IBIS sailing in the Florida Keys with her new owner. About a decade ago, a disturbing real estate trend gained increasing prevalence on the east coast of the United States: Boatyards and marinas began to disappear, being replaced by condominiums with slips. To have a boat slip, you had to purchase a condominium. Of course, most boat owners don’t want, don’t need, and cannot afford a condominium (...
The Whiskey Plank
The whiskey plank, traditionally, is the last plank fastened into the hull. The occasion is typically marked by a party to celebrate.
The views expressed are those of the authors and may not necessarily reflect those of WoodenBoat.
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March 19, 2015 -
March 06, 2015T’IEN HOU sailing to Cat Island, Bahamas, in 2005. In 1999, when it looked like I might actually survive stage #4 cancer, I did two things: I bought a house in Maine, and I started construction on my fifth cruising sailboat. The house was a mistake (perhaps houses are always a mistake—at least for me). Doing these two things simultaneously was downright stupid. I spread myself too thin, both... -
February 20, 2015LEOPARD making 12 knots on the Bahama Banks. In the early 1990s I leased a large steel industrial building just north of Ft. Pierce, Florida. I had recently split up with my third “wife” in Key West, and moved back to the Ft. Pierce area to set up a new shop where I could work more efficiently with Bill Smith, my boat building partner (he was tired of commuting to the Keys). In 1991 I received a... -
February 03, 2015The 1928 Alden Malabar Junior sailing on Long Island Sound in 1985. In mid-July of 1981, I sailed into New York Harbor in FISHERS HORNPIPE, my first cruising sailboat ( see Blog #31 ). I had an interview with David Beggs, in charge of restoration work on the ships in the South Street Seaport Museum, and landed a summer job as a restoration shipwright. I worked mostly on AMBROSE, the museum’s... -
January 19, 2015TERESA de ISLA MORADA flying her kite on Chesapeake Bay, 1985. In early 1985 I leased an “abandoned” property on the south side of Windley Key, in Islamorada, Florida. It had three acres, a ruined fishing camp, and a 100-foot private canal and concrete dock. It had vacant lots on both sides, and it was very overgrown with indigenous shrubs and trees, coconut palms and casuarina (Australian) pines... -
January 06, 2015FISHERS HORNPIPE in Riviera Beach, Florida, after 35,000 miles of sailing on three oceans. In early 1973 I decided I wanted a big sailboat—and that I wanted to sail off into the sunset, as the old cliché says. I lived on the California coast at that time, and I commenced looking around for a used boat. I soon realized I couldn’t afford anything I wanted. My cruising sailboat criteria were based... -
December 16, 2014T’IEN HOU in her junk-rigged Lorcha persona, circumnavigating Great Exuma. In very shallow parts of the Bahamas, places protected behind large islands and in “bights” (tidal estuaries and the lee-side west coasts of some islands), there are strange underwater formations I call “haystacks.” These are formed in soft “marl”—the white mud made from sand... -
December 04, 2014The Mayor of Joe’s Sound with supper (a beautiful, mature queen conch). On March 26, 2012, I set sail from George Town, Great Exuma, Bahamas, for Cape Santa Maria, the north end of Long Island, about 25 miles away as the seagull flies. I was sailing in my sharpie schooner IBIS, with Canadian Joee Sym as first mate. Because this was a windward passage, and because IBIS is flat-bottomed with a... -
November 20, 2014IBIS’s first mate Joee Sym at the entrance to Sivananda Ashram Yoga Retreat on Paradise Island, Bahamas. Joee with an immature conch contemplating a suicidal escape. When I first sailed to the Bahamas in early 1981, I was intrigued to see that there was a yoga retreat in Nassau, on Paradise Island, right off the busy main harbor. I have been practicing yoga since the early 1970s, and firmly... -
October 21, 2014A seamanlike Columbian copra schooner in the San Blas Islands. In Blog #25 I described visiting ruins in Portobelo, Panama, on the Caribbean side of the Panama Canal. We continued sailing east, beating into the powerful northeast trade winds in my cutter FISHERS HORNPIPE, toward our destination: the San Blas Islands, home of the Kuna Indians, half in Panama and half in Columbia. The Kuna Indians...