Ahoy!
Two events in Newport Harbor are closing in on my radar, which are of interest to boaters and landlubbers alike. I can see the blips for the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum’s Waterman Lecture Series featuring Chris Welsh, and the Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club’s Harbor Cruise Fundraiser for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
Closing in first is the lecture titled “The Five Dives Expedition: Recordbreaking Journeys into the Deep.” Local sailor and adventurer Chris Welsh has teamed up with Sir Richard Branson to gather a team of scientists and others to dive the deepest depths of the five oceans.
Of course, I am not speaking about scuba diving to the depths, but in a specially built one-man submarine named the Virgin’s Oceanic. The first dive scheduled for this year will be in the Mariana Trench at a depth of 36,201 feet, which is just shy of seven miles down. The trench also is more than 1,500 miles long and on average 44 miles wide and is near Japan, just east of the 14 Mariana Islands.
The seminar will be held Wednesday, May 18, at 7 p.m. in the Balboa Pavilion’s Grand Ballroom. You will need to make reservations with the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum by calling 949-675-8915 or email to rsvp@nhnm.org. Museum members are free and non-members will pay a nominal cost of only $10.
The second event is the BCYC’s Harbor Cruise Fundraiser for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society aboard Hornblower Cruises and Event’s Yacht the “Wild Goose” that is the 136-foot converted minesweeper formerly owned by John Wayne.
You can help a good cause while cruising Newport Harbor for this cocktail cruise and silent auction for the afternoon. This cruise and the auction are fundraisers for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Orange County Chapter.
Each passenger will be automatically entered into an opportunity drawing for a one week Costa Rican cruise for two aboard Star Clippers Cruises’ Star Flyer. You still have time to make your reservations for Sunday, May 22, and boarding starts at 1:15 p.m. with the ship sailing at 2 p.m.. Tickets are only $125 per person, but If you cannot attend, you can still help out by registering as a virtual ticket holder. Join in the cruse in spirit but not in person, can you will still be entered in the opportunity drawing for the Costa Rican cruise.
Sail over to ocie.bcyc.llsevent.org or call 714-481-5615 to find out more details about this wonderful fundraiser. Tell the Captain aboard the Wild Goose that I say hello.
Tip of week is share a couple of emails with you from my mailbag and hopefully increase your boating knowledge or at least make good conversation the yacht club. I received an email asking about my long distance voyages to and from Hawaii and especially where we anchor at nighttime. At first this might seem like a hoax email, but I have been asked this exact question from others too.
My first response is that I tell them every night we tie up to the fuel docks stationed between the mainland and the Hawaiian Island. Then I explain that there are no fuel docks in the middle of the Pacific and the ocean is a little deeper then the amount of anchor rope we have in our anchor locker. We actually operate the vessel 24 hours a day with a minimum of two watchstanders on the bridge until we make port in Honolulu or a port on the mainland. I wonder if you could bribe the Captain of a Navy supply ship for a top up of fuel?
Another email asked why these boaters did not see the line of demarcation at the tips of Newport Harbor’s jetty entrances that is vividly displayed on their GPS chart plotter, and I am not making this up. And remember, these are boaters who are supposed to know the rules of the road as you approach on a crossing situation. I can not wait to hear their radio call to the Coast Guard if their GPS unit ever shuts down.
“Mayday, Mayday!”
“This is the Coast Guard, what is your position and nature of distress?”
“We need to know which direction to point our boat to get home because our GPS is broken?”
I have actually heard similar types of radio calls to the Coast Guard and Harbor Patrol, especially when a thick fog rolls in unexpectedly on a summer weekend afternoon. I should start documenting this stuff for my next book in which I can expose the funny and sometimes clueless sides of the Sunday Boater. Send me your funny happenings, and you might read it here.
And don’t forget: Tune in to the No. 1 boating radio talk show in the nation, Capt. Mike Whitehead’s Boathouse Radio Show, broadcasting coast-to-coast on the CRN Digital Talk Radio syndicated network every Saturday at noon, Pacific Time and replayed on Sunday at 10 am Pacific. Join Chandler Bell and me as we talk about “all things boating.” You can find the station listings, cable TV channels, live streaming on the Internet, and now available are apps to listen to the show for your iPhone, Blackberry, iTouch, Android, Palm, and Windows Mobile at www.BoathouseTV.com or www.BoathouseRadio.com.
And don’t forget: Tune in to the No. 1 boating radio talk show in the nation, Capt. Mike Whitehead’s Boathouse Radio Show, broadcasting coast-to-coast on the CRN Digital Talk Radio syndicated network every Saturday at noon, Pacific Time and replayed on Sunday at 10 am Pacific. Join Chandler Bell and me as we talk about “all things boating.” You can find the station listings, cable TV channels, live streaming on the Internet, and now available are apps to listen to the show for your iPhone, Blackberry, Itouch, Android, Palm, and Windows Mobile at www.BoathouseTV.com or www.BoathouseRadio.com.
Until next week, Safe Voyages!
