Life’s too short to be bored. If you’ve got Melville’s “damp, drizzly November in your soul,” it’s time for a new adventure: time to get away, to see something different, to do something you haven’t done a hundred times before, to take a few risks. I

ONE PLEASANT MORNING IN LATE SUMMER OF 2014, James “Sham” Hunt pulled into my driveway with a trunk full of reference materials relating to the life of his father, Charles Raymond Hunt. Soon enough, we were having lunch overlooking Marblehead Harbor

“No thanks!” was my initial reply when a colleague asked if I wanted to cover a three-week photo shoot aboard a megayacht. It would run right through the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, when my grown kids would be visiting, a rare occurrence nowad

How did flying hang gliders lead me to life aboard a cruising yacht and writing this column? Indulge me for a minute. Standing on a grassy slope, which gently falls away to an 800-foot vertical cliff is risky enough, but being willing to run as fast

When you don’t have a lot of time on your side, it’s nice to have three 600-hp Mercury Verado outboards and a 50-gallon bait well stocked full of frisky pilchards. Such was the case when I stepped aboard the Formula 457 Fish center console on a Septe

Late this summer as we in the more temperate reaches of the northern hemisphere were squeezing out our last little stretch of the fair-weather boating season, I caught up with a young Lake Erie-based boating couple, Leah and Mike Hydzik, who fell in

While we love roaming the slips and doing dockside reviews at the boat shows, sea trials are where we really love to put our energy. That’s why when the Cannes Yachting Festival rolled around, I was happy to not only get to put the new Absolute 70 Na

Social media is a strange beast. Political, let’s call them debates, millions of companies trying to sell you everything from underwear to time shares, blurry screenshots from your second cousin, it’s enough to make you throw your iPhone into the har

One thing you can count on when you’re offshore in a small boat is that the vast, empty ocean is hardly that. There are more stars and planets overhead than you’ll ever see on land, all manner of creatures rising unexpectedly from the deep for a quic

Late last summer, while standup paddling, I watched a fisherman glide up atop a seafoam green multihulled paddleboard. Though pushed along by a trolling motor, he was gracious enough to stop for a quick overview of his 14-foot Live Watersports L4 Exp

“I’ll be leaving the gas dock at Liberty Landing at 1400,” my subject wrote me, by text message. Over the past several weeks, we’d tentatively scheduled a trip up the Hudson on his recently commissioned, freshly christened Scarlet, a 63 Hunt, and var

As the prime in-water boat show in Europe, and arguably the entire world, the Cannes Yachting Festival is without a doubt the deep end of the pool when it comes to new launches. The jam-packed docks and glittering Baie de Cannes are littered with all

From the deck of his new 29-CCX center console, Axopar’s fit, bearded, Finnish Founding Partner Jan-Erik Viitala made a bold statement at the Cannes Yachting Festival: “It’s one of the best driving hulls of any 28-, 29-foot boats on the market.” Now,

We stood shoulder to shoulder in a semicircle just outside the barn doors of the brightly-colored fish shack. Our small group chatted as we downed lagers and prosecco underneath the early-evening Scandinavian sun, still high in the mid-June sky. I si

Hi Dan, Okay, full confession … I’m a sailor. BUT I love your magazine! The stories and writing are first rate. I just listened to the podcast you did with Lydia of Sail magazine, on the … umm issues racing to Bermuda. Nicely done! I have raced sever

When it comes to designing and manufacturing a new yacht, getting the most return from a given investment of talent and other resources depends on being clear about what the vessel’s intended mission is at the outset. The common temptation to be all

Grateful. That’s the best word to describe how I was feeling as we walked up to the Fish City Pride, a drift boat that takes large groups of anglers fishing out of Hillsborough Inlet in Pompano Beach, Florida. I was with my two sons, Maxon, who is 11

There is a lot to be said for commuting by water. Some of the most beloved boats from the days of yore were the commuters that whisked robber barons and their ilk up and down the Long Island Sound from Manhattan to the Gold Coasts of Long Island and

The throw-in-the-towel moment came about two-thirds of the way through the job. With the hull of the vintage 14-foot McKee Craft painstakingly prepped and a complete underside coat of two-stage epoxy paint catalyzing on the bottom, a late spring fron

Most captains like adding more stuff to their boats, and much of that stuff is electric. Fancy stereo systems, multiple satellite TVs, wireless routers, elaborate nav-station electronics, power-hungry consumers like air conditioning and gyrostabilize

Ponce Inlet, the gateway to the Atlantic wedged in between Daytona Beach and New Smyrna Beach, Florida, was a complete circus. It was July 12th, and every able-bodied angler with access to a boat was headed offshore in the morning’s gray light to mak

When you think of Lake Tahoe, what comes to mind? Skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing? Towering, pine-forested slopes dropping into one of the clearest alpine lakes on the planet? Well, what about one of the most stunning yachts ever built? Probably no