For over 20 years now, three of my best friends and I have made a tradition of doing an annual sailing trip on the Chesapeake Bay with our dads. We “kids” are now grown up and dispersed around the globe, but our four dads still live within three miles of one another back home in Pennsylvania.
Cruising the Great Lakes has one drawback: you don’t see many whales or dolphins, or frigatebirds or puffins, for that matter. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still have plenty of equally meaningful brushes with nature.
The Pacific Northwest and the fishing we did on our Desolation Sound charter inspired some great cooking. These were a few of our choice memories, and recipes I highly recommend.
Most sailors I know—and there are many sailors where I live in coastal Massachusetts—are unmitigated do-it-yourselfers who like to do their own trip planning, boat prepping, provisioning, cooking and cleaning.
I’ve sailed past Michigan’s Grand Traverse Bay many times, first as a deckhand on various ore boats making their way between Minnesota and Indiana Harbor, Indiana, then during the course of a number of Chicago-Mackinac races.
Thoughts of Homer’s walled cities, epic battles and tragic heroes filled our minds as we prepared for our weeklong charter in Turkey. True, our charter base in Marmaris was over 300 miles south of Troy, but that didn’t keep us from dreaming of ruins and lost civilizations.
Two hundred and fifty miles north of Seattle and 3,400 miles from home, our crew of six was more than a little slaphappy after a long day of travel. As we drove toward Comox, British Columbia, we decided to create a wish list for the charter trip ahead.
We left the hustle and bustle of Charlevoix, Michigan, just in time to make the second drawbridge opening of the morning as we pointed our bow toward Beaver Island, an isolated destination about 32 miles offshore in the middle of northern Lake Michigan. There was a thick fog, and a light drizzle fell from the sky. Thanks to our chartplotter, I knew our position and the proper heading to the island, but having no radar I remained wary.
In the far Pacific, long-distance cruisers celebrate what it means to voyage, while locals celebrate what it means to be Tongan.
Even after dozens of visits over the years, I still find that Damariscove Island is pleasantly mysterious in a way unmatched by Maine’s other offshore islands
Simrad has upgraded their line of chartplotters with the NSS 4, a new model designed with going off soundings in mind.
Nearing the halfway mark of Falken’s passage between the Galápagos and Marquesas
Today we’re celebrating the birthday of one of history’s greatest yachtswomen.
Celebrating its 50th anniversary, Coneys Marine on Long Island has always counted on the power of family.
Bad puns aside, why do cats and sailing go so well together? It’s brain science.
Which modern synonym for “complain” originally was used to describe a ship that tended to round up into the wind due to a bad design
As the second fleet of starters get under way, a quick look at the tracker and the prep that goes into a race of over 2,000 open ocean miles.
Doubting his choices one chilly day, a sailor wonders whether he’ll have to make changes.
Catching and prepping your own dinner while underway is one of those one of a kind cruiser experiences. The process gets a whole lot better with the right gear.
In her first Marion-Bermuda Race as skipper of a Navy 44, Nancy Rhodes and her team of U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen aboard Integrity stuck to their strategy—even when things looked grim—and walked away with bragging rights and an armful of silver.
