Guest perspective/W.R. Cheney I used to see her on my way into town from our winter home at Lady’s Island, S.C. Factory Creek runs parallel to Route 21 – the Sea Island Parkway – for a short distance, just east of the bridge connecting downtown Beaufort with Lady’s Island. There’sRead More

Guest perspective/Russ Roth Two years ago we made a decision to repower our sailboat, Skiya (see Points East, August 2015). This spring I needed to be repowered. Last June, Marty and I left our mooring in Portsmouth Harbor on our yearly migration to our mooring in Rockland, Maine. We hadRead More

Guest perspective/Lauren E. Storck In the U.S. alone, there are 50 million of us with some hearing loss or deafness. That’s one in five people of all ages, on average. If you are so challenged, these three thoughts are important: 1. No shame is warranted or allowed; 2. Be awareRead More

Guest perspective/Christopher Birch The longer I have been around boats, the more I have come to appreciate the small ones. When I was young, I dreamed of how grand it would be to have a massive sailing yacht of my very own. Now, some years later, my heart skips aRead More

Guest perspective/W.R. Cheney Someone once said, “Go west young man,” and I usually do, although I’m not that young any more. I go west not to build a sod house and start a farm on the Great Plains, nor to join the forty-niners seeking gold in California. I sail inRead More

Guest perspective/Bill Hezlep In the Rivers and Harbors Act of March 3, 1909 [House of Representatives 28243, CHAP. 268, Approved March 3, 1909], Congress ordered the United States Army Corps of Engineers to develop a set of surveys and proposals for the construction of “a continuous waterway, inland where practicable,Read More

Guest Perspective/Russ Roth Every year Marty and I try to go someplace new. For us this is primarily focused on the coast of Maine. But we believe it is something to strive for no matter your homeport. It is just too easy to fall into a sailing rut. We allRead More

Guest Perspective/Paul Brown The year was 1987: my first year of sailing. I had a mooring at South Freeport, Maine, on the ocean side of Wolf Neck. Wolf Neck is the land separation between the Harraseeket River and Middle Bay. This was a year before I ever ventured to singlehandRead More

Guest perspective/Paul Brown The ’Bird: A Thunderbird 26 sloop is a so-called one-design “racer/cruiser.” In 1958, it was the winning design, by Seattle naval architect Ben Seaborn, in a plywood association’s contest for the best sailboat fashioned from marine plywood. The objective was a low-cost “Volkswagen,” simple to build andRead More

Guest perspective/Capt. Michael L. Martel Anyone restoring, or even replicating a traditional Maine-built craft, pleasure or working sail, knows that these vessels, when originally built, were not outfitted with Herreshoff bronze, generally. Instead, their fittings – from spar hardware to windlasses to chainplates – were forged steel or cast steelRead More