The Boating Barrister

Everyone’s mad these days. Folks can’t keep their airspeed up and the instrument panel is rattling and that left wing keeps fluttering ugly like the withers on a swaybacked horse. Not everyone has the altitude to make it back to the airport in the next few years and you see the panic in the way folks interact. Recklessness lies in the wake of economic stress and recklessness is all over the place, on the roadways and out…

No paper charts. I was on a bridge the other day and was told, “Nope, no paper” in the rounded accent of a Romance language. “But why?” I asked. “Redundancy!” was the reply and I gave up at that point. Was there a sextant aboard, a stub of pencil or even a compass that didn’t require an electrical circuit? Who knows? And this was a fancy, gleaming, relatively new build. It got me thinking. Back at my…

On a sailboat, you don’t need a TripTik to get from here to wherever you want. You can get to some destination any dozen ways and they’ll all sound right and real and maybe even a little special, like when you’re using a sextant. Lawyering is sort of the same; it’s easy for lawyers to sail a seemingly sound argument to any port of disembarkation they want. IMO, it’s up to the courts to make sure the…

There’s a fellow who crossed the Atlantic over the course of three centuries. Wild, right? But it’s true. He crossed The Big Blue from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. It’s not a riddle, but more in the vein of an historical fact as to how this occurred. More later. Right now, what I’ve got is that smattering of summer snacks you see spread out in the cockpit after dropping the hook. None of it…

Bloomberg or CNBC should hire me because the language of finance has a lot in common with boating. There are all sorts of headwinds and tailwinds.  There’s talk of clams and shark watchers and froth and fish and tons of attention is paid the bottom. You don’t want to guess the bottom. You’d like to know where the bottom is and sometimes you’ll miss the bottom. Buy the dip; sell on the ebb. But to my eye,…

On the Harper Valley PTA, you’ve got the married Bobby Taylor asking for dates, teetotaler Shirley nipping the gin, Miss Jones cavorting, Mr. Baker’s secretary having to leave town, and that other fellow drinking too much at Kelly’s bar. But their Peyton Place lifestyles made it ridiculous they were upset with Mrs. Johnson’s short skirts and she socked it to them! It’s a good song written a long time ago and yet that current still flows strong….

The Ethiopian calendar runs seven years behind ours which isn’t all that interesting, but learning that Rastafarians and Ethiopia have a connection sort of is.  More later. I’m writing this in Florida on a little island off its western edge. It’s the middle of March and Florida right now is sinking under the weight of tourists scrambling to wring the most out of a week “with the kids.” It’s a gruesome affair for everyone and if you haven’t had…

The New York Times has this newish aspect called Wirecutter; to me, it’s a riff off what Lifehacker.com and some other sites did by considering and commenting on consumables for which one’s desire far outweighs any need. Still, the tone/tempo of its writing is for someone who likes words and beats and chords and harmonies, fun to try and replicate. Its reference is also a nice vehicle to share some opinions on things salty. We like classic…

Call me Captain McNoodle. Some weeks back John asked I write this column because he’d be in trial. I said no problem ‘cause John’s a good guy alright. Anyways, I don’t have his spit and polish, but I’m better with the boats and so John thought me writing down how I see boating law would be good. I’m not Dickens so much, but John said questions/answers would work and he said he’d put his comments (italicized) in…

I like depositions and trials. I like the clarity that comes from the pressure. But to pepper questions in the boardroom or press a witness in the courtroom, you need a lawsuit. We file lawsuits for yachties, merchant mariners, passengers and anyone else injured working on or around the sea…but that doesn’t mean a maritime lawyer can’t dream. Here are some lawsuits I’d like to file if the opportunity arose; I call these “suits for sailors.” The…