June 11/2025: I first met Zdenka and her husband Jack in an entirely conventional shorebound way, through my cousin Charlotte, who is an old childhood friend of Jack’s. This at a lunch Charlotte hosted in her home in Portland, Maine, soon after Jack and Zdenka finished sailing around the world on Kite, their Valiant 42....
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....
Dec. 19/2021: This isn’t much of a surprise, that the great catamaran pioneer James Wharram has passed away, as he was, after all, 93 years old. Reading his recently published autobiography, I did get the sense that he and his partner Hanneke Boon were looking to get the story told in full before it was...
May 6/2020: Here is an amazing guy, who led an amazing life, and exited this world in a way any serious sailor might envy. Drowned, at age 90, after his 30-ft sailboat was caught by a wave and rolled as he attempted to cross the Ballina Bar at the mouth of the Richmond River in...
Dec. 28/2020: I am sure I wasn’t the only one who noted with raised eyebrows that Tim Severin, aged 80, passed away in Ireland earlier this month. When I was much younger, I was fairly blown away by his first successful book and the great adventure that made him famous. The Brendan Voyage, first published...
Oct. 9/2020: Oh dear. I’ve seen this one coming for some months now, and it does not mitigate the loss. For it is my sad duty to report that my good friend, co-conspirator, and stalwart shipmate Charles Lassen passed away yesterday, a victim of prostate cancer run amok. Charles has often been lionized, ridiculed, referenced,...
July 30/2020: Man, I’ve been writing too many of these lately. This is a huge one. Larry Pardey, who died at age 81 on Sunday, after years of struggling with Parkinson’s disease, and after suffering through a stroke last year, was an enormously talented man. He was a consummate sailor, both on a race course...
I’m just back from a cruise down the coast (of which more later) and during said cruise received the very sad news that yet another old sailing friend has passed on. I first met Mac when he was living with Nim Marsh in Middletown, Rhode Island, back in 1993. He was lying low back in...
Sad news from the mountain fastness of Andorra: Edward Cecil Allcard, born October 31, 1914, died last week on Friday, July 28, at age 102, of complications related to a broken leg he suffered on July 3. He was the very last of what some have termed the “Ulysses generation” of bluewater sailors, which included...
I never met Mike Peyton, but I always wished I had. In my younger days I drew a lot of cartoons, and I also enjoyed sailing of course, and when I got older and somehow fashioned a career of sorts out of writing about boats I always thought it would be super-cool to draw cartoons...
