One of the favorite magazines from my childhood was "Yachting". The
name said it all, and the pictures were to die for. As a kid,
looking through the pages of some borrowed copy of Yachting was pure
bliss - stories about fishing the Bahamas, cruising the Caribbean,
cruising Maine and the Pacific North West - not to mention pictures of
boats, islands and women that I could never possibly aspire to.

My yacht in those days was a 12 or 14 ft row boat depending on what
year it was. Sometime around 1959 or so, at around age 14, I
graduated to a 13 ft sailing canoe, followed 3 or 4 years later by a
14 ft runabout, and then a 26 ft Hackercraft triple cockpit mahogany
speed boat after I'd started to earn some of my own money. In 1971 my
wife and I bought our first serious sailboat, a 26 ft Swedish designed
Soling keel boat which at the time was an Olympic class racer,
followed in 1974 by our first cruising sailboat, a somewhat quirky,
British built, Westerly 28. I still had not achieved the nirvana
depicted by yachting magazine but at least I had tasted a part of it.

Now, many years and quite a few boats later, Yachting magazine shows
up electronically in my in-box instead of as a well worn doctor's
office copy or at a friend's house. It has lost some of its former
allure for some reason but that may be my perception rather than some
change in the magazine. At any rate, it is what it is. Every once
in a while they still manage to get my attention however, most
recently with an article entitled "50 Best Yachting Towns". In
typical Yachting fashion it is accompanied by some halfway decent
photography.

http://www.yachtingmagazine.com/cruising-chartering/destinations/2012/08/50-best-yachting-towns-2012

It turns out that we've been to quite a few of the towns mentioned and
it's difficult to find fault with their choices, although there are
certainly some others equally deserving.

On 9/28/2012 8:47 PM, Wayne.B wrote:
One of the favorite magazines from my childhood was "Yachting". The
name said it all, and the pictures were to die for. As a kid,
looking through the pages of some borrowed copy of Yachting was pure
bliss - stories about fishing the Bahamas, cruising the Caribbean,
cruising Maine and the Pacific North West - not to mention pictures of
boats, islands and women that I could never possibly aspire to.

My yacht in those days was a 12 or 14 ft row boat depending on what
year it was. Sometime around 1959 or so, at around age 14, I
graduated to a 13 ft sailing canoe, followed 3 or 4 years later by a
14 ft runabout, and then a 26 ft Hackercraft triple cockpit mahogany
speed boat after I'd started to earn some of my own money. In 1971 my
wife and I bought our first serious sailboat, a 26 ft Swedish designed
Soling keel boat which at the time was an Olympic class racer,
followed in 1974 by our first cruising sailboat, a somewhat quirky,
British built, Westerly 28. I still had not achieved the nirvana
depicted by yachting magazine but at least I had tasted a part of it.

Now, many years and quite a few boats later, Yachting magazine shows
up electronically in my in-box instead of as a well worn doctor's
office copy or at a friend's house. It has lost some of its former
allure for some reason but that may be my perception rather than some
change in the magazine. At any rate, it is what it is. Every once
in a while they still manage to get my attention however, most
recently with an article entitled "50 Best Yachting Towns". In
typical Yachting fashion it is accompanied by some halfway decent
photography.

http://www.yachtingmagazine.com/cruising-chartering/destinations/2012/08/50-best-yachting-towns-2012

It turns out that we've been to quite a few of the towns mentioned and
it's difficult to find fault with their choices, although there are
certainly some others equally deserving.


So nice to follow your dreams... Great writeup..