August, 2002 By Dodge Morgan My cab was careening through the streets of Paris in 1983 on my way to interview French naval architect Guy Ribadeau Dumas. I thought he could be the designer of the boat I intended to sail around the world alone and non-stop. Dumas had createdRead More

July 2002 By Dodge Morgan F.E. “Ted” Hood once told me that his most important education in boat design came from his experience at the helm of so many different boats during sea trials for his sails. He could not even estimate the total number of these boats and trials.Read More

June, 2002 By Dodge Morgan There’s a daily email of sailing news called “Scuttlebutt.” The coverage is strictly racing. A grand cast of the world’s racing famous report and debate racing matters at an awesome level of technical and personal knowledge and insight. I have even responded with a coupleRead More

May, 2002 By Dodge Morgan I can get really irked at some things I observe when I’m on the water. The number and frequency of these irritants seem to have increased over the years, perhaps because I was doing many of them myself early in my sailing career and thereforeRead More

April, 2002 By Dodge Morgan I have been struggling with how to classify sailing, holistically speaking, that is. I mean what frame of mind do I feel best suits me when I sail or when I simply think about sailing? This is a very personal decision, I can see, becauseRead More

Midwinter, 2002 By Dodge Morgan What does a sailor do in a Maine winter? Work over the spring commissioning list of chores? (This year I’ll finally have her Bristol!) Plan summer cruises? (Sure, I can fit in Chesapeake Bay and Nantucket Sound and Buzzards and Casco and Sheepscot and MuscongusRead More

October, 2001 By Dodge Morgan How about a column consisting of random thoughts? Hark, I hear some protests. “Why not?” Some shrugs (yes, one can hear a shrug. I once heard a bank VP’s nether orifice shrink). Some “What the hell?” And a few “Don’t waste my time and money.”Read More

September, 2001 By Dodge Morgan I sail Eagle when I want intimacy with the wind and water and Wings of Time when I want to go somewhere with obscene comfort. Eagle takes 20 minutes to get underway and Wings takes two minutes. Eagle is a 75-year-old gaff-headed schooner just 31-feetRead More

August, 2001 By Dodge Morgan My relationship with the sea is as complex and as unfathomable as my relationships with people I love. I am not at all sure of the how or why of it. The answer is a confusing combination of the spiritual and the practical and isRead More

July, 2001 By Dodge Morgan The feature article in June’s issue of Points East, “Whistling for Bats,” nudged me into a haven of nostalgia. Author Richard Fullerton detailed a Downeast cruise to the St. John River in the especially lovely Rhodes yawl Arion, a cruise that transpired almost completely, asRead More