Dave Roper is a regular columnist for Points East. Next to sailing, telling and writing stories is Dave’s favorite pastime. His most recent book, Watching for Mermaids was a three-time Boston Globe bestseller www.watchingformermaids.net. His writing has been published in eighteen languages. Dave has been a yacht delivery skipper, captain of a 135’ Mississippi River stern wheel cruise ship, and life-long cruiser along the coast of Maine aboard his 31’ Independence sloop, Elsa Marie. Dave is the founder of A-Script, a career advisory and resume writing firm in Marblehead, MA. davidroper00@gmail.com
August 2008 By David Roper The four of us were sitting around a mesquite-wood campfire at the base of a canyon amid the hills way outside of Tucson, near the old Tucson to Tombstone stagecoach road. We had spent all day in the saddle, my horse and I following JoeRead More
July 2008 By David Roper Remember responding to that “double dare” as a kid? Remember looking down off that ledge or that railroad bridge on that hot summer’s day and feeling pressure from your peers overcoming your basic survival instincts? Many of us jumped. Stupid. I remember responding to suchRead More
June 2008 By David Roper A Points East reader fortunate enough to keep his lunch down while getting through my column about my holding-tank surgical removal struggle and the resulting effluent assault asked a legitimate question: So what did you put in that big space where the holding tank onceRead More
May 2008 By David Roper “Hope for the best, but Plan for the Worst.” A famous round-the-world sailor had this imprinted on his companionway bulkhead. I guess he did it as a constant reminder. Makes sense. Those of us with a few miles under our keels know that things canRead More
April 2008 By David Roper Thousands, maybe millions, of seagulls, geese, cormorants, ducks and fish poop into the water all around me 24 hours a day when I go cruising. But my waste is human waste, which apparently is a special excrement and needs a holding tank. I don’t thinkRead More
Midwinter 2008 By David Roper My age of innocence ended around midnight one Saturday in the summer of 1969. It happened alongside a cruising yawl named Seaduction. What I inadvertently caused to happen, and what I experienced in a few short minutes, gave me my first real look at theRead More
What began as a promising relationship between man and bird ended tragically.
