John Kretschmer has just published a new book of interest to good old boaters, Used Boat Notebook, offering 40 reviews of good old boats which have been published in Sailing magazine over the past six...
When Sandy Mackinnon set out on a vacation trip down the River Severn, in England, he wasn’t planning to be away more than two weeks. His boat, after all, was a 10-foot 10-inch Mirror Class ding...
In Volume 6 of C.S. Forester’s Hornblower saga, the hero cuts out a captured British cutter, the Witch of Endor, in Nantes harbor to complete his escape from the bowels of Napoleonic France down...
The highest compliment you can pay to some people is to say that they’ve never held down a job. For anybody with the goal of long-term cruising, the first question might be how to achieve that g...
One sailors’ lament might very well be “so many sailing books, so little time.” If time for reading them is not the issue, then space for storing them (particularly if you are cruisi...
More than a century ago some people opposed the use of fountain pens in schools because the art of using a pen knife to sharpen a quill would be lost. The boating community long ago quit using manila ...
BOYS DIED IN VAIN TRY TO RESCUE DAD This headline, from the July 2, 1935 Boston Post, chills the heart. It refers to the story of the ketch, Hamrah, and the Ames family, lost at sea during an ocean vo...
Most sailors have daydreamed about sailing away to escape life’s inevitable troubles . . . point the nose of your boat toward the horizon and keep going. Pat Henry didn’t daydream about it...
At Sea in the City is no grim tale of surviving the savage sea, but a quiet journey through the spaces and history of New York City’s archipelago. Author Dr. William Kornblum and friends sail a ...
How much time will you sacrifice by sailing at a more comfortable angle to the wind? Why does that gust of wind “come from the side” when you thought you were close-hauled? Would you like ...
BY GEORGE SNYDER (XLIBRIS CORP., 2001; 335 PAGES; $20.00) REVIEWED BY DARYL CLARK It was a long winter and an even longer spring, here in the land of Ventura . . . Minnesota, that is! Spring departed,...
The American Sailboat takes us through a literary and pictorial history of American pleasure craft. As readers, we are given a whirlwind tour of our nation’s coasts, bays and inland waters. Such...
Pull up a stool at a tiki bar and listen to Frank Papy spin a few yarns about his life and times in and around boats. If you can’t catch up with Frank in the Florida Keys, his latest book, Saili...
“It seemed a very long day confined to our room. Still no hot water. We couldn’t shower; it was too cold. We waited for someone to come and question us. Nobody did. Our imaginations ran ri...
Thirty-somethings Dave and Jaja Martin were in the midst of what they termed their “midlife cruising crisis.” They had already sailed around the world in a Cal 25, and Jaja had just given ...
Your boating library may include Chapman’s for general rules and seamanship, Eric and Susan Hiscock for practical instruction, Don Casey for maintenance, Bowditch for navigation, maybe even Tris...
If George Sigler has just one regret it is that he didn’t publish his book, Experiment in Survival, sooner. The book details the Pacific crossing that he and a friend made in a Zodiac inflatable...
From the Cockpit of the Rubaiyat is a book that speaks to the amateur sailor in those of us for whom sailing is a passion beyond logic and yet who, in all likelihood, will never venture forth upon the...
Turn your imagination on and transport yourself to 1912. You’re aboard a 24-foot 6-inch Cape Cod Catboat, named Mascot, with one other person and a real cat, named Scotty, sailing from Massachus...
In September of 1998, Hurricane Georges roared through the Caribbean Sea and continued on a course that would take it through the Florida Keys and the Gulf of Mexico. When it became evident that Georg...
Bill Burr bought a 14-year-old boat, moved aboard, and set about making it “like new.” His projects were not so much of the power tool, Sawsall, and mechanical variety, however. He didn...
Popular histories such as Dava Sobel’s Longitude illustrate the drama of Europe’s ascendancy in the Age of Discovery. Governments sponsored inventions and universities, new measurement too...
CD-ROM BY PAT AND PAUL ESTERLE (DISTRIBUTED BY CAP’N PAULEY VIDEOS; $9.95) REVIEWED BY BEN HOCKER As the owner of a 32-foot 1979 Columbia 9.6, I was interested in viewing this CD-ROM . It is aut...
Captain Bill Brogdon intended that Boat Navigation for the Rest of Us, Finding Your Way by Eye and Electronicsteach us how to safely navigate our boats without having navigation become a chore ...
Why do you like to sail? Why do people go to sea, quit their jobs, sell their homes, homeschool (boatschool) their children? We all have responses to these questions . . . but going to sea for the ...
The wise owl, Robert Louis Stevenson, and the pussycat, his wife (manipulative and ever-seasick Fanny), took some money — he had a bundle — and sailed the pea-green Pacific amidst gilt spl...
On October 31, 1999, Australian teenager Jesse Martin became the youngest sailor ever to voyage solo, non-stop and unassisted around the world. With simple language and meticulous detail, Jesse’...
What could be more illogical than a love of boats, of sailing, and of the sea? No one knows this better than Bruce Myers, a Chesapeake Bay sailor and the owner of a 1978 Cal 2-27, named Getting There....
Don’t you ever go out in that thing again!” So screeched my mother that spring day in 1949 when I first paddled my recently constructed “umbrella canoe” and returned soaked and...
Are you a sew-it-yourself boater considering a cruise through the Caribbean? Or have you always wanted a complete set of international signal flags but haven’t the money to buy them or the energ...
