Month: June 2011

LAST NIGHT ASHORE/LAST SUPPER

 

This is it. We are off tomorrow, so it is too late to change anything else on the boat. Crew dinner tonight; weather briefing tomorrow morning; then it is off to the start line.

Our class is very diverse. the 289′ Maltese Falcon, 66′ catamaran called Phaedo, Zaraffa a 66′ reichl/pugh. I hope they do not put Maltese Falcon of the starting line with us. She is just too big; she can’t, nor should anyone expect her to be able to manouvre like a small boat. She is a ship really.

This will be my last entry until I return. Hopefully with great tales of the ocean and photographs to support the stories. Wish me god’s speed. see you in a few weeks.

On another subject I am including the following because messages in bottles is a fascinating thing for me.

A glass bottle, cast into the Gulf Stream off New England one year ago as a farewell gesture to a departed sailor, turned up last week on a beach in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland after an improbable, 3,000-mile transatlantic voyage.

 

Bound with rigging tape and sealed with wax, the rum bottle carried handwritten tributes to Mattapoisett resident Ken MacKenzie, a lifelong sailor who died of cancer in May of last year at the age of 69.

 

The bottle was launched from the deck of the 76-foot sailboat Lilla last June when the yacht, owned by Simon and Nancy DePietro of Mattapoisett, entered the axis of the stream while competing in the 2010 Newport to Bermuda race.

 

Coincidentally, Lilla sailed into Bermuda on Monday of this week, taking first place in this year’s Marion to Bermuda race and setting a course record in the process.

 

“Simon and Nancy live right next door to me, and Ken and I go way back with the boat,” said Mary Lou Manley, MacKenzie’s life partner who conceived the idea of the tribute at his memorial service.

 

“Ken found two messages in bottles in his lifetime, so we decided to make two messages in his honor,” she said.

 

MacKenzie spent his life on the water, Manley said. For many years he owned and sailed the famed Ticonderoga, a 72-foot wooden ketch built in 1936 and widely regarded as the finest work ever to come from the board of the legendary boat designer L. Francis Herreshoff. When Herreshoff died it was MacKenzie who scattered his ashes from Ticonderoga, Manley said.

 

The rum bottle washed up on the western side of the Hebrides on South Uist, one of the islands in the rugged chain known as “Scotland’s breakwater.”

 

It was discovered by Christine and Kevin Brook, a vacationing couple from the Winchester area of England, as they walked on Drimsdale Beach.

 

“The first thing they saw through the glass was the Rudyard Kipling poem, ‘If,’ that we put in there,” Manley said.

 

Her contact information was included in the contents, and when she checked her voice mail last Tuesday, the highland burr of a man named Ian McGuinness briefly informed her the bottle had made landfall. That was followed by an email from the Brooks, providing more details.

 

“Their email asked me if this was a live address,” Manley said. “It said, ‘If so, do we have a story for you!'”

 

Drimsdale Beach does not get a lot of foot traffic, according to local resident Jean Newman who works for Am Paipear, the south Uist community newspaper that has custody of the bottle and its contents and plans to run a story on the find in its next issue.

 

“I walk that beach often, and you feel slightly offended if you see anyone there because everyone wants the beach to themselves. There are plenty of beaches to choose from here,” she said in a telephone interview.

 

“It was a good place for the bottle to arrive because there are a lot of rocky spots. It’s rather unique that it survived intact.”

 

It seems unlikely that the bottle may have been on the beach for a long time, she said. “It’s a tidal beach, so it’s lucky that it landed far enough up that it didn’t go back out on the tide.”

 

The second bottle may still be out there, Manley said. She joined Lilla in Bermuda for the return trip to Mattapoisett after last year’s race and launched the second bottle herself, 10 days after the first.

 

“The second one might show up,’ she said. “But I just think that it’s really cool that this one made it somewhere and someone actually found it. Here he is Scottish and he ends up in Scotland.”

 

 

JUNE 27TH

We start on wednesday. My gear is loaded, I have been packed for longer than I care to admit. Snow Lion went back in the water today. Bottom faired and carefully wet sanded. I few details left which we will accomplish tomorrow; fuel, food, people.

We had a weather briefing this afternoon before the Perini Navi reception at Harbor Court. We have hope. A most pleasant evening overlooking Newport Harbor. If you look at the tracker, the first group is struggling with light air , headed in almost every point of the compass at some time.

FIRST SIX BOATS ARE OFF

The first start for the transatlantic race went off at 2pm on schedule in a 10 knot southerly wind and a flooding tide. Our start is scheduled for wednesday at 2pm.

weather for first start
weather for our start on wednesday

As things are at the moment we may not have much more wind , just a different direction.

4 hours after the start

START DAY FOR THE FIRST GROUP

Today is the first start for the transatlantic race leaving Newport, RI to the Lizard, UK, at 2pm from Castle Hill. There are only six boats in this start, ranging from the 40′ “British Soldier “to the classic 86′” Nordwind”. Their start will be in a flood tide and a light southerly wind, and likely sunshine.

Our start is wednesday the largest class with 14 entries; again with a broad variety of boats. A swing keel Cookson 50, “Jazz”, two class 40 boats, a 66′ catamaran “Phaedo” and the 289′ “Maltese Falcon”.

On July 3rd the last group sets off. These boats, “Rambler 100”, “Leopard of London” will all still finish ahead of us despite having started 5 days after we leave.

For every boat routing is the key to doing well. Finding a weather pattern and being able to sail to the boat’s rating. If a boat can sail to it’s potential throughout the race, it should win.

TRANSATLANTIC RACE DEPARTURE COMING

The Skippers meeting for the Transatlantic race will be Friday evening. Three starts are scheduled. June 26, June 29 and July 3. Yellow Brick will provide tracking during the race. For those of you who might like to watch our every move, Register with Yellow Brick.

THE LEGEND OF WHITEY BULGER

Whitey Bulger had achieved mythical status. How could someone hide in today’s world? He had been so successful at evading capture I wonder if he had not developed health problems and will now become effectively a ward of the state.

Osama bin Laden was also hiding for all intensive purposes, in plain sight. Certainly not in a cave as originally thought.

I was going to report about whales encountering boats. ( I have hit two whales with sailboats in my sailing career) but the story of Whitey Bulger is legendary.

FBI arrests mob boss Whitey Bulger in California

 

By The Associated Press

Published: June 23, 2011

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SANTA MONICA, Calif. —

Boston mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger was captured near Los Angeles after spending the last 16 years on the run during an epic manhunt that served as a major embarrassment to the FBI and made the fugitive a global sensation as he constantly found a way to elude authorities.

 

The FBI finally caught the 81-year-old Bulger Wednesday at a residence in Santa Monica along with his longtime girlfriend Catherine Greig, just days after the government launched a new publicity campaign to locate the fugitive mobster, said Steven Martinez, FBI’s assistant director in charge in Los Angeles. The arrest was based on a tip from the campaign, he said.

 

The FBI had been conducting surveillance in the area where the arrest was made, said police Sgt. Rudy Flores, who gave no details of the arrest.

 

FBI agents swarmed around Bulger’s building late Wednesday, hours after the arrests in a neighborhood of two and three-story apartment buildings.

 

Bulger lived on the third floor of The Princess Eugenia, a three-story, 28-unit building of one and two-bedroom apartments three blocks from a bluff that overlooks the Pacific Ocean. Neighbors said the couple did not stand out.

 

Barbara Gluck, who lives on the same floor as Bulger and Greig, said she didn’t know their names but recognized them from photos on the Internet after she heard about their arrest.

 

Gluck described Greig as “sweet and lovely” and said they would have “girl talk” when they ran into each other in the building. Bulger became angry whenever he saw the two of them talking, and would say, “Stop talking to her,” Gluck said.

 

“He was nasty,” she added. “At one point, (Greig) said (Bulger) has a rage issue,” Gluck said.

 

Bulger and Greig were scheduled to make an appearance in Los Angeles federal court Thursday. He faces a series of federal charges including murder, conspiracy to commit murder, narcotics distribution, extortion and money laundering, while the 60-year-old Greig is charged with harboring a fugitive. He was on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list for his alleged role in 19 murders.

 

The arrest brings an end to a manhunt that received worldwide attention as the FBI received reported sightings of Bulger and Greig from all over the United States and parts of Europe. In many of those sightings, investigators could not confirm whether it was Bulger who was spotted or a lookalike. He has been the subject of several books and was an inspiration for the 2006 Martin Scorsese film, “The Departed.”

 

The investigation also touched the highest level of Massachusetts politics. Bulger’s younger brother, William, was one of the most powerful politicians in the state, leading the Massachusetts Senate for 17 years and later serving as president of the University of Massachusetts for seven years. William Bulger told a congressional committee that he spoke to his brother shortly after he went on the run in 1995 but had no idea about his whereabouts.

 

He declined to comment to the Boston Globe about his brother’s arrest.

 

Bulger, nicknamed “Whitey” for his shock of bright platinum hair, grew up in a gritty South Boston housing project, and went on to become Boston’s most notorious gangster.

 

Along with Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi, he led the violent Winter Hill Gang, a largely Irish mob that ran loan-sharking, gambling and drug rackets in the Boston area. U.S. Attorney Donald K. Stern said in 2000 that the two were “responsible for a reign of intimidation and murder that spanned 25 years.”

 

The government has connected Bulger to a series of ruthless killings. One victim was shot between the eyes in a parking lot at his country club in Oklahoma. Another was gunned down in broad daylight on a South Boston street to prevent him from talking about the killing in Oklahoma. Others were taken out for running afoul of Bulger’s gambling enterprises.

 

He fled in January 1995 after being tipped by a former Boston FBI agent that he was about to be indicted. Bulger himself was a top-echelon FBI informant.

 

Prosecutors said he went on the run after being warned by John Connolly Jr., an FBI agent who had made Bulger an FBI informant 20 years earlier. Connolly was convicted of racketeering in May 2002 for protecting Bulger and Flemmi, also an FBI informant.

 

Bulger provided the Boston FBI with information on his gang’s main rival, the New England Mob, in an era when bringing down the Mafia was one of the FBI’s top national priorities.

 

But the Boston FBI office was sharply criticized when the extent of Bulger’s alleged crimes and his cozy relationship with the FBI became public in the late 1990s.

 

After he fled, Bulger became one of the nation’s most-hunted fugitives. With a place next to Osama bin Laden on the “Ten Most Wanted” list, he had a $2 million reward on his head.

 

In September 2002, the FBI received the most reliable tip in three years when a British businessman who had met Bulger eight years earlier said he spotted Bulger on a London street.

 

After the sighting, the FBI’s multiagency violent fugitive task force in Boston and inspectors from New Scotland Yard scoured London hotels, Internet cafes and gyms in search of Bulger. The FBI also released an updated sketch, using the businessman’s description of Bulger as tan, white-haired and sporting a gray goatee.

 

On Monday, the FBI announced a new publicity campaign and accompanying public service ad that asked people, particularly women, to be on the lookout for Greig. The 30-second ad started running Tuesday in 14 television markets to which Bulger may have ties and was to air during programs popular with women roughly Greig’s age.

 

The new campaign pointed out that Greig had several plastic surgeries before going on the lam and was known to frequent beauty salons.

 

John Weiskopf, who lives across the street from Bulger’s Santa Monica building, said he recognized Bulger when he saw his photo on the Internet.

 

“I recognized him. I said `Holy Smokes,”‘ he said.

 

“From what I understand, these were really gracious easy-going people,” Weiskopf said. “They don’t come out with fangs, they just blended in.”

 

For many years, William Bulger was able to avoid any tarnish from his brother’s alleged crimes. But in August 2003, he resigned his post as president of UMass amid pressure from then-Gov. Mitt Romney and Attorney General Thomas Reilly.

 

His resignation came two months after he testified about his brother before a congressional committee.

 

The committee, in a draft report issued in 2003, blasted the FBI for its use of Bulger and other criminals as informants, calling it “one of the greatest failures in the history of federal law enforcement.”