In late September, our marina manager asked if I would be interested in salvaging a few sailboats in the winter storage yard. All had been neglected and eventually abandoned by their owners. In each o...
When we retired from full-time cruising and built a house on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, my wife Dee and I bought a thoroughly dilapidated 1966 Marshall 18 Sanderling catboat for exploring the B...
GLOUCESTER LOST As I was reading Jerry Thompson’s article on how to maintain trailer wheel bearings (“Keep that Trailer Rollin’,” November 2017) I happened to see a sidebar in...
Everyone has heard of the Great Fire of London and the plague of 1666. You may have read of the diarist Samuel Pepys’ bawdy exploits with a wide variety of young, and not so young, women. What is not ...
SHOW US SOME KEEL Will your boat be included in a spread in our May 2018 issue? Send michael_r@goodoldboat.com a high-res photo of her bottom, your boat’s bottom. Let’s see her hanging in Travelift sl...
Rob Avery is back, with the second smart, nicely crafted crime story in the series narrated by our protagonist, Sim Greene. Following a life-altering roller coaster ride of murder and deception and a ...
I’m eager to tell you that the last book I read before picking up Still Water Bending was Lit: A Memoir by best-selling author Mary Karr. This is notable because the depth and poetic quality of Clarke...
CALL AN APIARIST If Mr. Hipp had contacted a local beekeeper (“The Epic Bee Saga,” The Dogwatch, October 2017) he could have saved himself a lot of trouble and money. Take it from a former beekeeper, ...
I stood in the cockpit of our boat, my trunks dripping wet from the swim out. Usually being aboard releases a spurt of euphoria within me. If I’m on the boat, most likely I’ll soon be sailing. Instead...
Novice, beginner, nimrod, greenhorn; we have all been this kind of sailor at one time or another. Many of us still are, and so this is written for you. You are the ones who have not (yet?) sail...
Say you are planning a summer cruise from the Puget Sound to British Columbia, or maybe as far as Southeast Alaska. You’ve probably got a pile of guidebooks on your nightstand already; you spend your ...
DEPLOYED AND MISSING GOOD OLD BOAT? For nearly 20 years it’s been our policy to extend a free subscription (print or digital) to service members deployed abroad. But maybe we’ve not been so good at ge...
Polar expeditions, naval battles, discovery, piracy, mutiny on the high seas…these are but some of the themes contained in Tales from the Captain’s Log. As the title implies, this collection of ...
I’m fond of books that take me back to another time, as if I’ve slipped through a portal, to experience our human history in person. A Darker Sea is one of those books. Award-winning historian James L...
SAILING FOR NEWER HUMANS I saw your inquiry about how to promote sailing as an activity among young people. My theory is that the same things that drew me in are likely to appeal to newer humans as we...
I am somewhere between the middle and end of refurbishing for fun and charter my 1982 Islander 48, Crescendo, hull number 1. She’s just about ready to move from Port Charlotte, FL where she’s been on ...
I rush to the Chesapeake Bay to fill up on sailing adventures. I explore the Bay with my boyfriend, Jordan, on Base Camp, our simple and reliable Pearson 31. You too may know the magical moments: smoo...
It’s wrong for hoary mariners to bemoan the evils of GPS and the loss of traditional navigational skills. Nonsense, as Jack Lagan points out in his Barefoot Navigator. His extended exploration of the ...
BY MICHAEL ROBERTSON UNSTAYED: LOOKING FOR PHOTOS Good Old Boat is looking for readers’ photos for an upcoming spread. We want to see you and your boat, underway beneath a headsail that’s set flying, ...
It is Race Week in the Salish Sea, north-northwest of Seattle, Washington. This is important to many of the characters in Antonio Hopson’s novel Nefarious, but not because they want to win any of the ...
There is, perhaps, no more ephemeral and monstrous a phenomenon than a rogue wave. A ship that meets one may suffer grave damage or even disappear before a Mayday can be sent. And yet the sea is no di...
A friend and experienced boater related an interesting story over lunch. He’d recently had trouble backing his boat into a slip. The wind was on the beam and his bow would blow off, keeping him ...
Sometime in the late 70s or early 80s I became obsessed with the idea of owning a sailboat after seeing one on a trailer with a “For Sale” sign hanging from the bow, and soon found myself ...
By Karen Larson This summer the confluence of two things made a strong impression on me. The first was the opportunity to appreciate once again in its entirety The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graha...
FROM TURKEYS TO DOLPHINS I just read Jeremy’s article about the Hospice Turkey Shoot (“Chasing Silver in a Good Cause,” August 2017). Stu Polhamus is a 3-time Dolphin 24 owner (curre...
BY MICHAEL ROBERTSON UNSTAYED: LOOKING FOR PHOTOS Good Old Boat is looking for readers’ photos for an upcoming spread. We want to see you and your boat, underway beneath a headsail that’s set flying, ...
When author Jim Trefethen wrote Sailing Into Retirement, he combined some information from his previous book, The Cruising Life, first published in 1999, with a second, updated edition in 2015. But, i...
Who’s the Captain? is a 56-page picture book of sailing life according to Dad and his crew. The humor in the text is accentuated by clever, colorful cartoons. Older kids who are familiar with the ins ...
Bill Streever is a biologist and a well-known nature writer. He and his wife, Lisanne, are novice cruising folk, who boldly set off on a cruise from Galveston, Texas, to Mexico’s Yucatan with only a v...
About 27 years ago, a group of sailors at Yankee Point Marina, off the Rappahannock River in Virginia, decided that a sailboat race in November would make a fine climax to the sailing season. Some of ...
