Nov. 21/2022: This, of course, is what we have in mind when notions of taking the boat south for the winter are first born: a sun-splashed bow wave in which dolphins gambol like frivolous children. But it takes a while to get there. I am actually bad at making plans. I knew I wanted to...
Nov. 3/2022: The bomb has dropped, my friends. The new book came out last week and—as of this moment at least—is the Number 1 Bestseller in Amazon’s Aviation & Nautical Biographies category. I urge you to check it out and click BUY here on Amazon (please leave a rating and review if you do!), or...
Sept. 23/2022: I didn’t get in as much sailing on the Maine coast as I hoped this summer, for various reasons. But I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the sailing that did take place. Back in ancient times, when I was a young person, summer sailing in this part of the world was...
Sept. 16/2022: I was a bit surprised, while visiting my wife’s family in Ireland last month, to find my mother-in-law had just finished reading this book, a mildly scandalous first-person account of a young man’s baptism as a bluewater sailor during a transatlantic passage back in 1974. Nosing around the cover flaps and intro, I...
Sept. 5/2022: I wrote about the advent of unmanned sailing drones back in January 2014, when a robot sailboat completed a passage from San Francisco to Hawaii, and haven’t given the subject too much thought since then. Turns out a lot has been happening! The California-based company Saildrone has been successfully putting drones into action...
You’ve seen the ugly images. A so-called derecho, with winds peaking at 140 mph swept across Corsica on the morning of August 18, killing at least eight people, injuring several others. Wasting countless boats. An ugly sky indeed Now here’s the video… the most graphic one I’ve found so far. Click on the “Watch...
August 17/2022: In May 2014 Thomas Tangvald raced his 17-foot Puerto Rican “mini-nativo” sloop Buenadaga in Foxy’s Wooden Boat Regatta at Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands. This was the popular regatta’s 30th anniversary, so there was a big crowd there. In the photo up top you see Thomas racing the boat singlehanded,...
July 14/2022: I must confess I had never even heard of Ralph Middleton Munroe, a.k.a. “the Commodore,” until just 12 years ago, when I test-sailed a very interesting boat called the Presto 30, designed by Rodger Martin, on Biscayne Bay during the Miami International Boat Show. I was informed at that time that this new...
June 22/2022: We need some closure on this, I think. I twice transited the wreck site where the 656-foot car carrier Golden Ray lay on its side in St. Simons Sound in Georgia—first in November 2019, just two months after the giant brick of a ship capsized. Then again in May 2020, as I departed...
June 12/2022: Job one when I returned to the South Jersey Marina at Cape May on Monday, May 16, was to climb up Lunacy’s mast and invert the VHF antennae back to their upright positions. (You’ll recall I had previously flipped them upside down to fit more comfortably under bridges on the ICW.) I had...
