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...
May 9/2022: One of the very cool things about my recent solo jaunt aboard Lunacy northward from Hilton Head up to New Jersey was getting to see four bright planets lined up diagonally near the moon on each clear night. This photo shows only three of them—Jupiter, Venus, and Mars (from left to right)—as the...
March 25/2022: I returned to Beach Marine in Jacksonville Beach early this month to bring Lunacy along on the first step of her seasonal pilgrimage back north to New England. I arrived at the marina late on a Friday evening and on rising from my berth the next morning, I immediately noticed: 1) the boat...
Feb. 9/2022: You’ll recall we left the good ship Lunacy at Beach Marine in Jacksonville Beach. I returned there middle of last month with no clear idea of what I would do with the boat, beyond that my old Portsmouth sailing buddies, Jeff and Molly Bolster and Phil Cavanaugh, would join me, and we would...
Jan. 8/2022: Here’s a blast from the past. Behold the long outer face dock at Fish Island Marina in St. Augustine, round about sunset earlier this week. The last time I was here was in late April 1992, when I was crewing on the late great schooner Constellation. We had sailed down from Charleston, South...
Nov. 25/2021: I had planned to sail Lunacy south to the W’Indies this fall and base her down there for the winter. Turns out I wasn’t the only one thinking like this. It seems the pent-up demand from last winter, when people, like myself, took their boats nowhere due to the pandemic, would be pent up...
Sept. 2/2021: The majority of my summer cruising in Maine this year, aside from some brief solo forays into Casco Bay, has been conducted in Penobscot Bay. All things considered, it is pretty much my favorite place on the coast. Given the prevailing conditions this season–light winds, fair doses of fog, and the odd hurricane...
