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Blowback is the unanticipated consequences of your actions. Everything you do produces some blowback. Sometimes blowback can get serious.
This is the story of some serious blowback from living the dream of sailing away.
Stories about the trials of voyaging in small boats usually contain hair-raising accounts of life-threatening adventures and heroic deeds. Crews lash themselves to [...]

Flowing northward at 4 to 6 knots, the Gulf Stream between the Florida mainland and Bahamian archipelago is effectively the largest river in the world. Even a mild wind blowing against it’s massive flow causes vertical waves to build, creating conditions that are dangerous. Marc Kraft, Owner and Operator of Pacific Yachting, remembers. (STC Ed.)

MANY [...]

Flying a spinnaker for the first time can be both exhilarating and challenging as LaLain, Yuka, Carl, and John discover during our Pacific Yachting class on the Monterey Bay.
(Click image to view photos)

Kiteology 101 ONLINE book coming soon! Check back.
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When I was a young boy, my father and I would take walks along the seashore and he would quote “Sea Fever” from memory, thus infecting me with an archetypal imagery that has sustained me through life’s many trials.
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What drove us to do something as crazy as making a sailing DVD? Here’s the backstory.

Click here to purchase the whole DVD
In late 2004, we returned to Santa Cruz, California after a six-year voyage that took our family through the Panama Canal, across the Atlantic, around the Mediterranean, and home again. Once returned, Monica, a physical [...]

A letter to Latitude 38
Like Latitude, I found Bill Hinkle’s letter in the May issue - in which he stated that living the cruising life when he was young was “senseless” - to be interesting. Rather forthrightly, he gives voice to the often unspoken fears and trepidations that entrap people and keep them from taking [...]

(In my opinon, the Moore 24 is the quintessential Santa Cruz boat. Back in 1990 I was the editor of the Moore 24 Class Association newletter. The newletter developed quite a reputaton in the Bay Area with articles like “Shoot this Baby Otter” and “Moore Homes for Homeless”. I wrote this silly ditty after my [...]

For some, a single image tells a story. Jamie Mitchell caught this Black Crowned Night Heron as it contemplated (do Herons contemplate?) a run of anchovies in Santa Cruz Harbor. Nice pic Jamie!—STC Ed.

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See more of Jamie’s pics at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamieharbor/
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I learned about the island way in Bequia, one of the islands making up the Grenadines group in the Caribbean. I’d sailed into Admiralty Bay to drop off a couple of pick-up crew intent on taking the ferry over to St. Vincent Island. When it comes to Caribbean Islands, Bequia seems to me to be [...]

Songline’s Log: July 17 - 23
The following is a summary of a recent cruise around the Santa Barbara Channel Islands.
Songline departed Ventura Harbor on the afternoon of July 17th with Marc, Monica, and Paul aboard. Michael was supposed to round out our crew to four but he had a dental emergency at the last minute.
After [...]