After some initial hubbub, I haven't heard much recently about the new boating laws in Canada and Florida that require certain pleasure craft operators to carry a special ID card or face a fine. Mandatory boating safety courses and licensure have been debated in many places in recent years, usually with much resistance from the boating community. The argument for a required course and some form of licensure is simple: boats, particularly those with motors, can be dangerous to others on the water just as automobiles are, and therefore operators should have a minimum knowledge of safe operation. Those resisting such regulations often oppose increasing government regulations and feel that the water is one of the last bastions of personal freedom, and that a required safety course is not only ineffective but also a toehold for government to begin levying additional fees and restrictions.

So far, both Canada and Florida make the process fairly simple and inexpensive, allowing the taking of an online course to meet the requirement. Still, I've heard that only a low percentage of boaters in Canada had acted before the September 15, 2009 deadline. Florida's law takes effect January 1, 2010, and applies (for now at least) only to those born in or after 1988.

As a sailor, I have mixed feelings about this legislative trend. It is true that people have died after collisions with fast-moving boats operated poorly, but I'm not sure whether an online safety course and ID card will make much of a difference.

What do you think?

Sailors often compare the shape of a sail to that of an airplane wing to explain how sailboats can sail upwind, since the physics of both (the Bernoulli principle) is similar. And now the new fixed wing sail of the US contender in the America's Cup race this February will literally be using a wing—and one that is actually much bigger than the wing of a Boeing 747. The huge BMW Oracle trimaran has begun trials using a 58-meter carbon-fiber wing instead of a traditional fabric sail on a mast.

After the latest court ruling, the race is now scheduled for Valencia in February. The trimaran with this gigantic thin wing looks so futuristic that it's sure to attract lots of excitement and awe during the race. Although it's called a fixed wing, in the sense that it cannot be hoisted or lowered like a traditional sail, it nonetheless has moving parts to allow for shape changes on different tacks with different wind gradients. As this Scientific American article describes, the wing is a much more complex engineering feat than an airplane's wing. We've come a long way from what now seems a very simple Marconi rig!

Photo courtesy BMW Oracle

Waking to heavy frost this morning in New England, my thoughts naturally turn to those sailing south in warmer climates. Over 60 cruising sailboats in the Caribbean 1500 rally left Hampton, Virginia, earlier this week headed for Tortola in the British Virgin Islands—and don't I wish I was aboard one of them!

These are mostly sailors who will spend the winter cruising around the Caribbean, many to return homeward next spring before hurricane season, some heading for faraway waters. I've crewed in this fleet twice in recent years but didn't have the getaway time this year. It's a great way for people who feel more comfortable knowing there's likely another boat not far over the horizon to do a longer voyage.

So as I head off to the boatyard again this weekend, heat gun in hand, to shrinkwrap my boat for the winter, I'm thinking of all you hearty souls out there in the warm waters of the world! For fun I'll read your daily updates and follow your positions on the tracker. Ah, life on a sailboat! If you can't do it right now, at least you can read about it!

If you're living in a northern climate and you've hauled out for the winter, better get moving soon on winterizing your boat's engine and water systems before the first hard freeze comes along. Don't make the mistake I once made and had to pay for in the spring with shock, expense, bruised knuckles—and almost sinking my boat!

The power of water's expansion during freezing is astonishing. Anywhere water gathers in your boat is vulnerable to damage. Follow your engine manual to winterize its cooling system. Then make a good winterizing checklist and pump antifreeze through every single waterline and hose in the boat, including some you may forget about. (Deck wash-down pump? Shower sump? Manual bilge pump?)

In my own case, in the first year with a new-to-me sailboat, I didn't forget or overlook as much as assume too much. I carefully filled every line and hose with antifreeze, and shrinkwrapped the boat for the winter. Launched her in the spring, excited on a warm but windless day, and motored to my mooring. Shut down, prepared to lock up and leave the boat ready for sailing come the weekend, and noticed the bilge pump running. It shut off, I turned away (thinking probably just the stuffing box drip), stowed a few more things, got ready to go—and heard the bilge pump come on again. Oh no! Read more...

Here's the latest word on the story of Laura Dekker ... and I promise my last post on this (at least for many months to come).

The Dutch juvenile court should announce tomorrow its findings regarding the psychological fitness of 14-year-old Laura Dekker for sailing around the world alone—either to allow or prohibit her going. She is the youth poised to go after the world record for youngest solo circumnavigator, a record the older Australian teenager Jessica Watson is now at sea seeking. The latest wrinkle in Dekker's story, however, could make this even more of a media circus. The Dekkers have apparently signed a contract with a television station to produce a reality television-type show about her voyage. Apparently a camera crew would closely follow her boat around the world, filming her every move, word, meal, article of clothing, and—perhaps—sailing technique. Reality television! I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt, but reality TV generally trends closer to the superficial than to the sublime. Further, Dekker's lawyer has even argued to the court that her voyage will be less risky with all these people following so closely. Well, duh! Meanwhile, another sailor has offered also to sail beside her, and hotel rooms and other accommodations are being offered at all ports. You can just hear her lawyer opining, Why, she'll hardly be alone at all!

At the same time, Laura continues to say, "It's all about the sailing." I'm going way out on a limb here to suggest that this whole story is becoming less and less about what real long-distance voyaging can be all about. The sailing literature is full of stories written by voyagers, solo and otherwise, who speak eloquently about their love of the sea, their adventures, their meditations when alone with this incredible environment—and what's it's really like to sail with an independent spirit, self-reliant and self-discovering. Just check out the logs at sailblogs.com and tripsailor.com of sailors now cruising the world, for a taste of the many who have worked so hard to make their dreams come true, who understand that indeed it's all about the sailing. I'll wish the same for Dekker when she's able to accomplish that.

Here's the latest in the No Comment Needed series of 2009-10 contenders for world records, in case you were growing weary of all the attention going to teenagers. British sailor Tom McNally plans to cross the Atlantic in both directions in his sailboat, the Big C, which is 3 feet 10 inches long. McNally is known as "the Crazy Sailor." No comment needed.

Undeniably a stunt, at least it's for a good cause: to generate donations for the charity group Sail 4 Cancer. His boat is so small that he's looking forward to crossing the Bahamas Bank where he can finally stretch out his body by walking alongside the boat through the shallows. He has so little room for gear and provisions that he'll depend on a hand-operated watermaker that he can operate only at night because in the sun the pumping exertion would cause him to lose water faster through sweat than he could make it. No comment needed.

At least with this entertaining attempt at a world record, the discussion won't focus on whether the sailor is old enough to face the risks and whether his parents should allow or encourage him. At least he's had a lot of experience crossing oceans in small boats, including a 1983 adventure in a 7-foot sailboat in which he had to be rescued between Newfoundland and England. Then again, maybe it would be interesting to raise the same question about his maturity (or sanity!). Though, one suspects, the answer just might be ... no comment needed.

For sailors who can't get enough visual stimulation and entertaining disastrous sailing stories, the Weather Channel is premiering a new series called High Seas Rescue starting this Sunday, October 25, at 8 p.m. ET. Three hour-long episodes will be aired back to back, offering enough adrenalin and fear to keep you up half the night afterwards (using their "Storm Stories" hyper-dramatic approach). Each episode apparently includes three or four separate stories, of which at least three involve sailboats:

• One U.S. Coast Guard swimmer responds to a mayday call that becomes a high seas mission when a family must abandon their sailboat in threatening waters during Hurricane Gordon.
• A small yacht on course to Australia is disabled at sea with a dead engine, broken main mast and a hole on deck. Help comes from a passing container ship in a risky rescue.
• Sailing for Bermuda, turbulent waves force three friends to abandon their sailboat and wait in the windswept ocean.

In addition to the fun, I enjoy programs like this because it's interesting to speculate, from a safety perspective, how you might have avoided getting into the emergency situation to begin with—or have improved your odds for coping once it started. What great sailors we are with such hindsight!

OK, I promised myself I wouldn't post further about Jessica Watson, the 16-Australian who set sail today for a solo circumnavigation through the dangerous southern oceans, unless there was real news about her voyage. I wished her well, as I trust we all do, and said it was time to put the controversy behind us and hope for the best.

But then today I read a story in the Australian press that paraphrases her father as saying, "it would be worse to deny his daughter permission to sail solo around the world than to lose her in the attempt."

I admit I'm emotional about this at the moment. I'm thinking about my own 18-year-old daughter. I'm thinking about how children can indeed accept their parents' restrictions as they grow older and more mature. And I am outraged by this statement attributed to her father. Nothing is worth losing one's child. Nothing. Period. I'm not going back into the debate about what age it becomes appropriate to attempt such a voyage alone. That's not the issue for me here—the parents' attitudes is what I'm reacting to.

OK, I've vented. Feel free to comment here if you disagree—but think first what it would be like to lose a child because you encouraged a risky behavior. Remember how there once was a race to see who could be the youngest pilot to fly the U.S. coast to coast. That race stopped when a boy crashed his plane and died along with his father and flight instructor aboard. Thereafter, those whose who kept those records agreed no longer to keep such a record, to avoid encouraging ever younger pilots to make the attempt. Death does sometime happen, after all. And I do believe in my heart of hearts that parents have a certain responsibility to work to keep their children safe until they've reached a certain level of maturity where they can genuinely make those decisions by themselves.

In a matter of hours Australian teenager Jessica Watson will set sail from Sydney in her quest to become the world's youngest solo circumnavigator.

Controversy has swirled around Jessica and her sailboat Ella's Pink Lady since her planned voyage was first announced, intensifying about five weeks ago when on a trial run she collided with a large cargo ship during her first night at sea. While her boat was being repaired, the debate raged whether this 16-year-old has the experience and maturity needed to face potential dangers at sea. Respected world-class sailors urged her to gain more experience before attempting the feat, while her supporters remained steadfast—like Jessica herself—in their belief that she is ready. Read more...