The breeze kicks up. The boat digs in, and I tighten my grip on the mainsheet. It’s overcast but warm. The slate-blue water around me is patterned with whitecaps. Ahead, the low, tumbling hills of Old Mission Peninsula, a 17-mile long finger of land separating the east and west ...read more
One of the neatest things about sailing offshore is the other lifeforms we encounter. We smile when we see flying fish skimming over the surface of the sea. We cheer when dolphins leap and dance in our bow waves. We are duly reverent when mighty whales sound and spout, and ...read more
It was a calm, mid-Pacific morning, around 1000 on May 31, 2019, when the keel finally let go. The three crew of the New Zealand-registered Ran Tan II had known for 18 hours that the 50ft Elliott racing yacht had suffered a major keel failure and that it would soon fall off. ...read more
Five days before Christmas, I booked my ticket home. It was evening, at the end a long day in my marine repair shop, BoatRx. After being in Miami a month, it was already starting to feel like home. I reviewed my to-do lists, grateful to be returning to a steady routine as I ...read more
I cannot help but smile at the irony of this. Not so long ago I offered advice in this space (Waterlines, Nov/Dec 2019) on how to tactfully borrow empty moorings in areas where mooring fields have obliterated anchorages. Some of my online readers promptly complained that using ...read more
