May 2007 By Tom Snyder I recently caught up with Christopher Columbus, who agreed to be interviewed by Points East. I learned so much, but perhaps the most important lesson was that doing a good interview is hard. Not surprisingly, you have to ask good questions – tough but fair.Read More

April 2007 By Dodge Morgan Does someone make an instrument that measures a boat’s vertical movement? There’s a confusion of choices for the horizontal: speed paddles, GPS machines, chip logs, patent logs. Why I’m wondering is that I would really like to know if, during our passage from Quahog BayRead More

April 2007 By Tom Snyder Go to a boat show in February and you will witness a sea of romantic humanity considering an enormous new cruising hobby. Others there will have already indulged. All of these folks share a common, overlapping list of images or fantasies of what cruising willRead More

Midwinter 2007 By Tom Snyder I recently read a cruising magazine article by an attractive, articulate and adventurous couple who sailed the waters of the southern Caribbean. Their passionate and cheerful description of their commonsense safety measures regarding piracy were astounding. I enjoy imagining an invitation they might write, askingRead More

Midwinter 2007 By Dodge Morgan Voice No. 1: “You look like an old sailor.” Voice No. 2: “I am that, especially the old part, but you look like you are in costume, just dressed up as an old sailor.” No. 1: “Let us talk sailing anyway. Are you good atRead More

December 2006 By Dodge Morgan I read that the remains of legendary fighter pilot “Earthquake McGoon” McGovern, who flew for the Tiger Shark squadron for China before we entered WW II and later for a CIA combat “airline” in Indochina, has just been found and returned for burial with familyRead More

December 2006 By Tom Snyder I am sending an open letter from the good citizens of New England to the boaters of England. As you will see, I plan to take the moral highroad wherever possible. The bitterness that I shall avoid is in no way related to the “USRead More

The boat is lost. Will the replays ever end?

October 2006 By Dodge Morgan I read “We, the Navigators” by David Lewis during an eight-day solo cruise this August. The author has intensely studied the navigation techniques of the South Pacific islanders as they linked Polynesia to Melanesia to Micronesia by sea voyages in outrigger canoes from a time,Read More

October 2006 By Tom Snyder From the depths of one man’s patheticnessof the “confessional” on these pages as a way of illuminating some hapless loser of a man ­– an imaginary man based not entirely on me, but based on my joy of contemplating pathetic characters. I always pretend toRead More