It was the last Monday of November 1979. I was a year out of college and somewhat adrift. Through an old high school friend, I’d landed an entry-level job at a new business that was hiring local yokels on the cheap in my hometown of Newport, Rhode Island. It was my first day as the new ­receptionist at Cruising World magazine. 

Little did I know when I answered my first phone call that my life was about to significantly change. In unimaginable ways. 

Five years earlier—precisely five decades ago this month—the first issue of Cruising World had made its debut at the US Sailboat Show in Annapolis, Maryland. It was the right magazine at the right time, riding the wave of a revolution in production-sailboat manufacturing. Publisher and editor Murray Davis was an affable Aussie who’d first visited Newport as a newspaperman covering the America’s Cup. His hell-on-wheels English wife, Barbara, managed the ever-expanding office. She terrified everyone but for some reason found me amusing. 

If she hadn’t, it would’ve been a quick end to this story. Instead, fatefully, I’d stumbled into a welcoming place full of happy, creative, nurturing souls. Somehow I’d tripped straight into my life’s work. 

My first big break came when I found a typo in a press release I wasn’t supposed to be reading while taking it to the printer. That got me kicked upstairs to the editors’ offices with a new title: editorial assistant. Proofreader to the stars! 

I wasn’t much of a writer, but knocking off dozens of papers as a history major at a fine liberal-arts institution had taught me some skills. The notion of using them professionally had never once crossed my mind. I’d played college football and thus could mindlessly grind winches, but I was even less of a sailor, my experience limited to some informal beer-can racing out of the Newport Yacht Club. 

That was also about to change. 

I’d have many mentors in the following years, but none more influential than my first two, both Great Lakes sailors: Dale Nouse, the magazine’s executive editor and a hard-nosed former reporter at the Detroit Free Press, and senior editor Dan Spurr, who’d sailed his Pearson Triton from Lake Michigan to join the staff. Nouse taught me how to compose a story. Spurr taught me how to sail. I learned a ton just by reading their always polished prose. 

I instantly fell in love with all of it. Sailing had everything I was after: travel, adventure, fun, competition and, of course, the wild blue yonder. Writing became a quest, to hone my craft to the best of my abilities. I came to see both pursuits as interlocked, inseparable. I couldn’t get enough of either.

Oh, the people I met and sailed with: Danny Greene, Robin Knox-Johnston, Alvah Simon, Gary Jobson, Mark Schrader and, of course, Lin and Larry Pardey. The Pardeys and I became such great, trusted pals that they asked me to pen their biography, As Long As It’s Fun. Such an honor. Still the best thing I ever wrote.

And, oh yes, the races that followed: Newport Bermuda, the Transpac, Pacific Cup, Sydney Hobart, Around Ireland, and literally hundreds of J/24 races (all with that old high school buddy, Ian Scott, who’d helped launch my improbable journey). Finally, holy cow, the places I sailed: across the Atlantic, down to Antarctica, through the Northwest Passage, around Cape Horn (twice), up and down the Caribbean, all the way around North and South America on an epic 13-month, 28,000-nautical-mile odyssey. Crazy. 

On this special anniversary, I’m amazed and grateful. After all this time and all those miles, Cruising World is still going strong…and I still get to contribute. I believe that Murray, Barbara and Dale—all long gone now—would be proud. And me? The luckiest of lucky lads. 

Back in the day, Dale critiqued every syllable of everything I wrote. He offered plenty of advice, the most memorable of which concerned wrapping up a story. He believed that a solid conclusion was the true key to any successful piece. And he was always praiseworthy whenever any of us, his colleagues and pupils, stuck the landing. 

“It’s the most important thing,” he’d say, time and again. “You’ve got to know how to get off the stage.”

Herb McCormick is a CW editor-at-large.  

The post Lucky Boy appeared first on Cruising World.

Now here’s an intriguing idea for anyone in the midst of a satisfying career who loves their job—and wants to keep it—but who also cherishes sailing and would greatly relish the opportunity to push pause on the rat race, take time to obtain and prepare an awesome boat, get that work situation in order, lay out a six-month plan to cruise the Caribbean, and enjoy a sabbatical. 

All of which is precisely what Brad Read, the executive director of the Sail Newport community sailing center in Newport, Rhode Island, and his wife, Cara, recently did. 

The Read family is Rhode Island sailing royalty: Patriarch Bob is a longtime stalwart in Narragansett Bay racing circles; brother Ken is the president of North Sails and a veteran of the America’s Cup and Volvo Ocean Race; and, like his older sibling, Brad was an all-American college sailor and has won multiple world championships in classes such as the J/24 (where, it must be said, both Reads have kicked my butt). 

Aboard their Bruckmann 47 cutter, Althea, Brad and Cara set sail from Newport in fall 2023 and returned—refreshed and rewarded—earlier this year. Afterward, I sat down with Brad to get his views on the voyage, and to seek his counsel for anyone else contemplating such an adventure. 

Breaking Away: “Cara and I looked at each other—we’re still in fairly good shape, we’re good at sailing our boat doublehanded. I wrote a letter to the executive board of Sail Newport and asked if they’d back a six-month sabbatical as long as it wasn’t during a year where we have a major event. They were very supportive. I wouldn’t even have thought about it if I didn’t have such strong, dedicated and organized department heads.”

The Secret Weapon: “We got a new mainsail and worked really hard with the North Sails group to see how to make the rig and sail plan more flexible because we really wanted to go with a truly cutter rig. We made the inner forestay permanent, and Kenny was like, ‘You don’t want to do that. What about when you tack?’ I said, ‘We’re not short tacking; we’re not ­racing.’ And the new staysail was the best. It’s literally the best sail on the boat.”

Changes in Attitude: “We had a wonderful time in the US and British Virgin Islands, as always. But it took me a while to get out of the charter mentality, where I was comfortable just hanging out in a pretty place for five days. At first I was like, ‘Let’s go, let’s go!’ And Cara asked, ‘Can we just stay in one spot for a while?’ It’s not like you’re on a weeklong vacation. It took some time to appreciate that.”

Doublehanding: “Cara and I are good at preventive maintenance, and we had lots of spares. We know when the loads are right and not to overtax things. And we reef early. We got very good at it, just the two of us. It’s actually easier that way, because when you have a lot of hands involved, it gets very distracting.”

The Route: “We left Newport and went to the Caribbean after a stop in Bermuda. I think we got the itinerary just right. You have only six months, you start as far east as you ever want to go. And then work your way downwind through the islands. A lot of people do it the other way, down to Florida, then it’s a beat to the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, and Puerto Rico. We were smart enough not to do that.”

The Advice: “I learned something in college sailing: Your strategy is one thing, but your tactics completely rely on your own assessment of your ability to execute. You have to go out and practice. You’ve got to get ready. So take a safety-at-sea course. Get the professional version of PredictWind, which is fantastic. Get Starlink—it’s a game-changer. Then practice. A friend told us that not everyone is willing to do the work to actually pull the trigger, like we did. It’s hard. In the end, there’s always something else you could do, another upgrade. Then, at some point, you just have to say: ‘Let’s go.’”

The post The Read Rules appeared first on Cruising World.

Forty years ago this month, an eclectic fleet of international solo sailors was underway on the second leg of the inaugural BOC Challenge, a dicey passage through the wild Southern Ocean from Cape Town, South Africa, to Sydney, Australia. The BOC was the first singlehanded round-the-world race to begin and conclude in the United States, having set forth from Newport, Rhode Island, on August 28, 1982. 

On the occasion of the event’s 40th anniversary (where does the time go?), it seems like an appropriately nostalgic moment to reflect on not only what transpired then, but also what has unfolded in the sport of marathon ocean racing in the four decades since. The changes have been significant. 

The BOC was the ­brainchild of a burly offshore veteran (of both yacht racing and the US Navy) named David White. He’d washed up in Newport after a solo trans-Atlantic race, with dreams of taking the competition to a new level. He recruited a willing accomplice in Jim Roos, who managed properties on Goat Island—including the marina that became the base of operations—and assumed the role as the first race director. Ultimately, the pair convinced the British-based BOC corporation (formerly known as British Oxygen) to come aboard as title sponsor for the race, which was run in four legs, with cash prizes of $25,000 each for the winners of Class I (45 to 56 feet) and Class II (32 to 44 feet). Game on.

Along with White, 16 sailors from eight nations signed up for the inaugural edition, and a wild cast of characters they were. Among them was a Japanese Zen Buddhist named Yukoh Tada; a Czech who officially defected on the day of the start, Richard Konkolski; a scrappy, tough-as-nails South African called Bertie Reed; the elder American statesmen of the fleet, former Los Angeles Times editor Dan Byrne; New Jersey grandfather and yacht broker Francis Stokes; and a handful of Frenchmen, most notably a dashing former deep-sea diver, Philippe Jeantot. 

Covering the BOC was my first major assignment in yachting journalism. I was on the docks in Cape Town when they set forth, and in Sydney when they pulled in. A whole lot of drama transpired in between. 

Tony Lush, an American sailing a 54-foot cat-ketch called Lady Pepperell, called for assistance early after falling off a wave and realizing his keel was wobbly. He was rescued at sea by Stokes on his Fast Passage 39, Mooneshine. 

Brit Desmond Hampton was not as lucky: On the final stretch to Sydney, he overslept and crashed the 56-foot Gipsy Moth V, chartered from the family of previous owner and English legend Sir Francis Chichester, on the rocky shores of nearby Gabo Island. Hampton survived, but the boat was reduced to kindling. 

Unfortunately, pre-race favorite White retired early after his 56-foot Gladiator suffered structural damage; running the race and building a solid boat proved to be one task too many. His departure opened the door for Jeantot, who’d arrived with a purpose-­built 56-footer called Credit Agricole and proceeded to dominate the event, winning all four legs in decisive fashion, and setting a record for fastest solo circumnavigation: 159 days and change. 

It seemed remarkable at the time, but today the record belongs to his countryman Francis Joyon, who took his 103-foot trimaran, IDEC Sport, on a spin around the planet in just over 40 days. 

Jeantot went on to launch the Vendée Globe race, a nonstop round-the-world contest; founded Privilege Catamarans, a brand of cruising cats; and got into loads of tax trouble with the French government. But his true legacy, as far as I’m concerned, was maintaining France’s role as the leader in solo sailing, carrying the baton first held by Bernard Moitessier and Eric Tabarly, and passing it along to a whole new generation of countrymen, who have run with it ever since. The English may have invented the sport, but the French came to rule it. 

And for me, the BOC Challenge turned out to be the first of many sailing events in which I’d cover or even ­compete. But none were ever better. 

Herb McCormick is a CW editor-at-large.

The post Around Alone appeared first on Cruising World.

My old college buddy Tad called out of the blue this past spring. He and a bunch of his pals were rolling into my hometown of Newport, Rhode Island, in a few weeks. He asked if I could take them for a sail, which wasn’t unexpected, as I’d offered him an open invitation long ago. 

Way back when, I somehow finagled entrance into academically elite Williams College almost solely thanks to my knack for catching a football. And somehow, in spite of myself, I managed to acquire a fine education. More important, I made many lifelong friends, several of whom were now coming to town after an early June reunion in Williamstown, Massachusetts. 

I asked Tad how many, and he said, “Three or four.” Fine. My 22-foot-6-inch Ensign has long cockpit seats. 

Subsequently, I received this series of texts: “Looks like five or six.” “I’m thinking eight or nine, and I’m still waiting to hear from some guys.” “Going to be more like a dozen.”

With that, I borrowed that famous line out of Steven Spielberg’s classic film Jaws: “Bro, I think we’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

Luckily, in Newport, there are many to choose among. But the boys deserved a treat, and what better than a sail aboard one of the graceful 12-Metres that once vied in these waters for the storied America’s Cup? And of those, which one better than Intrepid, the famous Olin Stephens design and two-time Cup winner, in 1967 and 1970? A local outfit, America’s Cup Charters (americascup
charters.com), operates a small fleet of the classic Twelves, including Intrepid. Which just happened to have an open date on the day in question. Yes.

As always with sailing, a lot would depend on the weather. Our day dawned clear and bright, and by midmorning, the prevailing southwest sea breeze was already pumping. I’d of course checked the forecast the night before and informed the lads that we were going to enjoy fairly ideal conditions. But I had no clue just how sweet.  

There were whitecaps in the harbor as we got underway. Intrepid’s tight regular crew, under the able command of skipper Mike Patterson, hoisted the reefed main, and we were off. Among our contingent, there were only a few actual sailors, but one was a ringer: the self-professed “shrink” Peter Davidson, who ran another Twelve, Weatherly, way back when. 

We hardened up on the breeze, which was a solid 15 knots and building, and it was clear that we wouldn’t be venturing out to Rhode Island Sound, where the Cup races were conducted. That was more than fine. You can’t beat Narragansett Bay, and for the next few hours, we ranged all over it. I enjoyed a long, delightful stint at the wheel closehauled with the rail down as the wind built into the low 20s and the boatspeed flirted with 9 and 10 knots. I was in a daze, surrounded by my schoolmates from decades past. Most of them didn’t really understand how special this sail was, but I sure did. 

It was a pretty accomplished crew, this bunch, across many professions: lawyers, doctors, businessmen. Some were retired, while some (like me) were still going at it hard. There was a common denominator here as well. Sure, there’d been some setbacks with health, marriages, kids, the whole disaster, but the bottom line was also quite clear: In the tenuous game of life, we’d all drawn lucky hands. 

As we bore away and settled into a course toward the Newport Bridge, everyone who wanted one got a chance to drive. The phones came out, pictures were taken and shared, (mock) insults were hurled, and there was plenty of laughter. 

There’s no getting around it: We’re relatively old men at this stage. The road behind us is surely longer than the one ahead. But there, on the water, despite the wrinkles and gray hair, all the years melted away. My friends looked exactly like they used to. We were all kids again.

The post Off Watch: School Daze appeared first on Cruising World.

The day Sally Helme fired me was pretty rough. I could’ve used a life coach. Like the dude who was brought in to replace me. 

The year was 2005, and I was five years into my tenure as ­editor-in-chief of this magazine. It was a different era. My mentors, the preceding editors—Murray Davis, George Day, Dale Nouse and Bernadette Bernon—had always emphasized that in publishing, there was a church and a state, equal but separate, with an emphasis on separate. The churchly editorial department, the words and stories, represented the scripture. Publisher Sally ran the business side—the state—responsible for generating the advertising lucre that kept all the wheels spinning. 

I’d been taught that it was not only beneficial, but also essential, to maintain an arm’s length from business decisions and to refrain from granting favors to clients. My job was to represent and satisfy the readers and subscribers. If the publication was the least bit phony, there was nothing to sell. And if the publisher-editor relationship was a bit tense, to the point of even being slightly antagonistic, that was a good thing. Healthy. Necessary. 

Man, I was outstanding at that part of the job.

Honestly, I wasn’t shocked when I was sacked. But the one thing that really ticked me off was that my executive editor, Tim Murphy, whom I’d been grooming to take my place, was passed over for the job. (Which contributed to his decision to quit, which made me respect and love him even more than I already did.) Thinking back, though, even that didn’t surprise me. Tim would’ve definitely wreaked even more havoc than I had. 

A short time before all the drama, I went in to work on a weekend. There at the door to my office was a pile of fresh dog poop. I’d seen Sally’s car, so I knew she was there and, sure enough, so was her pooch. She apologized profusely and cleaned up the mess, but I’m fairly certain that doggie got a treat shortly thereafter. 

Oddly enough, my first connection with Sally was through my mom, who ran an employment agency in my hometown of Newport, Rhode Island. Sally had come to Newport to launch an upscale marine magazine called The Yacht, and my mother had played a role in staffing it. It was how I first came to know Sally.

As has been made clear in this issue’s tribute to Sally (see page 8), she was a force of nature. The marine industry was super-macho in those days, led by hard boys like the Harken brothers, Ted Hood, Everett Pearson and similar characters. And while Sally cast a commanding presence, she wasn’t the type to curry favor by batting her eyelashes. No, to succeed in that hypermasculine world, she always had to be the smartest person in the room. A Princeton grad, she always was. 

All that said, it’s absolutely true that for me, getting canned was not a bad thing. I pivoted to writing more of my own stories, not editing ones that I’d commissioned. I wrote a few books, sailed my butt off, and did things that I’d never have contemplated had I remained in the editor’s chair. Though it stung at the time, I came to be very grateful that it had happened. 

And Sally and I, amazingly enough, eventually became pals. Real ones. She was always supportive, and connected me with more than a few fine opportunities. Sure, we still tangled a bit. She was on the board of the National Sailing Hall of Fame, and in its early days, I was one of that organization’s most outspoken critics, which I knew bugged Sally to no end. It was just like the old days.

The last time I saw Sally was at, of all places, a beauty parlor: We had the very same hairdresser. (It was our mutual scissors friend who texted me the news about her passing, a good day before anyone else knew.) We’d caught up, gossiped, had a few laughs, even shared a quick hug. There we were, after all this time, a pair of old mates still trying to keep up appearances.

Herb McCormick is a CW editor-at-large.  

The post Requiem for a Mate appeared first on Cruising World.

The mid-February day started out like so many other sailing events I’ve enjoyed over the years: meeting up with a new crew, scoping out the particulars of a boat I’d never sailed, reviewing the sailing instructions and forecast for the day’s race, and then dropping the dock lines and heading out. Such is the life of an itinerant sailing writer, and I’ve never taken any of it for granted. 

Little did I know, however, that before this day was done, I’d hear something bordering on the profound. 

It was the opening day of the St. Petersburg, Florida, edition of the Sailing World Regatta Series, sponsored by Cruising World’s sister publication. As he often does, my longtime J/24 mate Dave Reed, the editor of Sailing World, threw me an assignment: Go racing with a team of seasoned homeboys from the St. Petersburg Yacht Club on the day’s distance race, a relatively new element of the regatta for the cruiser/racer set. I was more than happy to oblige. 

Which is how I made the acquaintance of Tim Landt and his close pal Doug Jones, who attended high school in the same prehistoric era that I did, and who have been racing sailboats together ever since. The pair were in the same class as a couple of other St. Pete luminaries, Ed Baird and Allison Jolley, who each rose to the pinnacle of the sport—the former as a winning America’s Cup skipper, the latter as an Olympic gold medalist. “Doug and I were different,” Landt said, laughing. “We had to go to work.”

Landt grew up racing Optimists and Lasers, moved into crewed boats with a Columbia 24 and a Cal 40, and even owned a couple of big Ted Irwin-designed cruising boats. But he seemed proudest of his current ride, a relatively rare Nightwind 35, a centerboard sloop designed by his friend and hero, the late Bruce Kirby, who also created the ubiquitous Laser. “I’d been looking for one for years,” Landt said. “They never come up for sale.” This past October, one did, and he pounced. 

This was only the third race aboard his new Charisma, but he downplayed it. “I got all my old buddies together,” he said. “We’re just out here to have fun.”

But Landt was—how shall we put this?—an aggressive and vocal racer, and he wasn’t there to fool around. He nailed a port-tack start; was on the foredeck for a sail change as the breeze built; called out spinnaker trim early and often; and was more or less a cyclone the entire race, in which Charisma scored a respectable fourth in the 13-boat Cruising division. A very good sailor, Landt’s enthusiasm and exuberance were infectious; it’s always great to sail with a dude who just bloody loves it, and it was clear he did.  

Back at the dock, Landt shared a cool story about naming Charisma: As a kid, he landed a gig as a gofer for a wealthy captain of industry in the days of the great Southern Ocean Racing Conference series. The guy had a boat by the same name. “He was so humble,” Landt said. “I always said if I got a nice race boat, I’d call it Charisma.”

And then, he added: “You’re a writer, you might appreciate this. An old commodore, who was also my coach, once told me that the key to sailing is recreation. That’s what you have to turn it into. Now take that word apart, it’s re-creation. You always have to re-create yourself through your recreation. And that’s what sailing does for me.”

In the moment, I laughed and thanked him for a fine day. Only later did it occur to me that Landt had put into simple terms something I’ve always felt about sailing. I’m sure that a ­truly manic surfer or alpinist would say the same thing. That time away from the daily grind, laser-focused on the natural world, is priceless. Every time I’m on the water, whether on a daysail or after crossing an ocean, I come away refreshed and renewed. A new man. Hopefully a better one. Re-created. 

It always keeps me coming back for more.

Herb McCormick is a CW editor-at-large.

The post The Re-creation: My Day at the St. Pete Regatta appeared first on Cruising World.

There are folks who like a casual sail from time to time. There are sailors who own boats who enjoy them frequently, but who are not necessarily deeply committed to the sport or lifestyle. And then there are flat-out maniac mariners, guys who’ve sailed since they were kids, and who live and breathe every facet of it: cruising, racing and chartering. And everything in between.

Dudes like Californian Ron Boehm, the skipper and owner of the twin-hulled 52-footer Little Wing, one of the cooler vintage catamarans you’ll ever see. 

I first crossed wakes with Boehm and Little Wing during the 2016 Conch Republic Cup, a memorable regatta from Key West, Florida, to Cuba and back. It included a trio of inshore races, and a pair of wild-and-woolly Gulf Stream crossings of the Straits of Florida. I was sailing a pretty flash 60-foot offshore cat myself, but Little Wing cleaned our clock, winning all five races in the series to completely dominate the multihull division. Let’s just say that it made an impression.

Happily, however, in this past February’s Caribbean Multihull Challenge in St. Maarten, I had the chance to hop aboard Little Wing on a sweet sail from Simpson Bay to Orient Bay while it participated in the rally portion of the annual event. From the perspective of the boat and its rather fervent but laid-back captain—a potent combo—I now have a much better understanding of exactly how we got waxed in Cuba. 

Boehm has enjoyed a successful career in business and publishing, but in essence, first and foremost, he’s a sailor. He got his start racing prams as a junior sailor in Santa Barbara, California; graduated to skiff sailing as a teen in the highly technical and competitive International Fourteen class, in which he still campaigns; eventually took up more one-design racing in Santa Cruz 27s, where he became a national champ; and got into catamaran sailing with the purchase of a couple of charter boats from Leopard and Fountaine Pajot. When he decided to buy a dedicated cruising boat that he could still occasionally race, he knew he wanted a cat. “No ­heeling, which my wife likes, and so much more room,” he says.

He found what he was looking for in Little Wing, a story in and of itself. In 1994, a young Microsoft exec commissioned the cat from, of all people, renowned naval architect Bob Perry. He was not exactly known for multihulls, but he was ably assisted by someone who was: engineer Jim Antrim. The Perry/Antrim 52 was built in the Pacific Northwest by Shaw Boats with generous helpings of surplus carbon sourced from another local manufacturer by the name of Boeing. The cat changed hands several times in the ensuing years before Boehm bought it in 2015. 

Since then, it’s been driven hard and fast, from the United States to the Caribbean, and is now based in St. Croix, in the US Virgin Islands. There, Boehm’s mate, Steve Sargent, often stacks up the trampoline with prams and sails local kids over to St. Thomas for regattas. Little Wing is nothing if not well-sailed and cared for.

“It’s not a light boat, but it’s rock-solid and so safe to sail offshore,” Boehm says. “There’s no flexing whatsoever. We hit 18 knots coming down the back side of a wave off St. John’s. It’s a lot of fun to sail.”

The breeze started light on the day I sailed Little Wing—its original name, after the Jimi Hendrix song—and even though we were in a rally, Boehm had us tweaking things as if we were in the America’s Cup. As the day progressed, the breeze filled into the low teens, and we sliced along at an easy 8 knots jibing downwind with the code zero. The sailing was absolutely delightful. 

At day’s end, as we approached the anchorage, I snapped a picture of Boehm at the wheel and said, “Now there’s a man in his element.” 

And while he loves his cat, he laughed me off. “No,” he said with a smile. “I’d rather have a tiller.”

Herb McCormick is a CW editor-at-large. 

The post Winging It appeared first on Cruising World.

Gary Jobson motioned for me to step aboard his pretty, impeccable C.W. Hood 32, Whirlwind. Before anything else happened—and plenty was about to—he offered a thought. 

“I’m a lot different than a lot of professional sailors,” he said, referring to his peers in the America’s Cup and the upper strata of inshore and offshore sailboat racing. “I really like to sail.”

Boy, does he. Jobson is a winning member of the 1977 America’s Cup and historic 1979 Fastnet Race crews; an author, filmmaker, television producer, award-winning TV commentator and fellow Cruising World editor-at-large; and a member of the National Sailing Hall of Fame who still regularly competes in major regattas. He annually gives more than 100 lectures for yacht clubs and other venues. On top of all that, he also takes several dozen lucky folks for daysails on the Chesapeake Bay each year from his home in downtown Annapolis, Maryland.

And now, it was my turn.  

Given the sporty forecast for that Sunday afternoon this past October—a cold northerly gusting over 25 knots was already raking the bay—I was prepared for a cancellation, but Jobson waved me off. “It’s supposed to ease off later,” he said. 

And with that hopeful ­sentiment, Whirlwind was eased from her lift into the drink—and we were off. It was a short motor under the boat’s silent electric auxiliary from its Spa Creek berth to the ­nearby drawbridge for the 12:30 opening. Jobson mentioned that he maintains fine relations with its tenders. “Good guys,” he said. “I drop off a case of Heineken every year to show my appreciation.” 

With the bridge negotiated, up went the mainsail, and—as we fairly sizzled past the seawall fronting the US Naval Academy—Jobson laid out the day’s itinerary. It would be a tight reach up and under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to the Sandy Point Lighthouse, a spinnaker run to the Thomas Point Lighthouse, and then a beat back to the city. 

Given the conditions, this seemed quite ambitious to me, but I was sailing with Gary Jobson. What the hell did I know?

We never did make it to the first lighthouse (did I mention the weather?), but Jobson wanted me to have a spell on the tiller under the kite, and expertly set it from the cockpit, which was cool. “I do foredeck, but not on the foredeck,” he said. 

And man, did Whirlwind ever haul the mail, slicing downwind in double-digit fashion as I steered for dear life. I enjoyed a lot of great sails in the past year, but none better.

It was all going swell until we rounded Thomas Point Lighthouse and turned back upwind. The breeze had not eased off. We took a couple of waves aboard that pretty much filled the cockpit. The motor’s battery was swamped and fried, along with the bilge pump. There was much bailing. 

A crew of midshipmen on an Academy race boat idled alongside for a bit to make sure we were OK. They of course had no idea who I was, but I’m sure they realized: “Whoa. That’s Gary freaking Jobson.” Amid the chaos, it was pretty amusing. 

There was just one last bit of drama. Under sail on the last wisps of the fading northerly (at last!), we eked through the drawbridge at the 4:30 opening. Gary had been counting down the minutes from a quarter-mile out, and I was sure we’d be late, but I’m certainly not in any Hall of Fame. The bridge’s rails were of course lined with stranded refugees from the Annapolis Sailboat Show waiting to move, and I have no doubt that at least a few made the same “Is that who I think it is?” connection as the middies. 

Had the tender left the bridge open for a few extra ­moments as a favor as we passed through? Perhaps. “I’ll bring up another case of Heineken tomorrow,” Jobson said. 

As a sailor, I’ve been a lucky lad to knock off more than a few of my bucket-list voyages. And now I have another. I’ll always be able to say that I sailed through the Spa Creek Bridge on a windy day with a legend. 

The post A Legendary Sail appeared first on Cruising World.

As every sailor and music lover knows, the world became a quieter place in September, when the one-of-a-kind songwriter, mariner and balladeer Jimmy Buffett passed away after a bout with skin cancer. The outpouring of grief, appreciation and remembrances on social media was substantial, and nearly everyone seemed to have their own personal memory or tribute. Here’s mine.

I met Buffett in Fremantle, Western Australia, in the Down Under summer of 1987. I was there covering the America’s Cup during what became Dennis Conner’s Redemption Tour, when he won back the trophy he’d lost four years earlier. Buffett was a huge fan of Conner and his Stars & Stripes crew, and had flown to Oz for the duration, often playing sets at their waterfront base. It was pretty cool.

We had a mutual friend in writer P.J. O’Rourke, on assignment for Rolling Stone, where he’d more or less been handed the “gonzo journalist” baton from Hunter Thompson. P.J. knew absolutely nothing about sailboat racing, and we became press-boat mates. I could explain a jibe-set spinnaker hoist or leeward mark rounding, and he could crack me up with his endless array of anecdotes. They included his time roaming through the islands under sail with his pal Jimmy on Buffett’s Cheoy Lee cruising boat. Through P.J., I caught a couple of Buffett’s impromptu gigs in Fremantle dive bars, and was always happy to hang with that crew. 

All that said, at that stage, I wasn’t all that much of a Buffett fan. My taste changed in the ensuing years after I caught a couple of his live shows with the Coral Reefer Band (it was always hilarious to see 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley shaking the castanets). But what finally sold me on Jimmy Buffett’s music was when I started to pay serious attention to his lyrics. Specifically, those on one of his earlier records, the one named after the ­highway running down Florida’s Atlantic shoreline: A1A. 

A1A is not only my favorite Buffett album, but it’s one of my favorite records ever. So much so that I’ve come to think of the person, JB, and the album, A1A, as a single entity, one and the same. None of his truly famous hits are on it; there are no paradisiacal cheeseburgers or soothing blender drinks or folks getting drunk and getting down. Instead, there are 11 exquisitely crafted tunes, only about three or four minutes apiece, but with tales, lessons, and wordplay as carefully rendered and nuanced as almost any 300-page novel. If I were marooned on an island and could bring only five CDs with me, this would be one of them. 

Buffett’s genre has been dubbed Gulf & Western, which seems pretty accurate, but A1A is known for being part of his “Key West phase,” which also fits. By whatever term, one thing is certain about this collection: Nobody without a deep understanding and affection for the sea, nobody but a sailor, could’ve written them. 

Oh, the lyrics, like “Squalls out on the Gulf Stream, big storms coming soon” from “Trying to Reason With Hurricane Season.” Or “I’m hanging on to a line from my sailboat, all Nautical Wheelers save me” from “Nautical Wheelers.” Or “Got a Caribbean soul I can barely control” from “Migration.” Or this, from my favorite Buffett song, “A Pirate Looks at Forty”: “Mother, mother ocean, I have heard you call, wanted to sail upon your waters since I was 3 feet tall.” 

The ode to Mother Ocean. Our very essence, our lifeblood. Damn straight, brother. 

Even the spare, inviting cover of A1A is just about perfect. Before he was an author, pilot, restaurateur, real estate mogul, Broadway producer, cultural icon, and just about every other bloody thing under the sun, he was just Jimmy, tanned and smiling in his rocking chair, under a palm tree with the white sand and blue sea behind him. A man in his element. It’s how we all should remember him. 

So, RIP, A1A. And thank you. 

Herb McCormick is a CW editor-at-large. 

The post So Long, Jimmy Buffett appeared first on Cruising World.

Among the many ­revelations I’ve ­experienced since purchasing a 1970s-era classic-plastic cruising boat and setting up shop on the Gulf Coast of Florida for half the year is the fact that yachts don’t get hauled out annually here for a fresh coat of bottom paint. In New England over the years, I’ve owned a series of sailboats, all of which spent every winter on the hard in a boatyard safe from the ravages of endless nor’easters. Their bottoms were all prepped and repainted before getting launched again the following spring. It’s not a particularly pleasant task, but one I’d always tackled myself—yet another annoying yin to the rewarding yang of owning a sailboat. 

So, when I bought my Pearson 365, August West, a year ago, I was pretty psyched to learn that I wouldn’t have to undergo the labor (and cost) on a yearly basis. In fact, I thought that I might get a pass altogether for a season or two. Then, two things happened: First, the diver I hired for a monthly bottom scrub, when asked about the condition below the waterline, had a pithy answer (“poor”); and second, the previous owner, when queried about the last time he painted the bottom, was equally succinct (“um, good question”). There really was no alternative: It was time to haul the vessel for new paint.

In Rhode Island, if in possession of a pulse and a ­valid credit card, this had never been an issue; plenty of yards in or near Newport were more than willing to relieve me of cash. In Florida, at least in the greater Sarasota area, it was more of a challenge. The first couple of places that I called flat-out said that they didn’t work on sailboats. And it was quickly apparent that, if I did find a spot, doing the work myself was out of the question. Finally, on a tip from a local sailor, I learned of an outfit called N.E. Taylor Boat Works, just a few short miles up the Intracoastal Waterway from my slip on Longboat Key, in a place called Cortez Cove.

The tiny adjacent community of Cortez, measuring just 2 square miles of real estate, was an oasis from the strip malls. Cortez is a commercial-fishing village founded in the late 1800s that still retains its old-timey Florida vibe. Home to a great fish market, a big fish processing plant and a couple of seafood shacks, it seemed of a different time and place, and an extremely welcoming one at that. 

The cove, however, is not such a simple spot to get into. Peering in from the ICW, the fleet of rather large fishing boats would suggest otherwise, but the actual channel is narrow and marked by hand-painted signs, one of which I, of course, missed. In what’s becoming a disturbing new habit, I ran aground…directly in front of one of the busy waterfront restaurants right at dinner hour. Free entertainment for all. Luckily, I’m getting good at getting off the bottom, and I made it to the yard unscathed. 

Descendants of the Taylor family, part of the original group of Cortez settlers from North Carolina, still run the yard. It’s both friendly and funky, and I mean the latter as a high compliment. From the time I pulled in until the time I pulled out, nobody ever bothered asking me for, well, anything: my full name, an address, payment details, nada. Almost as an afterthought, it occurred to me that, since I was in a boatyard and all, and I’d purchased a pair of deck hatches that were sitting in my V-berth, I might as well get them installed (a task I’d originally planned to do myself but was not relishing). No muss, no fuss, just two hours of reasonable labor costs that would’ve taken me much longer. 

Getting out of the boatyard was a lot easier. Back in my slip a few days later, my diver returned (he does several boats in the marina), noted the paint job, and said I was good to go for a while. “That could last you a few years,” he said, which made me smile. Whenever that time does come again, though, I’ll know to return to Cortez Cove. 

Herb McCormick is a CW editor-at-large. 

The post A Haul Out In Southwest Florida’s Cortez Cove Comes Packaged with a Few Surprises appeared first on Cruising World.