I sat on the bow of our pitching boat, 400 miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean, looking up at the mess of carbon fiber and taffeta that was once a laminated headsail, thinking that this wasn’t part of the sailing dream brochure—nothing like this happened in the La Vagabonde or ...read more
“Jib alone is never a good idea,” our sailing guru Jerry told me. (Everyone should have a sailing guru). “Why’s that?” I asked. “It’s so much easier than putting up the main.” “You can only sail off the wind,” he said. “No upwind capability. What happens if someone falls ...read more
When you’ve been sailing with your spouse for more than 30 years you get to know each other pretty well. It almost goes without saying that you don’t always see eye to eye and so sometimes there are negotiations, sometimes arguments and sometimes acquiescence. In the end, the ...read more
Last August, my wife, Lily, and I took ownership of our 2011 Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 409, Summerwind, in St Martin, and set sail toward her new home in Stuart, Florida. After lengthy stopovers in St Croix and Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic—the latter to wait out Hurricane ...read more
The lifejacket was an afterthought. The visitor had motored his way up the river, and I’d waved him over toward a vacant club mooring nearby. Sitting in my cockpit sipping coffee in the morning sunlight, I’d watched him, solo, make two failed attempts to hook the pickup. There ...read more
