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SWIMMING WITH DOLPHINS: Dying in the Wild, Festering in Captivity
Dolphins on my mind. First, this great plague that has visited them. In the past year, over 1,000 dolphins on the U.S. East Coast have been documented as having died of a measles-like morbillivirus...
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WEIRD SCIENCE AND GADGETS: Saildrones, Jet Packs, Dog Poop
Here’s a trifecta of odd news that has lately teased my nautical mind. May as well lead with the Saildrone, an autonomous sailing robot that has recently completely a passage from San Francisco to...
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HELICOPTER EVACUATION: Abandoning Be Good Too
“I can say for certain that was the best helicopter ride of my life. It was also the best shower.” –statement by Gunther Rodatz to U.S. Coast Guard airbase personnel; Elizabeth City, North Carolina;...
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BE GOOD TOO: Answering Critics
Silly me. I thought publishing my account of abandoning Be Good Too would decrease rather than increase speculative and critical commentary among the baying dogs of the Internet. I suppose I should...
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SOUTH ATLANTIC CATAMARAN DELIVERY: Busted in Brazil
Given recent events, I thought maybe I should tell you about what happened last time I did a cat delivery with Hank Schmitt. This was seven years ago, in January 2007, and the short version of the...
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HAX AND FLAX: Navico Electro-Junket in the Florida Keys
I spent much of last week at the Hawk’s Cay Resort in Florida hobnobbing with a large clutch of my fellow marine journos (a.k.a. the “hacks”) and an even larger clutch of brand and tech gurus from...
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INFLATABLE SAILING DINGHY: Dreaming of the DinghyGo
Is there a cruising sailor anywhere who doesn’t dream of having a tender that can double as daysailer? The only problem with this dream is you really need to have a hard dinghy to make it come true....
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STANLEY PARIS: What Really Happened On Kiwi Spirit?
Thank goodness I was off having my own misadventure when Stanley Paris announced in his blog that he was abandoning his solo circumnavigation attempt and pulling into Cape Town. Otherwise there’s a...
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HMS BOUNTY: Final NTSB Report Released
The National Transportation Safety Board released its report on the infamous October 2012 loss of HMS Bounty yesterday, concluding “that the probable cause of the sinking of tall ship Bounty was the...
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RED BULL STORM CHASE: Windsurfing in a Hurricane
Don’t know if you’ve been watching the North Atlantic weather charts this winter, but FYI Ireland and the UK have been taking direct hits from storms as strong as hurricanes on a weekly basis for some...
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CHASING SHACKLETON: What Paul Larsen Did After Breaking the Sailing Speed Record
PBS has aired and released its great three-part video series, Chasing Shackleton, which follows the exploits of five modern-day adventurers as they seek to recreate Ernest Shackleton’s amazing...
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OLYMPIC SAILING: What Does the Josh Say?
Well informed sports fans will recall that SAIL‘s publisher, Josh Adams, abandoned his career in sailing journalism back in August 2012 to assume command of the U.S. Olympic sailing team. Our loss was...
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RUNNING INLETS: How Not to Fall Down and Get Hurt
I’m thinking about this (again) after watching an exciting video (see below) of a sailboat wiping out trying to enter an inlet at Zumaia in northern Spain. The photo above shows a different boat...
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CRUISING SAILBOAT EVOLUTION: The Emergence of “Alternative” Cruising
We have already discussed an early elite cruising vessel, Cleopatra’s Barge, and the development of high-end yacht design in the 19th century. Now it’s time to turn to the “hoi polloi,” the unwashed...
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ALEX THOMSON: Making a Fashion Statement
Who wouldn’t want to be Alex Thomson? He’s suave and sophisticated and has enjoyed the longest running full-on sponsorship in professional sailing. Hugo Boss has been financing his racing career since...
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CAT PPALU: Holed in St. Maarten
Major bummer here. D. Randy West, the well known West Indies multihull maven, is struggling to salvage his new ride, the Peter Spronk-designed Cat Ppalu (see photo above), which he bought and...
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FROM PRISON CELL TO THE SEA: Greg White and Jeff Bolster
You remember Jeff Bolster, right? He lives down the street from me here in Portsmouth, and I’ve crewed on his boat, and he’s crewed on my boat, and he doesn’t mind eating fish raw for breakfast. He...
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GEMINI 3000: A Very Affordable Cruising Cat
The Gemini, the first production cruising catamaran ever built in the United States, was born from the ashes of a terrible fire that in 1981 destroyed the molds for the successful Telstar 26 folding...
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RUDDER SKEG REPAIR: Getting Ready for Spring
IT’S HERE! Spring, I mean. Though there is still snow in the forecast up here in New England, and even in Annapolis, from which I returned last night after holding forth at the World Cruising Club...
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CRUISING BOAT EVOLUTION: From Work Boats to Yachts
In our last episode in this series, we described the genesis of the Cruising Everyman in the mid- to late 19th century. These were sailors who were not aristocratic bluebloods looking to flaunt their...
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