-
1 week ago | 
soundingsonline.com | Wendy Mitman Clarke
KEY TAKEAWAYSNewport is a Prime Launch Point for Excellent Summer CruisingNewport is surrounded by more than 40 islands and islets, making it an ideal base for summer cruising. Options range from quiet anchorages to lively harbors within easy reach. 2. Jamestown Offers Variety and CharmJamestown on Conanicut Island features transient moorings, restaurants, shops, and scenic walking.
-
2 weeks ago | 
goodoldboat.com | Wendy Mitman Clarke
Issue 143: March/April 2022OK, so this is a test. I am kneeling—no, really, I’m in what amounts to a contorted version of yoga’s “child’s pose”—facing aft in the rather narrow passage between the main and forward cabins. On my left, a vertical series of small lockers and the open hanging locker. On my right, the closed head door. In front of me, the newly painted mast step, the gleaming base of the newly painted mast, a strewage of wires, and the open bilge. And the source of my frustration.
-
2 weeks ago | 
goodoldboat.com | Wendy Mitman Clarke
A new headliner provides a big makeover for a 44-year-old racer/cruiser.
-
3 weeks ago | 
sailmagazine.com | Wendy Mitman Clarke
Boatbuilding is hard, dirty, technical, often tedious, unforgiving work. So, one could fairly pose the question to Matt and Jessica Johnson, who are four years into a DIY build of a 44-foot catamaran, if it wouldn’t have made more sense to just buy one and go sailing. It’s not like they are newbies to the cruising life.
-
3 weeks ago | 
goodoldboat.com | Wendy Mitman Clarke
Issue 145: July/Aug 2022I don’t know what most 14-year-old boys want for their birthdays—I could speculate, though it’s a slippery slope—but when my son, Kaeo, turned 14, his birthday request was absolutely no surprise. He wanted to go sailing. Understand, we already were sailing. We were cruising full-time as a family aboard our 45-foot Adams, Osprey, and that April, we were at the end of a winter we’d spent in the Guna Yala, an archipelago of 378 gem-like islands east of the Panama Canal.
-
3 weeks ago | 
sailmagazine.com | Wendy Mitman Clarke
People ask me a lot if I want to go cruising full time again. And I think, sure. Sure I do. I want to live that poster/meme/daily affirmation: “Life begins outside your comfort zone”/“There is no growth in the comfort zone”/“Do one thing every day that scares you.”Et cetera. I mean, who wants to feel that stepping outside your comfort zone means checking the hot option on your vegetarian vindaloo takeout order? Choosing the steamship color of grout over silver shadow for the bathroom remodel?
-
3 weeks ago | 
sailmagazine.com | Wendy Mitman Clarke
“Now I think we are going to have a bit of fun.”Jens Quorning, CEO and owner of Quorning Boats—builder of Dragonfly trimarans—may be the master of understatement. Up to this point, our test sail of the new Dragonfly 36 performance cruising trimaran has had me grinning ear to ear (his measurement of fun, he told me earlier, was precisely that distance).
-
3 weeks ago | 
goodoldboat.com | Wendy Mitman Clarke
Oxford’s Downes Curtis was one of Maryland’s most enduring sailmakers. Issue 147: Nov/Dec 2022Maryland’s deep maritime heritage is inextricably linked to the stories and experiences of Black people on the Chesapeake Bay. As an enslaved boy, Frederick Douglass began to learn to read and write while spending time in Durgin and Bailey’s shipyard in Baltimore, where he watched shipwrights mark each piece of timber with a letter indicating its location in the ship’s construction.
-
4 weeks ago | 
sailmagazine.com | Wendy Mitman Clarke
Mark Synnott, Dutton,Penguin Random House, $32You can fill a lot of shelves with books about Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition in search of the Northwest Passage, and whenever I see a new one I wonder: How will this be different? But Mark Synnott’s Into the Ice really is different—as well as informative, refreshingly honest, and page-turning.
-
1 month ago | 
sailmagazine.com | Wendy Mitman Clarke
I always thought you’d pry my classic Dubarry seaboots from my cold, wet hands, but that’s before I tried Zhik’s Seaboot 700. And while it may not be entirely fair to compare the two, since they are birds of quite a different feather, there are a couple of reasons why Zhik’s new boots are now my go-to—and it’s not just because they impressed the judges at METS enough to win the DAME Design Award Personal Equipment category. One, they are super lightweight at just over a pound each.
