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Vieques is a small island in the Spanish West Indies, off the coast of the Puerto Rican mainland. It’s part of Puerto Rico, as is nearby Culebra. We were there in 2006. That’s where we got our little sato (Puerto Rican slang for “mutt”), named Lenny. Here’s a picture of her.

(There are lots of dogs there that need homes…check out Save a Sato).

Vieques isn’t a glamorous place, but for us, that was its charm. There were no glitzy resorts, and the people who live there turn off their lights at night, so you can see every star in the sky. You can see the amazing glow of the Bioluminescent Bay, the brightest in the world. There are herds of wild horses that wander the island. And troops of little satos, most of them small terrier size, like Lenny.

Vieques earned its unique charm the hard way. In 1943, more than half of the island was turned into a naval base and the east end of the island was made a bombing range. The base was finally closed in 2004. Ironically, it was because of the naval base and the bombing range that Vieques remained undeveloped.

We just read that the Navy is planning to auction off thousands of acres of the old base (not sure about the bombing range). There are plans for big resorts and a cruise ship dock. I imagine the Viequenses are less than pleased, because Vieques has become an ecotourism destination.  Since it looks like change is on the way, if you cruise the Caribbean and haven’t been to Vieques yet, you might want to visit sooner rather than later.

We just came across this article and photo of the Portland Pudgy hard at work. We’re proud that a Portland Pudgy is aiding in the worthy cause of protecting the Bay of Fundy. This article tells how grassroots giving and a micro-grant program got a motor for Fundy Baykeepers’ Portland Pudgy.

“When Baykeeper Dave Thompson wished to extend his environmental reach in a tangible way on the bay by adding an outboard motor to the Fundy Baykeeper’s rowboat, the Portland Pudgy, he turned to Small Change Fund, a micro-philanthropy fundraising organization, which uses a grassroots-giving funding model to match donors with environmental projects.

Supporting projects that address environmental concerns with grants up to $5000, Small Change Fund was able to quickly Fundy Baykeeper Project for the motor, which assists Fundy Baykeepers in their ability to do their work more effectively and efficiently, ‘It makes it easy for us to reach the edges of the territory we are trying to protect. If we want to do work that’s some ways away from where we keep our main boat, we can easily put the Pudgy on a truck and take it there.’”

To read the article, go to Orato: Grassroots Giving Protects Our Waters. There’s an interview with Matt Abbott and David Thompson, where they talk about using their Portland Pudgy at Fundy Baykeeper Project.

We asked Portland Pudgy owners for sailing photos and got some great ones! Also lots of other pix.

Check out our new galleries here:  Portland Pudgy Photo Galleries.

This is our second post about boating gift ideas for your skipper or first mate. When your boat is shrink-wrapped and you’re holed up waiting for spring to come again, books about boating keep hope alive.

We already talked about boating love stories and kid’s books about boats. Now we’re going to share some nautical gift ideas about Boating How-To and Reference Books, Maritime History, Tales of Survival at Sea, and beautiful Boating Coffee Table Books.  We considered an additional category…Boating Books for Dreamers…but then realized that any good book about boating not only provides practical knowledge, it’s also the stuff of dreams (even if it’s just about installing a new head). Here are a few suggestions in these categories. We hope you share some of the boating books you love.

Boating How-To Books and Boating Reference Books:

• Living Aboard a Boat, Mark Nichols. This will help you turn your dreams to reality…from buying the right boat, choosing the right marina, and setting yourself up for life aboard.
• Essential Sailing Destinations, Adrian Morgan. Adrian Morgan, editor. How to make your cruising dream a reality. This books gives you essential information about a host of incredible destinations, from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, to the US East Coast, to Australasia. It tells you about family friendliness, chartering, best cruising months, local language, and currency, and more.
• Twenty Affordable Sailboats to Take You Anywhere, by Gregg Nestor. Twenty affordable, comfortable, and seaworthy sailboats. These boats range in size from 30–38 feet, an ideal size for the cruising couple. These boats are still readily available in the used boat market.
• Spanish for Cruisers, second edition, Katy Parsons.  A unique yachtsman’s phrasebook, nautical dictionary, and conversation guide all in one. It was written for cruising the  Spanish-speaking countries of the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Europe (sigh). It’s divided into 28 topics specifically geared to the boaters’ life and the charter yacht crew needs. Spanish phrases you’ll need to communicate with port captains, officials, marina and boatyard staff, mechanics, technicians, dayworkers, fishermen and divers.
• A Field Guide to Sailboats of North America, Richard M. Sherwood. A field guide much like Roger Tory Peterson’s birding books. A fun and informative pastime when you’re out on the water.
• The Lo-Tech Navigator, Tony Crowley. This classic teaches you the rudiments of celestial navigation, measuring speed with a drogue, making your own sextant, and much more. A serious book for adults, but it also would be a fantastic science book for teenagers living aboard.
• The 12-Volt Bible, Miner Brotherton, rev. by Ed Sherman. All about your boat’s electrical system.

Maritime History Books:

• Before the Wind. The Memoir of an American Sea Captain, 1808-1833. Charles Tyng. Viking. My absolute favorite in this genre. Captain Tyng is a wonderful character. You meet him when he’s a schoolboy right before his parents pack him off as a cabin boy, and you travel with him all over the world. A wonderful book and a great way to learn history.
• 1421. The Year China Discovered America. Gavin Menzies. Menzies posits that the Chinese admiral Xeng He discovered America before Columbus. OK, a lot of it may be a bit farfetched, but if any of it is true, Wow! An engrossing book that raises a lot of questions (and perhaps tries to answer more than it should).
• The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators, and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier, Colin Woodard. Penguin. Required reading for Maine-o-philes.
• A Viking Voyage: In Which an Unlikely Crew of Adventurers Attempts an Epic Journey to the New World, Hodding Carter.  A fascinating, informative, and entertaining book about Hodding Carter’s inspired reenactment of a Viking Voyage of discovery. “A celebration of the people and places Carter visits and a treasure-trove of fascinating Viking lore, here is an unforgettable story of friendship and teamwork–and the thrill of accomplishing a goal that once seemed impossible,” (from Amazon.com).

Coffee Table Books about Boats.

• Herreshof of Bristol, Maynard Bray and Carlton Pineiro. Gorgeously illustrated history of America’s reknowned yacht builder.
  
• A Century Under Sail, Stanley Rosenfeld. A beautiful collection of over 200 photographs by nautical photographers Morris and Stanley Rosenfeld.
• Welcome Aboard. Inside the World’s Classic Yachts. Matthew Walker. Publisher: First Glance Books. Gorgeous interiors of twenty-nine world class yachts. A pleasure to look at and a great source of ideas (even if you’re just fixing up a 24 foot catboat).
• Historic Sail. The Glory of the Sailing Ship from the 13th to the 19th Century. Howarth and Wheatley. Greenhill Historic Series. Astounding drawings filled with detail. Absolutely beautiful and chock full of information.

Tales of Survival at Sea (and other hair-raising stories):

• Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea. Steve Callahan.  Mariner Books (October 17, 2002). Riveting, terrifying, and inspiring story of Steve Callahan’s ordeal. Inspiring because of his ingenuity and will to live and his spiritual journey.
• Lifeboat: A History of Courage, Cravenness, and Survival at Sea. John R. Stilgoe. U. of Virginia Press. Lots of scary stories.
• The Proving Ground. G. Bruce Knecht. Warner Books. Tragic, “pulse-pounding” story of the tragic 1998 Sydney-Hobart Race.
• South: The Endurance Expedition. Ernest Shackleton. Signet. Incredible story of courage and inspired leadership.

This is the first of a few posts about boating-related gift ideas. We’re talking nautical gift ideas for those of us who can’t give our loved ones mega-yachts (not this holiday season at least).

Our first boating-related gift idea is boating-related BOOKS (in future posts, we’ll talk about other good boating stuff).

Books. If you live where there is an off-season (like here in Maine for example), what better way to keep hope alive while your boat is on the hard, than to immerse yourself in maritime lore? Amuse yourself and get smart by learning all about maritime history. Make your hair stand on end reading tales of survival at sea. Why not sit by the fire and teach yourself new knots, or learn celestial navigation?

We’ll list six categories of nautical boats that interest us:

• Kid’s Books about Boats and Boating
• Boating Love Stories (people in love with their boats)
• Maritime History Books
• Boating How-To Books
• Tales of Survival at Sea
• Coffee Table Books about Boats.

This post will list a few books in the first two categories. We’ll continue with more in the next post.This is just a few, to get started. If we think of more, we’ll add them. We hope you share some of the boating books you love.

Kid’s Books about Boats and Boating-Related Stuff (including pirates). For ages 3 to 16.

• Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary “Jacky” Faber, Ship’s Boy. A series by L.A. Meyer (PORTLAND PUDGY OWNER!). Publisher: Graphia. The whole series is wonderful. It’s the beginning of the 19^th century. An orphan girl, turned street urchin, disguises herself as a boy and signs on as cabin-boy (soon to become a pirate). Our daughter read every one of these books (she finally outgrew them by the end of 8^th grade). They ranked right up there with Harry Potter for her and her friends (boys, too). Read all about this wonderful series on the Internet: (Google search page for L.A. Meyer).
  
• Kidnapped and Treasure Island.  Robert Louis Stevenson. Scribner’s. We’re lucky enough to have old copies with N.C. Wyeth illustrations. But even without the old illustrations, they’re great stories that we tested on our kid (who loved them).
• The Seawolf. Jack London. Macmillan 1904. An engrossing story.
• Lighthouses of North America!: Exploring Their History, Lore & Science. Lisa Trumbauer. Ideals Publishing Corporation. Interesting book for kids who spend a lot of time on boats.
• One Morning in Maine and Time of Wonder. Two books by Robert McCloskey that convey the magic of coastal Maine.
• The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge. A wonderful story about the power of a little light house. Probably from the 1950’s. I remember it from my childhood.

Boating Love Stories (people in love with their boats)

• A Unit of Water, a Unit of Tim: Joel White’s Last Boat. Douglass Whynott. Publisher: Doubleday. About boat designer Joel White, of Brooklin, Maine. A beautiful book. A “poignant tale of both a genius at work and the people devoted to his art. Evoking E.B. White’s New England and its salty residents, A Unit of Water, a Unit of Time is a classic portrait of dignity, charm, and humble magnificence-and of a maritime community that keeps a vanishing world alive” (from Amazon).
• The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float. Farley Mowatt. Publisher: Bantam Books. Very funny, kind of silly (and true) story about a man in love with his old jalopy of a boat.
• Gipsy Moth Circles the World. Sir Francis Chichester. Publisher: International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press. Encouraging for us boomers: “When 65-year-old Francis Chichester set sail on his solitary eastward journey around the world in 1966, many believed he wouldn’t return alive. But when the old man returned nine months later, he had made history’s fastest circumnavigation” from Amazon.com.

To be continued…

We feel strongly that sailors should provide their own ditch bags. It’s common knowledge that the emergency supplies provided with life rafts are minimal and usually woefully inadequate.

We keep two ditch bags stowed inside our Portland Pudgy. Before assembling them, we researched ditch bags carefully and found the Equipped to Survive website an extremely useful source: http://www.equipped.com/abndnship.htm.

A USCG helicopter rescue pilot volunteered to us that in his opinion the single most important piece of survival equipment is a signal mirror.

Thankfully, we haven’t had to use our emergency equipment, so we don’t know what we’d wish we’d brought. For the sake of sanity, along with everything else, we’ve packed a deck of cards, a waterproof log and pencils, and some inspirational reading. None of it takes up much space and could save us from going bonkers.

We’d love to know what you consider most indispensable.

We’re getting ready to send two Portland Pudgys to the Falkland Islands. It’s gratifying when boating people in harsh climates appreciate the Pudgy’s potential as a lifeboat and as an everyday knock-around dinghy.

We’ve sent several Pudgys to Alaska and a couple of Pudgys to Newfoundland, but something about being so close to Antarctica is particularly intriguing to us.  They have penguins for goodness sake! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM440pwG1kk&feature=related.

To learn more about cruising around the Falkland Islands, look here:  http://www.cruiserswiki.org/wiki/Falkland_Islands

Footnote for nature fans: Charles Darwin was in the Falklands back in 1835.  He was fascinated by the the only land mammal on the archipelago, the unique Falkland Islands wolf, which he correctly predicted would be hunted to extinction. It also turns out he correctly hypothesized that the wolf must have arrived in the Falklands via iceberg. http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2009/11/16/researchers-finally-solve-charles-darwin-mystery?PageNr=1

The Portland Pudgy blog has been up and running for three days. We want it to be a place where Pudgy owners (and other boat owners) can connect with each other,  as well as a place where we can keep you posted about what we’re up to.  We also plan to post useful information about boating safety and fun.

We welcome your comments. To leave a comment, click on the title of any post (for example, “Portland Pudgy’s new blog,” or “Kite Sailing In Maine”).  A Leave a Reply text box appears at the bottom of the page. Type away! Then click Post Comment.