October 2020

When the boat ramps were closed during a pandemic lockdown, our editor still managed a circumnavigation, a small one, of two ponds in his smallest boat. This issue’s Boat Profiles focus on a plywood update of a traditional faering and a sail-and-oar cruiser designed for the Race to Alaska. We join three friends for a tour of Swan’s Island off Maine’s Downeast coast and learn a new way to cedar-strip a kayak without using staples. Our gear reviews put to the test Sailrite’s walking-foot sewing machine and one of Kestrel’s wind gauges. Dan Newland, whose career covered work on both AMERICA’s Cup yachts and rocket ships, shows off the kayak he built with inlays of imaginary planets and moons.