This thing sure does look a bit bug-like, doesn't it??? No need to get out the Raid, however. Tis but a figment in the imagination of one Yelken Octuri, a French designer whose day job is color-coordinating plane interiors for Airbus. It would appear he does not find this job entirely fulfilling. In his...
I stopped in for the night at Cliff Island on my way back from Malaga during my Mini Solo Cruise, and we stopped there again during a family weekend on the boat soon afterwards. I first checked it out just last year, but since then I've anchored or moored there repeatedly, as it is very...
It seems the sailing world's latest child circumnavigator, Laura Dekker, age 14, confounded hovering media vultures over the weekend by suddenly appearing in Gibraltar, then leaving again in secret to set out alone on her trip around the world. Dekker originally planned to make her solo departure out of Portimao, Portugal, where she and...
Boats produced by the French builder Chantiers Amel occupy a very unique niche in the cruising sailboat market. The company founder, Henri Toncet, who changed his name to Henri Amel while serving with the French resistance during World War II, became a pioneer of fiberglass boatbuilding in Europe after studying floating pontoons built of polyester-impregnated...
Next stop on my Mini Solo Cruise after Little Chebeague Island was all the way the other side of Casco Bay at the mouth of the New Meadows River. Malaga Island, as you can see, is wedged between Bear Island and the village of Sebasco, which is part of the larger town of Phippsburg...
Those in the sailing universe will instantly recognize Neil Pryde primarily for all its windsurfing mojo, but also as a straight-up sailmaker. I made my second transat, for example, back in 1992 under a suit of sweet Neil Pryde sails on a recently built Taswell 56 named Antipodes. So I was more than a...
Taft & Rinlaub's Cruising Guide to the Maine Coast is a bit dismissive of Chandler Cove, which is bounded by Great Chebeague Island to the north and east, Little Chebeague Island to the west, and Long Island to the south. The guide complains that the cove is a bit too large and deep to be...
This is my Omega Speedmaster, a fancy mechanical chronograph that my wife gave me for my birthday a couple of years back. It is, in fact, a special 50th anniversary edition of this legendary time piece, released back in 2007, when I myself turned 50. Watch fanatics will at once remember the Speedmaster as...
These days voyaging south down the U.S. East Coast via the Intracoastal Waterway is so commonplace as to be cliché. Literally thousands of cruisers now make the pilgrimage annually. Calling themselves “snowbirds,” they ply the murky waters of the ICW in all manner of vessels, both power and sail, and pride themselves on the tobacco-colored...
You may have noticed I haven't been in a huge rush to blog about the offshore race in which Team SEMOSA competed the week before last. If you're assuming this was because we did poorly, you wouldn't be far wrong. We ran the race on Phil Cavanaugh's Baltic 35 Alida, which we have campaigned with...
