The surreal aspect of Aug. 4 didn’t begin until 3 p.m. This was the Tuesday that Tropical Storm Isaias rolled through New England, and I was listening to the radio, one eye on my computer screen and the other on the wildly cavorting trees outside my window. Suddenly, this interruptionRead 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

Over the years, I’ve sold lots of stuff on the internet. Everything from Swedish cars to antique rototillers and, for the most part, the transactions have been fairly straightforward. Goodbye baby bike trailer – don’t let the door hit you on the way out – hello cold, hard cash. TheRead More

In the 2015 film “The Martian,” Matt Damon is an astronaut who’s unwittingly left behind on Mars, and realizes that if he’s to be rescued – most likely in four years, when another ship will be close enough to do so – he’s got to survive on a planet thatRead More

By Bob Muggleston The good news? The lights are on, there’s still plenty of food and the internet works. All those house projects and Netflix series’ you would tackle if you just had the time? There’s time now. The bad news is that, as a nation, we’re embroiled in aRead More

By Bob Muggleston For Points East Here’s a scenario I’ve thought about quite a bit lately: The year is 1939, and you’re aboard a boat tooling around Block Island Sound. Fog has rolled in, making visibility difficult. Horns sound. Suddenly, to starboard, something emerges from the swirling vapors. Stunned silence.Read More

This summer a commercial airline pilot friend of mine, Travis, spent a lot of time researching sailboats. He did so because: 1) He’s interested in upgrading his current platform, a MacGregor 24 trailer sailer he inherited from his father-in-law; and 2) he’s vaguely interested in living aboard a boat onceRead More

Many years ago, in the late ’90s, I had an old Star that I loved in a way that was inversely proportional to the aggravation it caused me. One of my top-five epic sails was aboard this boat, as was one of my top-five epic fails. The epic fail wasRead More

  Frequent readers of this magazine know I bought my “big” boat, a 1966 Pearson Commander, four years ago for $750. They also know, thanks to this space, that most of the sailing I do is here in Essex Harbor on the Connecticut River, where the boat lives on aRead More

The title of this piece is obviously a riff on the signature line from Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer,” a song that doesn’t get too much airplay anymore, but that all these years later (it was originally released in 1984) still affects me when I hear it. It’s theRead More