Sailboat Cruising

Yes, temperatures may be high, but there are brisk southeasterlies, warm waters, and the biminiEvening was still very hot. Friends had told us not to miss the unique monastery on Cat Island, and my wife, Carol, seemed eager and able. But as we traipsed the beachfront in the sun, I was waiting for my life to flash before my eyes. Going out in the noonday sun has never seemed

There’s more to cruising than wide-open spacesI glanced to port at the anvil-shaped cloud rising high over the mainland to the west, then at the genoa eased to catch a southerly breeze blowing anemically up the Johns River off Elizabeth’s stern. My heavy full-keel Bristol 24 barely moved. More to the point, I was losing the race with my friend’s Tartan 27 as he glided toward

Mother-daughter bonding on the high seasAs I dialed my mother’s number on the Panama City pay phone, I told myself not to be disappointed if she’d changed her mind. My father, who’d been worrying ever since I’d announced my decision to sail the 3,200-mile passage from the Galpagos to the Marquesas alone, had e-mailed me the night before. Subject line: “Crew for your

Palmerston Atoll, in the Cook Islands, delivers hospitality unheard-of in the real world.We were six long days out of Bora Bora. The wind was like a baby’s breath, and the rolling swells frequently knocked it out of our sails. Progress was slow but peaceful until the western sky filled with the rapidly lowering cumulus of an approaching cold front. We were soon hunkered down in

There’s always an anchorage around the bend when you’re cruising the rivers and sloughs of California’s Central ValleyMuch of our world has lost a proper sense of the journey, but not the world of sail. A friend of mine once told me how he sailed his two boys 80 miles up the Sacramento River from San Francisco. “We went when the boys were 14 and 12,” he said. “Along the way we