March 30/2021: So… this is what I did last Friday. Instead of writing the next installment of my Waterlines column for SAIL Magazine, as planned, I got in my car on a whim and drove two and a half hours to Belfast, Maine, and bought this boat, a 1969 Tripp 29 named Teal. A very cool...
May 19/2020: How to extract my boat from its winter quarters in Georgia without getting infected or quarantined somewhere? This is one question that was percolating through my mind as I monitored the unfolding of the global Covid-19 pandemic while sheltering at home this spring. Problem one, it seemed, was simply getting to the boat...
Seen at Maine Yacht Services in Portland while fixing stuff on my boat: Vendée Globe two-timer Rich Wilson’s new ride from France. A step down from an Open 60 perhaps, but still a very interesting boat. I’ve seen a number of these RM boats in France; they seem to be quite popular there. Never seen...
This is the most interesting new cruising sailboat design I’ve seen in a long time. Currently in build at Berkeley Marine Center, as conceived by a notable client, Barry Spanier, and drawn by a notable designer, Jim Antrim. It is significant, I think, that Spanier, a lifelong sailmaker who in his heyday designed and built...
I remember when I lived in New York City there were some people who used to read the obits every day, looking for what might be good deals on newly vacated apartments. Apartment ghouls, I called them. Here's an opportunity for any boat ghouls out there. The city of Newburyport, Massachusetts, is currently auctioning off...
WHEN IT CAME TIME to leave Dakar, I found we were, almost literally, hanging by a thread. I had anchored Crazy Horse, my Alberg 35 yawl, on about 100 feet of three-strand nylon rope, plus there was a 30-foot chain leader. On hauling back all the rope, which I had to do by hand, as...
AFTER I FINISHED UP my solo mini-cruise last week, I paid a visit to the Lyman Morse yard at Thomaston, Maine, and at long last laid eyes on Petrel afloat. She's the brainchild of designer Jay Paris, a colleague at SAIL, who has been fiddling over her creation for almost three decades now. I first...
OFTEN HAILED as the first performance cruiser, the Valiant 40 was an important breakthrough boat both for its designer, Bob Perry, and for cruising sailors in general. The genius of the design is that it married what above the water looks like a beamy double-ended traditional cutter with a much more modern underbody featuring a...
NO DOUBT YOU'RE WONDERING what happened with my cousin Nick Kats, who was planning to transit the Northwest Passage from Ireland to Oregon this summer aboard his steel ketch Teddy. In the end he decided to punt and cruise to the east coast of Greenland instead. He and his young crew (pictured up top) took...
Cha Cha at anchor in Newport. She seems very secure (note deployment of twin chain anchor rodes) (Photo from Newport-Now.com) THE UNFORTUNATE SAGA of CHA CHA, the 52-foot steel cutter I first encountered in Bermuda back in the fall of 2009, continues. According to an article published earlier this month, the city of Newport, Rhode...
