’s captain at only 25. Over his more than 60 year career, Captain “Dynamite” Johnny O’Brien would sail as master of both sail and steam ships and would fight pirates, his own crews and the very sea itself. It is quite a tale to tell.
Continue reading
Report: South Korean navy ship sinks
A South Korean navy ship sank in the Yellow Sea near North Korea late Friday, and the navy shot at an unidentified ship toward the north, according to reports quoting South Korean government officials.
Continue reading
One hundred and seventy one years after the slave ship Amistad sailed from Havana carrying a cargo of captives from Sierra Leone, the replica of the Amistad arrived in Havannah harbor yesterday. The captives on the original slave ship seized control of the vessel and sailed the ship to the United States where they were finally granted their freedom in 1841 by a ruling of the Supreme Court.
Schooner Amistad sails into Havana Harbor – March 25th, 2010
Amistad sails into Old Havana harbor
Built in Connecticut, the black-hulled, two-masted re-creation of the schooner, whose name means “Friendship,” flew the flags of the United States, Cuba and United Nations. It was one of the few times a ship under Cuba’s flag and the Stars and Stripes has called on the island in 51 years of estrangement since Fidel Castro took power.
As the Amistad neared shore, the crew of 19 mostly students — all Americans except for one from the African nation of Sierra Leone — lowered the sails, taking the U.S. flag down with them. Once the ship docked, however, the flags of both nations again flew high.