The First Voyage of Al Fishman (Fiction)

The First Voyage of Al Fishman (Fiction)

fiction, copyright (c) 2005 When Al Fishman was in his middle fifties the company he worked for was acquired by a national chain and he was eased out. He had a modest pension, his house was paid for and he figured his income was adequate to enjoy a long retirement....

The Storm With Fiona’s Name On It

December 2004 We had arrived in Falmouth, at the western end of England’s Cornish peninsular, in mid-October, 2004, after a summer of cruising in Ireland, Scotland and the Baltic. The trip down the English Channel had been a beat against moderate southwesterly...

Dismasted in the Gulf Stream

BAD WEATHER I am frequently asked about the worse weather I have ever encountered. The highest winds occurred on a trip from Bermuda to Newport in the summer of 1988. FIONA was dismasted about 300 miles from Fire Island Inlet. A shortened version of the article below...

Turned away

Published in Ocean Navigator Magazine- Aug 28, 2014 Gear failures sabotage a planned Antarctic circumnavigation Eric Forsyth Eric Forsyth’s Westsail 42 Fiona nestled amongst other voyaging boats in Port Stanley, Falkland Islands. Bob Bloyer When I departed Long...

Some Things Work and Some Don’t

Part I–SAILS AND ABOVE DECKIt is 24 years since I launched Fiona, my Westsail 42, which I bought as a hull and deck and finished over an eight year period in the backyard. In some ways she might be considered old-fashioned; for example, I like a sturdy gallows...

Sail Handling in the Southern Ocean

“This article is in the Spring, 2004 issue of Ocean Voyager. Presumably to save space my comments on similar passages by other sailboats were omitted. At the end of the published version they succeeded in mixing up the time for Moitessier’s passage from...