Inside Practical Sailor

There is something mildly annoying about receiving a semi-automated e-mail from a Practical Sailor tester hard at work in the Bahamas while I'm stuck in the office. Im not sure why I found these recent communiques so irksome. They were seemingly harmless notes from a friend, with the subject line Check-in/Ok message for Franks Spot."

Being raised on the shores of Biscayne Bay, I should have known better than to expect crowds of sailing fanatics to converge on Miami when the Volvo Ocean Race sailed into town last month. Still, I held faint hope. Now, as the race fleet closes in on the coast of Lisbon and the flurry of press releases begins anew, I'm reminded of my many disappointments in the Miami stopover.

The Coast Guards request late last month that sailors stand-down and suspend any offshore racing outside San Francisco Bay in the wake of last months tragedy in the San Francisco Yacht Clubs Farallones Race rankled more than a few Bay area sailors. The response was not surprising. Critics decried the move as draconian, driven by overzealous safety mavens, an example virulent government intrusion, trampling of personal freedoms, etc. etc. etc. It is a…

I recently read an essay that compared sailing to tennis, two sports that I enjoy, but are as different as they come. The writer implied that both sports are infected with a clubby sense of elitism, and while Im not so blind as to dismiss this as absolute nonsense, the comment irked me to no end. Some sailors might argue that theres a difference between racers and cruisers, but that would only perpetuate unfair stereotypes and misses the point. The distinction is much simpler: The sea is not a tennis court.

I had a near picture-perfect test sail last Thursday aboard the new Hunter 33 on the Manatee River, just north of our offices in Sarasota, Fla. All in all, the boat was very well behaved in the 12 to 14 knots of breeze, almost ideal conditions for this family coastal cruiser. Little did I know that days later, the parent company of Hunter, one of the cornerstones of production sailboat building in America, would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

According to a press release issued yesterday from Kannad Marine, the FCC has approved for sale in the U.S. Kannads SafeLink R10 SRS, the worlds first personal Automatic Identification System (AIS) device designed to be worn by individuals and activated to assist in man overboard recovery. Worn on a life jacket and activated by simply sliding off the safety tab and lifting an arming cap to deploy the antenna, this unique product sends structured alert messages, GPS position, and a special identity code directly to AIS receivers within (approximately) a four-mile radius.

It's just a few weeks until summer begins, and our hopes and prayers for a safe 2012 sailing season in North America have already been shattered. Five sailors were washed overboard and died in Saturdays Farallones Race, sponsored by the San Francisco Yacht Club. This was an experienced crew, which included several sailors with close ties to the San Francisco Yacht Club-the home club to many longtime Practical Sailor readers.According to news accounts, the Sydney 38 Low Speed Chase was struck by a breaking wave while rounding South Farallon Island, one of a group of islands outside San Francisco Bay that serves as a rounding mark in the 48-mile race.

Who can you trust? Youd think that the Internet explosion and the current boom in blogging and social media would make life easier for the wannabe cruising sailor looking for information on boats, equipment, and cruising in general. But when you start peeling back the layers of information-everything from bulletin boards to blogs to e-zines-you find that the Web is rife with contradictions, bad advice, and now, some contemptible stealth marketing.

Were just wrapping up our testing of the new e7 MFD from Raymarine, which we ran side-by-side with the Garmin 740s, one of our favorites in our recent comparison of small chartplotter-sounders. The e7 was the most interesting electronic gizmo we saw at this years Miami Boat Show, the annual debutante ball for manufacturers to unveil their newest creations to the public. The company calls it a hybrid display, using both a…

The government already has a variety of ways to track our comings and goings, and I suppose I can learn to live with these. But my boat always has been a more sacred and personal space. As I reflected on a future when a person can no longer step aboard his sailboat and fall off the map, I began to wonder whether this new floating creation, forever held in the gaze of the state, will even qualify as a boat.