Nav Problems

Juan Manuel Ballestero, a 47-year-old sailor, had a problem.

As we experience the disjointing of our lives during this pandemic, it is useful to put it in historical perspective.

It was cold on the morning of Nov. 20, 2019, when Dan Torchio and his crew of two slipped the lines off Rhapsody, a Passport 47 aft cockpit cutter, departing the safe confines of Greenport, N.Y.

Residents of Greenport, N.Y., a small maritime village on the northeast end of Long Island, have been watching all sorts of sailing ships come and go over the past couple hundred years.

In its day — more than 500 years ago — the nao (ship) Santa Maria embodied a sailing design that was as modern then as the fastest-designed sailboats are today.

Although it fished on the Grand Banks, still holding the record of catching 74 swordfish in one day — with harpoon — the schooner Roseway wasn’t built as a commercial vessel.

While he is best remembered as the designer of a host of famous yachts including the Westsail, Pacific Seacraft, Cabo Rico, Dana 24 and Columbia, English-born W.I.B. Crealock (1920-2009) began his love affair with sailboats in 1948 when he and three friends sailed from England to British Guiana.

Charles W. Morgan is the last remaining American whaling ship of a fleet that once numbered over 2,000 vessels.

The first Golden Globe nonstop around-the-world race was held 50 years ago in 1968-69 as a response to Sir Francis Chichester’s single-handed, one-stop circumnavigation a few years before.

Many a ship has sailed with a cat aboard. Cats were often carried on sailing ships to hunt rodents but also simply for their companionship.

By the time we reach the 118th chapter of Moby Dick, we are either emotionally exhausted or enthralled, sometimes both.

This past summer, the Viking great ship, Draken, toured the U.S. East Coast.

It was considered just a regular passage, from Liverpool to New York City.

Imagine a 470-foot steel box. Then add seven 190-foot steel poles, Put sails on those poles — 25 in all, about 43,000 square feet — and then fill the box up with cargo.

La Amistad — ironically the Spanish word for friendship — was anything but that to the captured slaves forced onto the vessel in 1839.

Although mostly now remembered as the captain of HMS Beagle in her five-year voyage around the world with a young Charles Darwin, Robert FitzRoy was a man of the scientific age who made contributions in many fields.

In 1975, Marty Sarandria was a typical 15-year-old — long hair, rock and roll guitarist, going through high school — when his parents pulled him from school.

Rachel and Ebenezer, possibly the first ferrocement coasting schooner working in the schooner travel business, began as an idea in the mind of an engineer at Bath Iron Works in Maine.

The term “Bermuda Triangle” gets thrust into common usage from a series of disappearances of crews and ships beginning in the 1920s.

Oliver Hazard Perry, the man (1785-1819), was born into a family of naval officers

There is an intriguing picture on the Internet of a young girl on a small raft just as she is rescued, with a caption reading something to the effect of “Survivor of Shipwreck.”

Seen from the bridge of the British steamship Gladys Royale on a cold January day of 1917 in the North Atlantic, the white cloud on the horizon resolved itself into a three-masted sailing ship.

From the time it was discovered in 1616 by the Dutchman Willem Schouten, and named for the town of his birth, Hoorn, Cape Horn has held the image of doom and redemption, heartache and tragedy in the minds of mariners.

From the latter part of the 19th century through the 1920s, square-rigged deepwater sailing ships still carried cargo competitively.