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

Guest perspective/Christoper Birch The best advice I ever gave my children was to drink their coffee black and their whiskey neat. I rest easy knowing how much time I have saved them from rustling around looking for things like cream and sugar and ice. If other parents had the goodRead More

Guest perspective/Randy Randall The marina business in winter is not much fun. The river’s frozen over, the snow-covered docks look like giant loaves of white bread, and the mooring balls are gripped fast in the ice. It’s all very depressing, and spring seems a long way off. Snow piled upRead More