M A R L I N    B R E E

 

It was a pleasure to be asked by Small Craft Advisor magazine to answer a reader's request -- whatever happened to Gerry Spiess? I was able to write in the SCA Reader Mail (July-Aug 2009) that Gerry sailed his 10-foot Yankee Girl across the South Pacific averaging 65 NM a day (and often reeling off 100 NM  Read More 

I appeared today on Stan Turner's radio show on KLBB, Stillwater, MN., and it was a real pleasure interviewed by the top radio interviewer around anywhere. Stan made it sound very easy as he interviewed me on my new book, The Dangerous Book for Boaters. We shared a fewchuckles over "dangerous" information. Good show!

How very nice to get a message from the Discovery Channel (you know, Man vs. Wild, Deadliest Catch, Titanic, etc.) and to talk with them about some of the stuff I had written about my adventures. They're based in London and so I had to watch time zones when we did talk on the  Read More 

I've been looking over Persistence after her long winter storage and I'm delighted to see that the two-part polyurathane finish is holding up so well. I only did one section in the "poly" -- the transom area, which usually gets hit hardest by sunlight --and this is still glossy and better looking than the varnish sections. Expensive? You bet. Worth it? Think so. Read More 

The Dangerous Book for Boaters is out and reviewer's average rating is a terrific 4 out of 5 stars. Says Dennis Renault: Anyone who has owned or crewed on a boat, or simply observed the boating fraternity first hand, will find something to laugh at, very likely the reader himself."

On Monday, rain or shine and probably rain, Persistence comes out of her winter-long indoor storage at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. It's supposed to rain and maybe be a thunderstorm, but the boat and I have been through worse. Ah, the sap is coming up in the trees and spring is here. Let the  Read More 

The Dangerous Book for Boaters will be coming off the presses in April, 2009. Fun? Well, I hope readers have as much fun reading it as I had writing it. A hint: This is not your average boating humor book. For one thing, it's ...well..dangerous!

I wondered how the world's biggest boat show would come off this year. If there were fewer boats, and I am certain there were, The Ft. Lauderdale International Boat Show didn't show. Instead, the queens of the fleet -- the Italian super and mega yachts over 100 feet LOA --- drew the crowds and I had the  Read More 

When I arrived at the fishing museum in Tofte, I figured that we'd get maybe a dozen or so people to attend the museum's 50th anniversary commemoration of the epic deed of The Old Man and the Inland Sea. Instead, people kept arriving until the small floorspace was filled -- and then they filled the entryway and an adjacent room. What a great turnout. Read More 

The 50th anniversary of the great battle between an old man and an ice storm on the inland sea will be coming up on Thanksgiving. It was the day before the holiday that Helmer Aakvik, Hovland, Minn., went out in his open skiff to try to find his neighbor, "The Kid," as a great storm desended on Lake Superior. His epic struggle for survival as he and his boat faced huge waves, freezing temperatures and ice became the tale I wrote about in Broken Seas. I later wrote a magazine feature that won the top boating writers award for 2007. I'll be at the North Shore Commercial Fishing Museum in Tofte,Minn., on Nov. 29 to talk about my research on "the old man" and his epic survival tale.  Read More