KEEPERS

Changing Dreams in Midstream

It was a thing of beauty: Young men fresh out of service, members of the greatest generation, if you must, delivered from the threat of war, determined to take a bite of the sailing life before they settled into what they assumed would be the inevitable, consuming obligations of work and family. Looking for adventure, they went. And how many of us have ever wandered into a forest looking for a mast? Or had the varnish stripped by a relentless Tehuantepecker? Once upon a time, Stan Honey handed me a cardboard box of old writings, clippings and photos. His dad’s writings, clippings and photos . . .

WIND: The First Twenty+ Years

More than 40 years ago, Dennis Conner’s comeback win at the America’s Cup in Australia inspired a Japanese movie producer to make a feature film about sailboat racing – WIND. Quite a few of the usual suspects of the sailing scene got involved, and I was one of them. Amid the fustigation, stress and associated

The North Side of Tonga

Can you name a regatta that in its first three years became the biggest annual festival in its island state? The answer was, and is, Regatta Vava’u & Festival.

So why did the pig cross the road?

Milestone Ocean Races

In the opening decade of the 21st century I had the opportunity to sail milestone editions of America’s three great distance classics: Centennial Bermuda, Centennial Transpac, and the 100th running of Chicago-Mac. So I did. Along the way I got fried, frozen, slammed, sore and high on sailing and life. I lost one friend and

Downwind Noir

How to seize upon an unproblem and solve it—to the consternation of many an internet flamer—and open up new possibilities in wind energy extraction, all while proving that, yes, it absolutely is possible to build a machine that will go dead downwind faster than the wind, using only the wind. Only to be told that, “Yes, it may work in practice, but it will never work in theory.”

Life at IYRS

Walking through door of the International Yacht Restoration School will likely affect you considerably. IYRS is not the only school in the USA that is teaching the woodbutchers’ craft, but it is a leader. If you’re into this sort of thing, you will know a cathedral when you see one.

The Olympic Circle

On San Francisco Bay the best patch of water for championship racing lies on the eastern reach of the bay, an area relatively shallow and relatively tide-protected, free of the narrow rivers of current and countercurrent found in deeper parts of the bay and clear of the shipping channels. Stars, 505s, Farr 40s and many,