The Boating Barrister

I’d buy an IMOCA 60 and park it in that slot betwixt the Black Pearl and Oldport Marine. I’d sit on the deck and waggle a toe at the milling masses. In an afternoon southerly, I’d unfurl the J2, slip the dock and bang around the harbor. Maybe on some wicked weekend, I’d crank over to Sag Harbor and front on my mon frère. When the breeze built right, I’d loop up to Bar Harbor and crash…

This is the time of year you slip down to the marina and rustle around your boat. Maybe you rummage out that Mark III Sextant you’d promised Nathaniel Bowditch you’d learn to use. Maybe you spot the collar to the spotlight plug you’d dropped last season ghosting quietly at the bottom of the lazarette. Point is: it’s all about odds and ends until the weather breaks and those air molecules start social distancing and things warm up….

I’m good with boats and can pretty much get anything waterborne from here to there with relative ease. I wasn’t ever very competitive in dinghies and I didn’t do much big boat racing. Time and chance is probably why. I’ve gotten good (maybe, very good) at other endeavors, but there’s something particularly sweet about developing a youthful passion and spinning it into a life – even one cut short too early. I didn’t know Geoff Ewenson and…

It’s close on Halloween and I love salvage, making the case of the salvaged corpse a good topic. It was a couple of years after the Second World War in Bayshore, New York. A man named Charles was on the Bay aboard his eighteen-foot flat-bottom skiff. He had a couple of thousand dollars in his pocket, but he was all outta luck (that last line should be read in the voice of Lennie Briscoe (a/k/a Jerry Orbach)….

By John K. Fulweiler, Esq. This is a primer, an antidote to all things amateur. It’s a one-page missive on a mission to commission solutions to a dozen situations (or ‘sitches as a person I love and know calls them). Some of the situations are maritime oriented and some aren’t. A few are unpleasant, but that doesn’t mean a life well led shouldn’t (or won’t) cross these waters. Dragging anchor. Don’t worry you didn’t have enough scope…

In a lawsuit’s lifecycle, it breaks ground all Iron Maiden-like with musket fire and skirmishes. But keep moving forward gaining each half league, and defense arguments founder and talk of settlement ensues. And I call that point in a lawsuit where the defending troopers drop their arms, the “angle of vanishing.” I’ll get to how Naval Architecture refers to and uses the phrase “angle of vanishing,” but let’s heave-to momentarily and consider the maritime law’s treatment of…

Newport is straight fire these days. Covid or not, the docks have a blistered Med look with miles of polished hulls, scuttling uniformed crew and Rovers idling at the curb. They’re calling the couple of new waterfront hotels “boutique,” a label meaning the business model is all about individual excess – larger rooms and larger rates. But it’s like how Mac Miller raps across a pulsing trip-hop: “She do whatever she like. And that just don’t seem…

By John K. Fulweiler, Esq. My girl is out of the Opti and into a Laser 4.7. She’s a stringbean, so it’ll be something for her when the southerly rolls down the Bay. I keep telling her it’s like she’s stepping up to the Formula 1 circuit, but there’s a wee look of bemusement on her face. Whatever the case, COVID has gutted the race calendar and this summer is for knocking around and learning her new…

By John K. Fulweiler, Esq. Whether blue water sailor or coastal cruiser, our weird quarantine world isn’t all that different from being shipboard. You keep an eye on the food, watch the water, worry the book you’ve maybe been meaning to write, consider the next menu, and scan the seascape. All you’re missing is lap of water and press of wind. My schedule largely remains the same as I trundle each morning into the office and lock…

Tick-tac-dough. I’m standing. It’s a courtroom where the photocopier is wheeled against the clerk’s desk and justice is mostly mechanical and pedestrian. We’re seeking the Court’s blessing of a settlement involving a minor. I’m idling aside the teenage client. She’s tall and quiet. A guardian (an attorney appointed to review the settlement we’d obtained) explains our (awesome) efforts to the judge and the dialogue devolves into a discussion of her injuries and lingering limitations. The girl is…