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Columnists/Full and By
Author:Bill Schanen
A friend of mine, a yachtsman of the motorboat persuasion, told me he was going ahead with his summer cruise even though the fuel bill would exceed $7,000. The same cruise last year would have cost him $4,000 in diesel fuel. “It hurts, but the...
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Columnists/Full and By
Author:Bill Schanen
I figured we had six inches of water under the keel at best. It was a pristine keel attached to a brand-new charter boat, and I was determined not to be the first charterer to ding it, though we were in a place where that was easier said than done,...
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Columnists/Full and By
Author:Bill Schanen
I’ve never abandoned ship. I’ve never pulled myself into a life raft. I’m not expert on those subjects, but I do know there is a fair amount of disagreement over when or if to take those steps. About half of the gruesome toll of 15 deaths in...
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Columnists/Full and By
Author:Bill Schanen
Won’t you ever get sick of it?” The question came from a college friend I see infrequently who finds it hard to believe that after all these years I’m still devoting big chunks of my life to sailing. My honest answer: Yes. I have been...
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Columnists/Full and By
Author:Bill Schanen
SAILING’s hometown is as pretty a seaport as you’re likely to see. Port Washington, on the Wisconsin coast of Lake Michigan, is a small city (population 11,000) of many hills. The highest of them is topped by two historical icons, a church whose...
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Columnists/Full and By
Author:Bill Schanen
I was concentrating more on the remarkable aubergine hue of the wine in my glass, a muscular Chilean blend of carmenere, cabernet and merlot, than on the NBC news program on the tube. It was the opening segment, before the first commercial touting a...
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Columnists/Full and By
Author:Bill Schanen
In the annals of sailors lost at sea—and that is a long and terrible history of shipwreck and death—I don’t think I’ve ever come across a crueler story than the sinking of the 35-foot sailboat Jason. Three sailors died, two of them in a...
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Columnists/Full and By
Author:Bill Schanen
We were sure he had all the right stuff to be on the cover of our Safety at Sea issue. At the helm on a breezy day on San Francisco Bay, braced at the edge of the cockpit, two gloved hands on the wheel, steely eyes looking forward, the fellow in the...
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Columnists/Full and By
Author:Bill Schanen
Imagine if Brett Favre wrote a Web log during football games, blogging his thoughts from the New York Jets sideline on a BlackBerry when the defense was on the field: “The offensive line they’ve stuck me with couldn’t block my mother-in-law....
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Columnists/Full and By
Author:Bill Schanen
I saw an ad in the New York Times placed by the motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson and it made me think of one of the worst weeks of my business life and one of the best weeks of my sailing life. The ad was a two-page spread featuring bold capital...
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Columnists/Full and By
Author:Bill Schanen
People used to talk about dreaming in Technicolor, back when movies were still on film. Most sailing dreams and reveries should be in color. When I want to change my mental subject from something irritating, boring or depressing, I can conjure a...
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Columnists/Full and By
Author:Bill Schanen
I wish I were a Boy Scout again. It’s not lost youth I’m looking for. It’s a ride on one of the fastest, most powerful types of offshore sailboats in the world, an Open 60. It seems that Boy Scouts might have a better chance of doing that than...
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Columnists/Full and By
Author:Bill Schanen
Talk about dodging a bullet. A design review that would have driven a small but highly motivated portion of our readers absolutely nuts almost got into this issue. I’ll take credit for averting what could have been a fusillade of scolding letters...
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Columnists/Full and By
Author:Bill Schanen
It was eons ago that I was introduced to sailing in the Bahamas, but the culture shock was so intense I still remember every jot and tittle of the experience. I stepped from a crowded Nassau quay onto the weathered deck of a schooner named Heron...
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Columnists/Full and By
Author:Bill Schanen
I was raised by my father on the doctrine that, for busy people, there is “no such thing as a convenient time for a vacation.” That being so—my father deduced—take a vacation exactly when you want to; and let the chips fall where they will,...
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Columnists/Full and By
Author:Bill Schanen
This is a can’t-miss column. It can’t miss irritating someone. That’s not my intent, of course. I want everyone to have saccharine thoughts about my words. It’s just that I’m writing about one of the most contentious subjects in...
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Columnists/Full and By
Author:Bill Schanen
Members of my family had the bittersweet experience on a recent weekend of emptying out our late parents’ house. Rafts of memories were released by the things we found, many of which were sailing mementoes. There were photos by the hundreds,...
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Columnists/Full and By
Author:Bill Schanen
I’ve seen sailboats ride up over docks like levitating sea creatures. I’ve seen boats enter slips by pivoting on the corner of a pier amid a fingernails-on-blackboard cacophony and a blizzard of flying shards of fiberglass. Guess what was the...
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Columnists/Full and By
Author:Bill Schanen
There is no safe path through the waves. Not even the most adept driver on board can avoid head-on collisions with masses of water so steep and hard they might as well be brick walls. Attuned to the insane rhythm of the seaway, every member of the...
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Columnists/Full and By
Author:Bill Schanen
We knew it was too good to be true, right? I’m referring to GPS, a phenomenon so utterly amazing that decades after its invention it still seems more fantasy than reality. After wandering the seas for millennia never quite sure of where in the...
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Bill Schanen's columns.
