Lunacy stopped here twice this summer--once on a weekend outing with the girls, and again when just Clare and I were coming back from Rockland. It is both a nice spot to visit in its own right and a good hidey-hole for those transiting Casco Bay in either direction. It is nearly the only place...
Not long after Lunacy got back in the water with her new Ultrasonic Antifouling system, fresh bottom paint, and a few other goodies (like a new stereo!), Clare and I at last managed to take almost a whole week off to embark on a short cruise together sans children. We'd been trying to organize this...
Just past Small Point at the western boundary of Casco Bay lies Popham Beach and the entrance to the Kennebec River, which, as I've mentioned before, is where I first started messing around in boats as a boy. We usually visit friends there during the summer and this year decided to sail Lunacy over for...
I stopped in for the night at Cliff Island on my way back from Malaga during my Mini Solo Cruise, and we stopped there again during a family weekend on the boat soon afterwards. I first checked it out just last year, but since then I've anchored or moored there repeatedly, as it is very...
Next stop on my Mini Solo Cruise after Little Chebeague Island was all the way the other side of Casco Bay at the mouth of the New Meadows River. Malaga Island, as you can see, is wedged between Bear Island and the village of Sebasco, which is part of the larger town of Phippsburg...
FROM AN EARLY AGE it was this image in particular, by artist Rockwell Kent, and a few others like it, that were pressed into my mind as nearly Jungian archetypes of what a life afloat must be like. There were several of Kent's dynamic high-contrast wood-block prints hanging about our house while I was growing...
Some very ugly news from the W'Indies. Latitude 38 has just published a grim first-person account by bluewater cruiser Mike Harker, who was recently assaulted aboard his Hunter 49 Wanderlust 3 while anchored at St. Martin. Mike, who was grievously injured in a hand-gliding accident two decades ago and was told he would never...
I'm just back from sailing Lunacy down to her winter berth in St. Martin. For this year's passage I had a professional weather-router, Rick Shema of WeatherGuy.com, give me advice on how to finesse the notoriously dodgy conditions that plague any boat trying to get from New England out to Bermuda and thence south...
