WING SAILING​

Now I've actually been there, folks. Under a 62' Hybrid Wing rig, on a 40' "beach cat" racing catamaran, with Randy Smyth and Tommy Gonzales with Scott Brown taking pictures.

It's a transcendent experience for an old shellback to sail effortlessly at speeds in the high twenties, and without hydrofoils yet. I'll tell you about it in this (and the next) Capercast. Welcome aboard.

There are some BIG experiments happening with multihulls right now.  In this amazing capercast, Jim talks about the convergence of multihull developments that are coming together in a very unique way within the creation of a new type of sailing-fishing boat conceived by entrepreneur Tim Mann.

Tim and his wife own and operate Friendly Aquaponics in Hawaii.  (See link below).  But prior to that, he built and sailed his own cruising multihulls for a number of years and found a way to sustain his cruising lifestyle by fishing.  This inspired Tim to develop some very unique ideas about practical, economical and sustainable fishing ... which he is about to personally try out in a special boatbuilding project.

But it doesn't end there.

Jim takes things even farther, by taking about a possible convergence between a modern proa, the self-rescuing multihull capsize technique (developed years ago by Jan Gougeon) and the new hybrid wing mast (under current development and testing by Randy Smythe and his partners at FAST FORWARD COMPOSITES in Bristol, RI)

THE CHUCUNAQUE

I'm digging pretty deep here to bring you the kind of story that one withholds until old age. When one looks back and tries to figure "How I Got This Way." 

It's those early exposures to certain feelings, special friends and meaningful mentors, or, in this case, a village in the palms filled with people with whom we could not communicate but didn't need to, much.  And found it hard to leave... Harder to return to normalcy.  It's just another old sea story.  It may not change the listener, but it changed the teller, and he's glad.