Publisher's Log

Most folks are weary of the pandemic and its impact on daily life. By the same token, you cannot help but marvel at the changes to society at large and to our own lives that seem here to stay. As I write this, Thanksgiving is a week away but there is no question that the holiday spirit is in full swing…and I mean that in a good way. Sure, it is a bit staggering to see Christmas…

I’m guilty, but it’s not my fault! Summer is over. It was officially, astronomically over last month. So why do I get grief? It’s because I am in charge of my neighborhood’s docks. And when I decide that the weather really is going to turn into nonstop northeasterlies which beat up our east-facing pier, pilings, and docks, then I have to do what I have to do. Even though we live on an island of 109 homes,…

We have been on quite a roll with our “classics” content in 2021. Beyond working with our friends at the Herreshoff Marine Museum & America’s Cup Hall of Fame as a partner for their Golden Jubilee Celebration, we have continued with our relationship with Conversations with Classic Boats. The content from these contributors has been just fantastic, and we hope you have enjoyed digging into a very uniquely Northeast/New England topic, one we can all be both…

It is with great sadness that we heard that Bruce Kirby had passed away at his home in Rowayton, Connecticut on Sunday evening, July 18. Bruce has been deservedly well eulogized across sailing and social media. He was a delightful soul who had so many accomplishments in his long and fruitful life. In WindCheck country, his work permeates not just through the Laser, but with the Sonar and Ideal 18 fleets that dot the coastline. But for…

I was Sonar racing with a mentor out of Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard in the late eighties. It was a one-day event with fantastic summertime conditions. After the cookout, it was revealed that Mentor had not lined up a place for us to spend the night. Since the forecast called for a big cold front and northwester, it seemed a good idea to beat the rush to the hoist and avoid what promised to be a…

Raise your hand if you played hooky for all or part of a weekday to do boat work in the past month. Excellent…very shrewd of you, as the weather turned perfect from the second week of May onwards. Now, raise your hand again if you pressed any children into service to expedite the boat work. I find that 13 and over is really the line of demarcation for significant progress being made versus needing so much instruction,…

I’ll say one thing about this past year…a lot has changed. Behaviors mostly. I distinctly remember how a year ago, we were so excited to be getting ten more “boxes” in mid-town Manhattan where WindCheck would be available. I also distinctly remember making plans for a Taste of Essex℠ exhibit within the CT Spring Boat Show℠. We were going to have ten or more restaurants and other retailers providing samples under the big clubhouse tent on Essex…

I am seriously hoping for a joyous spring. After watching what felt like a million of Connecticut Governor Lamont’s press conferences and daily studying of the vaccination and testing rates in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York, we are forging ahead with our Connecticut Spring Boat Show in Essex, CT. It is both a relief and a welcome burden to do it carefully. The enthusiasm from many sectors has been really uplifting. Yacht brokers’ biggest concerns…

Having just finished editing the first proof of the March 2021 issue, Zep (Editor-in-Chief) pointed out with great pride that we’d created our very own “women in sailing” issue. After all, four out of five of our feature stories are about women in the sport, the subject of our On Watch article is a woman, and Coop’s Corner is (partially) about a woman as well. That is six stories in one issue. I confess, during the gathering…

It has taken a long time to get here, or so it seems. In just one year we’ve gone from making big plans to lockdown, to grumpy adaptation. But along the way, parts of our sport flourished. Go figure. Of course our predecessors would scoff at the idea of grumbling over just one year of hardship. Perhaps it’s the era of non-stop cacophony, the loudness of the “news,” generating forced opinions and divisiveness that made it seem…