Just back from helping from helping me mate Jeff Bolster sail his Valiant 40 Chanticleer down to Norfolk, VA, from Newport, RI. This being phase two of his four-step campaign to take the boat down to the West Indies for the winter (phase one having been a short jaunt from here in Portsmouth, NH, down...
CHECK IT OUT, PEOPLE. WaveTrain rider Michael Geagan dropped a comment on my original post about the abandoned Swan 48 Wolfhound, ex-Bella Luna, to the effect that he located the boat about 600 miles east of Bermuda and boarded it on June 29. He reports the rig is still standing, but the boat has taken...
Thanks to a heads-up from WaveTrain rider Gareth Hughes I've been following this story over the past several days on the Cruisers Forum. I didn't write anything, however, as I thought the missing boat would soon show up. Now that seems increasingly unlikely, and it would appear that the fabled 59-foot schooner Nina, winner of...
This was a fast passage with very little motoring. My mate Mr. Lassen and I covered the 830 some miles between Fajardo and St. Georges in less than six days and burned only about five gallons of fuel in the process. Not my fastest passage ever between the Onion Patch and the W'Indies, but I...
There she is folks... yours for the taking. This empty Frers-designed Swan 48 of mid-90s vintage, worth I'd guess $500K or more, was adrift approx. 800 southeast of Bermuda as of this past weekend. She was abandoned just north of Bermuda by her Irish owner, Alan McGettigan, and three crew back in February. At the...
HERE'S A HOT STORY from the Where Are They Now Department that blew my mind a bit while I was cruising around in the Spanish Virgins last week. Spotted a feature in All At Sea, a local Caribbean sailing comic, by a young blonde rasta-looking dude about sailing 2,000 miles to windward from Vieques to...
Laura Dekker, current holder of the unofficial "youngest solo circumnavigator" record, who thumbed her nose at Dutch authorities and insisted on doing it her way, has announced in her own typically cryptic fashion that she doesn't think much of a film about her that has just been released to quite positive reviews. Maidentrip, an independent...
I HAVEN'T SEEN this boat in person, but from the photos on this Craigslist listing it looks to be in very good condition... and the asking price is just $11K! She's got recent Awlgrip on her topsides, a recently rebuilt freshwater-cooled Atomic-4 engine, a new water tank, a new prop, and a new stuffing box....
I'M NOT TOO UNHAPPY about the fact that I'll be spending next week at the Miami International Boat Show (you can look for reports right here, of course), but if I wasn't, I'm thinking I might be in Portsmouth, Virginia, instead. I've been very interested in the many questions raised by the sinking of HMS...
A LOT OF BLUEWATER SAILORS I know complain that they never catch fish while on passage. I once had this problem, too, but since perfecting my technique I've never once been skunked on a passage during which I have tried to catch fish. It's really not very hard and is a great way to vary...
