Posts by John Riise
New Girl on the Block
Wilbur Spaul achieved a significant milestone in his bid to sail the smallest boat to Hawaii: In February, he chainsawed the 8-ft Chubby Girl into pieces and tossed them into a dumpster.
Birthday Revelations with Commodore
Warwick “Commodore” Tompkins turned 88 last Wednesday, and he and wife Nancy celebrated with family and friends on Saturday at the Sausalito YC. War stories were told, our favorite being recounted by Skip Allan. More »
Sailing to the Ends of Sanity and a Flat Earth
We don’t quite get websites that intentionally run bogus stories. Well, okay, some ‘articles’ are amusing and we guess that sells ads. But these days, journalism is having a tough enough time with credibility without throwing gasoline onto the fire. More »
Zingaro’s Bad Break Is Bad Break
Two days before Christmas, James Evenson and Kim Jensen were on final approach to Honolulu from the South Seas aboard their Spindrift 37 cat Zingaro when things went terribly wrong.
They were in washing-machine conditions about 40 miles southwest of the Big Island. More »
Weird Scenarios with Sailboats
In one of the weirder kinda-sailing-related news items we’ve seen in a while, a group of Greek boaters were arrested for smuggling immigrants into Italy — apparently using sailboats they’d bought via internet ads. More »
An Old Latitude War Story
Back in the '80s or '90s, I went out on .38 Special, Latitude 38's first Bertram 25 photo boat, to shoot a race that used the Yellow Bluff buoy as a mark. As I knew the fleet would be pounding up there soon, I headed there directly from our Sausalito berth.
A Different Kind of Cruising for a Californian
Krista Swedberg caught the sailing bug early. Starting out as a little girl aboard her parents’ Santa Cruz-based Islander 40, she remembers trips every summer south to Monterey and north into the Delta. More »
Full Moon, Flat Water and the End of Days
It’s been difficult these past few weeks to remain upbeat. Between the unprecedented fires, unprecedented winds and unprecedented power outages, October in California seems more like a preview of the End of Days than the month of plenty. More »
‘Changes’ Cruisers Duck Hurricane Dorian
Josh and Christina are OK!
Along with the usual conversations and questions at our Crew List Party on September 11 came an unusual one from a number of people: “How are Josh and Christina on Tish?” More »
The Reasons and Right Ways to De-Name Your Boat
People change boat names for all sorts of reasons. Which is all fine and good as long as you do it the right way. For those of you newish to sailing, changing a vessel’s name the proper way involves a fair amount of attention to form and tradition. More »
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