The drama of the Wild Viking continues. Last we checked in on Norway's Antarctic adventurer Jarle Andhoey, he and his crew aboard the 54-foot Nilaya had suffered a broken boom after leaving the Ross Sea and were bound to an unspecified Argentine base on the Antarctic peninsula to make repairs and take on fuel. It...
Cast into the past to find the founding figure of bluewater feminism, the first in the line that leads to such modern-day heroines as Isabelle Autissier, Ellen MacArthur, and Samantha Davies, and you bump up hard against a woman named Ann Davison. She is remembered today, when she is remembered at all, as the first...
It's been a while since I mentioned Reid Stowe, not because I've lost interest in him, but because he went dark for several weeks, not long after he and his family arrived in the jungles of Guyana aboard their schooner Anne back in early January. Now he's got his communications sorted and is again transmitting...
One nice thing about this blogging game is that you sometimes get useful feedback. For example: about two years ago I put up a post about Joshua Slocum and his bizarre homemade 35-foot dory/junk Liberdade, which he sailed from South America to the U.S. in 1888 with his family after they were shipwrecked on the...
Editor's note: I received another update yesterday on the fate of Matt Rutherford, who is sailing solo non-stop around the Americas aboard an Albin Vega, from his buddy Andy Schell at Father & Son Sailing. Matt is now off Brazil, where he recently had to meet a vessel off Recife to receive parts and gear...
Norwegian Jarle Andhoey and his crew aboard the outlaw vessel Nilaya have announced they are leaving Antarctic waters and are sailing north again, reportedly for South America. To escape the area they evidently must first transit a 200-mile belt of sea ice. The Maori political activist, Busby Noble, who is aboard without a passport (accidentally...
One of the most remarkable things about sailboats is their capacity to inspire us to dream. Inside every cruising sailor's head there is a fantasy, be it of a palm-studded tropical lagoon, an antique Mediterranean harbor, some barren high-latitude fjord, or just the cove around the next headland. And all of these visions, however various,...
Yesterday was the second anniversary of the sinking of the Canadian school ship Concordia, a tragedy I will always relate to the controversial sinking just over 50 years ago of Chris Sheldon's school ship Albatross. This is a story that ties into a strong tide that has long flowed through my mind. It in fact...
If you've been following the unfolding Jarle Andhoey psycho-drama, you'll know that the Wild Viking and his crew aboard the steel sloop Nilaya are now officially in Antarctic waters south of 60 degrees and should be appearing in McMurdo Sound any day now. You may also have learned that the engimatic Kiwi crew member who...
Here's another interesting story I wrote something on almost exactly a year ago that has sprung back to life again. CBS News will be running a piece called "The Dark Side of Paradise" on its award-winning program, 48 Hours, about the murder and disappearance of two cruising sailors in Panama in January last year. You...
