SIGHTINGS spring crew party and hobnob with the Latitude crew, the price of admission will get you a hearty munchies buffet, color-coded name tags to aid in mingling, a door-prize drawing, and an inspirational sailing slide show. GGYC's bar will be open and selling drinks, and we'll have Latitude hats available to purchase. Sal's Inflatable Service will bring a liferaft to 'blow up' and party-goers can crawl inside to see what it might be like when the call is made to abandon ship. For Crew Party details and updates, go to www.latitude38.com/crew-party. Although you don't have to be on one of our free crew lists to come to the party, if you're serious about finding a ride continued in middle column of next sightings page
COLIN CASHMORE / AVANT GARDE
Clockwise from top left: recent-crew addition Sherry Smith; owner Chris Welsh; Captain Charlie Underwood; the beast in all her mast-less glory; 'Cheyenne's new pilothouse.
March, 2019 •
Latitude 38
• Page 55
CHRIS WELSH
cat — continued Welsh spoke emphatically on the issues he's trying to tackle. He said the marine munition sites "are all now rusting away and corroded, and are either being released or about to be released into the environment. They're bad news. But we have no current methodology to get rid of it." Welsh said he supports a research and training center in Canada. "Americans can't clean up all of the munitions, but you can train Angolians to clean up Angola's bombs, and Sudanese to clean up Sudan's bombs." Regarding microfibers — tiny synthetic threads that pollute the water and air — Welsh said that they're a bigger problem than almost any other type of plastic pollution. "Every water sample you take has microfibers in them. Every sea-salt sample has microfibers. Mussels, oysters, clams all have microfibers in them." We wondered: Isn't a giant catamaran an unconventional boat to do a diving operation from? "Highly unconventional," Welsh said. "But we're unconventional people." At St. Francis, Welsh said Cheyenne is "a great mothership that's very thrifty on fuel. It can sprint at about 23 knots, but generally we cruise at 13." He told us that he's Is 'Cheyenne' (seen here sans pilot house) launched and recovered three an unconventional dive platform? Sure. But she's proven to be highly effective. different manned submarines. When we visited Cheyenne on a rainy February weekend, the crew were in full pre-departure flurry, making trips to chandleries and working on a slew of projects. Cheyenne will carry two subs — an unmanned "UAV," which will do all the "mapping," as well as a one-person sub. Inside the cat's long, skinny hulls was everything you'd expect to find — engine rooms, racks of bunks, storage and a small, charming galley — but everything was on such a tight, elongated and exaggerated scale so as to feel more like a submarine than a sailboat. Just a few days before we arrived, a small pilothouse was installed on Cheyenne's forward strut. "That'll make motoring on the delivery a lot easier," said recent crew addition Sherry Smith, who's been racing around the Bay for 10 years, and did this year's Baja Ha-Ha aboard her Beneteau 423 TriLoLi. "I'm good at connecting pieces," Sherry said of her role as crew. "I just get shit done." Skipper Charlie Underwood joined Cheyenne in January. "We've S been in the midst of a pretty good refit getting us ready for this multi-year project that will start in Hawaii," Underwood told us. "Cheyenne's Cheyenne's got quite the pedigree — she's obviously been around the world, and was used in the movie Morning Light as a camera boat." Underwood has quite the pedigree himself. "I grew up as a sailing coach, crewed on mega yachts, and have experience as a yacht broker." Underwood was working at Newport Harbor Yacht Club's race office where he met NHYC member Chris Welsh. "I'm excited for where this whole project could go," Underwood said. "It's kind of an open book, and we're in the first chapter." Amid the hustle, we asked Welsh if he had any time to just sail. "I'm going to do the Transpac," Welsh said, with his classic Spencer 65 Ragtime. "When this project's done, I'll start on that one. — tim