When the book I’m reading bogs down to a boring grind, or takes a ridiculous turn, or irritates me by revealing the author’s ignorance of a well known fact, I turn to my old friend Jack Aubrey. J

No one is more passionate about their version of sailing than a multihull sailor. It is as if they know something that the rest of us are missing. One avid friend has introduced hundreds of guests to

For the better part of the hour before our start in the Chicago Mackinac race, we maneuvered around the starting area with a 200-pound weight at the top of the mast. That weight was a young bow man w

It was a Christmas morning decades ago, and I leapt down the stairs to see what was under the tree. But it wasn’t the usual mishmash of large and small packages, bearing the mix of new shirts, belts

It’s easy for most kids to learn how to sail. They just go to sailing school. Their parents enroll them in one of the numerous youth sailing programs available across the country. They learn fast an

If you consider the rising costs and barriers to insuring a sailboat, you might think the actuaries see dangers that we sailors can’t see.  But is there any reason to be concerned? One state�

Nathanael Herreshoff’s crowning achievement was Reliance, a sailboat of awe-inspiring size and power. Yet his influence on sailing flows to this day from a simple boat less than one-fifth the length

Years ago, I was very much into landsailing as well as sailboat racing. Born and raised in California, I was surrounded by dry lakes so hard you could rollerskate on them (people did). On a weekend, y

I try to stay out of trouble writing this column. I avoid taking stands on issues that might cause gastric distress among readers. I never touch politics, the deadly third rail of discourse. I wr

Escapism is built into the human psyche, has genetic and evolutionary roots, and persists in story across the millennia. So the trend to sell everything and sail isn’t new, despite the mob of tan, n

The first time I anchored in one of Jost Van Dyke’s perfect natural harbors, our boat shared the anchorage with only one other, a small, privately owned sloop. When I returned to the British Virgin

My dad was an executive for Douglas Aircraft and we lived in Tucson, Arizona, when I was a kid. As a young man, my father had run away to sea, shipping out on tankers and working his way up to navigat

I’ve heard people express sympathy for the men and women sailing in the Ocean Globe Race. That’s the 27,000-mile race that started last September and will go on for about eight months with short

I’ve developed a reputation among friends as a sailboat matchmaker. It often begins with an irrational text message: “I found an amazing boat. Almost free. Needs work. I should get it, right?”

What would sailors do without foul weather?  Sailors spin yarns. By definition, yarns are sea stories enhanced by exaggeration, but sometimes the subject matter needs no hyperbole to be a grippi

My dad was an executive for Douglas Aircraft and we lived in Tucson, Arizona, when I was a kid. As a young man, my father had run away to sea, shipping out on tankers and working his way up to navigat

I never met Jimmy Buffet, but I wrote about him. “Buffett was the muse, the piper who led sailors and wannabe sailors to the Caribbean to rent sailboats and live the dream.”—Full and By Se

Our team—sailing on our midsized boat—has experienced both sides of the looming wind-shadow debate. This is when a big boat in Division 1 is about to overtake a smaller boat in Division 3, and the