When my wife Marcia and I were boat hunting a few years back, we encountered a flotilla of men and women in their 70s and 80s who were hanging up their dock lines because of bum knees or bad balance or failing vision – not at all for a lackRead More

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!

It was another early-morning island supply run in mid-summer. Utopia slipped easily through the glassy swells for the seven-mile trip to the Isles of Shoals in the company of numerous grey seals and a single minke whale. The fish finder emitted a constant stream of beeps, echoes of the broadRead More

By Mike Camarata For Points East I am a full-time liveaboard. I am also a snowbird. I have been called plenty of other names, but we’ll stick with those two for now. A liveaboard is a person who owns a boat and – wait for it – lives on it.Read More

Over the years, as the owner of two full-displacement keelboats, I’ve often fantasized about going smaller. Don’t get me wrong: Big boats are fun, but sometimes, with all their inherent expenses and hassles, it just seems like there’s got to be a better way. The fantasy has always been this:Read More

By David Roper For Points East Once upon a time there was a man who felt that his life was a canvas painted in various shades of gray. His job lacked challenge, his friends were dull, and his girl didn’t cast her eyes down and blush when he whispered toRead More

There are two kinds of salesmen. There is the lonely, bespectacled, data-driven geek with the mathematical model that demonstrates the inevitable causal relationship between the promotional dollars invested and the widgets sold. Then there’s the Irishman. The Irishman can walk into a room of strangers and by the time heRead More

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 comfort us. Ashore, we hardlyRead More

“Dangerous Shallows: In Search of the Ghost Ships of Cape Cod,” by Eric Takakjian and Randall Peffer. Lyons Press, 2020; 256 pp. Review by Sandy Marsters On any given day, there just may be at least as many vessels on the bottom of the waters surrounding Cape Cod as thereRead More

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.