Opinion

One beautiful afternoon last August I sat on an old-growth cedar stump that had washed up on the beach in a winter storm and watched a blue gale blow up the Straits of Juan de Fuca. The straits are straddled to the south by the aptly named 11,000-foot-high Hurricane Ridge and 20-plus miles to the north by the beach where I sat.

Over his three decades of ocean voyaging, author John Kretschmer has been in more than his fair share of heavy weather. In this excerpt from his new book, Sailing a Serious Ocean—Sailboats, Storms, Stories and Lessons Learned from 30 Years at Sea, he looks back at his darkest hour at sea

John D. Macdonald, through his iconic character Travis McGee, observed that one thing never goes wrong on a boat. Instead, things go wrong in threes.

Sailing makes the news when there’s a disaster. The rest of the time, thousands of small boats traverse the oceans in safety, carrying hundreds of families with young children.

I’m not sure what madness made me decide to fix our generator myself. Maybe I was feeling especially talented that day. Or cheap. Or downright insane. Back on land, I would never try to penetrate the mysteries of our furnace—I didn’t even change the filters myself. But life aboard changes you.

Nothing dispels winter’s gloom from the dyspeptic souls of Salish Sea cruising sailors like sunshine, blue skies and a juicy bit of gossip with your morning coffee. When the rite of spring commissioning comes around in the Pacific Northwest…

SAIL Editor Peter Nielsen reminisces on first meeting Don Street some 25 years ago.

When I asked my daughter, Tamsyn, 10, what she and her brother, Griffyn, 7, had learned while sailing aboard Madrona, our Tayana 37, she cited some obvious things, like becoming a better swimmer and learning about marine life by observing it firsthand…

According to Coast Guard statistics, the vast majority of drownings happen from boats less than 26 feet long, with solo boaters especially at risk. Isn’t it time for the United States to make lifejacket use mandatory aboard boats of this size or when boating solo?

About a mile east of the Saint Lucie shoal and about 15 miles from the entrance to Ft. Pierce, as John was negotiating a steep wave, we heard a sudden loud noise under our feet. John screamed “Take it, take it!” as the boat headed into the wave. The reefed genoa backed, and the boat came about and started heading in the opposite direction with the wind and waves on our port side.