Life as it happens on the oceans of the world

by Nancy Knudsen, Editor on 25 Mar 2010 The telling of news for sailors is always a rich experience for the writer - the humour, the tragedies, the practical, wild tales of the adventurers, the traditions, the quirks, the environmental concerns, the new innovations, the heroes - and the cruising tales of those who've escaped the rat race and run away to sea.

This week is no different. All Australian sailors will be in sympathy with the more than 60 yacht owners who have suffered damage to their boats in the Whitsundays because of Cyclone Ului.

Just departed San Francisco is a strange sailing boat coming this way! The Plastiki departed this week for Sydney – a boat made of 12,500 plastic bottles. Banking family heir David de Rothschild is trying to draw attention to the plight of the world's oceans – it's a bizarre way to do it, and let's hope that it's not David and his crew of experienced sailors that end up in a 'plight'.

How can a yacht vanish during a short coastal sail? No debris, no squeak from an EPIRB, a fruitless grid search by planes and helicopters, no sign from ocean sweeps by satellites. Read the mystifying account which has left the family and friends of South African Paul Janse Van Rensburg distraught after his disappearance off the New Zealand coast. It's reminiscent of the disappearance of the legendary http://www.sail-world.com/index_d.cfm?nid=35943!Silicone_Valley_identity_Jim_Gray off the coast of San Francisco in 2007 – he had only gone for an afternoon sail and no trace was ever found. We'll all pray for a better end to this story.

There's the news of a new rally from Darwin to Indonesia, some new standards to take notice of for life jackets, some good ways to 'think green' when the time for anti-fouling rolls around, and an extraordinary report that the pirates have given the kidnapped cruising sailor Rachel Chandler a gun, 'to protect herself'.

Then there's the account of some unlikely heroes who saved the lives of a couple of yachties in horrendous conditions in Fiji; a couple of guys in tiny catamarans have just sailed a 350 mile voyage in North Queensland; an update on the teen solo sailors – Jessica is still storming home, Californian Abby Sunderland is heading through the fifties for Cape Horn, and now there's news that the Dutch teenager Laura Dekker is definitely planning to depart around July in a newly acquired boat.

Browse through the headlines to find the stories that interest you, and...

Sweet sailing!