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Circumnavigation, Serendipity, & Furr-some Pirates

Circumnavigation, Serendipity, & Furr-some Pirates

The week in review: An Alaskan couple's story, Inventing the Sunfish, and other sailing stories.

We’ll call this week Jealous in July. This week we’re jealous of a couple in Juneau, and also a couple of kittens, who are all just having the most fun on sailboats imaginable. Let’s jump into it!

In this week’s sailing roundup:

Juneau you want to go: An Alaskan couple’s circumnavigation.
Surfboard + Sail + Serendipity: Invention of the Sunfish.
Puss in Boats: The most Furr-some Pirates on the seas.
Race Updates: 2023 Port Huron-to-Mackinac Island Sailboat Race.
Sailing Snippets: NudeCruise, BigBoats, Sailboat Review.

Around The World in 17 Years

“We’ll buy it if you give us lessons for three days”. And that is how a Jeanneau couple accidentally wound up circumnavigating 50,000 nautical miles. William “Bill” Heumann and Marjorie Menzi bought their C&C Landfall 48 Second Wind and began lessons.

Lessons turned into The Baja Ha Ha, which turned into exploring South America, and then the glimmer of the Pacific beckoned… Their longest contiguous time at sea was 3 months, but the worst was the southern tip of Madagascar, which they took to avoid Somali pirates on their passage from Australia to South Africa.

The next stop for Second Wind will be back to where it all started in Mexico, where Bill and Marjorie hope to have her moored there as a winter vacation home. Read their full story and see more pictures here.

Race Updates

The 2023 Port Huron-to-Mackinac Island Sailboat Race kicked off on Saturday, July 15, 2023, at 11:30 AM in southern Lake Huron, just north of the Blue Water Bridge. The race is 275 miles long and takes the boats across Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, and the Straits of Mackinac to Mackinac Island. The first boats to reach Mackinac Island were expected on Monday, July 17, 2023.

Over 200 boats entered the race this year, representing over 20 different countries. The race is a challenging one, as the boats must contend with strong winds, waves, and currents. However, it is also a beautiful one, as the boats sail through some of the most scenic areas of the Great Lakes.

The 2023 Port Huron-to-Mackinac Island Sailboat Race is the 99th consecutive running of the race. It is one of the longest freshwater races in the world, and is the world’s longest continuously running freshwater race. Official race site and trackers are here.

TRANSPAC: Results and Finishes. Multis are in, and the 52nd Transpac race welcomed the Monos. Check out the results and fantastic photos by Sharon Green and her Ultimate Sailing Team here.

Invention of the Most Popular Sailboat Ever

The legend of a surfboard, a sail, and a pregnant sailing champion. How a designer for a Red Cross rescue paddle board added a simple sail and some small adjustments - mobility suggestions courtesy of his pregnant sailing wife - to create one of the most iconic and beloved sailboats of all time. Those designers were officially inducted into the Sailing Hall of Fame in 2021, long after the first sunfish set sail in the 1950’s. You can read the full article in The Smithsonian here.

Puss in Boats

Awww look, it’s the most fearsome purr-rates on the high seas. Junior and Mila live aboard their boat Honalee, along with their parents Allen and Leiby. They learned to swim at just 3 months old, and have their boat outfitted with lines for them to scramble up in case of any meow-overboard drills. In the marina, they like to jump on and off the dock visiting other boats. You can watch their ferocious swimming and sailing skills here, but fair warning: they are very, very cute.

Sailing Snippets

The weird, wild and wonderful from around the web.

NudeCruise: Ah, the true meaning of bareboating. Carnival is partnering with Bare Necessities to offer this years nude cruise, which you can read all about here. This won’t be particularly exciting news to most sailors, since they practically invented boating in the buff. (There may or may not be a whole subreddit devoted to it). If only it were hosted on a sailboat, the mast-measuring contest jokes would write themselves… Speaking of masts.

I Like Big Boats (And I Cannot Lie): Actually, I do not, but it made for a great follow-up headline to the above Snippet. This particularly big boat, the Aquijo, has masts so tall it must sail around the Panama Canal, and is currently docked in St. John’s Bay. She has a mystery passenger aboard, rumored to be… Mel Gibson? Anyways, here you go.

Sailboat Review: Dufour 37. Cruising World takes out the new Dufour, fully tricked out and gets her heeling over. She’s fast, beam-ey, and has an inflatable forward lounge area. The lounge-ification of monohulls is here to stay, and we don’t hate it. Check out there review here.

That’s a wrap, stay safe out there and we’ll Ketch you next week ya salty dogs (and cats).

Boat Repair Poll

When you need a technical repair, how fast does your mechanic typically get the repair done? We're doing an informal poll on average repair times around the country.