H2uh0

"The first time that I heard the name Mavericks was in 1968, when I surfed inside the rocks there with Walt Von Hauffe and a couple of friends," explains Mavericks surfing pioneer and legend Jeff Clark. "At that time Walt owned the Von's Cinema in Half Moon Bay, a popular hangout for the kids in the neighborhood. This was a time when you could drive to the end of Pillar Point and park right at the beach, then walk up the hill to see past Sail Rock where the big waves would break.

"On the giant days we would bail on school and find our way to the point to watch Mavericks. The year that I first surfed the main peak that we now know as Mavericks was 1975. In the early years I would bring whoever was willing to paddle out with me to sit in the channel, people like Jeff Kayes, Jim Dale, Jerry Hogan, Keith Delari, Heather Brown Dent, Mark Harrington, and John Dale. Interestingly, one of the biggest problems I had back then was a lack of the right equipment. The mentality was that there was no such thing as a 20-foot wave in California, so there was no reason to have a board for it.

"One day in 1990, Tom Powers, Dave Schmidt and I paddled out to surf Mavericks. What we experienced that day was bigger than anything that any of us had ever seen. When Dave and Tom returned to Santa Cruz with stories of the most perfect big wave on the planet, everything changed. The thought of a 20-foot wave in California didn't really sit well with the rest of the surfing world, but over the next few years the photos and the videos convinced the doubters that Mavericks was for real.

Read the rest here.

I heard a knock on the hull followed by a soft whistle. I poked my head out, sweaty and reeking of gasoline from cleaning the carburetor in Genny, my portable gas generator. Four boys in their early teens peered up at me with round brown eyes.

“Podemos atar a su velero para pescar?”

“Si, por su puesto,” I replied. I took their line and wrapped it around the mid-ship cleat. I really wanted to fix the carburetor, but I could tell my new neighbors were less interested in the fishing than talking to the strange gringa alone on the sailboat. I fielded questions and passed out cookies and crackers in exchange for fresh coconuts.

“I want to learn how to climb the coconut trees,” I told them. The three pointed to the smallest boy at once. Apparently he was the best at it.

“Manana, quiero aprender,” I told him. They were thrilled at this and we agreed to meet the next day in the afternoon by the medium-sized palm tree by the pier.

“It was like, like 15 feet…it was huge,” the sun-burnt guy in the internet café bragged to Diego, who ran the place. He was facing Diego but I could feel his words aimed at the back of my head. He spoke with loud inflections and dramatic hand jives towards the ceiling about the size the waves had been that day. I stared at the computer screen doing my best not to make the slightest visible reaction to his commotion. I listened carefully to each word for signs that he couldn’t surf and was probably exaggerating. The words stung. I knew the swell was pumping. I was trying to let my ears heal by resting alone in Puerto Jimenez, where the waveless waters had less of a magnetic pull on me. This lobster-faced, hotdogger had to tell his story loud enough for the entire galaxy to hear. I tried not to let it get to me, but he jabbed my most tender point of weakness and finally pushed me over the edge. I silently devised a plan to sail across the bay at first light. Long drive to the left, huh buddy? I paid and thanked Diego and walked out into the cool, wet night.

Continue reading here.

As you know, Ken was attempting to sail the "wrong way" (against the prevailing winds) around the world. He hit a huge storm off the southern tip of Chile and had to be rescued. Here is his account of what happened.

Hearts of Space is a fantastic radio program that is now available online for your listening pleasure. I started listening to this progam back in 1982 on the radio. The music featured in the one hour program is subtle, ambient, electronic, celtic, tibetian and much more. They play space music from around the world featuring artists like Brian Eno, Steve Roach, Harold Budd and many more. An audio demo is available and you can hear this weeks show for free on Sundays. Check it out here.

I have been a huge Bond fan since I saw my first one in 66' Here is a list of his best gagets.

LAST FEBRUARY, A cheerful 25-year-old Brit named Ellen MacArthur sailed into incandescence aboard her Open 60 Kingfisher with an improbable second-place finish in the Vendée Globe, a 26,000 mile, nonstop, solo circumnavigation that is justifiably considered the world's toughest yacht race. Why improbable? Because it was MacArthur's first Vendée bid, and she had been racing solo for just four years. But mostly because MacArthur, who stands five-foot-two and weighs 130 pounds, is the youngest person ever to have attempted the race, much less finished it. Her time of 94 days, four hours was the second-fastest solo circuit in history, and the fastest ever by a woman. Even race-winner Michel Desjoyeaux, a 35-year-old French sailing star who found himself dueling with MacArthur for the lead two weeks from the finish, was stunned by her performance. "She's a mystery to me," Desjoyeaux said on the dock after the race. "I don't know what I have been doing for the past ten years."

It's a long way from a landlocked home in the hills of Derbyshire to the Vendée Globe. MacArthur got hooked on the life afloat at age four, sailing off England's east coast with her aunt during summer vacations. By 22, she had knocked off two major transatlantic races, the 1997 Mini-Transat and the 1998 Route du Rhum, and was launching her campaign to sail around the world, mastering everything from diesel mechanics to weather forecasting to one-on-one racing tactics. More than anything else, the Vendée is a merciless test of character, and MacArthur unveiled an indomitable spirit. She laboriously hand-sewed a shredded spinnaker, made four exhausting climbs up her 79-foot mast to repair broken gear, destroyed one of her two daggerboards on a submerged object, and within days of the finish was in danger of losing her mast.

The grit and soul of MacArthur's Vendée effort boosted her into the sailing stratosphere. Her Web site survived nearly 500 million hits over the course of the race. Hyperbolic sailing commentators hailed her as the greatest sailor England has ever produced. Slavering European advertisers begged--in vain--for her endorsement of everything from hair spray to vacuum cleaners. (Durex, a condom company, hoped to get her to pose in a rubber dinghy.) Even the queen took note, dubbing MacArthur a member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

MacArthur is now invading the elite multihull racing world. On November 4, she and 1993 Vendée Globe winner Alain Gautier will double-hand a 60-foot trimaran from France to Brazil in the high-speed Transat Jacques Vabre. For next year MacArthur is considering another solo lap of the planet, in the 2002 Around Alone race (which, unlike the Vendée, has stops). Outside managed to catch the peripatetic sailing prodigy shortly after she and four mates had steered Kingfisher to a win in the Portsmouth-Baltimore leg of the EDS Atlantic Challenge. MacArthur was rushing to catch a plane back to Europe to go, you guessed it, sailing.

Continue reading here.

Here is a link to some very unusual boats. Click here.

This was one of my first posts on H2uh0. Check it here.

This bonehead move happenened a few years ago on one of the largest sailing yachts in the world. Mirabella is an amazing boat with one of the best crews around. Yet here they were on the rocks in the Med for several days while they figured out how to get her off with minimal damage. Read the story here.

Newport Beach based solo sailor Ken Barnes had big plans. He had hoped to sail around the world non stop on his boat Privateer. After a run in with a hurricane off Mexico, things were going pretty good. Then came a huge storm off Chile that wrecked his boat. He lost both masts, his engine is not working and he has water coming thru a hatch or two. Now a fishing trawler is on it's way to pick him up and scuttle the boat. The seas conditions were horrendous: 50 -60 kt winds and 40 ft seas. Not something you ever hope to encounter on the open sea (although these conditions are very much the norm in the area of Cape Horn where he is near). Good luck to Ken and hope you are holding up. If you would like to check out his website, please click here.

I just visited his website and he has been safely rescued as of 3am PST!!

Very nice Quicktime pics snapped at the stroke of midnight. Be sure to check the Sydney photo. For the pics click here.

The last one is an amazing shot of Saturn. If you go down a ways in the comments, one the posters enlarged the image for download. Go to Chris Drost 12-28 @ 1:40am to find it. Check it here.

Here's to a great 2007! Can you believe it?

Wow, Paul and had one of those spectacular sails yesterday! It was gusting to 35 when we headed out with a double reef in the main. The skies were crytal clear from the windy storm a day earlier. We could tell the wind had a very northerly component and that gave us some confidence in heading out the channel as we could put out a little jib to help us out to the bay. We got out there and it was a good 25 kts with huge swells. We got out to the end of the pier without tacking as the wind was strong and from the right direction. We headed for the lee of Angel with about a 40% jib up only. Once in the lee we hove to for lunch and had a great one with Alcatraz and the GGB in the background. After lunch we took a tack towards the pier and then decided to head back towards Angel. The wind was still strong and the knot meter hovered at 7. We locked the wheel and let the boat sail perfectly into Raccoon. We decided to tack thru and with a couple tacks we were around the corner with the help of a full main and jib. Heading home was great as we decided to head for the cut in the pier as it was a perfect heading. Got back around sunset for one of the best sails of the year! Looking forward to many more sails like this one in 2007!!

Ever want to watch the first episode of Sienfeld? Or catch the latest from Battle Star Galactica? Well now you can on your computer....for free! Check out the website here.

DEAN KARNAZES WAS SLOBBERING DRUNK. IT WAS HIS 30TH BIRTHDAY, and he'd started with beer and moved on to tequila shots at a bar near his home in San Francisco. Now, after midnight, an attractive young woman – not his wife – was hitting on him. This was not the life he'd imagined for himself. He was a corporate hack desperately running the rat race. The company had just bought him a new Lexus. He wanted to vomit. Karnazes resisted the urge and, instead, slipped out the bar's back door and walked the few blocks to his house. On the back porch, he found an old pair of sneakers. He stripped down to his T-shirt and underwear, laced up the shoes, and started running. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

He sobered up in Daly City, about 15 miles south. It was nearly four in the morning. The air was cool, slightly damp from the fog, and Karnazes was in a residential neighborhood, burping tequila, with no pants on. He felt ridiculous, but it brought a smile to his face. He hadn't had this much fun in a long time. So he decided to keep running.

When the sun came up, Karnazes was trotting south along Route 1, heading toward Santa Cruz. He had covered 30 miles. In the process, he'd had a blinding realization: There were untapped reservoirs within him. It was like a religious conversion. He had been born again as a long-distance runner. More than anything else now, he wanted to find out how far he could go. But at that exact moment, what he really needed to do was stop. He called his wife from a pay phone, and an hour later she found him in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven. He passed out in the car on the way home.

Read the article by clicking here.

ICHI Ban skipper Matt Allen is no stranger to the hazards of sailing, but nothing prepared him for the cold slap in the chops that floored him during last year's Rolex Trophy Series.

"All of a sudden, I was just laid flat on the deck. I didn't see anything coming at me," he says. The next thing he noticed was a terrible smell. "I opened my eyes and there was this enormous flying fish. It had jumped straight out of the water and hit me. There was blood everywhere but fortunately most of it was his."

Copping a fish in the face earned Allen a black eye but there are more perilous aspects of yacht racing.

"People have been picked up by ropes and thrown up in the air," he says. "We've often been sailing along with (deadly) sea snakes in the water, which is not scary until you start getting waves over the boats. You think, 'This wave may have a sea snake in it'."

On his first Sydney to Hobart race, a lightning strike knocked the skipper off the helm. Allen has even dislodged sharks from boat keels. And in the 2001 race, unusual atmospheric activity produced giant water spouts.

"You wouldn't believe it could happen until you see it, it's like something straight out of Dorothy from Kansas," he says. "You think you're going to miss one and then all of a sudden, it changes course. It can pull anything off the deck, including people."

Sunfish, which weigh up to 2300 kilograms, can cause serious damage, and collisions are common.

Ocean Skins went one better in the inaugural Melbourne to Vanuatu race this year, retiring with a damaged rudder after hitting a whale.

"It was a funny feeling; it was very soft," says skipper Tony Fowler. "We cut into him and just saw this huge tail splash out. He'd gone but it stopped the boat dead."

So he was understandably nervous when the Victorian yacht found itself among a pod on the way up from Geelong for this year's Sydney to Hobart. "It looked like we were in the middle of the whale highway. I have never seen so many whales in my life," he says.

Fowler also had waves dump dozens of squid on the deck, and watched his boat turn black with ink. Most terrifying were the two rogue waves encountered in Bass Strait.

"Just out of the blue, it picks up from nowhere. You can feel the water sucking out from under you, building the momentum. We reckon the waves were as big as the boat, which is 47 foot (14.3 metres)," he says.

The waves didn't break and the boat managed to sail over them. "It still put the fear of God into us," Fowler says.

Rogue waves are most dangerous when they break on the boat, releasing huge amounts of energy. Sailing over them creates the possibility of falling into the trough behind.

Professor Michael Banner, from the University of NSW, has been developing a system that would allow meteorologists to forecast rogue waves. He knows about the damage they can do. "Have you ever seen The Perfect Storm? That's an exaggerated example of what could happen," he says.

Allen says weird astral activity such as the Southern Lights can really give seamen the spooks. "It really looks like the sky has turned all red, and sailors often worry about red skies," he says.

Superstition aside, Allen says the sight is beautiful. "You might think it was quite romantic, if you weren't on a boat with 13 sweaty blokes."

(TheOceans.net) Maud Fontenoy passed Cape Horn Thursday, thus entering the Pacific Ocean – only to meet a series of low fronts which have kept the French solo sailor on constant watch.

Already tired after experiencing major storms on the south Atlantic, Maud longs for some badly needed sleep. “How difficult it is to sail so much to the south,” she vents.

"It’s hard"

“The cold, the storms with violent gusts, the dangerous sea, the constantly black sky, the stress… The truth of the matter is that I feel on top of the world, crossing a hostile universe which I have to save myself from,” Maud reports.

“Fatigue builds up, the cold becomes increasingly overwhelming and it is difficult for me to carry out the numerous maneuvers that I must do. It’s hard.”

Champagne must wait

Traditionally, sailors crack open a bottle of champagne when they cross Cape Horn, but Maud has decided to delay the celebration until she reach milder conditions - which according to forecasts won't take place in at least another week.

Maud’s next target is Cape Leeuwin, South Australia. That will be the third cape she will turn in her solo circumnavigation, with start and finish line in Reunion Island, against the prevailing currents.

French rower Maud Fontenoy set out from St. Pierre et Miquelon, (French) Canada on June 13, 2003 in an attempt to become the first woman to row across the Atlantic West to East. 117 days and an arduous journey later, she reached that goal on October 9th, 2003.

She drank sea water, fought off sharks, and tumbled in 30 foot waves. In the final weeks she was caught up in endless circles in the North Atlantic. Cargo ships brushed pass her like giants, frightening ghosts in the night. Injured and badly beaten she pushed hard towards the east, but the strong wind and the waves took her south without mercy. She arrived at the rocky coast in agitated seas and darkness, where not even the tow ship would go out to get her. But she never gave up and she stole the heart of hard core explorers for her fighting spirit, and her romantic messages in the midst of brutal storms.

In 2005 Maud rowed solo from Peru to French Polynesia, mid-Pacific to follow the route of Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl's 1947 Kon-Tiki expedition. She left from Callao January 12, 2005 at 17h40 (22h40 GMT).

Maud's current sail started in October, 2006. Fontenoy departed Reunion Island (Indian Ocean) on Board the "L'Oreal Paris", a 26m long, aluminum-hulled and carbon-masted sailing vessel. She hopes to complete a solo sailing trip around the world, against the prevailing winds - across Cape of good Hope, then Cape Horn and the southern seas. Maud hopes to cross the finish line back in Reunion Island by February, 2007.

I am out on a three day bay sail to finish up a great year of sailing in SF. Sunday night I was loading the boat and felt a little wind coming thru the cockpit. Decided to hit the bay for a night sail! Clear sky, lots of stars and 8-10 kts of wind for a perfect sail. Then on Monday my friend Geoff came up for a classic December sail. 60's on the bay, beautiful sun and lots of wind from the north. We hit 6.9 on the speedo. Parked it with a hove to for lunch by Alcatraz and the Golden Gate was our backdrop. Light coming home but still some wind. Two more days of beautiful weather are in the forcast!

It seems boats are getting bigger and faster all the time. When I sail the bay and hit that occasional 8 kts it is thrilling. When I see a video of sail boats going an effortless 30 -35 knots it blows me away. I dream of some day sailing on one of these screamers, but until then I'll just keep watching the vids.

I have been wanting to hang glide since I was a teen. The freedom, the view, the bird like feeling of drifting over the hills. I finally got a chance a few weeks ago. I was down in Cabo and these guys are flying around selling rides off the beach. What the heck, let's go! We took off and in a few seconds we were flying up into the sky and above the surf. It had an engine but the feeling of floating over the ocean in this small craft was amazing. I found a guy in SF who does it a bit different. He modified his hang glider so he could take off and land in the bay. Now that is cool. Check him out here.

Latitudes and Attitudes is magazine, website and TV show dedicated to the crusing lifestyle. The founder, Bob Bitchin, is a man who was born for adventure. I recently finished his book, "Letters from the Lost Soul" which was a very fun read. Here is a sample from their TV show from the island of Tonga. Watch it here.

Here is a very funny video of a bonehead fisherman. Gone fishing.

If you like music you may enjoy this. AOL has an amazing array of over 200 radio stations that are available for free. This includes a nice sampling of XM stations. Get a screen name and start listening. Great for holiday tunes too. Works on Macs! Click here.

Bridge wins.

Update from the 5 Oceans Race:
It was only Wednesday that we were all engrossed in a fast and furious battle between bitter rivals Alex Thomson (HUGO BOSS) and Mike Golding (ECOVER), jostling constantly for second place, neck and neck, at times only separated by only one mile. The first cruel blow was struck at 0300 GMT on Thursday morning when Alex Thomson capsized as a result of severe structural damage to the top of his keel. By 1100 GMT, the young British skipper was forced to make the devastating and crushing decision to abandon ship as the damage was deemed irreparable and an immediate threat to his security.

Meanwhile Mike Golding, some 70 miles to the east, was experiencing some of the best sailing of his career, breaking his personal record for a top speed by hitting 32 knots and covering 446 miles in 24 hours, further closing the gap on leader Bernard Stamm (CHEMINEES POUJOULAT). However, once the FICO World Champion received the call from race control that Thomson was in trouble, Golding didn't hesitate to immediately turn back and race towards HUGO BOSS as fast as possible, his focus shifted instantly from racing to rescue. This meant battling into strong headwinds and big seas to get to Thomson as quickly as possible in a race against the oncoming weather and the onset of darkness. The game had completely changed.

Although Golding made contact with Thomson on Thursday evening around 2030 GMT in typical Southern Ocean conditions of sleet and snow, it was jointly agreed to undertake the dangerous sea rescue and transfer at first light on Friday morning. Golding spent a nervous evening preparing himself and the boat for one of the toughest challenges in offshore racing.

At 0500 GMT Alex Thomson bid a tearful farewell to HUGO BOSS, his boat for three years, and jumped into his life raft, wearing his survival suit. Despite a well formulated plan from the two experienced sailors, the rescue was plagued by engine problems on ECOVER and 15 foot swell, making manoeuvring close to impossible for Golding. Finally, after four desperate attempts, Thomson stepped aboard ECOVER to much huge relief from both Brits. After dressing a hand wound that Alex picked up during the rescue, the rivals turned partners prepared to head back on course to Fremantle.

However, lady luck had not dealt her last cruel blow to these two skippers. At 1150 GMT on Friday, Mike and Alex were enjoying a much needed whisky coffee when a 40 knot icy gust blasted over the boat. They heard an incredible bang and rushed outside to see what was happening. They arrived on deck just in time to watch the top of the mast shatter before their eyes. Devastated by the damage, Golding turned to make best speed towards Cape Town. ECOVER now has two drained, very exhausted skippers on board this morning. An extremely long night saw work going on until they could do no more. With a staysail set only in 30-40knots of wind and extreme cold, they have been making steady progress on a course between north and 030 degrees.

Read the rest of the story here.

Check out this wild concept here.