David Buckman’s book,“Bucking the Tide,” is about muddling along the Fundy and New England coasts in an actual wreck of an 18-foot, $400 sloop. If you’re cool, you can get one for a mere $10. Send your mailing address to buckingthetide@gmail.com
A small matter of style
October 2021 By David Buckman One of the most compelling elements of boat ownership, and life in general, is the protracted process of crafting a sense of style that complements our designs and pays respect to beauty, functionality and proportion. Though such ambitions may rarely
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Take a gander at a Leight repast
April 2020 By David Buckman I’m responding to Capt. Mike Martel, who ran on about his famous chowder and clam-cake recipes in the Midwinter issue. I mean, it’s bloody boiled fish. Aboard the sloop Leight, we aspire to greater culinary heights, amply demonstrated by this
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Sailing with schooners
While cruising and solitude seemed a good strategy for steering clear of the pandemic this summer, there was no sailing away from the evidence of it in the light cruising traffic, abundance of vacant moorings, folks in masks, and the absence of the Penobscot Bay
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Threading the needle
Some of the coast’s most interesting eel ruts are invested of a particular attraction because only rarely do the tides, our timing, and the weather align, at which occasion we get to plumb the depths of interesting places like Pleasant Point Gut. Only a few
Read MoreBlowing in the wind
To those of us who set sail for Downeast and the Maritimes, the summer winds are our best friends and most demanding of adversaries. They fulfill our ambitions, deny our intentions, try our patience, keep us awake, lull us to sleep, and cool, chill and
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Into the quiet
Cruising under sail is one of the few places in life in which we can escape a world certain it has a right to be in our faces 24/7, to always be badgering us to buy stuff, act now, shape and share our views, to
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Going to great lengths for next to nothing
By David Buckman In a lifetime of sailing there were no cruises richer in beauty, drama and intimacy than those we launched in the 1970s, when cash flow was tight, and we set out to discover the New England and Fundy coasts aboard an old
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A lament for the late, great, fog
A lot of coasters curse the fog. I miss it. Though a lifetime of sailing may be too brief a span to draw any reliable conclusions, it seems that the Gulf of Maine fog stocks are in decline, particularly during the last decade. During one
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Of boats and beauty
By David Buckman For Points East There are few expressions of man’s genius more beautiful or enduring than a boat, and few endeavors more satisfying than boating. Anyone who’s drifted across the quiet waters of a lake, fetched along the coast, or crossed an ocean,
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Annoyed and annoying!
Sailing prose can be maddeningly upbeat. A good deal of it is about rising to challenges, the joy of discovery, life-changing revelations, the beauty of nature and people mending their ways. Well, I’ve been sailing for 79 years, reporting on it for a long time,
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An ode to slow
We awoke to the reflections of sunlit seas dancing across the cabin ceiling, a rich wash of blue sky overhead and the telltales hanging limp. The mate, who functions better than I in the early hours, pulled up a forecast. “Southwest 5,” she muttered sleepily
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Ainsley’s excellent project (of mine)
This is a follow-up and reality check to my mid-winter 2019 column, “Ainsley’s Excellent Project,” about the prospects of rebuilding my daughter’s 1960-something, Town Class sloop, which was intended to be a “we” enterprise, but for a number of perfectly good reasons, turned out more
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In search of clarity
Our coasting adventures always seem to be in a certain state of flux as we fathom new ways of addressing the epic sweep of them, and meld into the tried and true. Touching on life’s largest themes and nature’s most powerful forces, it’s about seeking
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Cruising the margins
There was a time when being told that some of my ideas were impractical, or just not done, proved no small incentive to do them anyway. Mostly I was just annoying, but did get on rather well with irregular behavior. Then I got it into
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Of the colossal, organic and abstract
There are few pursuits in this world more profoundly dramatic, organic and poetic than coasting. In an age when algorithms divine the way of many things, fetching alongshore is still an ancient occupation that demands discipline, a grasp of various arts, instincts and the abstract.
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Ainsley’s excellent adventure
Fixing up old boats is a family tradition. Back in the day, various seafaring relatives spent a good deal of time keeping their vessels afloat, while more recently my father and I bought beaters of sloops for next to nothing, fixed them up and pursued
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The way of the coast
I was startled by the hostility of our encounter with the lobsterman. It’d been a good while since we’d felt the burn, and I was reminded of the ’70s when the world was beating a path to buy Downeast vacation homes and a tide
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Mountains by the sea
Maine’s mountains by the sea are possessed of a particular gravity, and taking to the trails on a Downeast cruise both adds an expanded dimension to your travels and helps maintain a level of conditioning. Although coasting can be a relatively sedentary business, conditioning is
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In praise of ‘good enough’
The maintenance of a sailboat is possessed of a certain intensity for those of us who are marginally mechanical. Demanding a keen eye and a grasp of the nature of a wide variety of materials and complicated technologies, the cost of failing to act prudently
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Still water and solitude
There are still extraordinary depths of solitude to be fathomed on far-Downeast islands, where the world is possessed of a spare and abstract drama, palpable ancientness, and breathtaking sweeps of sea, sky and shore. In spite of development creep, perfect privacy can yet be had
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The humble sloop that launched a lifestyle
I can hardly launch spring fitting-out season without thinking about cruises past, and when the photograph above surfaced amid the chaos of my desk I was reminded of the excitement of discovering the New England and Fundy coast in the ’70s, aboard a leaky old
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Irish green. Quiet quarters. A dead-noser.
Cruise of the Leight, Part 11: I had imagined my summer of cruising as a “sailabout” of sorts, sharing qualities of the aboriginal Australians’ walkabouts. I was seeking the peace of wild places, mysteries of nature, depths of solitude, and the incomprehensible energy of the
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Fundy soup. Vibrations. Slack water. Into the quiet.
David BuckmanCruise of the Leight, Part 10: I had imagined my summer of cruising as a “sailabout” of sorts, sharing qualities of the aboriginal Australians’ walkabouts. I was seeking the peace of wild places, mysteries of nature, depths of solitude, and the incomprehensible energy of
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Restless night. Honest work. Rafts of auks.
Cruise of the Leight, Part nine: I had imagined my summer of cruising as a “sailabout” of sorts, sharing qualities of the aboriginal Australians’ walkabouts. I was seeking the peace of wild places, mysteries of nature, depths of solitude, and the incomprehensible energy of the
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Fundy dream. Getting pushed. Mini epic
Cruise of the Leight, Part eight: I had imagined my summer of cruising as a “sailabout” of sorts, sharing qualities of the aboriginal Australians’ walkabouts. I was seeking the peace of wild places, mysteries of nature, depths of solitude, and the incomprehensible energy of the
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Organic cruising. Time. Spectacle. Solitude
Cruise of the Leight, Part seven: Cruise of the Leight, Part 6: I had imagined my summer of cruising as a “sailabout” of sorts, sharing qualities of the aboriginal Australians’ walkabouts. I was seeking the peace of wild places, mysteries of nature, depths of solitude,
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Pieces of a puzzle. The Mud Hole. Silence
Cruise of the Leight, Part 6: I had imagined my summer of cruising as a “sailabout” of sorts, sharing qualities of the aboriginal Australians’ walkabouts. I was seeking the peace of wild places, mysteries of nature, depths of solitude, and the incomprehensible energy of the
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Engine talk, ghosting, Burnt Coat comfort
Cruise of the Leight, Part Five: I was imagining my summer of cruising as a “sailabout” of sorts, sharing qualities of the aboriginal Australians’ walkabouts. I was seeking the peace of wild places, mysteries of nature, depths of solitude, and the incomprehensible energy of the
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Northeast wind, Seal Trap, acute awareness
Cruise of the Leight, Part Four: I was imagining my summer of cruising as a “sailabout” of sorts, sharing qualities of the aboriginal Australians’ walkabouts. I was seeking the peace of wild places, mysteries of nature, depths of solitude, and the incomprehensible energy of the
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Sunday drive, color of money, Perry Creek
Cruise of the Leight, Part 3: I was imagining my summer of cruising as a “sailabout” of sorts, sharing qualities of the aboriginal Australians’ walkabouts. I was seeking the peace of wild places, mysteries of nature, depths of solitude, and the incomprehensible energy of the
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Late start, halting progress, Andrews Island
Cruise of the Leight, Part II: I was imagining my summer of cruising as a “sailabout” of sorts, sharing qualities of the aboriginal Australians’ walkabouts. I was seeking the peace of wild places, mysteries of nature, depths of solitude, and the incomprehensible energy of the
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Cruise of the Leight: Part 1
I was imagining my summer of cruising as a “sailabout” of sorts, sharing qualities of the aboriginal Australians’ walkabouts. I was seeking the peace of wild places, mysteries of nature, depths of solitude, and the incomprehensible energy of the sea. I wanted to lie in
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Caught out
Playing the weather cards in the Gulf of Maine can be an uncertain business, for the forecasts and local meteorological realities, particularly wind speed and direction, are at odds as often as they’re on the mark. Summer 2016 was a blustery one, the forecasts regularly
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On discovery and bar bullies
Some say there are no wild places yet to discover in the Gulf of Maine, or wild times to be had in its ports-of-call. Nonsense!
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The glow of slow
Moores Head, the spruce-crowned jolt of Isle au Haut, was doubled on the water as the Leight’s bow cleaved satin seas, a faint chuckle coming from under the bow. We’d waited out three days of easterly weather in Seal Trap and were itching to sail,
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The accidental, absurd and amusing
Humor is a rich, but all too rare a commodity among coasters, for we are a serious-minded bunch. Further, many amusing incidents have no witnesses, and a good bit of it is accidental. In 70-odd years of sailing, I have made just about every laughable
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What little I know about Pulpit Harbor
Pulpit Harbor reminds me of a favorite aunt of mine, there being a pleasing disposition, interesting character, old-school charm, and sense of style to it that has aged well, and is a pleasure to behold. Though hardly wild, there’s a pleasing ruggedness to the spruce-crowned
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Ragged Island
Ragged Island, the farthest offshore of Maine communities, still seems possessed of the rugged character and drama invoked in Elisabeth Ogilvie’s “Tide Trilogy.” Pithy novels set in the early 1900s, when life 15 miles to sea was a stark and elemental business, the spectacle and
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Discovering Smith Cove – again
In the wake of a lifetime of sailing, the exhilaration of discovery remains a powerful notion, as the mate and I were reminded when we sailed into Castine last summer to take in the arrival of the replica 1779 French frigate, Hermione. We’d first called
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Sheltering
For all the joys of coasting – driving along handsomely before a press of wind, pregnant arcs of sail against a flawless wash of sky, there’s a particular pleasure to the quiet side of cruising that takes as much finesse to meld into the optimal
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