April 12/2026: It’s a good thing I decided to attend this year’s PAYS Yachting Festival in Dominica (March 21-27), otherwise no one might have noticed it was the festival’s 10th anniversary. As it was, I almost didn’t notice myself. Originally labeled as Yachtie Appreciation Week, the week-long event was conceived by Hank Schmitt, an old...
Nov. 19/2025: Speaking of Tom Cunliffe, here’s a bit of serendipitous coincidence. Both he and Clare Allcard, who met for the first time back in 2016 in Andorra, when I met Clare for the first time, have published new books just about simultaneously. Except Tom’s book is a novel, his very first. And just as...
March 27/2025: I wanted to take a more “cruiserly” approach to bringing Lunacy back to North America from the Caribbean this year, and I also decided it was well past time to get my shoal-draft centerboard boat into Bahamian waters for a change. Thus the hatching of an obvious plan: to island-hop from the south...
Jan. 16/2025: ‘Tis a bit discouraging, I have to admit. The last time we cruised the Spanish Virgin Islands as a family was 12 years ago, and when I asked the kids (now ages 25 and 19) what they remember about it (they were then ages 13 and 7), they said they recalled very little....
Nov. 20/2024: This is getting tedious. First it was my fractured left wrist, nursed through a Caribbean cruise and a solo passage back home earlier this year. Then bursitis of the left elbow, endured through some coastal summer cruising in Maine. Now it is a badly sprained left ankle. Not a boat-related injury (unlike the...
May 23/2024: I did try to enlist crew to help sail the good ship Lunacy home from St. Thomas, but I will admit I didn’t try very hard. A good part of me wanted to do this singlehanded, fractured wrist or no. I had previously done some solo passages between the W’Indies and Bermuda, and...
May 17/2024: So… it happened again. I go off on the good ship Lunacy for a month of the detached life afloat (more on that in a minute), and another important person in my sailing life crosses the bar. Thus… another tardy obit. Last time it was Patience Wales, my first boss at SAIL Magazine....
April 4/2024: I pimped this baby in print in the April 2024 issue of SAIL (that copy also was just posted on SAIL’s website), but now my enthusiasm is bubbling over here on to WaveTrain. I ended up cruising the Caribbean this winter using ePropulsion’s electric Spirit 1.0 Plus as my primary dinghy outboard, and...
March 14/2024: As I have muttered to myself repeatedly over the years: I am one lucky boy. And I was surely feeling fortunate contemplating the prospect of this winter’s sailing schedule, a full month wandering the Eastern Caribbean with a crew of three old friends onboard. The first time in many years I’ve been able...
Jan. 11/2024: Here’s one of the more interesting things that has happened to me since the publication of The Boy Who Fell to Shore, my biography of Thomas Tangvald, October before last. This past November a woman named Suzanne Heywood reached out to me, wanting to talk about children raised on cruising boats. She had...
