Out The Gate Sailing

Stan Honey is a professional navigator, inventor and businessman who’s won 11 Transpacs, the Volvo Ocean Race and set a non-stop circumnavigation record a transatlantic speed record. In addition to being a successful navigator he’s an accomplished inventor and businessman. He pioneered on-screen navigation for cars, and invented the technology that superimposes the first down line in yellow for football game. He and his wife, Sally Lindsay Honey, race and cruise aboard their Cal 40 Illusion.

Stan Honey is a professional navigator, inventor, and businessman who’s won 11 Transpacs, the Volvo Ocean Race, and set a non-stop circumnavigation record a transatlantic speed record. In addition to being a successful navigator he’s an accomplished inventor and businessman. He pioneered on-screen navigation for cars, and invented the technology that superimposes the first down line in yellow for football game. He and his wife, Sally Lindsay Honey, race and cruise aboard their Cal 40 Illusion.

Jim Quanci has been sailing and racing on San Francisco Bay since the early 80s. He’s raced to Hawaii 18 times, once with his whole family, once alone, and many times with his wife - whom he met while racing on the Bay. Jim has sailed many miles on his Cal 40 Green Buffalo and many more all over the world on charter boats. In this episode, we talk about what’s changed in racing over the years, his race strategy, single handing, and what he loves most about being out there on the water.

Ryan Nelson has loved being on the water from a very young age. As a kid he cobbled together logs, a pole, and some fabric into a sailing raft. Today, as the owner and operator of Rogue Rigging, he’s still working on boats - and loving it. He spent nearly a decade rigging for West Marine before striking out on his own. I sat down with Ryan in his rigging shop at the Berkeley Marine Center and we talked about his business, his four boats, and his passion for racing on San Francisco Bay.

At the age of 22, John Neal bought a 27-foot Albin Vega sloop and set off from Seattle headed for Hawaii. His book chronicling that voyage, Log of Mahina, became a best seller and people started seeking him out to ask: "How can I find and prepare a boat for ocean voyaging?" In 1976 he began conducting Offshore Cruising Seminars and in 1990, to meet the requests for hands-on offshore instruction, John established Mahina Expeditions. He’s sailed 342,000 miles in the South Pacific, Caribbean, Patagonia, Antarctica, Atlantic, Scandinavia and the Arctic, rounding Cape Horn six times in the process. John’s wife Amanda was featured in episode 14 of Out The Gate.

When Kame Richards started Pineapple Sails in 1973, he’d only been sailing a handful of times. Forty-six years later, his business is still going strong and he’s learned a whole lot about sailmaking and sailing. In this interview we talk about his business, tides and currents on SF Bay, racing to Hawaii under a full moon, and the Alameda Community Sailing Center which he recently launched.

In 2008, Behan and Jamie Gifford set sail from Seattle with their three children, Niall, Mairen, and Siobhan. Their Stevens 47, Totem, took them down to Mexico, across the pacific, and beyond. Almost exactly ten years later they crossed their own track, completing a circumnavigation. They are currently in Mexico, where they had planned to set sail for another Pacific crossing, before the Coronavirus pandemic put those plans on hold. You can follow their adventure at sailingtotem.com

John Kretschmer is a philosopher sailor and a great storyteller - in the vein of Bernard Moitessier. As a sailor he’s logged more than 300,000 offshore sailing miles. He’s taught thousands of people about ocean sailing, imparting his knowledge in person and through his writing. He’s the author of At the Mercy of the Sea, Flirting with Mermaids, Cape Horn to Starboard, and most recently Sailing to the Edge of Time - which just last week came out as an Audio book. I sat down with John when he was in town to speak at the St. Francis Yacht Club.

Rich Jepsen found his life’s work at age 14, when he was allowed to take a small boat out sailing for the day by himself. Eight years later he got his first gig teaching sailing, and he’s continued that work to the present. He was an owner, operator and CEO of OCSC Sailing School in Berkeley for over 30 years. Today, while still teaching sailing and leading sailing trips around the world, he’s also Vice President of U.S. Sailing. In 2017 Rich received the Timothea Larr Award for his outstanding contributions to the advancement of sailor education in the United States.

In January 2018, Caitlin Schwarzman and Jason Rucker set sail with their son Arlo and daughter Alma, from Alameda for a year-long adventure through the Pacific. Their boat Debonaire is a 44-foot double-ended wooden ketch - and is the sister ship to a boat Caitlin went cruising on with her parents in the 1970s. We discussed getting themselves and their boat ready for the trip, the adventure itself, and how it brought them closer as a family. You can find their blog at: www.ayearandaday.net