We lost a subscriber last summer. That’s not unusual. It’s part of the ebb and flow of the magazine business, gain some readers, lose some. Yet this loss was remarkable because of the stature of the subscriber. Let me tell you about Rudy Haase.

As a card-carrying member of the Mainstream Media (Ink-Stained Wretch Newspaper Division), I cringe whenever my brethren in national news organizations report on sailing. They never get it quite righ

Hurricane holes live in Caribbean legend as promises of survival in the hurricanes that scourge the islands. These scattered anchorages are invariably landlocked except for a skinny entrance channel and many are bordered by storm surge-absorbing mangrove.

To paraphrase a viral White House comment about health care, nobody knew that safety at sea could be so complicated. Some sailors think it can be simplified by applying rigid rules and rote procedure

You can buy the best sailing instrument ever made for 40 bucks.

Admit it. When you read Sailing Alone Around the World you pictured the author as sort of an eccentric geezer.  

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. 

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

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.

 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.

 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

 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. 

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.