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...
Jan. 20/2022: Bob Dylan is of course a famously opaque character, and one of the more opaque episodes of his life concerns a certain boat he once owned. It is almost mythical, the stuff of legend among sailors in the Caribbean today. But it is in fact true: the last large traditional schooner built on...
Dec. 5/2020: Dang. You know I’ve been slacking in this blogging game when the Wall Street Journal gets around to running an obit like this before I do. That link there is a couple of days old. The print version ran today. I met Frank Butler a few times in passing over the years, but...
July 30/2020: Man, I’ve been writing too many of these lately. This is a huge one. Larry Pardey, who died at age 81 on Sunday, after years of struggling with Parkinson’s disease, and after suffering through a stroke last year, was an enormously talented man. He was a consummate sailor, both on a race course...
Apr. 30/2020: The North American boatbuilding industry has lost two pioneers this month, one an American, the other a Canadian. The first, Clint Pearson (see image up top), who died at age 91 back on April 4, was better known. He was renowned in the industry as a founder, with his cousin Everett Pearson, of...
How could I have lived so long without discovering this man? He is such an improbably entertaining writer, and all he wrote about, pretty much, is boats, the water surrounding them, and the life that is in it. Hats off to crew member (and erstwhile Boréal shopper) Nat Smith, who handed me a copy of...
I put in an appearance at the Miami International Boat Show last week for the first time in a few years. My first visit actually since the main part of the show moved out of Miami Beach and consolidated all its bits in front of the old Marine Stadium on Virginia Key. While roaming the...
I’ve been in this business long enough to know there’s no such thing as a boatbuilder immune to financial difficulty, but this does come as a surprise. As recently as last month Oyster proudly announced they have in hand £80 million in orders. They just showed off the new Oyster 745 (see photo up top)...
I have been shy about mentioning this to people, for various reasons, but now it’s time to come clean. You’ll have noticed I am trying to sell Lunacy, my faithful Tanton 39 cutter of the last 10 years, and some have asked what comes next. The answer, of course, is another aluminum boat. Two of...
This seems like an interesting development. Grand Large Yachting, a French conglomerate formed in 2003 that specializes in turning around distressed boatbuilders, was the prevailing bidder at a bankruptcy auction held this month for Gunboat, the luxury performance catamaran builder founded by Peter Johnstone. Reportedly Grand Large will put up $910K in cash and is...
