[Source: Vende Globe] As the Southern Ocean delivers the first big winds of this Vende Globe, speeds at the front of the fleet climb proportionately. The leaders are well into 35-40 knots of wind and big rolling seas, anticipating forecast gusts of 45-50 knots tonight as the gales peak for about 10-12 hours. The challenge as ever is not just pressing hard when you can through the worst of the storm, knowing how little distance separates the top 10 boats, setting the Open 60 up to deal with the big squalls and gusts, but anticipating when the wind is building and when it is starting away again. Most are now predicting that this system will be relatively short and sharp. Highlights from day 25 of the Vende Globe. 4 December 2008.  read more »

Posted by: enesmuts
Boat Loans By Excel Credit  read more »

I'm back from my delivery of an Outer Reef 65 to Palm Beach. It was eventful and boring in equal measures. We had three systems including gales offshore pass on the trip down and had to spend more time in the Intra Coastal Waterway (ICW) than we wanted to. The ICW is suffering from a lack of funding. It's supposed to be dredged to a depth of 14 feet but in many cases it's less than half of that and with wind from the north or north west tends to empty towards sounds like the Albemarle or Pungo River, Neuse River, or Pamlico Sound. Moreover, in the larger bodies of water it gets uncomfortably rough. Anyway, inside a big powerboat (expedition trawler) with stablilizers it's warm, comfortable and level. There's pitch, of course, but no roll. I can't stress this enough: There are logs in the ICW that float below or just at the surface of the water. While navigating it, you MUST keep an active watch. Some boaters will report the deadheads as securit anouncements on the VHF, but more often it's up to you. Actually, it's always up to you. One sad thing about the ICW is that where there are no speed limits, large powerboat wakes are destroying the banks. This is bad because the eroded materials end up in the ICW and because the undermined trees end up as deadheads that can be hit. In vessels with protected rudders and propellers they are just noisy. In boats where that's not the case they're a disaster lurking. What was really nice was going with someone who has experience on the ICW. Cory has been up and down it 30 something times and knows all the cool little places. I plan on stopping at all of them and more on my adventure. Many people get Beaufort, NC and Beaufort, SC mixed up. The North Carolina one is bo fort and the South Carolina one is beu fort. Easy way to remember this is 'o' comes before 'u' so the bo fort (Beaufort, NC) is above the South Carolina one. The members of the local populace gets very irritated when you mix them up. Beaufort, NC is a sailor's town. Sure, powerboats stop there but unlike most other marine towns, they don't hold much sway. Beaufort is a jumping off point for the Bahamas, Bermuda, and all places south. It's below Cape Hatteras so you can avoid unpleasantries there. True, there are still two more capes (Lookout and Fear) which have similar histories of shipwrecks but are not, for some reason, avoided as assidously. I met a fellow 424 owner, John Stevenson, and we had a nice afternoon together and he joined us for dinner at a very tasty restaurant just up the road from the town marina. I think it's on Queen Street, and it's not called a restaurant but a market. It's a little pricy, but not bad. And the food is excellent. John has been all over the Atlantic with his 424 and is extremely knowledgeable. It was a stroke of great luck to hook up with him. He's off to the Bahamas now. There's a little bar on Middle Lane, too, where if she's reading this (highly doubtful), I'd like to thank the lady who popped in and danced with me for one dance and then left. Very much like a drive-by dance. We had to stay in Beaufort for a day and a half while we had propeller work done. Remember the deadhead thing?  read more »

[Source: Team Russia] Kosatka, Team Russias challenger for the Volvo Ocean Race 2008-09, has left Portland, UK, bound for the start port of Alicante. Skipper Andreas Hanakamp and his crew have been preparing Kosatka for this moment, fighting the terrible weather in the UK over the last week. A series of low-pressure systems brought torrential floods and gale force winds preventing the shore team from reattaching the keel and stepping its new mast. With a break in the weather on Monday, it was all hands on deck to reassemble the boat after a major refit, upgrades and refinements. Kosatka is expected to arrive in Spain by the weekend.  read more »