Schooner Fame
Some traditions should be honored. I would certainly include rum drinking in that list. Tomorrow the Schooner Fame of Salem, Massachusetts is hosting a Rum and Revolution Cruise, departing from Pickering Wharf Marina, in Salem at 4:00 PM. After all, “rum and sailors have always gotten along like wind and water!” The 1.75 hour long cruise features sailing on a traditional gaff-rigged wooden schooner, seeing lighthouses, forts, and beautiful waterfront homes, and the opportunity to purchase revolutionary beverages based on rum and wine. Revolutionary beverages will be available for $5 to those of age. The Fame of Salem, a replica of the privateer from the War of 1812.
This week Sable Island became the 
Usually downrigging a schooner involves lots of coiling, carrying, hauling, the breaking down of shackles and turnbuckles, and depending on the rig, attempting to free up the top mast so that it can be lowered gently to the deck, rather than dropping it like an unguided missile. The last time I helped downrig a schooner, I spent hours in the cross-trees, helping those who knew far better what they were doing than I, and generally enjoying the view on a brisk Fall day. A rendezvous at the bar that afternoon ended the day most satisfactorily.
Those of us of a certain age, who were active in merchant shipping, remember the tanker industry in the 1980s. And none too fondly. After a period of rising charter rates and robust new construction, the market effectively collapsed in the 80s, resulting in a large fleet of laid up tankers. Some new ships steamed straight from the shipyard to lay-up. It is too soon to tell if conditions will turn as dark as they were thirty years ago, but the signs are not encouraging.
In August, we 
The future of the oldest, just barely surviving, composite clipper ship in the world, the 
Jeffrey Allison is a fascinating gentlemen. Now 73, from Middleton Tyas in the UK, he only started sailing when he retired from a career in engineering. Since then, he has sailed across the Atlantic six times, as well transiting the Panama Canal, and sailing the Pacific, Indian and Arctic Oceans. He has just returned from a 40 day circumnavigation of the Arctic. Allison and his crew, Australian crewmate Katherine Brownlie, 28, are the first to circumnavigate the Arctic in a clockwise direction. Two yachts previously circumnavigated the Arctic counter-clockwise in 2010.
We are rapidly approaching the bi-centennial of the 