My wife, Nancy, and I are big-time charterers. We love to sail, we love to travel, and we love to do the two of them together—so much so that after several years of chartering once or twice a year, we were looking to increase that to four or five times a year. In our travels we’d heard about owning a charter boat in a fleet
My first boat was a poorly maintained Thompson 21 powerboat that broke down so often I decided to try sailing. After all, having wind as the motive power and an outboard kicker when that failed would, in theory, provide the redundancy to keep me out of trouble and my family safe.
Admit it: there’s something unbeatable about sailing in your home waters. You know every tidal pattern, every obscured rock and every fluky habit of the wind. You could navigate with your eyes closed, though you’d never close your eyes, for fear of missing out on the scenery.
I woke from a deep sleep to the sound of my 8-year-old daughter, Asha, exclaiming: “Daddy, we are really close to the rocks! I can step out onto them!” That was enough to get me out of my groggy, dreamlike state, and I leapt out of bed and headed for the companionway with my shorts in my hand.
How and why one sailor went from bluewater cruiser to creek crawler
Eighty-some thousand miles and two children later, we crept up on Alaska from the west, sailing from Hokkaido, Japan, down the Aleutian chain in May aboard Seal, our 56-foot aluminum cutter.
The gun sounds at 0700 and immediately dozens of crews, both single- and doublehanded, begin dragging their boats across the beach into the water. Welcome to the start of the annual Everglades Challenge, the only event I’ve sailed where the SI’s contain the following warning: If you are not an expert paddler and/or sailor, do not enter this race. Even if you are a well-prepared expert you may DIE—yes, you may DIE…
Whether it’s racing with dad, weekending with a baby or circumnavigating with the whole tribe, these five families are proving that sailing brings them together
Good skippers manage the boat; great skippers manage the tension.
A spritely little cat that holds its own in a blow.
Analog alarms offer important feedback about how the boat is doing.
A friendly club boat with serious potential.
The lure of early-season boating is a beast with two heads.
A new four part docuseries details the Maxi Edmond de Rothschild campaign to defend the Route du Rhum title, available now on Youtube.
Eight Bells: Charlie Dalin
A fleet-footed foiler that everyone will want to take for a spin.
Where you’ve seen his work: Onboard photography and video during four editions of The Ocean Race Ross grew up in New Jersey and says he
The Laser was a little worse for wear. It was an old one, a little too heavy with chips and gouges that left the fiberglass
