On April 12, 2014, 5 boats and 22 TSPS members and guests participated in the first cruise of 2014. The destination was Hota, Chiba, a charming fishing port with the famous Banya seafood restaurant. A good time was had by all, and all boats returned safely to their home ports the next day. Some photos below:
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Commander Eugen Mall was recently pleased to award our Education Officer, Jeff Canaday, his 25th Merit Mark, which comes with lifetime membership in the United States Power Squadron. Jeff is a long-time member of TSPS and has been very active in setting up and teaching TSPS boating classes.
Thanks to TSPS member Tatsuo Fujimoto the first BBQ of the year will be held at his waterfront house across the water from Seabornia Marina near Misaki, Miura Hanto, on Saturday May 17, 2014 from 12 Noon until the drinks are gone. The cost will be Yen 5 000 per person. We have enjoyed Mr. Fujimoto’s hospitality before and always have a good time. For more information and how to sign up for the barbecue, go to the event announcement.
The 2014 TSPS Change of Watch was held on February 20th at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of Japan in Yurakucho, Tokyo. Over 40 members and friends attended. Warren Fraser, TSPS commander for the last two years, kicked off the proceedings with a summary of 2013’s activities. Secretary Gary Thomas gave a run-down of the status of our incorporation initiative, which will soon reach fruition. The high point of the proceedings was the election and swearing in of the new bridge officers for 2014, performed by District 13 Commander Doug Dworski. The members of the new bridge for 2014 are
Commander: Eugen Mall
Executive Officer: Jiro Fujiwara
Secretary: Gary Thomas
Education Officer: Jeff Canaday
Administrative Officer: David Sutton-Kirkby
Treasurer: Tony Whitman
Membership Chairman: John Marshall
Cruising Coordinator: Per Knudsen
Communications Officer: Mike Snyder
Social Activities: Warren Fraser
Public Relations: Masao Ando
Commander Doug Dworski also gave an interesting run-down of the situation with the USPS national organisation and District 13. Other attendees included the daughter and son of the late Past Commander Shun-ichiro Yamamoto, Akiko and Hiroshi, as well as Akiko san’s husband, Motohiro. PC Yamamoto was a well-liked avid week-end sailor and kept his boat “Mambo”at Hayama Harbor. Akiko san says that she welcomes TSPS memers to sail aboard Mambo when it has passed its inspections. The event ended with the annual raffle of booty emceed by new Administrative Officer David Sutton-Kirkby, and member Demir Sadigloku was the big winner of the night. The food was good, the atmosphere scintillating, the company grand. A good evening had by all!
On August 7, TSPS member Kirk Patterson completed a clock-wise circumnavigation of Hokkaido aboard his sailing vessel, Silk Purse. During his trip, Kirk posted progress reports regularly to Facebook, and for those who followed the story it was a tense voyage through thick and thin fog against and with strong counter currents around hazards-to-sailing such as long fishing nets, small octopus/crab pots, and concrete breakwaters into both friendly and unfriendly fishing ports, all the while encountering great generosity from many of the people he met and dealing with the long arm of bureaucracy, as the Coast Guard shadowed his every movement for the first half of his journey.
Kirk will remain in Hakodate for a week to ten days making repairs and doing maintenance work and other jobs before departing for Kyushu, a voyage of approximately 1,000 nautical mile through the Japan Sea. He plans to reach Fukuoka by mid-October.
Up in the rigging during his trip around Hokkaido, Kirk flew burgees from his sailing club in Victoria, BC.- the Bluewater Cruising Association, and from a sponsor- the Japan Hydrographic Association. For his voyage south to Kyushu, Kirk will be adding the TSPS burgee to his flag line.
We are proud to have Kirk as a member of TSPS and congratulate him for the successful completion of the second phase of his journey and wish him all the best as he makes his way south to Fukuoka. Fair winds, Kirk!
As residents of Japan we are all too aware of the dangers of typhoons and tsunamis, and as boaters and boat owners we’ve experienced that , er, sinking feeling as severe weather phenomena approach our boating waters. Well, our friends at the Hawaii Sail & Power Squadron have sent along a digital copy of a fifty-two page manual spelling out how we as boaters can protect our lives and property when a hurricane or other severe storm threatens. The manual also contains a section on tsunamis and other serious threats to boaters and the marine community.
While a lot of the information presented in the document is Hawaii-specific, much of it can be applied to our situation here in Japan, and is in the end simply sound safety advice for boaters and boat owners. It presents “a summary of the actions boaters and other members of (a) marine community can take before, during, and after a hurricane or tsunami, (and) is intended to assist in preparing for and mitigating the effects of these hazards. It includes information on these events and their dangers, (and) provides guidelines to develop a personal preparedness plan…”
You can view then download the ‘Boater’s Hurricane and Tsunami Safety Manual’ here.
From doradehistory.com:
Dorade became the most famous ocean racing yacht in the world. As the first major blue water design to be built to the drawings of her 21-year-old designer, Dorade’s keel was laid just weeks after the Stock Market Crash of 1929, and her launching in the spring of 1930 coincided with the slide of the nation into the Great Depression. Despite such inauspicious timing, this yacht, her young designer and youthful, attractive crew became a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic and on both coasts of America. Dorade introduced and validated the early yacht design concepts of Olin Stephens and influenced, in one way or another, nearly all developments in yacht design for the next three decades. Her rigging and deck fixtures, developed in large part by Olin’s younger brother, Roderick Stephens Jr., still make the name Dorade commonplace today. Her combination of speed, sea-keeping ability, stunning beauty and small size, coupled with her startling racing success, kept the eye of the public on her and on those aboard her.
From Wikipedia:
Dorade was a yacht designed in 1929 by Olin Stephens of Sparkman & Stephens and built 1929–1930 by the Minneford Yacht Yard in City Island, New York.
Dorade went on to place 2nd in the Bermuda Race later that year. The crew for its first race received the All-Amateur Crew Prize. However, it would be the Transatlantic Race that would bring the boat its name. Placing first, she completed the race in 17 days – a race that takes an estimated 3–4 weeks to complete. A parade was held in celebration of the crew and ship’s return with the mayor holding a reception in honor of Olin Stephens’ victory.
Olin Stephens, the designer, was skipper through 1932 when he handed the boat to his brother, Rod Stephens.[1] Led by Rod, Dorade sailed to victory in the 1932 Bermuda Race.[2] From Bermuda, Dorade sailed back to Norway, down to Cowes, England, and finally back to America after winning the Fastnet Race. The victory of the 1932 Fastnet Race was of substantial significance given the unusually severe weather, several ships feared missing as well as one recorded drowning among the events that unfolded.
TSPS Bridge Officer Tom Proctor has put his sailboat on the market. Below is information provided by Tom. All enquiries regarding Tombo must be addressed to Tom directly.
My Germán Frers-designed Hallberg Rassy 310, is for up for sale or available for 1/6th fractional ownership at ¥2,500,000/share.
Tombo was launched in June 2010 and is fully equipped for local and long-distance sailing. Her homeport is Shimoda at the bottom of Izu peninsula, which is the gateway to the best sailing grounds for those living in the Kanto and Tokai regions of Japan and only a few hours cruise from the Izu island chain to the south and east. Under a fractional ownership plan, Tombo will be moved to a port of the ownership group’s choosing.
A partial list of equipment includes:
• offshore sails
• gennaker with sock
• autopilot
• GPS
• AIS with Wifi to iPad/PC
• dodger
• bimini
• hot/cold pressure water to galley and shower
• central heating
• propane stove with electronic solenoid at tank
• water-cooled refrigeration
• LED lighting
• solar panel and charger
• electric anchor winch and bow anchor with all chain rode
• stern anchor with davit
• mooring lines and fenders
• 110 volt a/c charger and hot water heater
Additional options to get you to Australia, South-east Asia, or where-ever else in the world you’d like to go include:
• six-person life raft (2012)
• charts
• galley equipment
• loads of spares
• back-up GPS
• autopilot
• two Rocna anchors with rodes
• vhf radios
• lee cloths
• jacklines
• tethers
• preventer
• &etc
Hallberg Rassy boats are widely considered among the best-built passage makers for long-distance cruising. They’ve enjoyed a reputation for sea-going stability, safety, speed, and ease of operation for over forty years. That’s why I bought one.
If you’re interested in purchasing Tombo outright or participating in a fractional ownership arrangement, send me an e-mail at thomashproctor@yahoo.com.
Tom Proctor
In the June issue of BoatUS magazine, Evan Starzinger wrote a basic yet interesting article about three gripping hitches used to join two lines together while one line is under load. These are particularly useful when for one reason or another the load on a line is too great to manage by hand and requires transferring it to a winch or block to safely or more easily deal with.
I’ve used the icicle hitch to transfer a fully loaded jib sheet to a cleat because overwraps on the winch had tightened to the point I could no longer ease out the jib. Another use was at anchor. Voyager has an eight-foot bowsprit and leading the anchor rode to the end of the bowsprit eliminates chafing problems as the boat swings on the tides. By running a line through a block at the end of the spar then back to the bow and hitching it to the anchor rode, the rode can then be moved well forward and away from the shrouds that support the bowsprit.
Gripping hitches are useful and important and should be in every sailor’s inventory of quickly deployable knots.
You can read the article here.
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he new TSPS website has been up for 6 months and each and every month it has attracted over 1,300 new and unique viewers in more than 90 countries worldwide. Some of these viewers go on to become members of TSPS, while others sign up for the “At The Masthead” weekly digest of Tokyo boating news and stories published to the site. Still others, visit to get a sense of what’s going on in the TSPS boating community, or mistakenly stop by on their way to the Texas Society of Plastic Surgeons.
So it came as a pleasant surprise when we received an email from Tina Tibbitts, assistant editor of The Ensign magazine. Tina wrote to us requesting permission to include one of our website stories and the accompanying picture in an upcoming edition of the official magazine of United States Power Squadrons. Of course permission was given, but only after satisfying the demands for free pizza at the next Keelhaul from the photographer and his roguish writer friend. What this dynamic duo doesn’t know is that we offer pizza and more to all who attend the Keelhaul 😉
So for those of you who receive The Ensign as part of your TSPS membership, look for our story in the Waypoints section. For those of you who don’t, The Ensign is but another in a long list of reasons to become members of the Tokyo Sail & Power Squadron.
