Joel Petrow is an expatriate nuclear engineer visiting Williamsburg who decided to brush up on his sailing skills with an inDSCN3329formal lesson on a bright afternoon along the York River. He and his family live in Friedrichsdorf, Germany, outside Frankfurt. He found one big difference with America to be the walk-ability of German towns and much of Europe, vs. having to drive everywhere here. Some New England towns still have it, and the Petrows are thinking of retiring to Park City, Utah, where he can ski every day and enjoy a sophisticated small town. The family has become so assimilated in Europe that the Swiss Alps are also on the retirement list. (We should be so lucky.) One similarity he found is that American pop culture and media are pervasive in Europe, largely through the Internet.

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Orphans Sail

Orphans Sail

In perhaps the most significant sail of my life, I got to take out 12 orphans from the Milton Hershey School. Broken into two 2-hour sails with six boys each, they got to learn how to sail the York River off Yorktown and to enjoy the luxury of cruising on

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Nautical Chaos

Nautical Chaos

Dozens of deadrises and hundreds of observers on land and sea mingled during the annual Battle of the Boats off Riverwalk Landing. It was hard to determine who won after several heats. The next day offered a unique contest to see how fast a deadrise can go in reverse while

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Big Winds, Big Noise by Navy

Big Winds & Big Noise by Navy

I’m sometimes asked, “What’s it like to sail in big winds?” Adventurous, but the winds come and go. On this day, big winds for days suddenly calmed by the time Debbie Kremer of Arizona brought her beau Bob Wickley of San Antonio to sail the York River. We quietly tacked

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