Sept. 7/2023: While vacationing in West Cork, Ireland, last month, one of my goals was to spend some time sailing with Don Street. It says a lot that this is even a possibility. The last time I sailed with Don, when he was a sprightly sure-footed 75-year-old, was way back in 2005, aboard his famous...
Feb. 17/2023: Leave it to the most experienced performance sailors to come up with the most interesting boats when they get older and want to go cruising. Exhibit A in today’s brief is Oddity (see image up top), a custom plywood/epoxy 32-foot gaff-rigged barge of a thing masterminded by ex-round-the-world solo racer Pete Goss. A...
Dec. 6/2022: As mentioned in my last post sharing extra pix of Thomas, the first boat he owned himself was a scrappy little Chapelle-designed scow, Spartan, that he bought in Puerto Rico for just $200. This boat, along with L’Artemis de Pytheas, the boat he grew up on, was destroyed in the terrible wreck that...
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...
May 13/2022: I used to live in Thomaston, Maine, literally just down the street from the Lyman Morse yard, but that was 20 years ago, so I was happy to have a chance to revisit the yard this past week. It was then, and is even more so now, the kind of place where you...
April 27/2022: No, my friends, this is not one of those “concept” yachts, where a bored designer comes up with some really fanciful, crazy idea for a boat that will never ever get built. This is a real fanciful, crazy boat that exists in the real world, and if you really want you can buy...
Feb 25/2022: It’s hard to believe, but this coming November we’ll be hitting the 10th anniversary of Paul Larsen’s record-breaking 65.45-knot speed sailing run in Vestas Sailrocket 2. That record, almost 10 knots better than its predecessor, still stands. These days two different teams are hard at work designing and building vessels they hope to...
Dec. 29/2021: We previously discussed the very cool Energy Observer project, in which the old “maxi” racing cat Formule TAG (most famously known as ENZA New Zealand, an early Jules Verne winner) has been repurposed as a 100% energy self-sufficient vessel. But not all race-boat makeovers are so ambitious… or so well financed. One interesting grass-roots...
June 23/2021: I’ve always loved the feel and ambiance of a traditional plank-on-frame wooden boat, but I’ve never been too crazy about the idea of actually owning and maintaining one. So this was a very fine opportunity, getting to take someone else’s 41-foot Aage Nielsen sloop on a short jaunt down the New England coast....
April 19/2021: When developing a concept vessel there’s really no reason to think small. Take this plastic-eating beast, for example. The Manta, a concept developed by the Sea Cleaners, a non-profit founded by Franco-Swiss sailor/adventurer Yvan Bourgnon, is projected to weigh in at 1,800 tons, with an overall length of 184 feet. Beam is 150...
