Cruising World April 2015

When an Australian father-and-son sailing team set out from Jamestown, Rhode Island, in mid-February, bound for Oz and determined to prove Darwin right in his theory of natural selection, the U.S. Coast Guard came to the rescue and plucked the pair from well-forecasted stormtossed seas some 150 miles south of Nantucket (see Of Watch, page 122). Though the pair had done just about everything wrong to get themselves into such a jam, ironically they did a few things right to get themselves a helo ride out of it, including registering their emergency beacon before setting of on their illconceived voyage. The value of emergency gear such as EPIRBs and personal rescue beacons was a hot topic days earlier in Miami, when electronics company ACR hosted a preboat show cruise featuring…

Although she’s known as one of the world’s leading yacht-racing photographers, Sharon Green has roots that lie in family cruising. Her father, Don Green, circumnavigated the globe in his teens aboard Irving and Exy Johnson’s legendary brigantine Yankee, and he passed on his passion to his offspring. “My youth was spent day sailing on our Bluenose 25, Yellowbird, on Lake Ontario,” says Green, who was just 7 years old when she first took the tiller. “Much of my passion, knowledge and experience stems from those blissful days of sailing with my family.” One summer while Green was away studying photography at the Banff School of Fine Arts (she envisioned being “the next Ansel Adams”) her father commissioned a custom C&C 41, Evergreen, to challenge for the 1978 Canada’s Cup. Green…

CHANGES AT THE HELM There’s been a watch change at Cruising World. Longtime marine journalist and author Herb Mc- Cormick has been named executive editor; liveaboard sailor and writer Jen Brett has been promoted to senior editor; and Eleanor Merrill, a racer, cruiser and sailing instructor, has joined the team as managing editor. McCormick is one of the premier sailing writers in the business and has held a variety of titles with the magazine, most recently that of senior editor. In his new role, he will continue as director of the magazine’s Boat of the Year program and will oversee the popular Hands On Sailor content, as well as new boat coverage. Brett joined Cruising World as an associate editor and has played a key role in developing the brand’s…

Ginny Filiatrault lost her long struggle with cancer in January 2015. A fighter to the end, she battled the hated disease at every turn with every fiber of her being. And yet, with husband, Jacques, at her side, she managed to maintain contact with the cruising friends she had made over more than half a century. Ginny joined the Seven Seas Cruising Association in 1955, and served the SSCA as Commodores’ Bulletin editor, board member, treasurer, office manager, historian and more. To list her myriad contributions to the SSCA would fill a year of bulletins, and luckily, many are recorded in SSCA’s published official history (“Committed to Cruisers” by Dan Spurr, November 2010). Born into a California sailing family on Oct. 3, 1936, Ginny built her first boat at age…

Ted Irwin, a self-made Florida sailor who parlayed his love for and prowess in small-boat sailboat racing into a major force in American production boatbuilding, passed away in early February after a long bout with blood cancer. He was 74. After moving to the Tampa Bay area with his family as a youngster, by 15 Irwin was sailing high-performance Moth-class dinghies — built in his backyard, to his own design — at a world-class level. At 21, he landed a job as a draftsman in the boatyard of another legendary Floridian builder, Charlie Morgan. In 1963, after serving his apprenticeship and undertaking further studies, he rented a small Quonset hut on St. Petersburg Beach and launched Irwin Yachts. TED IRWIN LEFT A LEGACY THAT LIVES ON IN HARBORS AND SEAWAYS…

The American Sailing Association’s Bareboat Cruising Made Easy edited by Jo Weeks (2014, Amanda Lunn Publishing; $39.95) The American Sailing Association’s updated textbook, Bareboat Cruising Made Easy, is essential reading for cruising sailors of all levels who are setting out for an extended sail. Intended to accompany the ASA Cruising 104 class as a textbook, this 212-page book is so thorough and allencompassing that it will prove to be a useful, if not required, reference for anyone leaving the dock for more than an overnight. ASA deserves kudos for overhauling not just this established text, but its whole textbook series over the course of the last few years. Bareboat Cruising Made Easy is a great example of the ASA’s invigorated commitment to well-organized and eye-catching book design and updated, modern…