The following material was copied from the report located at the URL below. Notice that the original disturbance started off of Africa but the final storm became a Hurricane that dissipated south of Hawaii, in a completely different ocean basin. I was looking over these storm track reports and saw that this process seems to be typical. "Dora originated from a tropical wave that moved off the west coast of Africa on 23 July. It moved westward across the tropical Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea without distinction. By 4 August, the wave was located over the tropical Pacific Ocean south of the Gulf of Tehuantepec with some disorganized convection." http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/1999dora.html Mike Capt. Mike Maurice Tualatin(Portland), Oregon

Hi Everyone, I'm a new member on the list - just "listening" for now. I just read Beebe's book and so have recently gotten a little fired up about the whole area. I live in the Silicon Valley, California - currently in the middle of my career but think that one day it would be great to tour the world by water, preferably by power. This is a long range goal... but I figure its never too early to start learning. I'm interested in learning about several different approaches (my ultimate approach will depend how business goes in the next few years) but these seem interesting (going from least expensive to most expensive): 1. Old, larger ship that is proven and relatively low cost (initially) - e.g. old ice-class ship - sort of like this (but smaller - in the 80 ft to 125ft LOA): http://shipexpo.com/sales/vessel_detail.asp?FileNo=2096 2. Standard approach (Nordhavn's, etc.) 3. High-tech approach (new designs, integrating the latest technologies). Anyway - just wanted to introduce myself. And, I thought you'd find this article of interest (excerpt below) - seems like this could be a good marriage of both power and sail: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/mg18524881.600 The new age of sail 26 February 2005 >From New Scientist THE coming of steam sent the world's great sailing fleets into decline. The internal combustion engine finally finished them off. So it would be a strange twist of fate if the age of sail was resurrected by what amounts to a child's toy. For several weeks last summer, a team of German engineers sailed back and forth across the Baltic Sea playing with a large inflatable kite. The engineers, from the Hamburg company SkySails, were testing the potential of high-tech kites to pull a ship across the ocean by hitching a ride on winds high above the waves. The idea isn't to propel a ship by wind alone - a conventional diesel engine will help it along on days when the wind is blowing from the wrong direction, is too strong or dies away entirely. But since the kite reduces the need to use engines, the team at SkySails believes it can halve the amount of fuel a ship burns. This is just one of the ways in which sail power is being revived - and it's not the first. In tests more than 20 years ago, Japanese engineers equipped several ships, including a bulk carrier and a tanker, with masts and sails. The projects were eventually shelved, but this time round there are sound reasons why wind could win through. For nine years a team of naval architects in Copenhagen, Denmark, has been working on a completely new design: a 50,000-tonne cargo ship whose diesel engine will be augmented by a set of high-tech sails set on six masts. Canvas is definitely out. Aerofoils are in. Denmark is already a world leader in developing wind turbines for power generation and is keen to capitalise on this expertise to develop wind propulsion for ships. In 1995 the Danish Environmental Protection Agency began financing a major research project into windships. Led by the naval architects Knud E. Hansen, the research not only produced a new design of ship but also looked at how the ship could make the most of wind power and the cargoes it would be best suited to carrying. Now the team is about to embark on full-scale trials.