Longer articles by me that treat sailing and the sea in a more literary manner, short reviews of nautical books I think readers might enjoy reading, plus occasional excerpts from nautical books that I’d like to share with readers.
March 4/2026: In July of 1880 or ’82, a young African-American boy named William Golden (he would later often give his surname as Golding) was loitering about the waterfront in Savannah, Georgia, with a young cousin. The two boys were admiring a three-masted barkentine named Wandering Jew, when the captain and his wife called out...
Nov. 19/2025: Speaking of Tom Cunliffe, here’s a bit of serendipitous coincidence. Both he and Clare Allcard, who met for the first time back in 2016 in Andorra, when I met Clare for the first time, have published new books just about simultaneously. Except Tom’s book is a novel, his very first. And just as...
Nov. 7/2025: This isn’t really a sailing book, but in one sense it is sort of an ultimate sailing book—a story of sailing and the sea as a saving grace. I first met its author, Clare Allcard, in the spring of 2016, when I set out researching The Boy Who Fell to Shore, my biography...
Aug 8/2025: There was a time when survival drift stories involving bluewater sailors were not unusual. From the early 1970s to the late 1980s, as bluewater cruising became increasingly popular, but the technology involved remained relatively primitive, we saw a steady trickle of them. These days, what with modern sat comms and global 406 EPIRB...
Feb. 2/2025: It is, as Steve Callahan himself once remarked to me, a story that will not die. That being the story of his 76-day solo survival drift across the North Atlantic in a liferaft, back in 1982, after his 21-foot sloop Napoleon Solo was sunk in a collision (presumably with a whale) some distance...
Jan. 16/2025: ‘Tis a bit discouraging, I have to admit. The last time we cruised the Spanish Virgin Islands as a family was 12 years ago, and when I asked the kids (now ages 25 and 19) what they remember about it (they were then ages 13 and 7), they said they recalled very little....
Dec. 12/2024: I’ve been remiss here. I got a copy of this book some time ago, handed me direct and personal from its author, Tim Murphy, autograph included. I read big chunks of it most immediately and learned: it’s a great book! But I was on my boat at the time, and the book got...
Oct. 21/2024: The opening photo here says it all for me. Thomas Tangvald’s youngest half-sister Virginia sitting in the same spot I sat in some time prior to her, researching the tragic Tangvald legacy. This from her film Les enfants du large (translating as Ghosts of the Sea in English), which premiered at a film...
April 12/2024: First things first. A short profile I wrote on Daniel Hays and his semi-famous boat Sparrow appears in the most recent (May 2024) print issue of SAIL. It ends with a postscript (complete with Dan’s e-mail address) that he is looking to sell the boat. But if you think you might be interested…...
Jan. 11/2024: Here’s one of the more interesting things that has happened to me since the publication of The Boy Who Fell to Shore, my biography of Thomas Tangvald, October before last. This past November a woman named Suzanne Heywood reached out to me, wanting to talk about children raised on cruising boats. She had...
