Publisher's Log

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…

In the past 199 issues, WindCheck has not typically printed eulogies. This is in part because so many other publications, not the least of which is Scuttlebutt, do them and do them promptly and very well. We have had exceptions. There have been certain people, bigger-than-life types, who were so key to WindCheck from the beginning and who also happened to be very important figures in the WindCheck Community, that we were duty bound to honor them….

Stamford Yacht Club and the Storm Trysail Club with Riverside Yacht Club hosted three regattas on three successive weekends. The Vineyard Race, The Valeur-Jensen Stamford Denmark Race and the Long Island Sound Championships all had beautiful September weather. And sandwiched in there on the middle Saturday, 9/12, was Larchmont Yacht Club’s Edlu Race, a short distance race traditionally sailed as a warm-up to Block Island Race in the spring. I have sailed a big handful of Edlu’s,…

This summer we saw junior program directors and instructors trying really hard to make their classes possible, never mind fun or normal. But as many have observed, this brought a lot of “old school” behaviors back into play, some of which have been called for, without a pandemic to force the situation. Fierce competition at regattas had to take a break this summer. I’m wondering how that will turn out. Will kids have (gulp!) lost a step…be…

If you read last month’s iteration, I waxed on about the Covid-driven explosion in boating and the process of finding a new family boat and ended with teasing the grand plan to bring the boat back north with my 12-year-old. Well, what a surprise! Things did not go as planned.     Many aspects of the mission were accomplished. My son got to experience firsthand the logistics of getting a survey done, doing sea trials, making friends…

While writing the March Publisher’s log in February, I unwittingly foreshadowed the record levels of boat buying we have seen since mid-April. I wrote about finding the perfect boat at my better half’s insistence. It has been quite a journey to find the foiling catboat that can sleep four and tow 12-year-olds on wakeboards while still looking great without too much bright work to tend to. And my spouse has been very, very patient, helped a tiny…

I just took a look at the WindCheck Publisher’s Log that I wrote for our June 2019 issue, which was ironically titled “Change!”. (windcheckmagazine.com/article/change/). Ohhhhh boy…it’s perspective time. The big theme…the big story…the almost controversial topic was…we had decided to go with glossy cover stock for the first time in the magazine’s eighteen-year history. And we got letters, both pro and con! The Publisher of a “sister” publication (actually more like WindCheck’s aunt) commented to the negative…

There’s going to be a lot of family boating this summer. Professional sporting events have been severely curtailed. Concerts? Amusement parks? Festivals? Hard to imagine. If you thought you were the family’s Chief Entertainment Officer before, there’s a whole new level of responsibility coming at you in Summer 2020. First, if you’re going boating as a family, then the whole family needs to have fun. Many of you are blessed with spouses and kids who have always…

I often write about our cover photos, and the one on this month’s issue is extremely poignant. It’s a beautiful shot of high school kids, using old Brown University sails, in a springtime team race. For so many of us, it brings back instant memories of some of the most fun sailing we have ever done. Even if you only dabbled in some high school or college dinghy sailing, the feeling is still unmistakable. If you were…