By Jack Farrell The usual spring activity along our coast has been slow to develop this season due to the pandemic. But in early May, Maine Governor Janet Mills announced a phased re-opening plan for business in the state. In addition to some other enterprises, barbershops and marinas will be allowedRead More

It is . . . and you’re the winner! Is that Northeast Harbor, on Mt. Desert Island, in Maine? My wife Julie and I have often sailed Preamble, our Island Packet 37, down that way and spent many nights on harbor floats over the past 20-odd years. It is aRead More

We have a thing for islands. Since early 2019, we’d sailed to over 20 of them, from French Polynesia to our favorite, Block Island, R.I. And on this cruise, we found more of them in our own backyard.

Anniversary celebrated there It’s Edgartown, on the island of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. My family chartered a boat out of Newport, R.I., a few years ago and on the trip we eventually went from Cuttyhunk to Edgartown. We spent two nights there and got to celebrate a wedding anniversary, asRead More

As normal life on the mainland began to close down in response to the spreading virus in late March, I made a run out to the Isles of Shoals in Utopia with an especially large supply order for the caretakers. In a normal season there would be a day inRead More

A fire destroyed George W. Zachorne Jr. & Sons Boatbuilders, in Wickford, R.I., but more was ruined than structure, boats, tools and precious artifacts. A way of life was snuffed out, too.

This means we’re going to cruise clockwise around a figurative clock face in Gloucester Harbor, check out the seaport’s charms, and learn of the weed-bearded growlers and hazards that abound there.

On their first short cruises as a couple (see “Cruising with Diana, Part 1,” December 2019), it was two boat-lengths forward/one back for Mark and Diana as they set courses – often divergent – to perceived common grounds on which they might sail constructively, as a team, on a minimal overnight boat. However, compromises were made on both sides, and soon they were anxious for an extended adventure.

Mystic, Conn., is not a town, and the Mystic River, on which it lies, is not a river. So perhaps this rollicking, tarred-marline-scented village is a figment of our imaginations, which is OK by me.

Part 1: I had this great, new girlfriend, and I wanted to take her cruising, but my boat was a 40-year-old J/24 with minimal, claustrophobic accommodations. Well, one step at a time.