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 was waiting. I planned toRead More

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.

The weather was prefect for a picnic on Damariscove Island. Until it wasn’t. The trip back was a challenge.

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 greatest challenge of this placeRead More

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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. I consulted “Eldridge Tide andRead More

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.