Gibraltar – With the stealth that perhaps only a teenage girl (or maybe international spy) can manage, 14 year old Dutch sailor Laura Dekker snuck away from dock this weekend, setting off on her attempt to become the youngest person to sail around the world alone. As you may know, Laura has been battling for some time to attain the permission to take off on her voyage. The bullheaded young teen even went so far as to run away from home at one point, terrifying her parents who finally found her in St Maarten, shopping for a yacht! You would think that being labeled a teenage runaway would have ended her hopes of being found responsible enough to sail around the world alone, but Laura came home to convince her mother, and then the Dutch courts and social services, that she was a person capable of handling her boat by herself all the way around the globe. She didn’t, however, convince the Portuguese police  … Details
For the 2010 USSSC race, the US Surfski Championships will be held August 21st and 22nd. We received some very good feedback on the revised 2009 course and will run the same course for 2010. This puts us right in the middle of the San Francisco Bay Area’s windy season and let’s us take advantage of the summer afternoon winds that funnel though the Golden Gate. The single surfski long course (view course map) has been changed from the past format with the start and finish lines at the same location to a point-to-point mostly downwind race. The course starts at historic Fort Baker , makes a trip out the Golden Gate to the ocean, turns on a buoy past Point Bonita , and then finishes with a long downwind run past Angle Island on the way across San Francisco Bay to the finish at OCSC Sailing School in Berkeley. In addition to challenging conditions, the course offers spectacular scenery with views of the Golden Gate Bridge , Alcatraz Island , the Marin Headlands , and the San Francisco skyline  … Details
