New York to San Francisco Sailing Record Broken

Photo Latitude / JR© 2008 Latitude 38 Publishing Co., Inc.

The catamaran Gitana 13 smashed the New York to San Francisco sailing record by almost 2 weeks yesterday. The 110 ft Maxi-Cat sailed under the Golden Gate bridge and to the finish line at Alcatraz yesterday morning with a time of 43 days 38 minutes. This route goes around the long way, Cape Horn for a total of over 14,ooo miles. This is the same route that all ships took to get to California in the days before the Panama Canal. The clipper ship Flying Cloud set a record of 89 days 8 hours in 1854 that held for 135 years.
The Gitane 13 is currently at the Corinthian Yacht Club and will be setting off to break the San Francisco to Yokohama record (14 days, 22 hours) around the end of March.

Note that Steve Fossett held the San Francisco to Yokohama sailing record for a while in 1996.

For more info check out Latitude 38

Snowboarder lost at Tahoe resort

17 year old Thomas Groh got lost on Saturday while riding on the backside of Northstar at Tahoe. The snowboarder from Novato, CA was riding on the Challenger run which runs along the southwestern boundary of the resort. It was snowing hard that afternoon. It seems that he overshot the bottom cat track and wound up well beyond the lift. He was fortunate to have a cell phone but unfortunate to have let the batteries pretty much run out. His friends reported him missing right around closing time (4:15pm). He eventually was able to get a call through to a friend. It wasn't a lot of help since he had no idea where he was. From one report, as searchers headed out to find him, he curled up in the snow and waited. Despite the hard snowfall searchers were able to find his tracks. At around 10pm they shot up a flare and he spotted it. He was rescued at 10:30pm just as the storm was about to get a lot worse.

For more see a video interview from Fox news Reno.

1 crewmember leaves the 1000 Days at Sea project

The “1000 Days at Sea: The Mars Ocean Odyssey” started on April 21, 2007 when the Reid Stowe and Soanya Ahmad sailed the 70 ft. schooner Anne out of Hoboken, New Jersey.

The idea was that once they left, they would stay at sea out of sight of land for a long time.

1000 days I think.

Today we learned that after 306 days, Soanya's seasickness has gotten so bad that she had to leave the project. She was picked up off the coast of Freemantle Australia. I was always under the impression that one could get over sea sickness if you stick it out but I've never stuck it out in the Southern Ocean, let alone for 306 days. She has broken the record for longest time at sea by a female as well as several other records. Let's hope she feels better on land and that Reid can continue on alone for another 700 days.

For more info on the project check our their web site at http://1000days.net/

Lunar eclipse kind of fuzzy last night

We went up to a hillside in San Francisco to watch the eclipse. A lot of high clouds obscured the view but we caught a glimpse or 2 of the fully eclipsed moon through the clouds.

Total Lunar Eclipse Tonight

Here on the west coast of North America, we just might be able to see a total eclipse of the moon this evening. This eclipse here starts at 7:01PM PST and will last until 7:51PM PST. The weather is finicky today but with some cloudless luck, we'll be able to see it.
For more info about the eclipse, and times to check it out in your time zone, check out Nasa's Lunar Eclipse Page.