By Dodge Morgan It is October and the little Murray Peterson schooner Eagle and I are facing the sad passage that will end our thirty-second summer together. We are such good friends that we tend to take each other for granted. The day is 40-degree bright and well fed withRead More

By Tom Snyder This can’t possibly be right. My father fears nothing at sea. I’ve always known this, and so, by contrast, (not literally) I fear everything at sea. Clearly, I could use a psychic breakthrough. I had a big one in late September. Let me describe. Hurricane Floyd wasRead More

February, 2000 By Carlene M. Grossi For Points East It had been a relatively uneventful August cruise for the two sailboats from Newport, R.I., a Catalina 30 and a Pearson 30. Oh sure, there had been fog, and the broken spreader, and the calls in “sick” to work, and theRead More

I was flabbergasted. It was hard to believe this was the ocean I had feared just a few months ago. Here we were 200 miles offshore plopped in a circle of velvet seas.

We were 124 miles off Bermuda in 70-knot winds and 30-foot seas. A pressure gradient created by Hurricane Gordon lingered indecisively off Cape Hatteras, and a characteristically decisive Bermuda high hovered over Bermuda. For 48 hours, we struggled to keep our boat in one place in order to avoid the hurricane to leeward.

A near drowning incident in a swimming pool when I was a child left me fearful of the water. It wasn’t until I was about 34 years old that I was forced to confront the fear and deal with it.

Whenever I see kids wearing the “N0 Fear” caps and T-shirts that became popular a year or two back, I remind myself to get one of those caps for myself, to wear whenever I’m aboard my Pearson 303, Treasure.

September, 1999 By Dodge Morgan Man and boat in harmony as rigging and joints squeak in The island home has some characteristics in common with a boat in that it is surrounded by water, has a windward and leeward side and presents an endless list of chores to accomplish. OfRead More

September, 1999 By Tom Snyder I have recently penetrated deep within the Byzantine bureaucracy of our government-operated GPS chartplotting technology. My discovery, the result of a happy accident while cruising Casco Bay, is not for the fainthearted. This whole damned thing makes me want to scream. (Sorry I snapped.) FirstRead More

August, 1999 By Dodge Morgan The air and water temperatures in the British Virgin Islands both hovered between 85 and 90 degrees F. The normal West Indies habit of occasional downpours that serve to cool things off were absent and people moved slowly, particularly those of us with old carcasses.Read More