While cruising and solitude seemed a good strategy for steering clear of the pandemic this summer, there was no sailing away from the evidence of it in the light cruising traffic, abundance of vacant moorings, folks in masks, and the absence of the Penobscot Bay schooner fleet. We missed sailingRead More

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 hundred yards long, the slenderRead 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

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 know our exact location, whoRead More

By David Buckman In a lifetime of sailing there were no cruises richer in beauty, drama and intimacy than those we launched in the 1970s, when cash flow was tight, and we set out to discover the New England and Fundy coasts aboard an old wooden sloop I’d acquired forRead More

A lot of coasters curse the fog. I miss it. Though a lifetime of sailing may be too brief a span to draw any reliable conclusions, it seems that the Gulf of Maine fog stocks are in decline, particularly during the last decade. During one cruise back in the ’80sRead More

By David Buckman For Points East There are few expressions of man’s genius more beautiful or enduring than a boat, and few endeavors more satisfying than boating. Anyone who’s drifted across the quiet waters of a lake, fetched along the coast, or crossed an ocean, knows this much to beRead More

Sailing prose can be maddeningly upbeat. A good deal of it is about rising to challenges, the joy of discovery, life-changing revelations, the beauty of nature and people mending their ways. Well, I’ve been sailing for 79 years, reporting on it for a long time, and haven’t mended my waysRead More

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 as we closed our eyes,Read More

This is a follow-up and reality check to my mid-winter 2019 column, “Ainsley’s Excellent Project,” about the prospects of rebuilding my daughter’s 1960-something, Town Class sloop, which was intended to be a “we” enterprise, but for a number of perfectly good reasons, turned out more of a “me” task. ThatRead More