The sailing world is a fairly small one. Especially when you are looking at boats that actually do sail around a lot The other day a new boat pulled in to the slip right across from us here in Charleston, South Carolina. As soon as I got a look at the graphics on the transom, my brain flipped though its internal card file and found a match.

XL was designed by Jim Antrim and was built at the Berkely Marine Center in Berkeley, California while I was working at the sailing school there. I literally had a front row seat as this boat was taking shape back in 2008. You can see pictures of the boat sailing, and under construction at Antrim’s website: http://antrimdesign.com/xl.html

XL had been brought here because her owners were planning on running her on the spring and summer racing circuit on the east coast, and Bahamas. After several years in storage, she had a new paint job, new rigging, and a general refit. She had just sailed here from Miami.

There was one small problem… there was something missing:

The mast! Apparently some piece of the new rigging failed, just as she was coming into Charleston Harbor, and the whole rig went over the side.

Fortunately, there wasn’t a lot of consequential structural damage, and nobody was hurt. With a initial delivery estimate for a new rig out well into June, it would seem their racing schedule will be significantly reduced.

We are getting ready to head to Florida, after being stuck here for too long. We are starting to watch the weather carefully, but the next week or so has a weather pattern that is resulting in wildly different forecasts. We’ll pick a day to leave once the various weather models agree on what we might encounter!