Editor's note: Later this fall I'll be crewing on a boat in the Caribbean 1500 cruising rally, which departs from Hampton, Virginia, on November 7. The prospect has me recalling the last 1500 I sailed in, way back in 1998, when the rally fleet had a serious run-in with Hurricane Mitch. It was a very...
I was most gratified when one of my Facebook friends, Wojtek "Voytec" Wacowski, who is both a serious sailor and an avid photographer, jumped at the opportunity to visit the Friedrich Petzel Gallery last month after I blogged about the Sean Landers exhibit there. Apparently, the gallery was empty when he got there, and he...
Is it fine art? Or just some cartoons? That's what I've been wondering about this "Around the World Alone" exhibit by artist Sean Landers currently on display at the Friedrich Petzel Gallery at 537 West 22nd Street in Manhattan. When I first came across these paintings, I was amused by them. But the more I...
The Tom Colvin schooner on which I blogged earlier, which purportedly was wrecked by its owner's son after he borrowed it without permission, was removed from the beach at Fire Island last week. The skinny at Saltaire38 has it that the owner gave the guys who took it out some cash plus the boat for...
At last, here's some serious recognition for my man Alessandro di Benedetto, who set a world record back in July for smallest boat used in a non-stop solo circumnavigation. Setting the record was one thing, but you'll recall what was truly remarkable about Alessandro's voyage was that he sailed the last three months on his...
I ARRIVED IN THE AZORES aboard Crazy Horse, my Alberg 35 yawl, in late August of 1995 already feeling kind of nervous about the hurricane situation. Earlier that summer I was caught in a tropical storm named Chantal while en route to Bermuda, and since then several other North Atlantic storms had chewed their way...
What a difference a year makes. Last December right about this time I posted a story about Laura Dekker getting busted in St. Maarten after she ran away from home so she could sail around the world alone without the Dutch government messing up her plans. The kill-joy government deported her butt back to Holland...
I meant to post something about this amazing video Hold Fast when I first found it, but it's quite long (over an hour), particularly for something put up for free at Vimeo. I've now watched it twice. I'm sticking it here in the Lit Bits category, because it rises to that level. This isn't some...
Here's one interesting weirdness about this tragic Mike-Got-Mauled-On-His-Boat tale: initial reports, which basically came verbatim from the victim himself, had the location all wrong. First it happened in Martinique, or in Guadeloupe, then finally it was St. Martin. The Aussie Sail-World site (which I believe originally reported the location as Guadeloupe, though they seem...
FROM AN EARLY AGE it was this image in particular, by artist Rockwell Kent, and a few others like it, that were pressed into my mind as nearly Jungian archetypes of what a life afloat must be like. There were several of Kent's dynamic high-contrast wood-block prints hanging about our house while I was growing...
