In happier days

Hetherington said the Boundless encountered strong winds and waves about six metres high.

We had an excellent sail from Baddeck going over a thousand miles and were right in the middle of the Atlantic. A wave hit the boat in a fashion that snapped our rudder. The rudder is made of aluminum, it's a heavy duty aluminum rudder, and it snapped in half and it was parallel to the surface of the water. We knew at that point that we were in complete distress.

After hull integrity, rudder integrity is the most vital component of a seaworthy vessel, yet most sailors pay more attention to LED lighting or smartphone apps than they do to their boat’s rudder. Before you shrug off rudder failure as a remote concern, consider that the incidence of mid-ocean rudder failures is close to 1 percent.

Happy family

sold them his cherished 1985 Cheoy Lee Pedrick 36-foot sailboat the Odyssey for $1 after reading they’d come from Colorado, like he and his wife, and had a 2-year-old pug, which reminded them of their old pug, Chow.

Nikki Walsh and Tanner Broadwell bought at $5,000 1969 Columbia 28-foot sailboat to sail around the world. Their trip lasted 2 days. In the end the boat sunk to the bottom of the ocean. They departed Tarpon Springs, Florida. By 9PM on Wednesday, February 7, 2018, their boat was at the bottom of the sea. They were able to save their dog, a dinghy, and their IDs before abandoning ship to a SeaTow.

• Learn to sail first
• Never enter a strange harbour at night
• Have an overall backup plan (totally missing in both cases)
• Better planning, especially financially, I know life can throw curveballs, so being conservative is better/safer. 
• Example: On buying a boat, I would say a good rule of thumb would be to buy a boat that is less than 10% of your net worth. Probably higher when younger as time give you a chance to recover, but at most 30%. The reason for this is to make sure you are not sunk (pardon the pun) financially should disaster strike.
• Have a revenue stream to keep you afloat.
• House being rented out (or passive investments)
• Books or articles revenues
• Work and travel. Replenish the cruising kitty frequently.
• Less attractive, but do-able: make money while travelling (here, here, here, and here)
• Others?

Mini-Boat

Designed by Josh Tulberg, the Rapid Whale Mini Boat is a DIY kit that lets you build a tiny one-person watercraft. That’s right, you’ll actually have to put this thing together on your own, which should be fun if you enjoy building stuff in your spare time. We don’t know how long building one of these things will actually take, but we imagine it can take up an entire weekend (maybe more). If building a boat sounds daunting, well, it kind of is. For this project, though, Tulberg simplified the process as much as possible, relying on the popular “stitch and glue” method of boat building. Except, he simplified it further by replacing the stitching part with binding the part using zip-ties instead, which should help speed up the build in a considerable manner.

The kit includes laser-cut marine plywood parts, various 3D-printed plastic components, a thick Plexiglas steering wheel, steering shaft bearings, and various sizes of gaskets.  If that doesn’t sound enough to build a boat, you’re right. The kit is designed to pair with a list of items you can get off the shelf, all of which are available from an Excel sheet on the product page. It’s quite a long list, so it could be overwhelming, although they did include a direct link to a specific recommended product from either Amazon or Chesapeake Light Craft, so you can just click on the links to order everything in one sitting

In 1955, cousins Clinton and Everett Pearson began building fiberglass dinghies in their garage on County Street in Seekonk, Mass. The fiberglass material and their methods of construction was brand new and untested. However, Tom Potter from American Boat Building approached the Pearsons with a project to build an auxiliary sailboat that would sell for under $10,000. Naval architect Carl Alberg was given the task of designing the boat. The result was the Triton 28 sailing auxiliary. The first boat was built in the cousins' garage, in time for the 1959 New York Boat Show.

In 1959, the Triton 28 was launched at the New York Boat Show. The cousins had to borrow money to pay for the transport of the boat from their garage to the show. The boat proved to be a hit, and the cousins had deposits for 17 orders by the end of the show. To raise the capital to acquire facilities to meet the demand, the cousins made Pearson Yachts public in April 1959. Upon returning to Rhode Island, the demand for the Triton 28 remained so strong that the cousins purchased the old Herreshoff Yard to expand their production site. Pearson Yachts introduced a number of new models, most of which were also designed by Carl Alberg. By the end of the year, the newly founded Pearson Yachts had over one hundred employees and was turning out nearly one boat per day. 

Anchor Watch!

From August 18 to August 20, audiences enjoyed Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, Beauty and the Beast (2017) and Edward Scissorhands on a four-storey, two-sided, floating screen anchored to a barge in Lake Ontario.

The inaugural Sail-In Cinema™ was held in 2011 to mark PortsToronto's centennial year. The annual event attracts more than 10,000 people on land and 100 boats over the three-day period and is now a permanent fixture on Toronto's summer calendar.