Nov. 21/2025: It’s true! It’s true! I’m selling Lunacy after a hard long debate with myself. She’s afloat and available for viewing at Jabin’s in Annapolis, courtesy of my old friend Forbes Horton, who is listing her for me. Unlike last time, when I sold old Lunacy in order to buy new Lunacy, and so...
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...
May 8/2025: Some of you may be surprised to learn this, but I do have fans. One at least, anyway. Scott Davis, an active sailor based in Manchester, MA, contacted me via this blog site some time ago and worked hard to establish a rapport. We had a long chat on the phone, during which...
March 27/2025: I wanted to take a more “cruiserly” approach to bringing Lunacy back to North America from the Caribbean this year, and I also decided it was well past time to get my shoal-draft centerboard boat into Bahamian waters for a change. Thus the hatching of an obvious plan: to island-hop from the south...
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....
Nov. 20/2024: This is getting tedious. First it was my fractured left wrist, nursed through a Caribbean cruise and a solo passage back home earlier this year. Then bursitis of the left elbow, endured through some coastal summer cruising in Maine. Now it is a badly sprained left ankle. Not a boat-related injury (unlike the...
Oct. 6/24: Back in August, while crawling around for a while in Lunacy’s engine bay, on top of and behind the engine itself, I somehow injured my elbow. On my left arm, same side as the now mostly healed fractured wrist. I didn’t even notice at first. But after I got home to Portsmouth, my...
July 9/2024: I cannot pretend otherwise. My brand-new 2017 Boreal 47, Lunacy, overall winner of Cruising World’s Boat of the Year rumpus of 2018, ain’t so brand new anymore. Maintenance is inevitable… and more and more frequent these days. Case in point: the aft daggerboard control lines. I had, of course, noticed they were looking...
May 23/2024: I did try to enlist crew to help sail the good ship Lunacy home from St. Thomas, but I will admit I didn’t try very hard. A good part of me wanted to do this singlehanded, fractured wrist or no. I had previously done some solo passages between the W’Indies and Bermuda, and...
March 14/2024: As I have muttered to myself repeatedly over the years: I am one lucky boy. And I was surely feeling fortunate contemplating the prospect of this winter’s sailing schedule, a full month wandering the Eastern Caribbean with a crew of three old friends onboard. The first time in many years I’ve been able...
