January 6, 2009 - Richard Branson, billionaire founder of the wide ranging Virgin-branded businesses, is offering his 105' catamaran for charters in the Caribbean next month. The Necker Belle has accomodations for 10 and cruises at 18 kts under power and up to 20 kts under sail. The cost is $88,000 a week. Here's the story with pohtos at CNN.com.

December 19, 2009 - At 3:30 pm Wednesday the 77 foot lobster boat Michael and Kristen was 200 miles SE of Nantucket when it lost power with five people aboard. After initially being towed by a neighboring fishing boat, the Coast Guard cutter Escabana took over. Rough seas and high winds initially limited the towing speed to 4 mph. On Thursday morning the towline broke in seas that reached 10-15' with winds of 38 mph. The Michael and Kristen is expected to arrive in Provincetown this morning, ahead of tonight's Nor'easter and blizzard. Here's the story from Shana Wickett of the Boston Globe.

16-year-old Australian Jessica Watson sailed her bright pink S&S 34 sailboat, Ella's Pink Lady, out of Sydney harbor yesterday, beginning an attempt to become the youngest person to sail around the world alone without assistance. Jessica made headlines last month when, just hours after setting out on a practice run, she dozed off and crashed into a 63,000-tonne cargo ship. The collision broke her mast and damaged the boat's rigging and hull. Marine safety experts said she was lucky to have stayed afloat and reported seeing childish doodles on her navigation charts, prompting calls from senior officials for her to abandon the attempt.

Last summer, 17-year-olds Zac Sunderland and Mike Perham, completed globe encircling solo voyages. Both stopped for repairs en route so their voyages do not count as unassisted. The youngest sailor to complete the voyage unassisted is Australian, Jesse Martin, who was 18 when he completed it in 1999.

Here's an interview with Jessica by Jesse Martin:

October 12, 2009 - Washington Irving's 1828 biography of Columbus popularized the idea that Columbus had difficulty obtaining support for his plan because Europeans thought the Earth was flat. In fact, the primitive maritime navigation of the time relied on the stars and the curvature of the spherical Earth. The knowledge that the Earth was spherical was widespread, and the means of calculating its diameter using an astrolabe was known to both scholars and navigators. A spherical Earth had been the general opinion of Ancient Greek science, and this view continued through the Middle Ages. In fact Eratosthenes had measured the diameter of the Earth with good precision in the second century BC. Where Columbus did differ from the generally accepted view of his time is his (incorrect) arguments that assumed a significantly smaller diameter for the Earth, claiming that Asia could be easily reached by sailing west across the Atlantic. Most scholars accepted Ptolemy's correct assessment that the terrestrial landmass (for Europeans of the time, comprising Eurasia and Africa) occupied 180 degrees of the terrestrial sphere, and dismissed Columbus's claim that the Earth was much smaller, and that Asia was only a few thousand nautical miles to the west of Europe. Columbus's error was put down to his lack of experience in navigation at sea.

Columbus believed the (incorrect) calculations of Marinus of Tyre, putting the landmass at 225 degrees, leaving only 135 degrees of water. Moreover, Columbus believed that one degree represented a shorter distance on the Earth's surface than was actually the case. Finally, he read maps as if the distances were calculated in Italian miles (1,238 meters). Accepting the length of a degree to be 56⅔ miles, from the writings of Alfraganus, he therefore calculated the circumference of the Earth as 13,828 miles statute miles (25,255 km) at most, and the distance from the Canary Islands to Japan as 3,000 Italian miles (2,300 statute miles or 3,700 km). Columbus did not realize Alfraganus used the much longer Arabic mile (about 1,830 m).

The true circumference of the Earth is about 25,000 statute miles (40,000 km), a figure established by Eratosthenes in the second century BC, and the distance from the Canary Islands to Japan 12,200 miles (19,600 km). No ship that was readily available in the 15th century could carry enough food and fresh water for such a journey. Most European sailors and navigators concluded, probably correctly, that sailors undertaking a westward voyage from Europe to Asia non-stop would die of thirst or starvation long before reaching their destination. Catholic Monarchs, however, having completed an expensive war in the Iberian Peninsula, were desperate for a competitive edge over other European countries in trade with the East Indies. Columbus promised such an advantage.

While Columbus's calculations underestimated the circumference of the Earth and the distance from the Canary Islands to Japan by the standards of his peers as well as in fact, Europeans generally assumed that the aquatic expanse between Europe and Asia was uninterrupted.

There was a further element of key importance in the plans of Columbus, a closely held fact discovered, or otherwise learned, by Columbus: the trade winds. A brisk wind from the east, commonly called an "easterly", propelled Santa María, La Niña, and La Pinta for five weeks from the Canaries. To return to Spain eastward against this prevailing wind would have required several months of beating at shallow angles into the wind, during which food and drinkable water would have been utterly exhausted. Columbus returned home by following prevailing winds northeastward from the southern zone of the North Atlantic to the middle latitudes of the North Atlantic, where the prevailing winds blow from the west toward the east (westerly) to the coastlines of Western Europe, where the winds curve southward towards the Iberian Peninsula.

Columbus was wrong about degrees of longitude to be traversed and wrong about distance per degree, but he was right about a more vital fact: how to use the North Atlantic's great circular wind pattern, clockwise in direction, to get home.

- From Wikipedia with minor edits.