H2uh0

Checkout these crazies from Norway and Iceland as they hit some sick lines. Towards the end the fall must be 50 feet and they just plunge in. Get your fix here.

I am a cruiser at heart. I look forward to the day when I can cast off the lines and head west to New Zealand. Until then, I am constanly looking at cruising boats and researching their cruising attributes. Here is an example of a highly regarded cruising boat - the KP 44. This boat will take you anywhere in comfort and style. Lots of room below for all the food and toys, and can easily sail more than 150 miles a day. Let's see, that will get me to Hawaii in about 18 days! Check this review and start dreaming yourself! Click here.

I have been working with Macs since the Lisa in 82'. My Ibook died in June so I purchased a Macbook. Wow, what a nice machine. Unfortunatly these new computers have been running too hot. The new Intel processer is fast but hot. So hot it was melting the insulatin of the heatsink and causing the computer to randomly shut down. We have two MB's at our house and both were affected. Once Apple figured it out in early September, they were able to make the fix. New heatsink design and a much cooler machine. The bad news is this happened to 1000's of folks with brand new computers. They were not happy campers. But now they have the fix and it took me 2.5 days to send it from SF to Tenn. get the fix and I am back online. If you are looking for a new laptop, these are great ones. The new builds donot have this problem so go get one. For you PC folks, the cool thing about the new Macs is, you can run Windows and Mac side by side on one machine! How cool is that?

Check out this vid of some great surfing on the islands of Singapore. You won't believe the swell. Wanna go? Click on the second vid for just the surf part. Check the vid here.

My computer is in the shop being repaired so I will be offline for about a week. In the meantime, check out the links on the left! See you soon.

Take a listen to one of the few sailing podcasts on the net. This week they interview Nick Maloney. He has sailed around the world three times among other accomplishments. Listen here.

Check out these cool pics from a famous race in Saint Tropez. This site features some of the best sailing pics on the planet. Check it here.

What a cool way to ski, blade, skate and board! The potential of these wings is amazing. Check out the vid here.

Our adventure begins on the 24th of September, 2006. Tex, Dave and I met at the boat at around midnight to load the boat and get ready for an am departure to Potato Slough. We did not need to rush off because the tides would not be favorable until about 10:30am. Had a nice raspberry pancake breakfast and off we went. Very little wind so we motor sailed towards the Richmond Bridge. It was a slow day but spirits were high as this was our third trip to the Delta. September is a great time to go as it is very quiet up there this time of year. We make it up to the Carquienez Strait around 2pm. Still slow going and I am sure we are not going to make it to Antioch on this day. We end up off Benicia at aound sunset and head into their yacht harbor for dinner and rest. We tie up at the fuel dock and begin BBQing our fresh salmon dinner. Along with some fine wine, salad and some veggies we feast on the boat. After clean up we all notice how peaceful the boat is. It seems the tide is falling and we are sitting in about 4 feet of mud. We look at the charts and it will be high tide around 7am and just in time for our departure. We all sleep well and get started early.

The wind is blowing and off we go. We are getting good speed and the Bencia bridge has just passed. There is the mothball fleet off our port bow. The Navy keeps all their old ships in the bay, just in case they might need them again. It is an impressive sight. We follow the channel makers. We round a bend and the water is 50' deep and we are hitting 6 kts. We stray out of the channel for a little bit as we get closer to our detination. We pass a bright yellow marker and continue on. We soon find out what the yellow maker was for as we are hard agound in some soft sand. We get the sails down and I jump in the water with the anchor to begin our kedging efforts. Slowly we get back to deep water and we are sailing again. We hit sand one more time as we head out and then we stick inside the channel for the rest of the trip. Getting stuck up here is not that big of a deal but it costs us an hour of our time to get everything sorted out.

We continue up New York Slough and stop in Antioch for a pumpout and a break. We shove off and three hours later we are secure in beautiful Potato Slough. There is one other boat and they are at the other end of the anchorage. We go for a nice swim and then get ready for a pasta dinner and backgammon.

Wednesday morning we have a light breakfast of granola, fruit and yogurt. We then have a nice morning swim and hang around the boat for the day. Inflatables, kayak and a hammock in the bow make for a very relaxing day. The weather is perfect and the water refreshing. We have some great conversations and enjoy our piece of heaven. At 3pm we take off for Antioch. We need to begin our home trek a little closer to home as it will be an all day sail to SF. We follow the channel markers under motorsail and before we know it the sun has set and we still have an hour to go. We approach Antioch in the dark and see the lights of the harbor. We settle into our slip after feeling our way in and head off for a very fine meal at Humphrey's. Named after the wayward whale that swam up to the Delta about 15 years ago. He eventually was lured back to the Pacific after some folks played the sounds of other humpbacks eating and having sex. The cool part about the story is that on Friday afternoon about 5pm they set Humphrey on a course under the Golden Gate Bridge and of course the media was all over this. The local radio was abuzz with the news and as he headed out the Gate traffic came to a stop on the brige as everyone stopped to watch him swim away. What a great sendoff!
After a fine meal we headed to bed and a great nights sleep.

Up at 6:30 for our return home. The wind is up but it is on our nose so we motorsail some more. As we exit New York we are barely moving so we begin tacking and watching the charts and the channel markers. We hit C-Strait and the wind has picked up to about 16 kts and the going is slow. I check the tides and we are getting a
.7 kt favorable push in the right direction. Oh joy! We need another 3 or 4 but it was not to be on this day. We fight our way to the Richmond Bridge and finally the wind is on the beam and we are hitting 7-8 kts without any Yanmar assistance. We make it home shortly after sunset. Another successful and safe Delta trip under our belt. Thank-you Addiction for a great adventure to the mighty San Jouquin River.

Back from a great trip to the delta! We had very little wind on the way up and so it took two days to get to Potato Slough. We had a full day there but it just was not enough time. On the way back we had too much wind on the nose and it took a 12 hour sail to make it home. We had a lot of laughs, great food, and awesome times. Now its on to the second half of the vacation. A trip to the famous Banderas Bay in Puerto Vallarta. We are heading there with 9 friends and will be staying at a beautiful villa on the water. Hope to do some scuba and sailing on these lovely waters. We have wireless access so maybe a few posts from the coast...

A blaring car horn shook Dean Karnazes awake. His eyes snapped open to see two headlights coming straight at him in the middle of a two-lane highway in the Santa Cruz Mountains. He was completely confused. Where am I? he asked himself. What in the world is going on? Whatever it was, it seemed dangerous as hell. A split second later, he hurled himself into the brush on the road's shoulder.

By the light of the full moon, Karnazes checked his watch -- 3:30 a.m. He finally realized what had happened. He'd fallen asleep while running and veered into the center of the highway. Shakily, he stood up.

Karnazes was near the end of the 2002 Providian Relay, a 199-mile footrace from Napa to Santa Cruz that's normally run by teams of 12 people. But as he had for the past seven years, Karnazes was running the entire course by himself, as what he wryly calls "Team Dean." When the horn jolted him awake, he'd been running for more than 50 hours, without sleep, and had covered 160 miles.

Brushing debris off his Polarfleece jacket and checking himself for cuts and scrapes, Karnazes set off again along the dark road. Only 39 miles to go, then there would be plenty of time for rest. Read on.

We are off this weekend for a fifty mile sail up to the mighty San Jouquin River from SF. My two best friends and I will get into the sloughs for some swimming, water skiing, chilling and just hanging out on the river. It's very quiet up there this time of year and the weather is awesome. The first time we headed this way we got stuck in the soft mud a few times. We always got out, but did manage to lose an anchor in our kedging efforts. We will be more careful this time with the markers. Our friend Ray has a ski boat and he will be meeting up with us. Should be a blast! I leave you some serious windsurf wipeouts that will blow you away! Catch the vid here.

Check out some surf footage off the South African coast. These boys are stoked. To view the vid click here.

Here is a great cruising website about a couple who buys a very rough project boat for a future cruise around the world. They thought it would take a year to fix it up but instead it took 10,000 man hours and three years to get it going. They had a wonderful trip and made it around the globe in another three years. See some of their slide shows of their various adventures as they sail the world! Click here.

Check the video here.

12000 nm into the circumnavigation, four years on the journey, 36 hours in Colombia, and the bubble burst.

It was dark moon, just before midnight, March 27. The sound of a boat's wake hitting our steel hull stirred me. "They're here!" I woke Chris.

"Who's here?" he asked.

"The freaking welcoming party!" I shouted. He jumped up to close the hatch, and saw the first of six armed men board MALAIKA.

Earlier that night I had insisted that we lock the companion way, which can only be done from outside, and so Chris climbed into the cabin through the hatch, which was left ajar, but secured.

Both hatches have bulletproof glass portholes, and so we could see them trying to smash the glass with their guns. They had not brought tools with them, as they expected the companion way to be open, like the other 3 boats pirated earlier this year.

"Chris," they shouted, "Open the door, it's the police!"

We looked at each other. "They know us." We can count the people we know here on one hand.

With only a little flash light, they stumbled around and yelled at us to put the lights on. Chris quickly disconnected the batteries. They tried unsuccessfully to break the lock.

"MAYDAY! MAYDAY!" I wasted precious minutes in vain. They heard my call and cut the SSB aerial.

The lock would not budge and so they chopped around it. The hatch is hard teak and it took them over an hour to gain entry.

The entire duration I was calling for help on the radios. I was answered on the VHF ch 16 by the Colombian Coast Guard, who asked me to confirm our position as Pt. Hermosa, Puerto Velero.

Never to be heard from again, or ever seen.

The guys outside were getting frustrated, and so with two of them on each side of the hatch, they tried to lift it open. After enough prying they managed to lift it slightly, but Chris was able to deploy a can of pepper spray into three of their faces. He also continued to hang on the inside of the hatch, holding it down. The pirates never worked out that the hatch slides back and doesn't lift up to open. That is what saved us.

Once the lock was chopped free, they pulled out the first and second wash boards--the third always sticks. With the hatch closed overhead, the entry was too small to walk through and would have required them to crawl. It was safer for them to call us out one at a time, rather than them come inside, as they did not know what else we had to arm ourselves with.

When it became evident that they were going to gain entry, the panic that had seized us earlier evaporated. A calm overcame us and everything slowed down. It felt like my ears were blocked and my thoughts echoed in my head. We could die tonight, but that's O.K. I have had a few good innings and this is as good a time as any. With that Chris took my hand and said, "When the door opens we get out!!! And you get into the water, ASAP. Don't stop to chat, straight in the water, and I will follow."

Continue reading by clicking here.

About 100 miles off the San Diego coast lies a huge mountain that rises almost out of the sea. Surfers have recently discovered this tow in surf spot. When the swells are up, it can produce some of the largest waves on the planet. Check out this vid by clicking here.

BM has come to a close and they say it was one of the best in a long time. Art cars, theme camps, incredible desert artwork and about 40,000 burners. I did not make it but hope to attend the week long festival in Nevada in the next year or so. Check out some great pics here.

Found this video over at Wetass. These ski foilers know their stuff but what you see here is all the mistakes they make in their bid for the perfect aerial. Check it here.

Now if you told me there was a man who was going to swim around the world, I would say he is nuts. But this is no ordinary man. In fact, he has already run around the world (35,000 miles and 50 pairs of running shoes). He expects his swim to take about 8 years and 30 pairs of googles. Read his story here.

Several months ago we featured several folks that were attempting to sail around the globe in very small crafts. Well the the smaller of the two (8 feet in lenght) has quit before even getting off the dock due to lack of funds. I am not sure what these guys are thinking but somethng is not right. Read the posts here.

SAN BLAS, Mexico - Three Mexican fishermen adrift in a 25-foot fiberglass fishing boat for nine months and nine days were expected to return to their homeport of San Blas the week of August 21.

Initial reports picked up August 9 disagreed on whether the three young men in their 20s were at sea three months or nine months.

"It was nine months and nine days," said Jesus Vidana, one of the survivors. " One of the guys on the boat [had] a watch that shows the months and the days."

The anglers' disabled boat was spotted near a tiny atoll called Baker's Island, midway between Hawaii and Australia - nearly 5,500 miles west of their departure point - by a Taiwanese tuna fishing trawler owned by Koo's Fishing Co. of the Marshall Islands. Manager Eugene Muller said the same boat had picked up two other drifting fishermen from Kiribati five months ago. Those men had been at sea more than two months.

Two days after the San Blas anglers' miraculous rescue, Mexican government officials told reporters that two other men had been onboard the boat when the vessel left San Blas . The two as-yet unnamed men died at sea and their bodies thrown overboard.

Reuter's News Service on August 17 quoted a local San Blas government official as saying no one in the village knew that two other men were onboard. The survivors didn't mention their boat mates when initially interviewed by Mexican media from their rescue ship August 16, but later told officials the men had refused to eat, and succumbed to starvation - one in January and the other in February.

This survival story will go on record as one of the longest lost-at-sea sagas in modern history, surpassing British Vice Admiral William Bligh's six-week journey to Timor following the Bounty mutiny, and challenging or exceeding Chinese sailor Poon Lim's four months in the South Atlantic in 1942 after a German U-boat torpedoed the British Merchant Ship on which he worked.

The trio of shark fishermen - Vidana, Salvador Ordonez and Lucio Rendon - left their village near San Blas on October 28, 2005 for what they had assumed was a three-week fishing trip. While on the trip, however, one of their motors failed and the other ran out of gas, leaving them at the mercy of winds, waves and strong westerly currents.

They said they survived their 5,500-mile odyssey by eating "raw fish, ducks and seagulls" and collecting rainwater to drink.

There were times when we had only one bird to share among the three of us," recounted Vidana, adding that they once went 15 days without anything to eat.

They had no radio, but did have a compass, flashlights, water and a Bible which they read daily. By trip's end, reports say there were but a few worn pages left in the battered book.

"We never lost hope because there is a God up there," Vidana said during a telephone interview from the rescue ship just days after they were picked up.

The men were all asleep when they were spotted. Once aboard the Koo's ship, they were unable to communicate with the Chinese-speaking crew.

The men's onboard interview with the Televisa News station August 16 shocked family and friends in the fishing villages of San Blas and El Limon; most had long given up the men for dead and first learned of their miraculous journey and rescue when Mexican media began broadcasting their story.

They were reported to be sunburned and underweight but otherwise in good health. And though now safe, coming home to Mexico will still take time. The Mexican government said they will send someone to the Marshall Islands to pick up the men after the fishing trawler returns to port, possibly by August 24.

"I knew we would be found," said Vidana.

The Longest Wave - video powered by Metacafe

IT'S A LOT HARDER THAN YOU MIGHT THINK to swim from island to island across four-knot currents, gargling salt water hour after hour, getting chased by sharks, and towing your worldly possessions on a five-foot surfboard while flying the British flag. (It's even harder when you're told on your very first day in the British Virgin Islands that your British naval flag is actually a Swiss flag.) What with the jellyfish, hecklers, and excessive rum intake, you might even think twice about swimming your way through the Caribbean.

But that's what I did for spring break.

Why, at age 43, couldn't I have just plunked myself down at some swanky resort? Blame it on my midlife-crisis swimming fixation, in which I've bragged quite publicly that I'm going to make it to the 2008 Olympics in the 200 freestyle, even though I never even qualified for the trials in my prime. In fact, I pretty much sucked as a younger swimmer until my senior year at Kenyon College, when I came sort of close to qualifying—finishing two seconds behind in the 200 free (akin to being five minutes back in a marathon). After that, I went on with my life, albeit with the nagging thought that if I'd just had a little more time, I could've made it to the podium.

Now, at the last possible moment, I want to see if I was right.

When I first resubmerged myself in the swimming world last fall, I was like any other midlife dingbat pedaling past you in traffic jams or burning rubber at the local treadmill. I was swimming six days a week. Pumping iron. Counting heartbeats. Getting in touch with my inner guppy. But something was missing: I wasn't having any fun. And I wasn't going all that fast. So I decided to train more like I had in college. That meant downing plenty of fresh-squeezed lime margaritas, doing vodka shots in the Jacuzzi, and spending money like my daddy would bail me out. My wife and four children weren't amused, but, sure enough, I got faster. Soon I was closing in on my old pace.

As my besotted winter blurred by, I figured I'd head south like all the other kids for spring break, only instead of passing out on the same beach every night, I'd swim from island to island. That way I could keep up my Olympic training, with only a few tweaks to my rigorous schedule: swim, eat, nap, drink, nap, drink, eat, drink, sleep, repeat.

Read the remainder of the article here.

Professionlly built cruiser with upgraded living quarters is now on the market. This boat was designed for the person who wants it all. Flying bridge, comfortable in a seaway, and ready for long distance adventures. Your dreams are your only limitations. Operators are standing by...