At the heart of our magazine are the stories related by our readers of their adventures and cruises. There are so many and so many different kinds. Below are some of our favorites.
Fetching Lady Liberty
Part 1: Cruising partner Diana is goal oriented. In 2018, we sailed our J/30 from Cape Cod to Mount Desert Island because she wanted to climb Cadillac Mountain. In 2019, she wanted to climb the Statue of Liberty. Oh boy . . .
Read MoreRunabout to Rhode Island
From Rye, N.H., to Block Island, R.I., in a 21-foot Eastern Pilot runabout: I’d been studying this route and planning this cruise for two years, and here I was, Aug. 10, 2022, on the cusp of my adventure.
Read MoreComing full circle
A week-long gig 100 miles out to sea brings the author back to the early days of his career.
Read MoreAn Aussie’s perspective sailing down east
Winter 2023 By Donna Price For Points East Ian and I have been sailing our 44-foot Nordic sailboat Mystic along the coast of Maine over the past four summers. We had never come this far down east before, as work commitments and other constraints always
Read MoreThe fun starts beyond Schoodic
To cruise from this Maine peninsula to way-Downeast in Passamaquoddy Bay and the Bay of Fundy is to enter a big-tide world with fierce currents, eddies, and the endless joy of being alone.
Read MoreMaine: Always different tomorrow
October/November 2022 By Ian Moore with Jon Kane and Lee Grimes With steady 10 to 15-knot southerlies, sunshine, and record high temperatures, you couldn’t ask for a better forecast for the first sail of 2022. Despite the forecast, I had reminded Jon and Lee several
Read MoreDowneaster Alexis
With apologies to Billy Joel and his Downeaster Alexa, of ballad fame, the author’s sloop of almost the same name could claim that Maine honorific after a `70s cruise from Christmas Cove to Newport.
Read MoreAdventure? No thanks.
“We are plain, quiet folk and have no use for adventures,” declared Bilbo Baggins. “Nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things. Make you late for dinner.” We don’t like them either, but we sure have them.
Read MoreOlivia Lord, R2AK warrior
September 2022 By Marilyn Pond Brigham Shortly after I was asked to review the “Race to Alaska” movie for Points East, I came upon a bit of serendipity. My yacht club’s weekly email included a brief note that not only were a couple of members
Read MoreMarshall Island is tough to top
When high winds and rough seas kept the 22-foot Sea Ray, Tegoak, off Maine waters until mid-July, Capt. Tim and navigator Kathryn grabbed a weather window and briskly made up for lost time.
Read MoreShort circuit
A dream cruise from Massachusetts to the Dominican Republic aboard a 30-foot Cape Dory is briefly sidelined when a mysterious and persistent electrical problem arises in the first days of the voyage.
Read MoreMarsh Harbor to Maine
Deserted Bahamian beaches, gale-force winds, wild and placid rivers, canals, and memorable encounters with engaging fellow cruisers earmarked the homeward leg of this nine-month voyage.
Read MoreSailing through boot camp
The members of the Corinthian Yacht Club made a young Coast Guard recruit feel at home.
Read More‘In the wild, you get one mistake’
August 2022 By David Roper This is a continuation from the July issue of an excerpt from Dave’s upcoming book “The Ghosts of Gadus Island” August 1985 Fog, Gadus Island After a breakfast of corned beef hash and eggs, Sophie climbed a couple steps on
Read MoreTransatlantic Bittersweet
Part 2: It was the trip of a lifetime, but as with everything in life, the grim reality of everyday existence imposed some limitations. Quarrels between crew members as well as food issues left a lasting mark on the experience.
Read MoreThe perfect proposal
The planning was intense, the execution flawless and the result? Magical.
Read MoreA tale of 2 dinghies
A pair of venerable dinks, with a cumulative age of more than six decades, has for years served the Brighams and their five sailing vessels as tried-and-true tools in their quests for successful cruises.
Read MoreTransatlantic bittersweet
Part 1: “Want to sail across the Atlantic?” my wife Nancy asked, knowing it was a life dream. “I told them you’d be interested.” I signed on, and the experience proved both pleasant and painful.
Read MoreOur plan C cruise turned out to be just fine
Plan A was the Newfoundland south coast, but it had a COVID closure. Plan B was Maine, which endured a moth infestation with toxic by-products. So, Plan C, and a lovely one at that: Massachusetts.
Read MoreFrom New Hampshire to New Zealand under sail
Jeff and Molly Bolster discuss their 2018 cruise via Zoom host by the Gundalow Company's World Ocean Experience series.
Read MoreThe thank-you passage
My mother, Gail Stanwood, passed at 96 in October 2020. She kept meticulous cruising logs, then retyped the accounts with detailed narratives. She would savor this 2021 log entry for the sloop, Prelude.
Read MoreIn a year when everything was shifting rapidly, Maine was my rock
In many ways, the summer of 2020 was like any other. But there was the COVID pandemic, which changed everything, except for the things that did not change, like sailing along the coast of Maine.
Read MoreAn experience like this happens once in a Blue Moon
My son and I, and his friend Dave, delivered Blue Moon, a Grand Banks 42 - named after that nocturnal orb – from Lake Champlain to his marina in Boston. It was a memorable getaway.
Read MoreBoating, biking & hiking on Isle au Haut
It was time to use the best days of August for some serious adventures.
Read MoreIt took two years, but eventually we got Magus home
I was back on our motorsailer in the Chesapeake Bay, where we’d left her for repairs while homeward bound for Maine from the Bahamas two years earlier. It was time to complete the cruise.
Read MoreHomeward bound
December 2021 By Tom Joyce For P0ints East This Sunday morning, there were no taxis at Westchester Airport in White Plains, N.Y., and Uber was unresponsive. I needed to get to the marina in Mamaroneck, twenty minutes away, where the boat I had just bought
Read MoreFollowing seas, tin skiffs & Getch
Dave Getchell was the consummate small-outboard/aluminum-boat guy. A skillful, safety-conscious skipper, Getch clearly knew small-craft handling and loved to share his wisdom with kindred spirits.
Read MoreJust plain scared silly
The weather was prefect for a picnic on Damariscove Island. Until it wasn't. The trip back was a challenge.
Read MoreThe Blue Hill bandit
December 2021 By Christopher Birch For Points East Sometimes those Boston Harbor currents float you right out the harbor. On one such recent trip, my wife, Alex, and I steered our sailboat to a mooring at the Kollegewidgwok Yacht Club in Blue Hill, Maine. The
Read MoreA voyage to the promised land
And no such hallowed place is earned without travail. Bad things happen in threes, so after the fourth mishap disappeared in our wake, we settled into the rhythm of the sea and logged a flawless cruise.
Read MoreCruising in the shallow end
That’s what Massachusetts’ Essex Bay offers – an attractive place to gunkhole – but with a fixed keel boat and a draft over three feet, the experience is both a challenge and a pleasure.
Read MoreGullivers travails, Part II
I looked aloft at the flogging genoa, saw that it was tearing, and a sad epiphany materialized: I should start an Excel file to inventory my burgeoning list of oversights and misdeeds.
Read MoreCasco Bay fog daze
“When in doubt, go out,” was the plan, and to outrun the soup, we headed farther offshore. The gloom seemed to lighten eight miles from home, but this was Maine, and we knew better.
Read MoreBuzzards Bay had the last word
September 2021 By Mark Barrett The southwest wind was whipping through the Cape Cod Canal, and it would be right on my nose with a west-running tide. I wasn’t sure I could make headway against the wind with the little outboard on my 40-year-old J/24.
Read MoreFrenchboro in the fog
Mid-July along the Maine coast can be clear and calm or foggy and rough. That’s why you seize every favorable weather window, and hope the forecast is not as bad as it is predicted.
Read MorePanic in the fairway
Morgana was rocking gently in her slip without any new bumps, dings, or worse. I could, and had, docked Morgana in a slip for the first time! I had stayed the course despite my fears, inexperience, and self-doubt.
Read MoreGulliver’s travails
Part 1: In 90-degree heat, I covered my exhausted body with a 10-below sleeping bag, fitting penance for someone whose plan for cruising from Boston to Rhode Island was “Let’s hope for the best.”
Read MoreA visit with Dodge Morgan
September 2021 By Homer Shannon It was the morning of July 14, 1999. Three boats from the American Yacht Club in Newburyport, Mass.; Carpe Diem, Overtime and Cinderella, were anchored way up in Quahog Bay. Homer and Dee Shannon from Cinderella had just returned from
Read MoreIn the grip of a strange racing fever
Who wants to face discomfort, despair, physical depletion and loss of zest for life, for four hours or four weeks, to compete with a boat that might average five mph? Well, Gulf of Maine racers do.
Read MoreHis world is our oyster
One day I’m retired and idle: the next, I’m an oyster farmer. How did I go from eyeballs-deep in a couch to total immersion in raising Eastern oysters? Well, hang onto your hat!
Read MoreNaviguessing
August 2021 By Fred Douglass My father’s family had built a Shingle-Style cottage on the western shore of the Sheepscot River in 1903, when my father (Alfred W. Douglass 1899-1970) was just four. His father had decided to spend the plupart of his father’s money
Read MoreMaine chartering: Nobody got hurt
July 2021 By Thomas Dudley This posthumously published essay is the second in a series of lively, often wry, reminiscences to be published in Points East over the coming months. Thomas Minot Dudley, of Durham, N.H., died at the age of 83 the day after
Read MoreTired of the same old spots? Move it!
These two Massachusetts-based families decided to reposition their boats for a season to explore regions outside their usual homeport cruising range.
Read MoreMessing about with . . . goats!
There is nothing worth doing more than “messing about in boats,” extolled Mr. Water Rat in “The Wind in the Willows.” But you don’t want to mess with mischievous farm stock on a Connecticut island.
Read MoreAnhinga, and the lessons learned
Photo courtesy Roger Long June 2021 By Roger Long Senior year in high school was when I put away childish things and became fully obsessed with boats. I’d made a weeklong cruise in my 10’ dinghy with a boom tent the summer before on Lake
Read MoreSelf-quarantine cruise
Restrictions of a worldwide virus made working online from home the norm, so, with our Nordic 44 Mystic waiting in Maine, why not call her home-in-transit for a few weeks and set sail?
Read MoreFrom Maine to Spain on Galatea
“How to move. When to move. If you had to think about it, you weren’t going on the boat.” The boat was Galatea – a 38-foot steel-hulled yawl that was sailed across the Atlantic in the summer of 1964 – and the remembrance is courtesy
Read MoreDudley and sailing evermore
From an early age, the author was drawn to the mystical act of propelling a sailing vessel by harnessing the wind; and his wife, Dudley, also felt the magic. But it wasn’t all “tailwinds and flat seas.”
Read MoreThe river turns the wheel
And, in Newburyport, Mass., it always has, literally and figuratively, as the mighty Merrimack River has powered a shipbuilding industry, a rich international trade, mill wheels, and, today, a waterborne tourism.
Read MoreSaoirse was 40 feet of rusting vessel destined for the scrap heap. Now she’s home sweet home
One person’s candidate for the junk pile can be another’s gem. And thus it was that a beloved, but deteriorating, steel sailboat became a treasure for a couple in search of a new floating abode.
Read MoreAnniversary Blowout
During the summer of COVID-19, we celebrated 33 years of marriage by cruising locally, focusing on Buzzards Bay and cozy Rhode Island. Short of a hurricane, what could possibly rain on our parade?
Read MoreCapable hands
March/April 2021 By Paul Brown In the late 1980s I was relatively new to sailing, and had recently purchased a 1968 Thunderbird 26 I named Brownscow. Brownscow’s design was the result of a contest offered by a West Coast plywood company in 1958, and –
Read MoreBoothbay, by gosh!
Part 3: The J/30 Mojo finally found some wind, and Mark and Diana sailed efficiently from Portsmouth, N.H., to Boothbay Harbor, Maine, despite a nav-bungle and a minor piloting error.
Read MoreRound-trip ticket: Bahamas
The author and his wife had long dreamed of cruising south for the winter and returning in the spring. Finally they did it, with two dogs, aboard the Banjer 37 motorsailer Magus.
Read MoreAll’s well that ends well
While I have made many hundreds of trips from Portsmouth Harbor to the Isles of Shoals across the full range of weather and seasons (wind, rain, fog, snow and freezing spray) I had never been thoroughly scared until one afternoon a few weeks ago.
Read MoreBaptism by fire, Part II
Part 2: Some hairy autumn sea miles remained between Sea-Finn and her Midcoast Maine destination, including a forecast of 17- to 20-foot waves, 65-mph winds – and infamous Kennedy Rock.
Read More“Plenty in ’20” and Plan D
By Pam Humbert For Points East The new year was still young and unsullied back in mid-January when our club met to unveil their summer cruising plans. The room was abuzz with dreams and the anticipation of a fresh new year and a season yet
Read MoreFishers Finally!
The fates conspired against me in my attempts to visit Fishers Island, as though an invisible force was blocking my access to it. Last summer, I broke through, with an emotional epiphany.
Read MoreRevisiting Roque and Mistake Islands
By Tim Plouff For Points East It was to be a glorious summer day in Maine, and the promise of making new discoveries – as always, to us – was as exciting as the forecast. Our boating friends Allison and Andy Moorwood had proposed a
Read MoreThe Gulf, golf and the kid
How do you get a teen-age boy to go cruising in Maine with his father (no, this is not the lead to a new joke), to share in the joy of quiet nights under a blanket of stars, to be away from his friends, from
Read MoreA solo transverse of the Cape Cod Canal
By Chuck Roast I had just blown in from Gloucester, Mass., the day before on Navicula, my Cape Dory 33, courtesy of a stiff breeze from the northeast. The morning would begin in Provincetown, Mass., with what may well have been the worst breakfast of
Read MoreMuscobe to Menemsha
When my son and shipmate Randy, and his family, rented a cottage in Chilmark, on Martha’s Vineyard, I decided to solo my 33-foot Young Brothers Jonesport-type lobsterboat south for a visit.
Read MoreBut we must be in North Carolina!
By Nim Marsh For Points East Magazine November 12 breaks in high overcast, 52°, wind southwest, 10. At mid-day the air is still raw, but the compass reads 180° – due south – and all is right with the world. At roughly Mile 34 on
Read MoreMojo: Maine or bust
Part 2: Contending with windless seas, tipsy restaurant diners, and the threat of leisurely breakfasts and shopping sprees, the J/30 Mojo finds herself near the doorstep of the Maine coast.
Read MoreBaptism by fire
Part 1: With crew unavailable, the author, a relative cruising greenhorn, chose to singlehand to Downeast Maine from New York. He reached Kennebunkport, learned a lot, and nobody got hurt.
Read MoreMojo bound for Maine
Mark and the indomitable Diana set sail from Buzzards Bay’s Red Brook Harbor aboard the J/30 Mojo, destination Mount Desert in Downeast Maine. The first leg, to Gloucester, was almost flawless.
Read MoreIn search of the Red Paint People
By David Roper This year’s cruise to Maine was supposed to be a quiet, reflective time spent mostly anchored alone in a bay I’ve always loved. For the first time in many years, my wife would sail with me on the Downeast leg from our
Read MoreThreading the needle
Some of the coast’s most interesting eel ruts are invested of a particular attraction because only rarely do the tides, our timing, and the weather align, at which occasion we get to plumb the depths of interesting places like Pleasant Point Gut. Only a few
Read MoreHarwich Port, Mass.: Home away from home
Home: safety, quietude, belonging. Port: haven for mariners and vessels. Saquatucket Harbor, in Harwich Port, Mass., has been our home port – away from our true home port – for 20 years.
Read MoreA new boat for Diana
I promised I’d buy a bigger boat, with a standing-headroom cabin, if she survived a summer cruising on my J/24. She not only endured, she thrived. The ball was in my court. Big time!
Read MoreBlowing in the wind
To those of us who set sail for Downeast and the Maritimes, the summer winds are our best friends and most demanding of adversaries. They fulfill our ambitions, deny our intentions, try our patience, keep us awake, lull us to sleep, and cool, chill and
Read MoreForce 8 Cape Cod
June, 1994. 200 miles south of The Cape. Wind 40 knots, gusting higher. 20-foot waves. Water north of the Gulf Stream 50 degrees. Destination, Spain. This is the story of how we almost got there.
Read MoreThe mouse that roars
Let’s join this peripatetic cruiser aboard his Saga 43 ILENE, around the cabin table, for a breezy account of a monthlong cruise along tiny Rhode Island’s extensive and varied shores.
Read MoreInto the quiet
Cruising under sail is one of the few places in life in which we can escape a world certain it has a right to be in our faces 24/7, to always be badgering us to buy stuff, act now, shape and share our views, to
Read MoreTaking cover
It was a pleasant enough day when a friend and I took a new-to-me 14’ runabout down the Providence River from the neighborhood of Riverside in East Providence. At 16 years old we were venturing into the “vast open water” of Narragansett Bay south of
Read MoreGrateful summer: Cruising with cancer
We always spend as much time as possible on our Finngulf 391 sloop West Wind, a 39’ masterpiece from Finland. Whether we would be aboard this past summer was certainly in doubt.
Read MoreWaterlilies 2.0
By Marilyn Pond Brigham From 2005 to 2009, I was a Waterlily. Waterlilies are members of the mostly over-40 ladies sailing program at Quissett Yacht Club (QYC) in Falmouth, Mass. The Waterlilies program meets on Friday mornings, July through August, and has done so since
Read MoreInnocents abroad
By Frederick Findlen One beautiful October morning, my wife and I, both novice mariners, decided to take our last boating trip of the year. We checked the marine forecast, then launched our 17-foot motorboat in the New Meadows River in Brunswick, Maine. The plan was
Read MoreDowneast Express
Ride the prevailing southwest wind north and east along the New England coast, and you’ll ultimately find yourself in the pristine waters of Downeast Maine. Take the offshore fast track there.
Read MoreMy own sailing legacy
I married this man because, well, sailing was part of his fabric, and I was determined it would be part of mine, too. Little did I know then that I also had a magic boating key to pass on to my family.
Read MoreRunning home from COVID-19
By Dick Klain My last cruise down the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) was several years ago. Since that time, I have stayed up to date on the ditch through friends. When the coronavirus hit, I wondered what my friends who were still down south would be
Read MoreRockin’ around the clock
This means we’re going to cruise clockwise around a figurative clock face in Gloucester Harbor, check out the seaport’s charms, and learn of the weed-bearded growlers and hazards that abound there.
Read MoreThe reluctant sailor’s ICW guide
Sailing Scared: Maine to Florida 2014-15 by Karlene Osborne; Custom Communications, Inc., 2019; 128 pp.; $16.95. Book review by Randy Randall Reading “Sailing Scared,” Karlene Osborne’s new book about a cruise from Maine to Florida via the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), one realizes early on how
Read MoreMad dash to go-back
Experience is the best teacher, and lessons can be learned by straddling “exciting” and “really dumb.” In that spirit, I planned a 20-mile, Force 5 downwind flier from Portland to Harpswell
Read More‘OK, Irv, you’re right!’
Guest Perspective: Paul Brown Fundy Flotilla 2004, from Northeast Harbor to Grand Manan, and then on to Saint John and the St. John River. Brownscow, my Beneteau Evasion 32, had made it to Grand Manan, New Brunswick, and then had to leave the flotilla as
Read MoreDeliverance
The schooner was pinned against 40-foot cliffs, pounded by seas that threw spray over their tops. A former owner of a towing and salvage firm, I thought I could haul her off with my 46-foot sedan cruiser.
Read MoreCruising with Diana, Part II
On their first short cruises as a couple (see “Cruising with Diana, Part 1,” December 2019), it was two boat-lengths forward/one back for Mark and Diana as they set courses – often divergent – to perceived common grounds on which they might sail constructively, as
Read MoreLit picks, and venturing out
The first trip to the Isles of Shoals in the new year was a combination supply run for the Star Island caretakers and a reconnaissance mission for upcoming building projects. We loaded a dozen small bags of groceries and a few bottles of wine –
Read MoreCruising with Diana
Part 1: I had this great, new girlfriend, and I wanted to take her cruising, but my boat was a 40-year-old J/24 with minimal, claustrophobic accommodations. Well, one step at a time.
Read More‘Low bridge, everybody down…’
“Low bridge, we’re coming to a town,” the old barge song continues, and these days many of those towns on New York’s Western Erie Canal and Seneca Lake are spellbinding waterfront villages. Aboard Weak Moment, our 32-foot trawler, we’ve now seen quite a few of
Read MoreSaddleback Island
By Tim Plouff For most Mainers, the name Saddleback has long been associated with the western Maine mountain near Rangeley that was a popular ski resort for decades before successive owners fell on hard times. While the ski trails remain closed, an effort to re-start
Read MoreBoating and a big slice of humble pie
Many years ago, in the late ’90s, I had an old Star that I loved in a way that was inversely proportional to the aggravation it caused me. One of my top-five epic sails was aboard this boat, as was one of my top-five epic
Read MoreGood counsel, and sailing faster than the wind
In spite of my best-laid plans, a second season has now passed without launching our sloop Aloft. We have used the time to make numerous upgrades, and she now has a totally new rig, engine, and plank fastenings below the waterline. With her updated electronics
Read MoreAn ode to slow
We awoke to the reflections of sunlit seas dancing across the cabin ceiling, a rich wash of blue sky overhead and the telltales hanging limp. The mate, who functions better than I in the early hours, pulled up a forecast. “Southwest 5,” she muttered sleepily
Read MoreHurricane Dorian and the “dream wedding”
The last big weekend of the year promised a full house at the Oceanic Hotel. A two-day island wedding extravaganza was also on the schedule.
Read MoreA late-season delivery
Guest Perspective: Capt. Michael L. Martel I awoke in the darkness with a start, disoriented, only to eventually realize that I was still in my bunk, fully dressed and wrapped in my blanket against the cold. Even though the last two days had seen the
Read MoreA blazing beginning
The move aboard Klang II was supposed to be the start of our live-aboard lives and, perhaps, some ocean vagabond years, but a boatyard conflagration made a grand attempt to intervene.
Read MoreCruising aboard the Caravan 18
Guest perspective: Christopher Birch “What’d you sail in on?” asked the man shaving at the sink next to me. “A Caravan 18,” I replied, pleased with my quick thinking and grateful for the shaving cream concealing my smirk. It was a beautiful August morning in
Read MoreA quart in a pint pot
Sure, New Hampshire has a paltry 18 miles of Atlantic shoreline, but it packs a disproportionately wide variety of cruising sights and experiences in just New Castle and Portsmouth alone.
Read MoreLa Dolce Vita
And it was a sweet life indeed aboard the 41-foot Concordia yawl Dolce, on a delivery from Boston to the Newport Boat Brokerage Show to be sold. No one bought her, but that isn’t my story.
Read MoreNow this is downeast cruising
Part 2: For years, son Randy wanted to spend just one night where no marinas, restaurants, or marine facilities existed, just wildness. Before we turned back to Marblehead, I took him to Roque Island.
Read MoreCharming the snake
The Cape Cod Canal separates the Cape peninsula from the mainland in serpentine fashion, and, as with the notorious reptile of Eden, transit requires numerous encounters with tidal temptation.
Read More‘Now this is Downeast cruising’
Part 1: Glorious sunshine, water glinting like diamonds, spruces above granite-shored islands, a lobsterman’s windshield flashing in the sun. This is what we dream about on dreary February days.
Read MoreHelping to keep the waters clean
Guest perspective/Randy Randall “Hey Dad,” Jeremy yelled. “Looks like you hit the jackpot! What is all this stuff?” He was right. I’d practically filled the front of my kayak with trash. “Help me unload all this,” I told him. But you see collecting trash is
Read MoreMartha’s Vineyard ports-of-call
I’ve explored five Martha’s Vineyard harbors – Menemsha, Lake Tashmoo, Vineyard Haven, Oak Bluffs and Edgartown – and each seems to delight visiting cruisers in its own special way
Read MoreTankers are fast
Guest perspective/Randy Randall Oil tankers are fast. Much faster than you probably think. The behemoth ships that seem to take forever to cross the horizon when you’re offshore are actually moving right along. They’re like an optical illusion – so big and imposing, so long
Read MoreFirst to Block (Island, that is)
Anyone who’s been to Great Salt Pond, on Block Island, knows how magical it is, especially on a warm summer night, and you’re surrounded by hundreds of other cruisers. Without anyone there – not a single other boat – would it still feel the same
Read MoreMaine cruise: Unplugged
Part 2: The author reveals more favorite Maine anchorages – not the “best” ones – and the crew of the Saga 43 Ilene favors small places with solitude or ones with good eats, museums and theater.
Read MoreHoly Cannoli! I like to sail
Smitten by the Masefield “Sea Fever” romance of sailing vessels, but hesitant to embrace the recreation of moving small boats with the wind, Tricia espouses powerboating. Years later, epiphany.
Read MoreFast forward to Boothbay
You’re watching a video of the coast from Mystic, Conn., to Boothbay, Maine, filmed in midsummer from offshore. Now press the fast-forward. But don’t forget fast-reverse.
Read MoreOur Favorite Maine anchorages
Part 1: Not “Best Anchorages,” just our preferred harbors, islands, rivers and coves, and we favor smaller places with nature and solitude – or ones with good eats, museums and theater.
Read MoreBound for Salem
And why not? This seaport on the North Shore of Boston has a grand maritime history, classic architecture, tourist haunts, boating services, and more witchcraft lore than the average salt can handle.
Read MoreBusman’s holiday
Part 2: Former professional mariner Capt. Dick Allen and his wife Bev begin the circuitous homeward leg of their inland Triangle Loop cruise aboard their 32-foot Seaquest trawler Weak Moment.
Read MoreBusman’s Holiday
Part 1: What does a former professional ocean mariner do when he seeks relaxation? He heads to the inland waterways of the U.S. and Canadian Triangle Loop on his 32-foot trawler.
Read MoreRacing Eros
Competing in a New England classic-yacht event aboard a British-built 1939 Gloucester-type staysail schooner may not be for the weak of spirit, but it will be exhilarating and the experience of a lifetime.
Read MoreWaterworld
New England offers countless harbors, both great and small – some bustling with commercial traffic, others quiet and “undiscovered.” For me, none is more interesting, vibrant or gorgeous than Boston Harbor.
Read MoreLong Island inside
Part 2: In the August issue, the McGuires and their trawler Hope entered Long Island Sound, expecting to be underwhelmed. Instead they were delighted and excited. On the next leg, they were challenged.
Read MoreNova Scotia idyll
In 2017, we cruised from our hailing port of New York City to the Bras d’Or Lakes of Cape Breton Island, at the north end of the Maritime province of Nova Scotia. We liked what we found.
Read MoreA Newfoundland summer
“You have to sail Newfoundland; there’s nothing like it,” a colleague had proffered decades ago. And for years we dreamed of cruising to this Maritime province. Then, finally, our reverie came true.
Read MoreSurprise, surprise
Our eastern Long Island Sound cruise was one of the more delightful – and humorous – we’ve ever logged; and it was, literally, right around the corner from our Rhode Island homeport.
Read MoreOffshore: Bigger and More
In 2017, ten sports boarded the f/v Nor’easter, out of Kennebunkport, Maine, to fish some 25 miles at sea, in 300 feet of water on Jeffreys Ledge, for cod, haddock, pollock . . . and blue shark!?
Read MoreBound for Northeast Harbor?
Part 2: Grateful to be under way again, we envisioned plying Somes Sound and visiting the Japanese gardens at Northeast Harbor’s Asticou Inn. But, as we left Stonington, engine alarms shattered the peace and our plans.
Read MoreLife as a human spar
Can a sail across Maine’s Casco Bay qualify as a cruise? Yes, when the vessel is a nine-foot Nutshell Pram with a podiatric whisker pole and the skipper has prehensile toes.
Read MoreAnd finally to Roque
Part 2: In the December issue, this 75-year-old circumnavigator was motoring toward the legendary Downeast island from southern Maine in an 80-year-old square-stern canoe when his cruise went figuratively south. Here’s how he reached his hallowed destination.
Read More‘Another crazy scheme’
Part 1: A 75-year-old circumnavigator, I hoped to visit Roque Island, Downeast, from southern Maine, in an 80-year-old canvas-covered, square-stern canoe. My learning curve was steep.
Read MoreBound south on the ICW? Read this first!
We’ve got routes and geographical waypoints. Alternate itineraries. Mileages. Shoal sections. Open stretches. Wind exposures. History of the Atlantic, Gulf and Okeechobee waterways.
Read MoreSmitten with Lady Liberty
Part 1: We were told that the Statue of Liberty must be seen at least once from one’s own boat. This was our hook for a cruise from Newburyport, Mass., to New York Harbor.
Read MoreNo oysters today
Guest perspective/W.R. Cheney Someone once said, “Go west young man,” and I usually do, although I’m not that young any more. I go west not to build a sod house and start a farm on the Great Plains, nor to join the forty-niners seeking gold
Read MoreFour years on the Waterway
Guest perspective/Bill Hezlep In the Rivers and Harbors Act of March 3, 1909 , Congress ordered the United States Army Corps of Engineers to develop a set of surveys and proposals for the construction of “a continuous waterway, inland where practicable,Read More
Read MoreGo someplace new
Guest Perspective/Russ Roth Every year Marty and I try to go someplace new. For us this is primarily focused on the coast of Maine. But we believe it is something to strive for no matter your homeport. It is just too easy to fall into
Read More20 years of running the river
The Run to the Crescent is a fundraising 13-mile inflatable-dinghy cruise-in-company from Newburyport, Mass., up the Merrimack River to the Crescent Yacht Club in Haverhill.
Read MoreSeason’s last ride
Fall. This four-letter word creates passion in many, but I lament the nasty season that follows, so please excuse my disdain for the arrival of autumn.
Read MoreGermination of a dream
Like so many New England sailors, I have long thought of taking Preamble, my 1998 Island Packet 37, south for the winter. Typically, the idea surfaces while I’m finalizing my fall haul-out and winter storage plans.
Read MoreCruise to Cuba
More than 60 years ago, a young Bay Stater conceived the idea, and started planning it only a couple of years ago. Now it’s been realized in a fast Cal 2-30 named Scooch.
Read MoreThe meaning of ‘Fathom’
What an incredible week my husband Bob and I had aboard the 700-passenger m/v Adonia, the sole ship in Carnival Corp’s brand-new Fathom line.
Read MoreA 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.
Read MoreCruising 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.
Read MoreCruising 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?
Read MoreQuarry cruise
Part I: The 19th- and early 20th-century granite mining operations in Maine's Penobscot Bay were the hooks for this trailer-boat cruise to Hurricane Island, Tenants Harbor, and the Muscle Ridge Channel.
Read MoreBoats, bikes and beaches
A perfect summer day on the outer Cranberry Isles - with boat and bicycles - confirmed to us that this combination is ideal for scratching the surface of these islands.
Read MoreAlong the Reach
A leisurely ramble, east to west along Maine's Eggemoggin Reach in wet, windless and buggy conditions still delights the skipper of the 22-foot, engineless catboat Penelope.
Read MoreYou’ll never believe what we saw on the ICW
While Middle America puts on a pretty face for those who pass by on the highway, the view from the Intracoastal Waterway is of a different stripe, perhaps a more accurate display of what America is all about.
Read MoreA pocket cruise in the Elizabeths
Between Buzzards Bay and Vineyard Sound are the pristine Elizabeth Islands, from which it's a short hop to Martha's Vineyard. A pleasant, relaxing week of true cruising can be had in and around them.
Read MoreTrials with the F Word
For us, this meant fiberglass. Our old wood yawl was not as bulletproof as she was beautiful, and we wanted a monocoque hull to keep the water out. The transition wasn’t that easy.
Read MoreBack on the land
After five years of roaming the seas, the Martin family has found a spot of land on which to live, at least for now.
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