Author: Chris Szepessy

A three-time J/24 World Champion who’s won titles in numerous other one-design classes, Brad Read has served as Executive Director at Sail Newport in Newport, Rhode Island for nearly a quarter century. “Sailing on the family cruiser-racer as a young sailor allowed me to see the sport from various angles,” Brad recalls. “Gunkholing in the harbors of southeastern New England allowed our parents to teach us the proper way to anchor and raft to other boats, basic…

Connecting people to the water at The WaterFront Center Story and photos by Rick Bannerot One does not need to make too large a leap between the dock and the gunwales of Hobie catamarans, Sonars, a Mariner 36, J/105s, or a 125-year-old oyster sloop. What you first need is access to the docks, floating rafts and moorings where these kinds of boats are kept in the summer. You also need a compelling reason to amass such a…

By Paul Jacobs & Tom McDonald The Discovery Last October, after a splendid autumn sail on our 1990 Catalina 34 Pleiades, my wife Nancy and I returned to her mooring in Wickford Harbor, Rhode Island had some nice wine and cheese in the cockpit, cleaned up, and departed the mooring in our dinghy. Taking the usual track back to NorthWick Marina, I happened to spot a lovely sailboat to starboard that I had not noticed before. I…

100 Tips for a Pet-Friendly Voyage By Michelle Segrest Published by Navigate Content, Inc. 102 pages E-book Our friend Michelle Segrest has written the definitive work on the subject of bringing canine companions on board a sailboat. If you’re contemplating a sail with your dog, whether for an afternoon or an ocean crossing, How to Sail with Dogs is a wealth of information about everything you need to know to sail comfortably and safely with dogs. Chapters…

By Melissa Pappas, Save the Sound Ecological Communications Specialist Not too long ago, millions of river herring swam through Connecticut’s rivers each spring. These silver highways of fish making their way back to the place they were hatched were showing signs of rebounding after decades of decline. Last year, Jon Vander Werff, Save the Sound’s fish biologist, counted almost 200 alewife, the larger of the two species of river herring, in a trap at Konold’s Pond on…

The Mixed Offshore Doublehanded European Championship By Barbara “Basia” A. Karpinska Between the pandemic and tough competition for new Olympic sports, we now know that the efforts pioneering Mixed Offshore Doublehanded as a new discipline in Olympic Sailing will need to continue beyond the Games in Paris 2024. Initiated in 2019 in a one-design boat called the L30 (developed by Rodion Luka and designed by Andrej Justin), over the course of the last three years the event…

By David Schwartz The Narragansett Bay Yachting Association held its annual ‘Round The Bay race on Saturday, July 30. NBYA worked with The Nature Conservancy, a global conservation organization dedicated to conserving the lands and waters on which all life depends. Working in this state for fifty years, The Nature Conservancy has helped to conserve 35,000 acres of land in Rhode Island and to protect the quality of the waters we sail in. The seventeen boats racing…

By Nick Bowen   The Twenty Hundred Club had their third race of the season on Saturday, July 23. This was also their first of two destination races. The “Cuttyhunk Race” starts just south of Rose Island near the “G3” buoy, takes the sailors about four nautical miles south to buoy “R2” at Brenton Reef. This mark is about two nm south of Castle Hill where the boats turn east for a 19.5 nm run across Rhode…

Sarah Anker, a current Suffolk County legislator who lives in Mt. Sinai, NY, has published a children’s picture book on ocean pollution entitled Below the Ocean: Keeping Our Sea Friends Safe. The book targets young children ages 2- 10 years and provides an engaging story about a young seal and her encounters with ocean pollution. “Having raised three children and knowing how important it is to teach our kids about respecting and maintaining our environment, I decided…

By Tom McKeon   Twenty-nine years is arguably a milestone for any event. This is exactly what will take place October 1, 2022 when the Peconic Bay Sailing Association’s Whitebread 29 race committee’s horn sounds! Like any great event, the Whitebread had humble beginnings. Twenty-nine years ago, after a weekly Wednesday night summer race around Robins Island, a small group of New Suffolk sailors gathered at the Galley Ho restaurant and decided (after a few cocktails, from…