Stories of Boat Related Mishaps and Experiences | Soundings Online Column

A change of routine can be painful

I did not plan to stop sailing so early this season, but circumstances dictated otherwise. In the past, I have usually sailed into December, but in late October the unexpected happened and sidelined me with an injured left shoulder.

We’ve gone aground on the Cape Fear

Sailing fathers unable to take their boats with them on family vacations to the seashore face being marooned on a beach, building sand castles. But even if they don’t have a sailboard or a surfboard to car-top, they could get lucky and find a beat-up, sun-trashed Hobie or Sunfish to rent, although certainly not a high-performance keelboat.

Junior Fleet is more than just sailing

There is no place on Chesapeake Bay quite like Gibson Island, a unique private community developed in the 1920s by famed New England landscapers for wealthy Marylanders as a watery retreat from torrid Baltimore summers of old.

Return of the Gibson Island Yachtsman

One long-ago summer in the early 1990s, two single, laid-back friends in their early 30s would occasionally match-race in their respective Catalina sailboats. These were very minor events on the Annapolis yachting scene, to be sure, and I was the only boating writer in town who gave them a little ink in a local, now-defunct sailing rag I edited.

You take the high road, I’ll take the low

My first overnight cruise of 2008 was not my first sail of the season, as it has often been in the past. This year, I have been sailing since mid-April. The boat was ready for cruising but I was not, because of a cold and wet spring. I did replace my main halyard with a double-braided line from West Marine, since the old one was showing signs of wear. Another necessary item was a paper chart, the 2008-’09 Maryland Cruising Guide edited by Mickey Courtney and published by Williams & Heintz Map Corp. of Capitol Heights, Md.

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Jack Sherwood, Writer-at-Large

Jack has been cruising Chesapeake Bay and writing about the region for more than 25 years. His critically acclaimed book, "Maryland's Vanishing Lives," was published by Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University Press and is now in its second printing. Before joining Soundings, Jack was a feature writer at the Washington (D.C.) Star for nearly 20 years and a senior editor at Chesapeake Bay magazine from 1995 to 1998. His monthly Bay Tripper column focuses on the Chesapeake.

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