Close to the Water: Sailor’s Day Off
As the steward of three wooden craft, I look forward to the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival as a highlight of the boating year. So I feel guilty admitting that I wasn’t there this past September. Instead, my wife, Kate,…
Dan checks his chart to make sure…
The author presses bearings back into…Close to the Water: Opening Day
Opening Day means different things for different sailors. For some, it means practicing maneuvers and parading past judges while steering in formation. For others, it’s a sailboat race that starts the spring series. Since I…
Close to the Water: Boat Ramp Champs
I was on one of my early camp-cruising trips in a 15-foot rowboat when I approached the tiny marina at Blake Island State Marine Park. Two sailors from a 40-foot trawler climbed down from their deck chairs to the dock. “Do…
Close to the Water: Small Boats, Big Influence
A 16-foot Jim Michalak-designed Scram Pram,…
Bill and a friend work on the boat in the…Close to the Water: Capsize!
Are You Ready to Self-Recover?
Fern swims towards the bow…
#TBT: Rowing the Rapids of the Inside Passage
In our latest Throwback Thursday, heading south from the Broughtons on a small boat, the big rapids of the Inside Passage are calling. If you haven't already read the first in Bruce's series on his Inside Passage small boat…
Bill rolls his boat down the gravel ramp…