May 2008 By Tom Snyder Shhh. Don’t tell my wife, Annie, about what follows. Seriously. She will be so surprised. But first, a bit of background: Annie has just recently expressed an interest in doing an extended sailing cruise with me this summer! This is my old fantasy come true.Read More

April 2008 By David Roper Thousands, maybe millions, of seagulls, geese, cormorants, ducks and fish poop into the water all around me 24 hours a day when I go cruising. But my waste is human waste, which apparently is a special excrement and needs a holding tank. I don’t thinkRead More

April 2008 By Tom Snyder The brilliant social critic, Tom Wolfe, notices a lot of things about us. He is the one who identified the “Me Decade” and the “We Decade.” He named immensely wealthy, dangerously skinny, and endlessly acquisitive New York matrons as “Social X-rays.” In “The Right Stuff,”Read More

Midwinter 2008 By David Roper My age of innocence ended around midnight one Saturday in the summer of 1969. It happened alongside a cruising yawl named Seaduction. What I inadvertently caused to happen, and what I experienced in a few short minutes, gave me my first real look at theRead More

Midwinter 2008 By Tom Snyder Without a doubt, the most popular articles in boating magazines are the personal accounts, by amateur writers, of rewarding and sometimes exciting coastal cruises. Who among us hasn’t been inspired to visit a new cove after reading the straightforward, honest, what-you-see-is-what-you-get stories of a marvelousRead More

December 2007 By Dodge Morgan Two incongruously connected events: The recent $314 million lottery winner from Indiana will undoubtedly find his name is added to a number of yacht broker prospect lists. In stark contrast, we learn that Private Smith will not be coming home to his Rhodes 19. TheRead More

December 2007 By Tom Snyder These are exciting times for any young family that has decided to get their feet wet in the world of family cruising. Things are improving. Twenty years ago, the general recommendation for one’s first cruising boat might have been a 21-foot fiberglass starter boat thatRead More

October 2007 By Dodge Morgan I wonder if the reason I make the sail each year from Snow Island to Newcastle alone is because I enjoy sailing Eagle with a crazy crew. Or if I simply can’t find anyone who wants to sail with me. Or if I just likeRead More

October 2007 By Tom Snyder It’s official. I’m going to sell my boat. And there are a lot of things that had no effect on this choice. It has nothing to do with the huge cost of maintaining a boat. Nor does it involve the fact that I am spendingRead More

September 2007 By Dodge Morgan I know a sailing couple with a small child and a large dog. When they go cruising, they place the kid with a baby-sitting relative and bring the animal aboard with them. How’s that for setting priorities! And not that uncommon in this weird worldRead More