Sailing

Fall 2013

Fatigue at Sea: A Circumnavigator’s Story

Were there a Hall of Fame of Sleep Deprivation, a special place would be reserved for single-handed sailors who routinely rise from their bunks to check their rigs and scan the horizon for oncoming vessels. It’s a reasonable safety precaution. It also invites its own measure of risk by compromising reaction times, hand-eye coordination, and general judgment, the kind of things scientists study at WSU Spokane’s Sleep and Performance Research Center.

As it happens, Lois James MA ’09, PhD ’11, a research assistant professor in the center, is the daughter of Naomi James, the first woman to sail single-handed around the world via … » More …

Winter 2015

Take to the sea

Four years ago, at a wedding in Spokane, Cathy Simon ’71 was seated across from a woman named Kay LeClair. Like Simon, LeClair was in her 60s. Unlike Simon, she had recently climbed to the 29,035-foot summit of Mount Everest.

It made Simon think, “I’m not done. I need to do something more.”

A sailor, she started exploring her options and lit upon the World Cruising Club’s World Atlantic Rally for Cruisers, a 26,000-mile circumnavigation of the earth. Speaking to her husband, Charles Simon ’89 MS, she said, “We’re going to need a new boat.”

This May, the couple sailed their 58-foot sailboat into Rodney … » More …

Spring 2007

John Leitzinger: Racing with the wind

On a small boat with six other guys, with about two weeks to travel 2,300 nautical miles, you really want to be with agreeable people.

That was John Leitzinger’s philosophy when he was looking for teammates to sail with him in the 2006 Vic-Maui International Yacht Race, a trip between Victoria, Canada, and Lahaina, Maui.

Fortunately, he long ago found a good sailing partner in his college friend, Ken Marks. After finishing their education degrees from Washington State University in 1987, the pair moved to Tacoma, where they worked as substitute teachers, lived together, and bought a boat from another Cougar classmate’s dad. “It was … » More …