On the Water: News & Events

Jeff Lebesch (left) and Adrian Johnson, first and second finishers in the Singlehanded Transpac. © Kathe Hashimoto Photography No matter where you go in the world it’s “never like this” when they switch the weather on. So it goes with distance events as well. The 2010 edition of the Singlehanded Transpac has been slow going much [...] …Read More

Sea Ray's Aquapalooza Signature Event, an on-water boating extravaganza, is scheduled for this coming Saturday, July 10th, in Austin, Texas. The Aquapalooza series is billed as the world's largest boating event, last year attracting 15,600 boats and 84,000 people at 123 events. The signature event is the centerpiece of the series, and this year takes place on Austin's Lake Travis. …Read More

Consummate veteran Skip Allen, who has won California-Hawaii races crewed, doublehanded, and solo, maintains that doublehanded is the hardest, harder even than singlehanded because when you’re alone, you know you have to make compromises. Doublehanded, he says, “You feel obligated for your partner’s sake to keep pushing as hard as you can.” The quote is approximate, [...] …Read More

It's just a draft  -- artist I'm not -- but maybe someone out there in Panbo land can craft this into something fun for a hat and business card?  The graphic idea is an electronic wave turning into an ocean wave, but I'm open to another des... …Read More

The defenders of the America’s Cup today released narrower parameters for the next racing class, still keeping open the question of whether it will be monohull or multihull. I’m happy to see a wing mast specifically permitted in the new specs for the multi, and I am only mildly surprised to see a cant-keel included in [...] …Read More

When you need to find boat ramps, you can look everywhere at a glance with a new iPhone app, the Boat Ramp locator. The free new app is available to anyone and can be used on both iPhones and Droid phones. It’s available in the Apple iTunes store and in the Droid Marketplace, and can [...] …Read More

There's a lot to say about this screen and how the values got there, or didn't, but what I like the most is how Maretron's DSM250 is displaying the outputs of two NMEA 2000 depth transducers at once, and that I was even able to name their data window... …Read More

The problem: The wind will carry you Dead Down Wind, but DDW is slow. DDW is especially “slow” in a fast race boat sailing against similar boats that are using narrower wind angles to generate more apparent wind and additional speed. But would it be possible to create a contraption that captures the wind and uses [...] …Read More

My search for Gizmo's navigation PC has taken a strange turn -- as you can see above, posed around a Furuno MFD12 -- and I'm blaming a Panbo commenter who recently crowed about scoring a 12v, fanless all-in-one Datalux iPix on eBay.  I'm close ... …Read More

I saw the news in Soundings Trade Only yesterday that Bob Hewes had passed. Hewes is credited with building the first modern flats boat in the 1950s, born out of a bonefishing trip with legendary fly angler Lefty Kreh. In doing so he influenced an entire genre of angling, specifically how people approach skinny water [...] …Read More