December 2024: Why We Love Boat Shows
High season is in full swing: Locals are taste-testing favorite guavaberry Christmas concoctions. Rally crews are making landfall at hosting marinas, and teams are tuning their rigs for the super-hot racing season ahead.
With so much going on, it’s easy to let the fall 2024 frenzied boat show season drift away in our wake. But long ago, I decided the boat show experience is too valuable and important. I look forward to boat shows because that’s where I catch up with friends and find out what’s important or new and fun for cruising and racing sailors. Boat show buzz is trippy, electrified by warm and sunny days and the sizzle of comings and goings. If something cool or different is going on near or far, you can be sure it’s being talked about on the docks at a boat show.
For the team at Caribbean Compass, boat show season in Newport, Rhode Island, and in Annapolis, Maryland, was a chance to network, thank our advertisers and contributing writers and content partners, and toot our horn: Our digital footprint is growing. Our bimonthly e-letter goes out to more than 12,000 readers and 25,000 have visited our website. We couldn’t do it without our reading community, our hard-working contributors or our advertisers.
Thank you!
Elaine
P.S.
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October 2024: It’s About You — and Your Boat
Birthdays, anniversaries, and milestone markers often whiz right by me, the way watery miles slide under the hull during a bluewater passage blessed by a steady beam reach.
Who has time?
It’s bad form, I know that, so in the month of October, I’m paying attention to one big anniversary that reminds me of just how far sailors of several generations have come:
The 50th anniversary of my “alma mater” — Cruising World magazine.
If it wasn’t for Cruising World, I never would have been able to transform my life as a former newspaper reporter and wandering splinter head (aka wooden boat sailor and schooner owner) into one whose centerpiece is a legitimate career in marine journalism. I wouldn’t have been able to share the adventures of my other half, captain Rick Martell, and I, as we sailed countless boats, our own and others, all over, from the Caribbean and New England to the Med and French Polynesia. And I wouldn’t have been able to learn how to help others share their unique stories, either. CW was the best training ground I could have ever asked for.
Most importantly, if it wasn’t for CW, I wouldn’t now serve as editor-in-chief of the Caribbean Compass. While Cap’n Fatty Goodlander, a longtime colleague and contributor to both magazines, may be experiencing a senior moment when he recounts our professional relationship, those many years ago, in CW’s 50th anniversary issue*, he also makes a great point: It’s not about us.
It’s about you. It’s about your boats. It’s about how you adore your boats, the fresh air you breathe, the friends and family you surround yourself with aboard, the sweat that pours off your forehead when everything goes pear-shaped on deck or below. Boats are the drama, the suspense, the fulcrum of your aspirations and emotions.
Along with the souls who take to them, they’re also the story. A story like the one my pals Adam Loory and Jenni Rodda are creating. On their shakedown cruise to long-sought-after destinations, the couple sailed to my island home for a visit last summer aboard Soulmates. Rodger Martin originally designed the custom 40-footer for boatbuilder Eric Goetz as Katie G.
She’s a hefty quick study, having originally been built to fulfill Goetz’s passion for shorthanded offshore racing as well as extended cruising. The “fast, fun and easy to sail” monohull features water ballast, twin rudders, a plumb stem, retractable bowsprit, and a mainsail that’s 56 feet on the luff and 19 feet on the foot. “It’s a good-sized sail,” admits Adam.
Our Sunday morning reunion after I rowed out to welcome them to my little cove is a moment I treasure, and I look forward to each new update via social media. Truth be told, I can’t get enough of stories like Adam and Jenni’s, which is why in this issue, we’re launching the “Cruising Boat of the Month” photo essay of — what else — your favorite boats and onboard experiences. Sea Life, a 1997 Amel Santorin 46-ketch owned by surveyor and author Todd Duff and photographer Gayle Suhich, kicks off this new feature (see page 16).
So, dig around the camera feature of your smartphone, or if you still practice legacy methods, pull out your photo albums and scrapbooks. Tell me about your boat, your mascot, your dinghy, the fun, and the disasters. Remember: It’s about you.
Elaine Lembo
elaine@caribbeancompass.com