This classic nautical book is aimed squarely at Good Old Boat readers, despite being written decades before Good Old Boat magazine came to be. The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float is not so much a tale of man ...
During these COVID-19 days of isolation, this 17,000-mile voyage by a father and son on a 25-foot engineless sloop, has the effect of making our stay-at-home confinement seem downright luxurious in co...
Home From Distant Seas is the final volume in James Baldwin’s Distant Seas trilogy, documenting the completion of his 13-year circumnavigation aboard Atom, his 1963 28-foot Pearson Triton. We follow B...
As I write this review, I am a few weeks into a winter move to the Maine coast. The picture window to my right is dark at 4 pm, and the house shivers under a squirrely wind gusting over the island tha...
To the experienced sailors out there who have read the addictive narratives of Cook, Ross, Amundsen, and Shackleton, and who have dreamed of their own voyage to extreme latitudes, your book has been w...
Fiddler’s Green had overheating problems from the very beginning of our ownership. We got used to checking the temp gauge for the Perkins M30 every 15 minutes or so while motoring, throttling down or ...
Sundowners in paradise? Check. Uncertainty? Check. Doubt? Check. Relationship drama? Check. Check. Check. Plunge is an apt title for this cruising narrative as the author doesn’t simply dribble ...
This book, aptly subtitled, “Fiberglass Boats and the Men Who Made Them,” is the bible of the fiberglass boatbuilding industry. And Dan Spurr is the prophet to write it. Dan is Good Old Boat magazine’...
Spring is here and marinas will soon be filled with mast-raisers. And while the world is filled (to the brim?) with mast-raising solutions, I have another. I believe my method is possibly the simplest...
Our Next Guest, Please In the latest edition of The Dogwatch, there was a great little article by John Churchill (“Modernizing a Guest Anchor Light,” February, 2021). Being a good old boater (cheap), ...
In the world of sailing vloggers, few crews are better known than the Delos crew. They have sailed around the world with their cameras rolling and have a loyal tribe of followers for every nautical mi...
Impeller Advice I saw the hack; a good, traditional hack for many similar installation problems (“Impeller Install Hack,” The Dogwatch, January 2021). Something else folks might not know: It is common...
I used to own a Guest model 461 anchor light, a popular piece of gear when many of our good old boats were built. A fundamentally well-made device, the incandescent bulb suffered from poor light outpu...
As the title makes clear, this is a book of 27 unforgettable stories. Having just read this book, I realize I’ve already forgotten most of them. Then again, my rusty old brain does not remember things...
No News Here The Dogwatch stems from the original Good Old Boat Newsletter that was released six times a year. It’s a radically different (and monthly) newsletter today. It may have made sense to have...
Installing a new impeller in a water pump can be a bit of a struggle, especially if you’re working under the engine by braille. That’s the position I found myself in with the Yanmar 3GM30F aboard my 1...
It’s amazing to think that no scholars atop the masthead of Melville studies had thought until now to undertake the systematic cataloging of the ways in which Moby-Dick reflects the 19th century mind ...
What do you do when you’ve prepared for a single-handed around-the-world sailboat competition, have a great 40-foot high-performance boat ready to go… and then the race is called off? Go. That’s what ...
Moving On Hello Michael and Good Old Boat team! We take our responsibility to live lightly on the planet seriously. Whether living off-grid on land or cruising on our Alberg 30, eco-values drive our d...
Nautical Scribes We heard from prolific nautical novel writer Jinx Schwartz that prolific nautical novel writer Ed Robinson has died. Ed lived on a boat and traveled throughout Florida and the Bahamas...
A Better Battery for Backup Regarding Jim Shell’s article in last month’s The Dogwatch, “A Battery for Every Need,” Eveready Ultimate Lithium batteries may be a better choice than alkaline batteries f...
Rarely do I really enjoy a cruising memoir that melds a family story with descriptions of white-knuckled adventure. I also tend to identify with solo sailors or the male half of a cruising couple, bei...
For years I’ve been landing 36- to 48-inch striped bass during the Chesapeake Bay spring trophy season. It’s a spring ritual and yet, I never cease to be amazed at how easy it is to wind in 200 feet o...
Protagonist Emmeline “Em” Ridge is a boat delivery captain of limited experience. Newly widowed, her husband having died in a kayak accident, she lives on a tidal island just east of Portland, Maine, ...
Feel-Good Holiday Juice Our own Behan Gifford sent me an email that included this heads-up: “I am smitten with the whole concept. It is just loaded with feel-good holiday juice!” Indeed! Residents of ...
A Condemnation of the Chipper While reading the latest Dogwatch, I followed a link to Rob Mazza’s review of Dick Carter’s sailing autobiography. Rob mentioned that Carter began his offshor...
Three New Legends In 1906, Thomas Fleming Day founded the Bermuda Race with the revolutionary aim of providing an ocean race for amateur sailors in normal boats. In the process, he started the world’s...
We were preparing for our spring cruise and going over our on-board dry-cell battery inventory. Our conclusion? Our inventory of AA and AAA batteries stays fresh because we go through them, whereas we...
“There you are! Are you out for a sail, or out for a swim?” With these thoughtful words, a fellow club member sailed by us in his Laser. We were indeed swimming, next to my swamped open-hulled ...
In the August edition of The Dogwatch, we published Janie Meneely’s wonderful poem about Nasty Nell, the mermaid who was not to be gotten the best of by two hungry sailors. Here, Meneely revisits the ...
