The Shooting The Breeze Sailing Podcast

Welcome to this episode of The Shooting The Breeze Sailing Podcast (STBSP) which is a Cross Podcast with Bela Musits from the Sailing the East Coast Of the USA podcast whereby we interview a fan of both of our podcasts, Gene Martel, who started sailing recently after getting interested a few years back. He searched around for Sailing Podcasts, and found ours, among a few others. I met Gene back a few years ago at the Annapolis Sailboat Show, and he reached out to Bela as well, asking about what sort of boat he should look into buying.

Now a few years gone by, Gene has a year of sailing under his belt and he wants to tell his story so it might inspire others to learn how to sail and make it happen. He reached out to both Bela and I and we decided to do a group chat a release it across both of our platforms.

Also in this episode I talk a bit about the Upper Chesapeake Bay Sailing Group on Facebook meetup we had last weekend, a sail in event at Lighthouse Point Marina in Baltimore called the Boat Show and Tell. It was a fun event, and planning has already begun for next years event.

And I also talk about the upcoming Annapolis Sailboat show, my slots at the podcast booth, and other plans for the show.

You can listen to Episode 184 of the STBSP, by right clicking and downloading here,

You can find it on all your favorite Podcast Apps and Aggregators

or push play on the embedded link below.

Intro Music by yours truly and Greg Young, of The Incoherents, a band I managed in college. The song is called Never Tell and is available via email. Find the other songs they did at The Incoherents. The Lean Years Volume 2, on Itunes.

Break music, “Wild Winds of Misfortune” by Leo Disanto of The Vinegar Creek Constituency, and “The Wild Rover” as performed by The Ogham Stones
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Welcome to episode 189 of The Shooting the Breeze Sailing Podcast (STBSP), our chat with Upper Chesapeake Bay Sailing Facebook groups resident Guru, Thad Van Gilder.

He started sailing when he was a young kid, building small boats as he went along. The backwaters of the NJ shore were his playground where he honed his skills running into bridges and shallow water. After college he spent his summers sailing the Delmarva bays and rivers on a variety of boats. Later on he started working on boats and delivering boats on the side.

He is a wealth of knowledge about all things Good Old Boat, and he tells us all about his adventures in this conversation.

He is a staple over at the Facebook group, doing zoom calls, and helping others with sailing questions. You will probably find him hanging around Rock Hall, MD on his Cape Dory 36 with his wife, or down at Anchors and Oars, checking out the Good Old Boat parts!

Someday, we will hang out onboard in person, or meet up out on the water. There may even be a book in his future!

You can listen to Episode 189 of the STBSP, by right clicking and downloading here,

You can find it on all your favorite Podcast Apps and Aggregators

or push play on the embedded link below.

Please leave us a comment or send us thoughts to [email protected].
Intro Music by yours truly and Greg Young, available via The Incoherents. The Lean Years Volume 2, on Itunes.
Break music, “Wild Winds of Misfortune” by Leo Disanto of The Vinegar Creek Constituency, and “The Wild Rover” as performed by The Ogham Stones
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Welcome to this episode of The Shooting The Breeze Sailing Podcast (STBSP) with our guest, Sailor, Olympian, America’s Cup winning team member, and founder of PredictWind, Jon Bilger!

With the Olympics fresh on our minds and weather creeping into our daily lives with Tropical Systems in our news feeds, it is a great time to talk to Jon about the Olympics, his time as a member of Team Alinghi, and how he took all that sailing experience and the technology used by his weather forecasting team out into the public space as PredictWind.

If you are even half serious about sailing you probably have used PredictWind, or at least have heard about it. It began creeping into my consciousness back around 2015 as it showed up in various YouTube channels as part of their passage planning. The graphics make the program very easy to visualize how the weather is going to impact the area’s where you are planning on sailing.

It comes down to a safety at sea issue at times, as you do not want to be stuck in the middle of a deepening low pressure system at sea. With Predict wind you can get real time and historical data from sailing grounds all over the world. You can install a data hub on your boat that sends live data to the grid via recently available tools like StarLink.

You can run virtual regatta’s, you can plan a passage, you can do all sorts of things on Predict Wind. Many of the features are free, but you can also upgrade to make use of the advanced features available.

Jon has such a great sailing venue over there in New Zealand, and takes advantage of it as much as possible with his family, a special memory of which he talks about where his father is helping his daughter wrangle a boat ashore that was built for him when he was a kid by his dad. He also talks about high tech and very adventurous Foiling boats taking us into the next phase of sailing.

You can listen to Episode 182 of the STBSP, by right clicking and downloading here,

You can find it on all your favorite Podcast Apps and Aggregators

or push play on the embedded link below.

Intro Music by yours truly and Greg Young, of The Incoherents, a band I managed in college. The song is called Never Tell and is available via email. Find the other songs they did at The Incoherents. The Lean Years Volume 2, on Itunes.

Break music, “Wild Winds of Misfortune” by Leo Disanto of The Vinegar Creek Constituency, and “The Wild Rover” as performed by The Ogham Stones
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Welcome to episode 179 of the Shooting The Breeze Sailing Podcast with our guest Olympic Sailor Lara Dallman-Weiss who is representing the US Sailing Team in the 470 class with sailing partner Stuart McNay.

I was honored to be considered to interview Lara on our little Sailing Podcast. I must say I had a little bit of imposter syndrome beforehand as I thought about the questions I might ask a world class athlete and sailor. I am fascinated by the level of dedication you must have to reach this level and how to physically and mentally prepare to compete in such an environment, with all the hurdles you have to manage along the way. I was also very interested in whether she considered herself an Athlete first or Sailor first and what plans she may have after her Olympic campaign is over.

A big part of the journey is finding the support along the way, so if you are so inclined you can donate to the team over at Lara’s Website, www.larasails.com where you can find updated information, buy some merch and support the team. You can also find her on Instagram. US Sailing is the umbrella organization under which the Olympic sailing teams operate and who gives support to the teams at this level.

The Olympics start in late July with Lara starting sailing on August 2nd. Not sure on the Television schedule in the US, but NBC Sports will be covering the summer olympics.

You can listen to Episode 179 of the STBSP, by right clicking and downloading here,

You can find it on all your favorite Podcast Apps and Aggregators

or push play on the embedded link below.

Intro Music by yours truly and Greg Young, of The Incoherents, a band I managed in college. The song is called Never Tell and is available via email. Find the other songs they did at The Incoherents. The Lean Years Volume 2, on Itunes.

Break music, “Wild Winds of Misfortune” by Leo Disanto of The Vinegar Creek Constituency, and “The Wild Rover” as performed by The Ogham Stones
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Welcome to this episode of The Shooting The Breeze Sailing Podcast (STBSP) in which we spend a rainy Saturday in Annapolis at Bacon Sails with Stevie Reeves, in his podcast studio, with alcohol, and Captain Boomies and the Bear crash the Party. This is part two of what ended up being almost a three hour tour. If you want to watch it on Stevie’s YouTube Channel, the link is here. It gets kinda crazy, but it was a fun time and there’s some good stuff in here. Check out Unfurled with Stevie Reeves on Insta and Youtube.

This is Part 2, if you missed part 1, go back and check out episode 177.

Started Cleaning the boat up a bit, got some bottom paint, waiting on some good weather next few weekends to get the boat ready for the season!

You can listen to Episode 178 of the STBSP, by right clicking and downloading here,

You can find it on all your favorite Podcast Apps and Aggregators

or push play on the embedded link below.

Intro Music by yours truly and Greg Young, of The Incoherents, a band I managed in college. The song is called Never Tell and is available via email. Find the other songs they did at The Incoherents. The Lean Years Volume 2, on Itunes.

Break music, “Wild Winds of Misfortune” by Leo Disanto of The Vinegar Creek Constituency, and “The Wild Rover” as performed by The Ogham Stones
Support the Podcast on,