Latitude 38 Magazine — “May” the New Issue Be With You!
It’s a little early for “May the 4th …,” but we felt the force this morning when we started our preview for this month’s magazine. Yoda says, “Pass on what you have learned.” Here’s a preview of what we’ve learned from a bunch of sailors doing sailory things around the Bay and beyond.
The 2024 EYC 2v2 Team Race Invitational
by Ros de Vries
“Five inches between blocks for building speed, three inches for fast.” These were my simple marching orders for a full-throttle day of team racing. I’d read the Sailing Instructions, I had a shaky understanding of the rules … but for everything else, well, I’d just have to learn on the job.
It was Saturday, April 13 — an overcast but otherwise ideal day for racing at Encinal Yacht Club. Given the solid breeze and the preference for more tactical sailing, the Race Committee had declared that no spinnakers would be flown — and so my foredeck role was converted to jib trim. Within the first five minutes, my hands were burning from getting the boat dialed in.
The River of Grass Garage Build
A few years ago, Stephen Buckingham started thinking about getting a new boat. That started him down the road of boatbuilding and boatbuilding logistics. “I had long wanted to do the Singlehanded Transpacific race to Kauai, and I bought the Black Soo Starbuck for that purpose,” said Stephen. “After racing in the SSS Longpac twice, I decided that was not for me.” So he sold Starbuck and started looking for a smaller boat that would be easier to take on inland and Bay adventures.
Enter the River of Grass or RoG, a kit-built 15-ft micro cruiser designed in Florida at Bedard Marine. Stephen didn’t have a shop big enough to build a 15-ft boat, as he lives in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District, but he ordered the kit and had it delivered while he went looking for a space to build a boat.
A Harrowing Passage to the South Pacific
by Evan Gregory
We had sailed Chinook 1,500 miles since the injector refit in Trinidad and arrived at the great gateway to the Pacific, the Panama Canal. We had seen many cool places, but everything in the Caribbean felt fairly approachable from an American perspective. We expected the next stage of the journey through the South Pacific to feel very exotic. Little did we know the adventure was about to begin a little earlier than expected.
Plus, there’s more. We also have our regular monthly columns:
- Letters: Turmoil at US Sailing; Setting Our Own Youth Sailing Priorities; A Max Ebb Correction; Sailing on the Coast Guard Brigantine Eagle; Work Smarter Not Darker; and pages more of readers’ letters.
- Sightings: Stad Amsterdam’s New Learning Horizons; After ‘SC’ Buoy Saved, USCG May Remove Others; A Local Sailor’s Clipper Race Dreams; As Fate, and Sharks, Would Have It …; and more great stories.
- Max Ebb: “Race Crew Care”
- Racing Sheet: The Doublehanded Farallones Race, SSS Round the Rocks, El Toro Bullship Race, all-female Anne McCormack Cup, California ILCA Masters, BYC Rollo Wheeler Memorial Regatta, and RYC Big Dinghy are all featured in these pages. We end with Monterey Bay and San Francisco Bay Buoy News, and Box Scores includes the last of the Midwinter Series results we’ve collected.
- Changes in Latitudes: With reports this month on Sweethaven’s first trip to Mexico; a fun interview with Patsy Verhoeven: La Reina del Mar of the Baja Ha-Ha; Andiamo‘s adventures in Southern and Northern California; and some interesting catching up with folks in Cruise Notes.
- Loose Lips: We share the April Caption Contest(!) winners.
- All the latest in sailboats for sale, Classy Classifieds.
We appreciate all readers and all our supporters. Without you there would be no Latitude 38. This month we extend a big thanks and appreciation to those supporters who advertise in the pages of Latitude 38, and we invite you to share that appreciation by supporting them.
And thank you to our distributors. Go grab your new issue of Latitude 38 from any of these folks listed. Or subscribe, and have it delivered each month.