Archives for posts with tag: boat

Sailing catamarans have come a long way since the Hobie Cats of the 1960s. Today’s America’s Cup cats literally fly over the water on hydrofoil daggerboards and rudders, reaching speeds over 40 knots. That’s an absolutely incredible speed for a sailboat.

I used to sail my old Prindle 18 across SF Bay and we did maybe 15—18 knots and that was thrilling. We’re also hanging off the side!

The video above features the massive AC72, Oracle’s 72′ boat. The one below features the smaller AC45.

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We finished this lovely little book a few weeks ago. It’s a collection of stories, told by Wylie Blanchet, of cruising the coast of British Columbia in the summers of the 1920s, with her five children (and sometimes a dog), in a 25-foot motorboat.

They traveled at a time when the BC is coast was changing from a traditional land to a modern one. They came across Indian villages abandoned for the summer, remote inlets with perhaps a single cabin and a sole occupant, and, at one point, a bear, which the children mistook for a man standing in the forest watching them.

These days you don’t often read about adventures as told from the perspective of a mother and her children but there they were cruising up the coast of Vancouver Island, a woman and her five children setting off every summer and coming back with adventures to tell.

Link: The Curve of Time

At first this video looks like standard travel fare: some friends going down to Baja, having a look around. Then, at 1:22, they’re in a boat petting a whale. A whale!

It’s right next to the boat and they reach out and touch it like it’s a curious puppy. And maybe it sort of is, because it’s a baby whale. Then mama shows up — she’s huge — and… everything’s still fine! It’s totally amazing to me. I know whales calve there but I didn’t know it was like a petting zoo. Is this a normal thing down there? Seems like it. At 3:30 the video goes back to friends hanging out, playing music, etc., like it’s no big deal.

Freakin’ whales!