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...
May 23/22: It’s happening, my friends! My new book is in the pipe, crawling ever closer to the light at the end of the tunnel, and you can now pre-order your copy direct from the publisher: https://www.latahbooks.com/blank-1/the-boy-who-fell-to-shore The scheduled publication date is October 25. Pre-ordered books will ship no later than that date. Don’t be...
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...
May 9/2022: One of the very cool things about my recent solo jaunt aboard Lunacy northward from Hilton Head up to New Jersey was getting to see four bright planets lined up diagonally near the moon on each clear night. This photo shows only three of them—Jupiter, Venus, and Mars (from left to right)—as the...
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...
Apr. 7/2022: It’s been a long strange trip, my friends—researching, writing, and finding a publisher for this story—but at last it is happening. My third book will be published this coming October by Latah Books. Faithful WaveTrain riders will recall that I first “rediscovered” Thomas nine years ago, in the spring of 2013, while noodling...
March 25/2022: I returned to Beach Marine in Jacksonville Beach early this month to bring Lunacy along on the first step of her seasonal pilgrimage back north to New England. I arrived at the marina late on a Friday evening and on rising from my berth the next morning, I immediately noticed: 1) the boat...
March 23/2022: As soon as I finished reading Chris Bowman’s excellent memoir about building boats in Bequia and sailing with Bob Dylan, I was inspired to revisit this book. It is a curious volume, part cruising memoir and part scholarly treatise. Its author, Douglas C. Pyle, arrived in the islands in 1968 aboard an old...
