Adventures

October 2021

A Quiet Time in a Big Estuary

A Columbia River cruise

Bruce Bateau takes a California couple cruising on his home waters, the tidal reaches of the Columbia River that form the border between Oregon and Washington.

September 2021

Fifteen Years of the Small Reach Regatta

A retrospective

After 15 years, the Small Reach Regatta has come to the end of a long and successful run. Tom Jackson was there from the very beginning and takes a look back at the popular Maine Coast cruise.

August 2021

A Wright Brothers Moment

1972, three friends, and a homebuilt hydrofoil sailboat

Mike Jacker, along with his friends Louis and Marty, had just graduated from high school and would have spent the summer of ‘72 sailing Lake Michigan at a local club, but a book on hydrofoils set them on a quest to design and build their own sailing foiler.

July 2021

Gile Flowage

Working with the wind

The Giles Flowage, a reservoir in northern Wisconsin, can get rather choppy when the wind picks up, but Tom Pamperin wasn’t going to be deterred from taking a weekend getaway there.

June 2021

Baker Lake

The mirror of a mountain

Baker Lake is an 8-mile-long reservoir that lies at the foot of a 10,781’ volcano in Washington. On a summer weekend it can be crowded with hundreds of boats, campers, and beachgoers, but on a midweek cruise in May, our editor had the lake almost all to himself.

May 2021

A Gulf Coast Cruise

By sail and motor from Florida to Mississippi

Two doctors, both feeling worn out by the pandemic, took a well-deserved break to cruise over 300 miles on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. They sailed open water when they could and reluctantly resorted to motoring the Intracoastal Waterway when they had to.

April 2021

Fox Islands

A Maine coast island cruise

Christophe Matson and John Hartmann launched in Rockland, Maine, to begin a wandering oar-and-sail cruise of North Haven, Vinalhaven, and the myriad of small islands and waterways that surround them.

March 2021

A River Row

Oregon’s Willamette River

Jordan, Jon, and Hart were all on the same crew when they were in college, training for years to row as fast as humanly possible. Two decades later, with their 30s now trailing astern, they were content to lower the stroke rate and enjoy the scenery on Oregon’s Willamette river.

February 2021

Don’t Tell Me I Can’t

Isabelle Heker's Greenland kayak

When Isabelle Heker decided to build a Greenland-style kayak, her friends and family doubted she was up to the task. In spite of her lack of woodworking experience, tools, and a place to work, she forged ahead and proved something to everyone, including herself.

January 2021

The Texas Coastal Bend

An escape to barrier islands

Roger Siebert takes us on another sail-and-oar adventure, this time to the barrier islands of the Texas Coastal Bend. The protected bays, mild November weather, and company of boater friends and dolphins made a memorable getaway.

December 2020

A Quarantine Cruise

Wisconsin’s West Coast by sail and oar

When travel restrictions prevented Tom Pamperin from getting to his usual cruising grounds, he looked for possibilities closer to his Wisconsin home. Over half of the state’s western border is created by the Mississippi River, so he set out to cruise a section of Wisconsin’s “West Coast.”

November 2020

Bainbridge Island

A Puget Sound solo circumnavigation

Although August is usually a month of doldrums on Puget Sound, our editor’s summer solo circumnavigation of Bainbridge Island offered good sailing as well as torrential rain and a sudden squall that put a capsized daysailer in need of a rescue.

October 2020

Swan’s Island

A Maine Coast Circumnavigation

Each summer, a group of five friends usually get together with their sail-and-oar camp-cruisers to enjoy the island-studded Maine coast. This year, the three who were free to travel during the pandemic circumnavigated Swan’s Island.

September 2020

Solace of the South Salish

A sojourn by sail and oar

Looking for a place to breathe freely in the midst of the pandemic, Bruce Bateau set sail on Washington’s narrow waterways at the southern extremity of the Salish Sea. He spent four restorative nights at anchor in coves too small and too shallow for most boats.

August 2020

Dammed

Exploring Washington's Riffe Lake

Riffe Lake is a reservoir in the foothills of Washington State’s Cascade Mountains, an idyllic setting but for the shoreline’s reminders of abandoned towns, lost forests, and an aging dam.

July 2020

A Solar Solo

Cruising the Rideau Canal

Phil Boyer takes a look back at his first fully solar-powered cruise. In SOL CANADA, a boat he built with a canopy covered with solar cells, he traveled 125 miles from Kingston, Ontario, to Ottawa, along a canal system that has been carrying boat traffic since 1832.

June 2020

Downriver, Part 2

From St. Louis to the Mississippi Delta

In our March 2019 issue, David Hudson shared with us his adventure on the Upper Mississippi River and now he’s back with his row down the Lower Mississippi to its delta on the Gulf of Mexico. The river is bigger and so are the ships, the rafts of barges, and the sand bars.

May 2020

The Race to Alaska, Almost

Trailing the fleet, keeping up with the leaks

Thor Belle found an old Swampscott dory rotting away under a tangle of blackberry bushes and decided to make it seaworthy again. He and Pax Templeton did their best to put the boat back to rights and entered it in the 2019 Race to Alaska. They soon discovered that the dory wasn’t really up to the task, but they pressed on in spite of the difficulties.

April 2020

A Red-Lantern Journey

Ontario's Lake of the Woods

Tom Pamperin had Ontario’s Lake of the Woods in his sights for years. When he finally got underway at a launch ramp on the lake’s eastern shore, he was eager to venture into the maze of islets ahead of him and in no hurry to get back.

March 2020

The Broughton Archipelago

Four for oar and sail

Eric Hvalsoe and his three cruising buddies headed to the north end of Vancouver Island, each with a sail-and-oar boat they’d built, and set out to wander among the islands of the Broughton Archipelago. Tides, currents and whales kept them on their toes.

February 2020

Sunday Pass

A Texas winter getaway

Sunday Beach was a popular spot for sun-worshipping Texans until it was obliterated by Hurricane Harvey in the fall of 2017. Now known as Sunday Pass, the 1000’ gap in the land at Matagorda Island offers new cruising and beach camping opportunities for small boat. Roger Siebert takes us there for a weekend getaway aboard his 15’ Flint.

January 2020

Across an Ocean

Rowing the Atlantic

After Christophe Papillon served as a paratrooper, he retired from the military and needed to find other ways to slake his thirst for adventure. He had done a bit of kayaking and some freshwater sailing, so the challenge he set for himself was a daunting one: rowing solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

December 2019

Southing in the Inside Passage

A sail-and-oar voyage

Bruce Bateau took the summer off, launched his boat near the north end of Vancouver Island, and headed south to a haul-out 350 miles away, with only two sails and two oars to get him there.

November 2019

A Fringe of the Wild

Wisconsin's Turtle-Flambeau Flowage

After an unexpectedly dreary summer, Tom Pamperin drove off with his boat in tow and no clear destination in mind except “away.” He found the restorative “away” he was seeking in the Turtle-Flambeau Flowage of Wisconsin’s north woods.

October 2019

Barron Canyon

Canoeing the Algonquin

Phil Boyer and two of his good friends paddled three of Phil’s canoes along the Barron River in Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park, and portaged to nearby lakes where they contended with boulders by day and bullfrogs by night.