September Issue Out Now
Is it September already? Well, no, not till Sunday, but guess what? The new issue of Latitude 38 is out today, and, spoiler alert, it’s one of our favorite issues ever.
Here are a few excerpts:
Pacific Puddle Jump Recap
“Our highs were days of sailing in nearly perfect conditions, when the boat, the sea and the wind were in nearly perfect balance; enjoying the 360-degree, unfettered view of a perfect ocean; stars and fluorescence at night. Crossing an ocean and the equator is not a trivial undertaking. The sense of satisfaction was enormous,” said Nello and Sheridan Angerilli — of the Beneteau 11.50 Marathon — in the PPJ Recap. “For us, lows included the duration of the trip and the constant movement of the boat, sometimes in very uncomfortable ways.”
The Foiling Follow-Up
“If you’re trying to go fast, why be saddled with monohull configuration?” asked Malcom Gefter, a Newport, Rhode Island, native and progenitor of the TF 10, a Morrelli & Melvin-designed foiling trimaran. Gefter spoke to us in a Follow-Up to 2018’s The Foiling Feature. “What a multihull does is move the weight outward — you’re not saddled with a lead keel and a million people on the rail.” With the TF 10, Gefter said the theory “is basically saying, ‘Don’t bother adding weight on the windward side, but rather, push up on the leeward side.'” Creating leeward lift is something that foils are uniquely capable of offering.
Sightings
“According to Captain Alejandro Irigoyen, aka Dad, he’s been cultivating the dream of circumnavigating for 25 years — ever since he crewed on his first offshore ocean race, and long before he met his wife, Bernadette Sanchez,” wrote our editor-at-large Andy Turpin about an extraordinary family he met in the South Pacific. “Having recently cashed out of their comfortable life ashore in Puebla, Mexico, they’re now on a mission to become the first Mexican family to circumnavigate the globe — and along the way they intend to spread a message of peace and respect.”
Transpac Part 2
“As this issue of Latitude 38 goes to press, the party has long been over in Honolulu and the bulk of the fleet has successfully returned to the Mainland, bringing this 50th edition of the Transpac well and truly to a close,” wrote Ronnie Simpson in his second installment on the Transpacific yacht race.
The September 2019 issue will also feature Letters, Changes in Latitudes, The Racing Sheet, World of Charter, and, of course, the winner of this month’s Caption Contest(!) in Loose Lips.
So please, by all means, drop whatever you’re doing, hit the waterfront (click here to find a distributor), and pick up the new issue of Latitude 38. Otherwise, Latitude will find you, Nation.
West Coast Well Represented at TP52 Worlds
The 2019 TP52 World Championships have come to a thrilling conclusion in Puerto Portals, Spain, with Harm Müller-Spreer’s German-flagged Platoon team just managing to squeak out a two-point victory after nine races. Having come into the fifth and final day with a modest lead over Alberto and Pablo Roemmers’ Italian/ Argentinian Azzurra team, Platoon nearly threw it away by posting a higher score on the final day than on all the other days combined. While day five’s opening race — race eight in the series — was recalled due to a large wind shift, Platoon earned a penalty point when they forced a collision at the start with their championship rival Azzurra. Taking the penalty at the top mark and dropping all the way back to 10th in the 11-boat fleet, Platoon’s championship hopes were beginning to fade. Recovering to eighth place in race eight before finishing a disappointing ninth in race nine, Platoon would only barely manage to hold onto the lead and capture the 2019 World Championship title.
Behind them, Azzurra and Vladimir Liubomirov’s Bronenosec team would round out the podium in what would go down as the closest-ever TP52 World Championships, where the top six teams were separated by a scant seven points. Bay Area native John Kostecki, the tactician on Platoon, commented, “We’ve never actually started out the final day in the lead before; we’re usually having to come from behind. We had a super-close call with Azzurra at the beginning of race eight and just managed to hit their stern pulpit with our bowsprit, to gain a penalty, and then found ourselves super-deep. This group has sailed together for three years now and we’ll have to learn from this and continue to improve,” said a relieved Kostecki, whose high-percentage, low-risk tactics helped deliver them to the top spot of the podium for the second time in three years. Among the other prominent Californians in this top-tier fleet, third-place Bronenosec had Santa Cruz native Morgan Larson, who was also calling tactics. The two American-flagged entries, Sled and Quantum Racing, finished the regatta in fourth and sixth place, respectively.
Elsewhere in Europe, it continued to be a good week for the Americans as Don Wilson’s Chicago-based Convexity won the M32 World Championships on Lake Garda.
Free Pumpout Nav App
‘Maiden’ Departs, Greta Thunberg Arrives
Maiden Sails Out the Gate for L.A.
A crowd of well-wishers gathered this morning to wish farewell to Maiden and her crew as they departed for the next leg of their world tour. The 58-ft 1979 Bruce Farr-design Disque D’Or III — one of the stars of the documentary Maiden — is on a 30-plus-city world tour to raise money for charities working to provide an education for young women in need. Maiden is due to arrive at Marina del Rey tomorrow at 2 p.m. and the captain and crew were more than ready to cast off the lines and head back out to sea. But first, there was the official bon-voyage reception at the St Francis Yacht Club, which has hosted the vessel since its arrival on August, 19.
“We’ve had an absolutely fantastic stopover in San Francisco,” said Kaia Bint Savage, The Maiden Factor’s digital-content coordinator. In addition to conducting open-boat sessions to help promote the charities they support, some of Maiden’s crew visited the local offices of Room to Read — an organization that delivers life-changing reading programs and materials to millions of children across the globe.
Room to Read’s Chief executive officer Dr. Geetha Murali said that the crew received good insight into the work Maiden was supporting and was able to demonstrate the effectiveness of their support with documented case studies and reports. As part of Maiden’s program, Murali was able to hand over a baton representing the “Relay of Hope” through which children’s messages of support and encouragement are delivered to each other around the world.
Maiden will spend approximately two weeks in L.A. before continuing her journey, with the next stops including Chile and Uruguay, and a date to round Cape Horn late in the year. Since their arrival in San Francisco, there’ve been some crew changes. Among the newcomers are Lindsay Rosen from Seattle, and local sailors Kellie Ann Taylor and Sabrina Perell, who is a member of St FYC. Also on board is Ashley Perrin, a member of San Francisco YC who can be regularly seen sailing the Bay Area aboard her Moore 24. In addition to being a known local racing sailor, Ashley has amassed thousands of ocean miles Transatlantic and Pacific crossings along with world-recognized events such as the Fastnet.
Stay tuned as we continue to bring you updates and news of Maiden and her crew on their 60,000-nautical-mile journey.
Greta Thunberg Sails Into New York
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg arrived in New York on Wednesday after a highly publicized Atlantic crossing aboard the IMOCA 60 Malizia II. “After a 15-day sail that was obsessively tracked by European news media, cheered by fellow climate activists, mocked by critics and rocked by rough waves off Nova Scotia, Greta and the boat’s crew went through Customs on Wednesday morning while anchored off Coney Island, Brooklyn,” the New York Times reported.
Malizia II and Thunberg were greeted by young activists at North Cove Marina, according to the Times. “The boat’s black sails had come into sight just blocks from Wall Street, the heart of the global financial system whose investments in fossil fuels are one of the main targets of climate protesters — and an area that climate change threatens with sea-level rise.”
Greta Thunberg’s mission is not without controversy. On our Facebook page, some of our followers criticized the 16-year-old Swede for sailing in a boat made from petrochemicals. “She could have sailed a wooden boat,” someone said (with what degree of seriousness we’re not entirely sure). In mid-August, we received a letter from a 30-year reader who said they would not renew their subscription because of our “ongoing platform for the discussion of ‘global warming.’ I was under the impression that you folks were interested in sailing, not politics.” (We think Latitude has always waded into conversations about public issues, even as ownership, and certain, opinions have changed — but OK.)
“Greta has her detractors,” the Times wrote. “She was criticized after single-use plastic water bottles were seen on the yacht. Some have labeled her call to ‘pull the emergency brake’ on emissions simplistic or even undemocratic.” As we discussed in our Plastic Plague series, it is both difficult to know exactly where to put our energy, concern and outrage in terms of effecting meaningful change, and even more difficult to unravel ourselves from the pollutants that have become integral parts of our everyday lives.
Regardless, we believe in doing something, in having a dialogue, and in pressuring governments and multinational corporations into taking action. In this sense we tip our hats to Greta and the crew of Malizia II.
Raccoon Strait Talk
With a long weekend of pleasant sailing weather ahead, you might be wondering where, exactly, you should sail. A cruise out the Gate, a loop of the Bay, or maybe the Bay tour, taking a break from Cityfront breezes with a somewhat sheltered cruise through Raccoon Strait. We were out last week and caught a few boats that were cruising through and lookin’ good.
No matter where you’re headed this weekend, a loop through Raccoon Strait is usually a pleasant leg of any Bay sail. If you’re just out for fun, Raccoon is an enjoyable part of whatever circuit you take.