Category: General

Van Isle 360 – Race Tracker

Van Isle 360 starts tomorrow.  37 boats will be racing counter-clockwise around Vancouver over 9 legs and roughly 2 weeks.  This will be the first Van Isle for everyone onboard Shearwater, and we are so looking forward to the sailing, competition, scenery, socializing, and relaxing.  So far, we are off to an excellent start having

A Late Race to the Straits Report

Should have posted this 3 weeks ago…   One of the highlights of the year around here is the annual Race to the Straits. This is a favorite for Chris & I because, while we often race double-handed, at RTTS everyone else is either DH or even single-handed. Ha! A level playing field. We did

Spadefoot Returns – 23 Days Adrift

There are bits and pieces of this saga on Facebook and sailing forums, but I thought it would be good to put all of this in one place for easy reference.  I’m not aware of many/any other boats that had been abandoned, drifted for so long, and were brought back to shore in good condition

The Fate of Poor Spadefoot

Justin here.  On dry land, happy to be with Chris. So…  What happened out there?  There’s not so much to say, really.  After the first 3 days, Spadefoot was in contention, and we were feeling pretty positive about the trip.  We had a little over 200 nm to go when the expected changed from light

Keel issues – and abandoning Spadefoot

1630 – Justin just called me to let me know he is heading towards Solaris, as he is hearing a lot of keel noise and was concerned about sudden failure.  Both Solaris and Concussion are in contact with Justin. 1705 – Justin called to say that Solaris is with him.  He has gathered items he needs to

B 1-2 (Leg 1) – Day 2 extra edition

(303 miles to go) I‘m hiding on the beanbag, the waves are right down and the breeze is 5-10, with the jib top close reaching, so a good time to send an update.  Mostly a restful day.  Just a few sail changes as I went from jib top to A2 to A0 to A2 to

B 1-2 (Leg 1) – Start / And he’s off!

(628 miles to go) This week has been somewhat of an exercise in extreme patience – which is a commodity neither one of us possess that much of.  I think we used it all up by the time 11am came around (after a really trying week with the typical boat headaches, too much driving, and

Pacific Cup Day 10 – Brochure Sailing

Day 10 was rather different than the previous days.  The sun came out, the winds eased off to 15-20 and the waves turned into long Pacific Tradewind rollers.  Just like the brochure said it would be.  We put up the A4 and spent the entire day rocketing along in relatively smooth water with relatively little

Pacific Cup Day 9 – Life on Board and Midnight Company

We are in the tradewinds for sure – lots of cumulus, and perhaps more telling, the cabin smells like wet clothes and people needing showers, mixed in with warm humidity. Last night, we saw our first racing sailboat – saw their port running lights and they seemed to be a pretty big boat, so I

Pacific Cup Day 8 – Wind

Did anyone imagine it could be this windy for this long on the way to Hawaii. Since leaving San Francisco we have not seen less than 10 knots of wind and have only seen less than 15 for maybe 30 minutes in total. Today has been the windiest so far. More like 20-30. Our experiments

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