SIGHTINGS a 'ha-ha' from
our 500th issue
If you are one of the many sailors making plans to participate in this fall's Baja Ha-Ha XXVI — over 10,000 sailors on over 3,000 boats have preceded you in the last 25 years — please note that the event will start a week later than in recent years. The Ha-Ha Costume Kick-Off Party will be on November 3, and the awards ceremony will be on November 16. The Ha-Ha, of course, is the annual cruisers' rally from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas, with R&R stops at funky Turtle Bay and pristine Bahia Santa Maria.
When we started thinking about 500 issues of Latitude 38, the first thing that came to mind were the names. Peterson, Larson, Heineken, Tompkins, Mull, Holland, Baylis, Easom, McNeill, Cayard, Wondolleck, Prussia, Corlett, Livingston, Disney, Blackaller, Moore, Stapleton. Endless names of sailors who did things great and small, fun and curious. Racing rockstars, circumnavigators and afternoon daysailors. Hal Wondolleck was teaching his eight kids to sail, and it morphed into the Encinal Yacht Club junior program that included stints from Paul Cayard, Morgan Larson and Sean Svendsen. Today, Tom and Cindy Wondolleck's son Dylan (Hal's grandson) sails with EYC, and recently traveled with the US Optimist team in Belgium. There are too many sailor's names to mention that have rippled through the nearly 100,000 pages printed over 500 issues, plus the infinite terabytes of 'Lectronic Latitude. Over the years, we've been a yearbook, a scoresheet and a bulletin board (think Facebook without all the soul-sucking drama). We've been, in short, a community, a family and a band of motley miscreants. The names that have graced these pages are, to us, like stars on the sidewalk in Hollywood. Names like Bill Green and Henry Jotz, Paul Kroll, Hal McCormack, Jim Warfield, Jake van Heekeren (before Pineapple), delivery skipper Robert Flowerman, Bill George, Jim Maloney, Kim Desenberg, Greg Paxton, Pat Vincent, Don Peters, Tom Alexander, Millie Biller, George and Frank Pedrick, Bruce Powell, John Kostecki, Howie Marion, Bill Sisteck, Brian Kellog, Steve Lewis, Annie Lewis, Mike Herlihy, Lynn Wright, Vickie Gilmour, Vicki Sodaro, Gordie Nash, Russ Williams, Tom Krase and even Dee Smith. We've collected a whole register of names on our West Coast Circumnavigator's List. There was the Reynolds family on Phoenix of Hiroshima, Jack van Ommen on a pair of Naja 30s called Fleetwood, Lin and Larry Pardey on their Lyle Hess 24 cutter Seraffyn, Mark Rudiger on the Volvo 60 Assa Abloy (among his many circumnavs), and, just last year, Randall Reeves onboard Moli. Reeves is, of course, on that same boat in the Southern Ocean as we write, attempting a record-setting circumnavigation. Not far behind him is Jeanne Socrates, who's trying to set her own record by becoming the oldest person to sail around the world alone and unassisted. How about these names: In issue #1 there were three advertisers that are still with us today: Pineapple Sails, Gianola Canvas and Sausalito Yacht Harbor. Speaking of names, we recently unearthed a letter from Jocelyn Nash outlining sailors who spent time with Jim DeWitt — the first Californian to win the North American Men's Sailing championship — at DeWitt Sails. With his artist's eye for talent, DeWitt at one time or another employed naval architects Bob Smith, Tom Wylie, Gary Mull and brilliant sailor/engineer Rob Wade of Santa Cruz. "How about special shout-outs to colleagues Rob Moore, Shimon Van Collie, Mary Briggs and John McCarthy," wrote our Changes in Latitudes editor John Riise. "They were all good friends whose bells have tolled. I am diminished by their passings." And then there's the name of the Big Cheese, the Grand Poobah himself. We would not be here without Latitude visionary Richard Spindler. His is a name that speaks for itself. Our 500th issue comes at a crossroads for our sport, lifestyle and path of sailing, so we're going to take a look back, while also searching the horizon ahead. In this issue, we examine the Evolution of the Top row, from left: The 100th, 200th, 300th and 400th issues of Latitude 38 (note that we didn't always mark the occasion — silly us). Bottom row, right photo (from left to right): Pierre, Paul and Danny Cayard. Center photo: Four generations of sailing Nashes, as seen at Richmond Yacht Club in 2015 (left to right): Nicholas, Jasmine, Jocelyn, Gordie, Addison (in front), Chris, Nick and Sam. "Nicholas just joined the Navy." Left: A photo from volume 60, June 1982, of Jocelyn Nash, the only female entry in that year's Singlehanded TransPac. Page 48 •
Latitude 38
• February, 2019
LATITUDE ARCHIVES
continued on outside column of next sightings page
