Jan. 25/2023: You absolutely cannot make this stuff up! The true story of Thomas Tangvald—born and raised at sea, orphaned in a wreck and cast ashore at age 15—is finding traction with both sailors and land folk fascinated by “the freedom one finds in any life close to nature.” As previously mentioned, I have many...
Jan. 11/2023: Now comes news over the past weekend that Charley Morgan, one of the great pioneers of fiberglass boatbuilding and design, left this world on Saturday, bound for whatever comes next. He was 93, and reportedly passed just a few hours after his wife Maurine died. Sailors of a certain age will remember Morgan...
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. 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,...
