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FREE SWAN 48: More Info And A Plan
Just figured something out. That Irish-owned Swan 48, Wolfhound, currently adrift twixt Bermuda and the W’Indies, is ex-Bella Luna, the same Swan 48 that my buddy, A.J. Smith, skippered through...
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AMERICA’S CUP CONUNDRUM: Need We Worship Larry Ellison?
Another America’s Cup summer looms on the horizon, raising again that perennial insuperable question that so tortures racing sailors: how the heck do we get laypeople interested in our sport? These...
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ROLL-UP INFLATABLE DINGHIES: Better Than RIBs
ATTENTION EARTH PEOPLE! As I write this I am approaching Bermuda, blasting along but 70 miles out on what seems a perpetual close reach, due for a landing sometime in the wee hours tomorrow, of which...
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DEATH BY SAILING: Andrew Simpson and Luke Stimson
I was planning next to bore you with some details of Lunacy‘s recent passage from Puerto Rico to Bermuda, but the breaking news is far more compelling. And not just to sailors it seems. In my recent...
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NORTHBOUND LUNACY: Sailing From Puerto Rico to Bermuda
This was a fast passage with very little motoring. My mate Mr. Lassen and I covered the 830 some miles between Fajardo and St. Georges in less than six days and burned only about five gallons of fuel...
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MODERN SAILBOAT DESIGN: Quantifying Stability
We have previously discussed both form stability and ballast stability as concepts, and these certainly are useful when thinking about sailboat design in the abstract. They are less useful, however,...
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SWAN 48 DELIVERY: Wrong Way To The W’Indies
Editor’s Note: Those studying my recent account of Lunacy‘s passage from Puerto Rico to Bermuda may have noticed that we did NOT find that abandoned Swan 48, Wolfhound, ex-Bella Luna , that I blogged...
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HAUNTED SAILBOAT: Up For Auction
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....
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CIGAR SMUGGLER: Is a Catalina 470 Worth 33 Boxes of Stogies?
That’s the question cruiser Jeff Southworth has no doubt been asking himself ever since January, when local police and U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents popped him in Puerto Rican waters and...
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BERMUDA FITTED DINGHIES: More Extreme Sailing
Practically the first thing I learned on flying back to Bermuda to rejoin Lunacy this past Thursday was that there would be dinghy races here in St. George’s Harbor on Friday. That and the prospect of...
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NORTHBOUND LUNACY: Bermuda to Maine
Just arrived yesterday in Portland, Maine, with crew members Billy “Swizzle” Springer and Adam “Twinkletoes” Cort after another reasonably fast passage on Lunacy. This time we covered a distance of...
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ANCHORING TIP: Store Rope Rode On Deck
I didn’t come up with this idea myself. I learned it crewing for a guy down in Florida who always stored not one, but two rope anchor rodes on his foredeck while cruising. Even on offshore passages he...
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GULFSTAR 50: An Affordable Big Boat
Gulfstar Yachts was founded in 1970 by Vince Lazzara, an industry pioneer who in the early 1950s helped make a success of Aeromarine, one of the very first fiberglass boatbuilders. In the early 1960s...
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ALUMINUM HULL ANXIETIES: Return of the Leaky Rudder Skeg and More Bottom...
Lunacy got hauled out at Maine Yacht Center soon after we arrived there from Bermuda last week, and yesterday I went up to have a look at her. As you can see in the photo up top, there’s very little...
View ArticleOCEAN SAILING MOVIES: All is Lost and Kontiki
It’s not very often I have a “major motion picture” about ocean sailing to look forward to seeing. Must be the end of days or something, because now there are two. Usually, of course, these movies are...
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BILGE DRAIN: A Useful Hole In Your Boat
You usually don’t think of a hole in your hull as being a good thing, but sometimes a properly organized one can save you a lot of trouble. Back when I owned Crazy Horse, my Alberg 35 yawl, a boat...
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FIBERGLASS PROPANE BOTTLES: Lite Cylinders Recall
I’ve had to replace all the propane bottles on Lunacy over the past two years, as no one would refill the really old aluminum ones that came with the boat. While shopping around, I took a hard look at...
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CRUISING SAILBOAT EVOLUTION: Cleopatra’s Barge
In the beginning, what we now call “yachting,” or sailing for pleasure, was practiced solely by a wealthy elite. Indeed, the first leisure craft were owned by monarchs and were profligate in their...
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SCHOONER NINA: Missing and Presumed Sunk
Thanks to a heads-up from WaveTrain rider Gareth Hughes I’ve been following this story over the past several days on the Cruisers Forum. I didn’t write anything, however, as I thought the missing boat...
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POOL TOYS: Aquatic Drones and Submarine Automobiles
Nearly 10 years ago SAIL magazine asked me to write a speculative story on what cruising sailboats might be like in the year 2040. In response I created a boat I called the DreamAway 408, which was...
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