Dry Tortugas – A Grand Adventure

CRUISING TO THE Dry Tortugas National Park by boat can be the most challenging part of this amazing destination. Locals warn about two seasons: Winter Storm (December-March) that features high winds and rough seas, and Tropical Storm (June-November), that features more of the same. April and May are known to be delightful. We’d talked about Read More

Homeschool Daze

AFTER 10 YEARS OF planning and preparing for the adventure of a lifetime, we cast off from San Francisco aboard our 33-foot sailboat named Chewbacca. Our crew consisted of me, my husband Bruce, and our five and seven-year-old daughters. When we embarked on our first offshore passage as a family, I should have been giddy Read More

Kodiak Island, Alaska – Cruising with Members

Days after returning from a trip to Kodiak Island, Alaska, I experienced an uncontrollable urge to stop the car whenever I glimpsed something red in the bushes along the side of the road. This curious habit developed because of the little raspberry-like, orange-colored salmonberry. We found our first of these miniature grape-shaped globes while hiking Read More

No Hard Feelings Cruise

ABOUT 30 MEMBERS of England’s Royal Lymington Yacht Club (RLymYC) joined the Sailing Club of the Chesapeake (SCC) in September 2019 for a taste of Chesapeake Bay cruising. Altogether, 78 sailors on 20 boats enjoyed some of the best fall cruising the Chesapeake has to offer — good winds, perfect temperatures, cool nights on the Read More

Old Saybrook, CT to Gardiner’s Bay, NY

THE CONNECTICUT RIVER, one of only 14 American Heritage Rivers, is the longest river in New England, beginning north of the Vermont/Canadian border and ending its flow more than 400 miles later in Old Saybrook, CT, where it spills into Long Island Sound. The estuary at the mouth of the river is graced with grassy Read More

New England Seaport Sampler

When the Puritans set sail in 1620 to flee religious persecution in England, their long journey across the Atlantic was rewarded with a place more beautiful than they had imagined. As those travel-weary settlers exited the Mayflower, they were greeted by one of the most magnificent coastlines in North America. Timber-rich mountains reached down to Read More

Block Island Memories – Cruising With Members

For many reasons, Block Island, RI, is the hailing port on our boat, Tapestry. Since the 1960s when my parents took the ferry over and stayed at Ballard’s and later at The Surf … to 1970 when my boyfriend and I, newly in love and still in high school, biked from the ferry to the Read More

Casco Bay Cruising Itinerary

“If once you’ve slept on an island … you’ll never be quite the same.” So goes the idyllic poem by Rachel Field. Nowhere is that truer than on a coastal island in Maine in summertime. Casco Bay in Portland is dotted with more than 200 beautiful islands, some more inhabited than others, particularly Peaks and Read More