Aug 8/2025: There was a time when survival drift stories involving bluewater sailors were not unusual. From the early 1970s to the late 1980s, as bluewater cruising became increasingly popular, but the technology involved remained relatively primitive, we saw a steady trickle of them. These days, what with modern sat comms and global 406 EPIRB...
Oct. 6/24: Back in August, while crawling around for a while in Lunacy’s engine bay, on top of and behind the engine itself, I somehow injured my elbow. On my left arm, same side as the now mostly healed fractured wrist. I didn’t even notice at first. But after I got home to Portsmouth, my...
Oct. 26/2023: Rather than shoot from Portsmouth to Newport all in one go, as has been my past practice when heading south for the winter, I wanted this year to make a little cruise of it and see some sights along the way. After 10 days at the Wentworth Marina seeing to this and that,...
Sept. 26/2023: Having failed to do as much sailing as I would have liked through July and August, I had big plans to get a bunch of cruising in during September and blocked off the middle two weeks as non-stop boat time. One big fly in that ointment was Hurricane Lee; the other was a...
June 16/2023: In the wake of my earlier post, I did receive some advice on the feasibility of escaping to open water from Oriental, North Carolina, via Ocracoke Inlet. The majority opinion was that to transit any of the three inlets between Pamlico Sound and open water (Ocracoke, Hatteras, or Oregon) in a cruising sailboat...
May 29/2023: I originally had high hopes as I plotted to liberate Lunacy from Palmetto Bay Marina on Hilton Head Island to sail her north toward home waters. Long-range forecasts per both the ECMWF and GFS weather models showed strong rivers of southerly wind blasting up the East Coast, and I speculated I might even...
March 21/2023: After leaving Lunacy ensconced at Brunswick Landing Marina down in Georgia back in November, I did return to visit her the following month for several days. But I didn’t sail anywhere. I spent time instead working on a few boat jobs and also confabbed with an old sailing journalism associate, Tim Zimmerman, who...
Nov. 21/2022: This, of course, is what we have in mind when notions of taking the boat south for the winter are first born: a sun-splashed bow wave in which dolphins gambol like frivolous children. But it takes a while to get there. I am actually bad at making plans. I knew I wanted to...
Sept. 23/2022: I didn’t get in as much sailing on the Maine coast as I hoped this summer, for various reasons. But I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the sailing that did take place. Back in ancient times, when I was a young person, summer sailing in this part of the world was...
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...
