Armchair sailing

There's an absolutely brilliant picture on Elaine Bunting's blog today of Emirates Team New Zealand banging into the 1m waves of Valencia yesterday. 1m may not sound like a lot but, it clearly was putting those thoroughbreds under pressure. I suspect the photographer's a pro and will be guarding this one carefully (I would in his shoes), so won't re-post here. I did, though, follow the lead of "favourite blogs" to sail-world.com's cruising page . This, in turn, led to a story about one Kiwi selecting the Marten 49 as his perfect fast cruising yacht. To say it's a bit of an Aussie Wally makes it sound like somebody who thinks the Wallabies can win the Rugby World Cup. Nothing of the sort. Check out the builder's site here (I assume they'll have no problem with me posting one of their snaps).

Asia Marine in Phuket has just listed a Warrior 38 which looks like a decent boat even though she's 21 years old. Does anybody know much about these Warriors and where I can find out more information about them?

Although this blog is supposed to be more about cruising than racing, I couldn't resist this picture from the Sailing Anarchy home page . As they say, what clearer reminder could you want than this shot from the Melges 24 world championships: There's some fun video of the same event here as well:

Even if you're over 100 years old, you can obviously still be very trendy. The venerable Yachting Monthly magazine has launched its own You Tube channel.

...with those words, 68 year old Robin Knox Johnston has just completed the Velux 5 Oceans and his latest circumnavigation. The BBC's report on it is here . There's some marvellous video of Open 60 sailing on the Velux 5 Oceans site which gives huge kudos to RKJ's achievement. Many men 25 years younger would struggle to manage one of these boats by themselves. Here's to quieter cruises in company Sir Robin...