To the inveterate boater, the smell of honeysuckle in the spring is no match for the fragrance of fresh fiberglass. I’m in Hawaii on the Big Island visiting my daughter, Nancy, and her family. But I followed my nose to the port of Hilo and found my favorite aroma at Force Marine. (Read More…)

Cambridge, Md., is no Oxford. Both are off the Choptank River, Cambridge perhaps 8 miles farther upstream from Chesapeake Bay than Oxford. But there, the similarity ends. (Read More…)

Moving day dawned foggy. The far shore of Town Creek was visible as if seen through gauze. The far shore of the Tred Avon River might have been in Oklahoma, as far as you could see. (Read More…)

The roar coming west on the Tred Avon River sounded thunderously mean, like a gang of Harley-Davidson riders, so it probably wasn’t unthinkable that I paused and looked toward the noise. All winter long, there have been days blending into more days when I have seen no human conveyance out there — not boat nor barge. This was definitely an occasion to take notice. (Read More…)

Robin has weather cloths for her aft lifelines. We had them made up a couple of years ago by a sail loft in Annapolis. Another small firm applied stick-on red letters — big ones — revealing our secret identity: “Soundings.” (Read More…)

Up there, the moon — silver-white and not quite round, or so it seems — sits as solid and permanent as City Hall, the focal point of the night’s landscape, washing all with its light, making street lights superfluous if not downright intrusive. (Read More…)

Slowly, the preparations are made. Bermuda beckons, and the start of the race — the Bermuda One-Two — is less than 90 days away. Yesterday, I dealt with U.S. Customs. (Read More…)

The Oxford Fire Company cancelled its  chicken dumpling dinner. Could that be a sign of the economic times? (Read More…)

Snow is plastered on the north side of every stationary object in and around the boatyard, stuck their by the force of strong winds that persist after the blizzard. (Read More…)

In a recent e-mail, our friend Dan Stadtladner, who raced in the 2007 Bermuda One-Two, asked if I recalled the depth of the anchorage in Bermuda. (Read More…)