2017 June 1
Credit sailing schools with making sailing more egalitarian. Before there were sailing schools in any significant number, it was assumed that if you were a sailor you had been born with a silver shackle in your mouth.
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2017 May 1
I have dreams about sailing. My boat is named Main Street, which may be why I sometimes dream I am sailing it on a street, weaving through motor vehicle traffic under a spinnaker. That’s really
2017 April 1
In the 1960s, my wife and my mother were (briefly) sailing TV stars. That is only a mild exaggeration. They appeared on television, on Chicago’s NBC affiliate no less, and in those days that qualified you as at least a minor celebrity.
2017 March 1
You’re supposed to learn from your mistakes.
What I learned from my biggest sailing mistake was that boat lust can lead a sailor astray just as surely and quickly as the other kind of lust.
2017 February 1
I’d like to set up a meeting between James Harrison and Rich Wilson. Rich could give James some tips about competing in sports.Harrison is a star linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers whose winning-is-everything attitude earned him $100,000 in fines for illegal hits in a single season. Wilson is a scholarly 66-year-old sailor.
2017 January 1
I’m going to introduce you to a man who has learned, refined and perfected the art of finding the simple joy of sailing.
For an activity that humans figured out eons ago, sailing can be complicated. Besides keeping up with advancing technology, it often demands serious planning. Cruises and races require organizing personnel and logistics. Even daysails with friends need arrangements to find dates and times that coincide with suitable weather.
2016 November 1
While the First Mate (that would be my wife) leaned over the lifelines in a game struggle to hold the boat off the dock, I gunned the diesel to blast out of the slip through a strong sideways breeze and nasty ferry wake. As the boat cleared the last piling (cleared on the second bounce, that is), I heard a commotion behind me, looked back and saw the First Mate hanging from the dock by her fingertips shouting some words that I couldn’t make out but I assume were unprintable.Schedule
2016 October 1
One acquaintance said he spent the better part of a weekend binge-watching the drama unfolding on his computer screen. Another told me he lost sleep, unable to resist getting up in the night to check the latest developments. A number of people I hardly knew regaled me with arcane details of a sports competition they barely understood but followed avidly on the internet.
2016 September 1
Mark Twain famously described Bermuda as paradise you have to go through hell to reach.
A chronic seasickness sufferer, he served his time in hell on the dependably bumpy rides to his island getaway.
Twain was no seaman, but even experienced ocean sailors are wary of the 600-plus-nautical-mile passage from the East Coast to Bermuda that features sea conditions energized by a hot Gulf Stream flowing fast through a North Atlantic that is often a speedway for weather systems.
2016 July 1
The view through my office window this morning tantalizes with a cerulean sky and green maple tree leaves aflutter in a fresh northwest breeze. The urge to escape to the red sailboat docked a block away is as compelling as the urge to wax nostalgic in this column I am writing for SAILING’s 50th anniversary issue. Alas, I’m going to resist both.
2016 June 1
The column was published more than five years ago, but I still get reader comments about the Full and By piece I wrote about the ghost fleet. The column is sort of a ghost itself, living forever on the Internet.
2016 May 3
Readers, I’m going to introduce you to one of your mates, a fellow sailor whose story comes with a touch of serendipity while telling us something about the diversity of the sailing clan and the esteem that is held for sailing as a pursuit that offers character-building challenges. I think you’ll be glad he’s one of us.
2016 April 1
Guys tell me they wish they had never sold their most-loved automobile, maybe a first-generation Pontiac GTO or a Mustang like Steve McQueen drove in the movie “Bullitt,” but instead stored it and pampered it so that today they would be able to show off a valuable classic.
2016 March 1
A mental disease called prairie madness afflicted settlers living on the American Great Plains. It was caused by the wind. The incessant wind blowing over the endless expanse of flat land literally drove people nuts.I believe I was once on the brink of going crazy because of the wind. That was during the worst sailboat race I ever experienced. Unlike prairie madness, my nascent mental disorder was caused by wind that never blew.
2016 January 1
Some the actors in the 2015 movie “In the Heart of the Sea” had to suffer for a few weeks with a diet that consisted of small portions of fruit, yogurt, spinach, chicken and salads so they would l
2015 November 24
Don’t ask how many sailboat shows I’ve been to. I couldn’t tell you. There are so many of these rituals that command the attendance of people engaged in the business of sailing embedded in my memory that they’ve blurred into an uncountable mass.
2015 October 15
One day when my mind was obviously a black hole utterly devoid of anything stimulating to think about, I wondered why so few presidents of the United States and aspirants for that office were sailboat owners.I think I found a partial answer when I came across an article in an online archive with a headline that read, “Boxer calls out Fiorina as a multiple yacht owner.”
2015 September 18
In 1995, in the quaint era when logo T-shirts (non-technical 100% cotton) were considered as important to business promotion as a Facebook page is today, SAILING created one that featured a portrait of Joshua Slocum and a drawing of his yawl Spray. It’s a classic. If you’re lucky enough to possess one, it might fetch a tidy sum on eBay, but better to preserve it as a tribute to a great sailing trendsetter.
2015 August 17
The shapes arrayed on the windward rail are rounded mounds. In the dark they look a bit like a row of igloos.The simile is apt. It’s a cold night. The 15-knot northeasterly wind is heavy with vapors rising from 48-degree water. The sailors are padded in layers of fleece or down under foul-weather suits and inflatable life vests, with boots on their feet, wool caps on their heads. Shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, they ride high above the choppy water as the heeling boat close-reaches toward a distant waypoint.
2015 July 1
Long live the America's Cup! Yes, I know, some of us have been disappointed by the morphing of this historic yachting institution from a respected international competition among sailors representing yacht clubs and their countries into a spectacle that features participants in helmets and body armor and is fueled by the inflated wallets and egos of billionaires and marked by shameless rule-rigging, but now we can again proudly embrace this once beloved sailing icon, for the America’s Cup has finally delivered on its promise to sailors.
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This gem offers elegance and style in the most distinctive of packages
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This hybrid power-sailboat may be just the answer in a midsized cruiser
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A long-range cruiser that comes with an American esthetic for classic appeal
