Welcome to Zartman Cruising, the blog with which we hope more fully to chronicle our family’s sailing adventures, with all the mishaps, triumphs and in-betweens that come our way. If you’ve not read our stories in Cruising World or BoatUS magazines, take a quick peek at the “About Us” page, or browse the links to magazine articles and books in the sidebar to get a picture of who we are and what we’re doing. As time goes by we hope to fill this website out with lots more resources: cruising ideas, navigation tips, child-rearing solutions, everything, in short, that’s on our minds. But these things take time, and for now our blog begins in Newport, Rhode Island, at the end of what’s proved to be a long-ish winter. Tomorrow is the first day of Spring, yet it snowed again this morning, leaving a slushy mess on all the piers at the marina, and sliding off of the shrink-wrap winter canopy with a soft “whoosh” as the day warmed up.
Our neighbors tell us that last winter wasn’t like this; that snow only fell once or twice. It would have been a perfect year for getting the boat ready for an early start. This year is not, and the list of things to do once we can remove the winter canopy is staggering. Of course there’s still plenty to do while under wraps—borrowed charts to photocopy, sort and fold; new kit to shop for; this website to set up, even—but we’ve been at that all winter and are ready for a change. With a sailing date set almost in stone, the rest of the time is just filler. But we need to fill it with action if we’re going to cast off before Memorial Day to sail to Nova Scotia. If we’re late for that, we’ll have to rush through to get to Newfoundland in time, and if we’re late for that, our window to cross the Atlantic to Ireland might catch us unprepared or unrested. So come on, Winter! We have big hopes for this year, and we need to put some action behind them if we’re going to see them accomplished.