Author: John K. Fulweiler

Regatta Rules Can Trump the COLREGS (Sometimes) Sailboat racing isn’t for cardiac candidates or simpletons. It’s a tough endeavor played atop a shifting game board with player pieces often valued in the kind of dollars many families call retirement. Maybe it’s for this reason, you skippers and Helly Handsome-wearing owners with the too-bright sneakers, should pay attention to this bit of kit about racecourse liability. Let’s disabuse the crew of something: you racing your sailboat (even…

The Boating Barrister

Sodium Law: Don’t Ride at the Bow

By John K. Fulweiler

Some of you might say I don’t write enough about legal things; that I pitter on about this and that when the reason you turned the page was to read a sodium-laced legal tidbit. Fine. Here you go. Picture a recreational boat with eight people aboard. Courts aren’t particularly good journalists and so there are always facts missing you don’t need for the legal decision, but they’d be nice to know. I’m assuming it was a bowrider-style boat. Use your mind’s eye…

The Boating Barrister

Looking Slow but Going Fast: Sleepers

By John K. Fulweiler

There’s a video you can find without too much effort. It’s Christopher Cross vibing the tired lawyer look save for the shredding he’s giving a Tom Anderson guitar. Yeah, they call it ‘yacht rock’ but him and low-key Michael McDonald unpacking “Ride Like the Wind” always gets me verklempt. I like sleepers. You know, things that belie what lie beneath, which is what today’s column is all about. There was a burgundy-colored Volvo 960 wagon into which…

The Boating Barrister

Misadventure: Will the Coast Guard Bill Me?

By John K. Fulweiler

I don’t get people hollering for help as quick as they do. I remember late nights in Maine where wizened relatives well into their cups would cut lobster lines free of props and continue carrying us children homeward; I’ve wrapped up wounds a combat battalion would consider serious with 3M’s blue masking tape; I don’t like to think about the time it was me, a sailboat and another guy in a very bad spot off a New…

The Boating Barrister

How to Roll: A Maritime Lawyer’s Guide

By John K. Fulweiler

If I had it my way, here’s how I’d roll. On the home front, I’d split my time between New England and somewhere in the Caribbean. There’s an interesting fellow, Felix Dennis, who had a place in Mustique. I like how he wrote about his time there. You should read him. He was the OG of publishing, spent a ton on wine, women, pharmaceuticals and song, and then wrapped up a hardy life with some pretty good…

The Boating Barrister

Mad Hattery: How to Act in a Marine Casualty

By John K. Fulweiler

Everyone’s mad these days. Folks can’t keep their airspeed up and the instrument panel is rattling and that left wing keeps fluttering ugly like the withers on a swaybacked horse. Not everyone has the altitude to make it back to the airport in the next few years and you see the panic in the way folks interact. Recklessness lies in the wake of economic stress and recklessness is all over the place, on the roadways and out…

The Boating Barrister

Paper Charts & Salvage Claims

By John K. Fulweiler

No paper charts. I was on a bridge the other day and was told, “Nope, no paper” in the rounded accent of a Romance language. “But why?” I asked. “Redundancy!” was the reply and I gave up at that point. Was there a sextant aboard, a stub of pencil or even a compass that didn’t require an electrical circuit? Who knows? And this was a fancy, gleaming, relatively new build. It got me thinking. Back at my…

The Boating Barrister

Laylines and Marks: When Being a Lawyer Feels Wrong

By John K. Fulweiler

On a sailboat, you don’t need a TripTik to get from here to wherever you want. You can get to some destination any dozen ways and they’ll all sound right and real and maybe even a little special, like when you’re using a sextant. Lawyering is sort of the same; it’s easy for lawyers to sail a seemingly sound argument to any port of disembarkation they want. IMO, it’s up to the courts to make sure the…

The Boating Barrister

The Big Blue: Three Centuries of Passaging

By John K. Fulweiler

There’s a fellow who crossed the Atlantic over the course of three centuries. Wild, right? But it’s true. He crossed The Big Blue from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. It’s not a riddle, but more in the vein of an historical fact as to how this occurred. More later. Right now, what I’ve got is that smattering of summer snacks you see spread out in the cockpit after dropping the hook. None of it…

The Boating Barrister

Are Boating and Finance Kinda Sus?

By John K. Fulweiler

Bloomberg or CNBC should hire me because the language of finance has a lot in common with boating. There are all sorts of headwinds and tailwinds. There’s talk of clams and shark watchers and froth and fish and tons of attention is paid the bottom. You don’t want to guess the bottom. You’d like to know where the bottom is and sometimes you’ll miss the bottom. Buy the dip; sell on the ebb. But to my eye,…