Underway Column Editorial by Editor Bill Sisson | Soundings Online Column

So long to a schooner that died with dignity

The maritime community lost one of her great iconic ships recently when the 165-foot Wawona was towed a short distance from her berth at Lake Union Park in Seattle to a dry dock company, where she is being “surgically” dismantled and archived.

Boating enters the new age of ‘affordability’

I received two letters recently on the same day that addressed the same subject: the cost of boating. The first writer wondered — a bit tongue-in-cheek — why the list price of a new 150-hp outboard was about the same as that of a new Honda Civic sedan with a 140-hp engine. Good question.

Under Way

A refit for Soundings as we chart a new course

Soundings will turn 46 this spring, quite an accomplishment for a magazine that was started by three colorful characters sitting around a kitchen table, sharing a bottle of gin and dreaming of building a different sort of boating publication.

Under Way

Caught up in the ‘Draggerman’s Haul’

There’s a dragger on the headstone of the old fisherman, gone now more than 20 years. The inscription reads: “Imagine the excitement on the other shore.”

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A new approach to the old compromise

William Sisson Augusto “Kiko” Villalon views boats from the perspective of a lifelong sailor, designer, marine engineer, accident investigator, and someone who for 20 years ran a company that built the tooling for some of the biggest powerboat brands in the business.

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William Sisson, Editor

A 1981 Phi Beta Kappa journalism graduate, Bill has been writing about boats for more than two decades. His boating travels have taken him from the Persian Gulf to the Baltic Sea, and always back home to Little Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island. As editor, Bill is responsible for planning and executing the publication's boating coverage each month, and his Under Way column starts each issue. Bill has been with Soundings for 20 years and in 1997 won the Moulton H. "Monk" Farnham Award for Excellence in Editorial Commentary.

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