Cruising at Last: Sailing the East Coast - Tapa dura

Describes the journey the author and his wife took from Georgia to Maine and back again in a twenty-foot keel sloop they built themselves.

The pure, simple joy of sailing and cruising, the blessedness of leaning down along the wind via your wing-on-edge - that's what sparks Sunrise, a 20-foot keel sloop that the author and his wife built themselves and sailed from Georgia to Maine and back again, learning to be cruisers and having the time of their lives. This is no vast adventure clumsily told by a sailor trying to become a writer. On the contrary, Cruising at Last is a simple tale told with charm, wit, and humor by an accomplished writer learning to become a sailor.
From this gem of a book one can't help learning a great deal about East Coast cruising lore. Poking into scores of harbors, coping with harbor masters, fleeing from storms, making piloting mistakes and correcting them before it is too late - it's all here with an immediacy that sits you down in the cozy varnished cabin or puts you drooping dead tired over the tiller, where you mustn't fall asleep or it may cost you your life. What the tide books don't tell you - the importance of abandoned lighthouses, the menace of tugboats, the shortcomings of vectors and RDF, the message from crab and lobster pot buoys - is all woven into this engaging narrative.