September 26, 2016

A winter delivery becomes a solistice sleighride
Our mission was to deliver a 38-foot Young Brothers gillnetter from Islip, Long Island, to Portland, Maine, the week before Christmas. The pennants on her gillnet buoys snapped ominously like prayer flags.
August 17, 2016

Live aboard? Why not?
The timing was right for the semi-retired couple and although there have been some challenges, they wouldn’t have it any other way.
July 20, 2016

Cruising the Kite Loop
Part 1: What do you do when you want to attempt the Great Loop, or the Down East Loop, but don’t have the time? You invent a new, shorter circle and name it after its fanciful shape.
June 22, 2016

Cruising in Buckman’s Wake
In the spirit of minimalist David Buckman, the author embarked upon his “Epic Voyage Writ Small” in a 20-foot daysailer. But did David ever sail with two 10-year-olds as crew?
June 15, 2016

Special Delivery
Ensign Hull No. 1337 has been in the author’s family for five decades, and five generations of Coppas have sailed her off the same Wickford, R.I., mooring since the late 1960s.

Features

When Zeus is mad

September 1, 2016

As we rounded Appledore Island at the Isle of Shoals Saturday afternoon, I crossed my fingers. It was high season, a weekend, and unbelievably hot ashore, so I feared all the moorings in the Shoals’ Gosport Harbor would be taken. But it was worse than that: Many boats had toRead More

The accidental, absurd and amusing

September 1, 2016

Humor is a rich, but all too rare a commodity among coasters, for we are a serious-minded bunch. Further, many amusing incidents have no witnesses, and a good bit of it is accidental. In 70-odd years of sailing, I have made just about every laughable gaffe there is to beRead More

Aloft and Jack grow old together with concern

September 1, 2016

It is a hot Sunday afternoon in late July, and I’m walking across the dusty back lot of a small boat yard in southern Maine a dozen miles from the ocean. Ahead of me in the shimmering heat is a large metal-clad storage shed whose dark-green panels creak in theRead More

Smith’s Castle and my search for a chart

September 1, 2016

Most people, however, are interested in the fact that the Castle – basically a fortified home – was where a thousand colonial troops from present-day Massachusetts and Connecticut massed before marching on the Great Swamp in the winter of 1675.