Buizen takes the Honours!

by Nancy Knudsen, Cruising Editor on 28 May 2008 During the Sanctuary Cove International Boat Show on the Gold Coast at the weekend the Buizen 48 was judged to be the Sailing Boat of the Year! We'll feature more about this very comfortable cruising boat next week. Talking of winners, you can be a winner this year by turning up at the Melbourne Boat show and buying a boat - a free boating course goes with every purchase

Amazing news just to hand is that a yacht which was abandoned after the crew mutinied against the Skipper and called for rescue, has just been discovered two months later, mast intact, still drifting off the coast of New Zealand.

Hesitant blue water sailors will love the story of Ann Waring's conversion from strictly coastal cruiser to sailing adventurer across the South Pacific – by sailing her favourite catamaran.

Read about the two powerboats that beached themselves near Mooloolaba recently – it's a cautionary tale for sailors headed for this popular river and harbour.

If some of this week's World Sailing News weren't so potentially serious, you'd have to fall off your cockpit seat laughing.

USA sailors are being asked to lobby their political representatives urgently so that leisure boaters will allowed to continue to let falling rainwater run off their boats into the sea. Yes, you read it correctly.

Across the Atlantic, French fishermen have been blockading British sailors who have come across to sample the wine and enjoy the baguettes. Instead of this (or maybe as well) they have been hatching escape plans, unsheathing their swords, and making runs at the barricades.

In the Eastern Med, yacht Midnight Sun, having just survived pirate waters and rough passages to get there from Asia, is having a much harder time surviving the bureaucracy of Europe, and there's a lesson or two here. As for bureaucracy, nothing can beat the Egyptians who virtually destroyed this year's Med Red Rally from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea with THEIR bureaucracy.

Ah, but you can escape from it all with idyllic tales from the Treleavens in the Caribbean, from Pittwater's Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club Rally in the Aegean, and you can't miss the engaging account of Henry Geerken's terrifying adventures as he and his crew go for a bigger boat and a bigger lake to sail on. Read on, read it all, have a great week, and....

Sail Safe!