Northwest Passage, sailor disappears, 11 hours treading water, more..

by Nancy Knudsen, Editor on 26 Jul 2012 As summer moves on there are more and more leisure sailors out there on the water working on their boats, undertaking spectacular adventures and, as usual, getting into some kind of trouble or other.

There's a fleet of sailors daring the Northwest Passage again, forecast to be even more free of ice than ever before, and we feature two of them, some Australians who started last year in an unlikely junk-rigged sailing boat, and are resuming their voyage this year.

The Tall Ships in the Tall Ships Challenge are almost finished their voyage along the east coast of the USA. Their latest stop is Halifax and there are thousands of people taking advantage of the opportunity to see, touch and maybe sail a heritage tall ship.

One man got himself into trouble when a rogue wave washed him overboard and he spent an amazing 11 hours treading water, watching the searching helicopters not able to find him. Next time, he says, he'll be wearing a life-jacket. We're glad about his miraculous – and gutsy – survival, but I could also suggest he wears a tether next time and saves the nation some costly searching.

Lots of varying tales of happenings on the water. A South African sailor has disappeared in mysterious circumstances in the Indian Ocean and police are investigating. In Florida there are many happy sailors as they up their skills with a 'Sailing Week' holiday - what a good idea!. Up in Scotland there were some embarrassed grins this week as a rescue boat was washed onto rocks and the rescue boat sent to rescue them ended up on neighbouring rocks.

On a more practical note, as well as a very useful discussion on jacklines or jackstays, there are two products featured – one, a radar reflector for your grab bag and the other an automatically closing drain plug that will stop your dinghy sinking to the bottom when you forget to replace the bung.

More too, so browse down the headlines, and...

Sweet sailing!