So often, when we have met folks on a boating holiday, they spend hours up on the bow, “catching the rays” so that when they go back to work they will hear “wow, what a great tan.”
However, talk to a derm and they will tell you, having seen so much sun damage and worse, over the years, that there is simply no such thing as a good tan. Yes, nearly everyone knows that excessive sun, or at least extra ultraviolet (UV) radiation, sunburn or not, is not good for you.
According to the American Cancer Society, melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer, can develop anywhere on your body, even those areas “where the sun don’t shine”. Interestingly, the risk of melanoma is increasing in people under 40 and understanding what to look for is important before the cancer spreads, leading to better survival.
Unchecked, melanoma is often fatal, in part because even an advanced case often doesn’t look like much, more like a mole with irregular boarders. This image shows how innocuous it can appear. 
I am particularly focused on this because Brenda was diagnosed with melanoma three years ago after we got back from Cuba. She had noticed a small spot on her arm some months earlier,when we were in the Bahamas, that looked a lot like the spot in the photo above but it wasn’t until we returned home in May that she had a dermatologist at Yale Medicine check it out. Fortunately for Brenda, hers had only progressed slightly beyond stage one, but that diagnosis was upsetting in itself as she was told that a recurrence was perhaps 1 in four, not great odds.
Even though the lesion didn’t look like much, the surgery to remove it proved to be quite extensive, involving the removal of the equivalent of a modest “ice cream scoop” of tissue, all the way down to the muscle. Even more fun was that they then made an incision from the borders of the excised section that extended in both directions nearly to her shoulder and elbow. This had to be done so that they could pull the edges of the “ice cream scoop” together without causing a divot or pucker where the incision was the deepest.
Additionally, they removed some sentinel nodes in her armpit for testing to see if the cancer had migrated beyond the lesion on her arm. Fortunately, these came up negative. The point of telling you this is that even the smallest melanoma is a big deal and is generally dealt with aggressively, which speaks volumes of the danger that it represents.
When Brenda was diagnosed, we did wonder if our sailing days were over because of the need to avoid unnecessary exposure to the sun going forward. For us, it was doubly important that we find out how much protection from UV that Brenda would have aboard during the brightest portions of the day, from around 10:00 to 16:00 hrs, when the sun was most intense.
With this in mind, I purchased a testing instrument from General Instruments that would accurately measure both UVA and UVB light waves, the parts of the light spectrum that have been identified as being the most damaging to skin.
According to the instrument maker’s website, “The #UV512C UVC light meter is ideal for applications such as UV curing and sterilization, semiconductor fabrication, offset printing, environmental monitoring and industrial process control.” Ok, sounded pretty official and scientific to me.
The big question was how much UV would Brenda be exposed to at “high noon” in the Caribbean, aboard Pandora, where we spend a good deal of time each winter.
We’ve also heard, over the years, that you can get a bad burn from “reflected UV” off of the water and this alarmed us as, even with a bimini overhead, it seemed to be an impossible task to eliminate the UV coming in from the sides of our enclosure, reflected off of the water.
In theory, Pandora has better sun protection than most with her hard dodger and fully enclosed cockpit. 
As an aside, you may be wondering if being enclosed all the time is too hot in the tropics, it isn’t. Actually, the full enclosure has proven to be particularly helpful at keeping the relentless trade winds to a manageable level. However, up in the NE, where the winds are often light, we need to open things up much more.
When we were in Antigua, and that’s plenty far south with really intense sun, even in the winter months, I took a number of measurements, with the meter, at noon when the sun is most intense. Here’s what I found, some of what surprised me.
Control: As a control I took measurements directly into the noon sun, in a cloudless sky. The reading, and the highest that will register on the instrument, weas 10,000 units. Deep shade, away from the water, registered between 500 and 600 units, about 5%.
Sunscreen: Then I put a small piece of plastic wrap over the sensor and checked full sun again that showed readings in the 8,500 range, suggesting that very thin plastic wrap let through most of the UV light. Next, I put a very light smear of SPF 15 sunscreen and the reading, again in full sun, was about 2,000. With a thicker spread of SPF 15, half of that. SPF 60 yielded a reading of 600, a lot less, about the same as in deep shade.
Surprises: Perhaps the most interesting readings came from pointing the unit toward the sun at 45 degrees off of the water, simulating “reflective light” where I only received a reading of 2,000, only 20% of full sun. That was much less than I had expected. Further, in the middle of the cockpit, where the light was still very bright, the measurements were equivalent to deep shade.
Vinyl blocks UV: I also took measurements through the clear plastic of the vinyl dodger, both new and old material, and the measurement was, again, zero. Even old and weathered vinyl cut out 100% of the UV rays. I found that astonishing, however I guess it does make sense as the material is treated to resist UV degradation.
Glass does not block UV: My hard dodger has large pieces of tempered glass and I was surprised to find that it only blocked 10% of the UV rays. All of this suggested that during the brightest parts of the day Brenda was very well protected under the bimini, even if it seemed so bright that sunglasses were required.
Clothing protects from UV: So, what about clothing? I tried an old white T shirt and found that, even when wet, it blocked about 95% of UV with a dry shirt letting through somewhat more. I was particularly surprised by that given all the hype about UV protective clothing. My test suggests that just about any clothing that covers you up works well, even if it doesn’t have a “UV rating”. I guess that putting a UV rating on clothing is about the same as saying that a particular shirt has “100% blockage against vampires”. Works for me.
All of this is good news but I guess that the most surprising thing to me was how low the UV exposure was under the dodger and bimini. And that clear vinyl windows were just as effective as being down below when it came to exposure, and that even the lightest white clothing, “UV protected” or not, provided good protection.
The good news for Brenda is that two and a half years out from her surgery she is doing well and her doctor told her recently that her risk of recurrence now is “very, very small”, which is good news.
His advice to her is that it’s OK to continue spending time aboard Pandora but to always use plenty of sunscreen and to do her best to stay out of the sun when it is most intense.
One way or the other, we are taking his advice very seriously but it’s nice to know that being aboard Pandora we can still manage the risk.
So, there you have it. reflected UV isn’t nearly as much of a problem as everyone thinks, sunscreen really does work and most any clothing does an excellent job of keeping harmful UV out.
We continue to keep our fingers crossed that Brenda won’t have a recurrence and every year that passes makes that less likely, which is good news.
All and all, this experience has certainly made the phrase “there’s no such thing as a good tan”, means more to us than ever.
Ok, so with our UV exposure in the winter up here in New England so low, I wonder if we will develop a vitamin D deficiency. Great, something new to worry about.
I can’t wait till May. Are we there yet?
And speaking of queasy, the muscular build of this Canadian cost guard boat gives a pretty good feel for how rough it can get out on the water there. 
We brought along our car on the ferry, then a tiny diesel VW Rabbit. Remember them? That car got AMAZING mileage, about 50 mpg, on average. And, I remember that diesel was $.47 a gallon. And, during the oil embargo I sometimes bought fuel oil from a place in Bridgeport CT. I’d pull up to the heating oil place and they’d snake a hose out from the shop and fill me up. Totally illegal. Ah, those were the days. I won’t talk about my income in those years. About as low, or perhaps lower than the price of fuel. I was selling advertising for a local free newspaper. 
We have always loved lighthouses and to this day go out of my way to visit them when we travel. This one, in Yarmouth is on Cape Forchu is well known and often photographed. We climbed up to the top to take in the view. The light went round and round and as it passed, you could feel the heat of the bulb as it passed, like a rotisserie. Brenda thought it was great too until the foghorn went off. It was so loud that it made us weak in the knees. To this day it still takes some coaxing to get her up in an active lighthouse. 
We have only camped in a tent twice together, the first time was while we were in college, near Niagara Falls. It rained the whole time and we quickly learned that the tent was not waterproof and that didn’t even include the fact that there was no bottom to the tent, waterproof or not. Water coming in from above and below.
Not a great shot but I include this as it features our wok, perched over an open fire. We filled it with seaweed and added two lobsters. That wok has served us faithfully for all these years. We still use it nearly every day. After that trip it was really well seasoned. 
One evening, or was it the only evening we camped there?, we heard someone playing bagpipes in the waning twilight. It was a remarkable moment with the forlorn music and fog wafting over the campsite.
To this day I still get a thrill when I see a schooner. On this trip we went out for a day sail on the schooner 
Brenda is a prolific fiber artist, graduating from her early focus on knitting. I believe that this may have been her first sweater knitted with “real” yarn. This particular photo is one of my all time favorites. 
When she was younger, but not a lot younger than she is in this photo, she didn’t have access to good yarn, or any, for that matter, and had to knit a single ball of red yarn, probably (gasp) acrylic, rip it out and knit it up again. She still has to rip things out but not because of a lack of good yarn. Quite the contrary, her “stash” is prodigious.
Pride was quite authentic down to her beautiful gig. 
In the “they don’t make them like they used to” category, how about the hull of this fishing boat? Not a lot made these days of planked wood. She’s a beauty, or at least once one as she’s certainly long gone. 
The tides in the Bay of Fundy are known as being among the highest in the world, as high as 40′. That’s a lot of water moving in and out of the huge Bay of Fundy, twice a day. As the tide floods the water surges in, moving a small wave ahead of it. This is referred to as a “bore” and is pretty impressive to see as the ridge of white water rolling inland across any inlet or bay. 
Perhaps the most photographed harbor in Nova Scotia is 
Charming fishing boats at every turn. 
Where there is “quaint”, there are artists capturing the view. Peggy’s Cove is no different. 
With big tides, all you have to do to haul a boat is to pull it up at high tide and let the receding tide do the rest. 
Just about all of the boats we saw were still built of wood and the cottages surrounding the harbor, oh so quaint. I expect that many of these have been sold, over the years, to summer residents, known in Maine as “from away”. 
We visited, of course, the local lighthouse. Looks like Brenda’s waiting for the wind to blow up her skirt. Me too…
And, speaking of breezy, the coastline here is quite rugged and windswept. I can only imagine what it is like in the dead of winter. 
With the constant wind not a lot grows higher than knee high.
We went out on a day fishing boat, jigging for squid and even caught some cod.
Ready to head out to sea. 
We even caught a flounder, sole, fluke, something like that. It’s flat anyway. Not sure she’d “soil” her hands on an icky fish these days. 
It was on this very trip that we talked about buying a boat for the first time. There was a small boat show in Yarmouth, If I recall. I expect that this photo was taken when I said “Hey, let’s buy a boat”. “Very funny Bob, perhaps not.” 
The coastline is so spectacular. Maine is very similar so we’ll see this sort of view next summer which will mark our 15th time to visit Maine aboard our own boat. I went to Maine briefly a few years ago but Brenda hasn’t been there since I retired over six years ago. 
Lovely views. I wonder if it looks the same nearly 40 years later. 
Ok, how about a photo of me for balance? Funny, seems that I had more hair then. 
Well, it’s getting late and I need to pack for our trip to MD tomorrow to celebrate our grandaughter Tori’s birthday. She’s a real cutie.
A lot of water has gone under our keel since this photo was taken but it’s nice to know that we will soon be making memories again in Canada this coming summer.
We headed out, aboard Tao, with our friends, Chris and Pat for the run back to Bridgeport where we planned to keep her. I was a happy guy. Happy to have a boat that was better looking than my hat. Well, this shot wasn’t taken on that exact day, but it illustrates my point. 
Brenda, perhaps happy as well but only until she discovered, to her extreme distress, that she was prone to nausea when things got bumpy. Which on a small boat, is nearly all of the time. I wish I could say that she eventually got over it, but not completely, even to this day, 40 years later.
Well, we finally made it to Bridgeport where I had arranged for a mooring to be installed off of the beach, down the street from the duplex apartment that we were renting at the time.
We hung out with our friends Chris and Pat along with others, nearly every weekend. No outboard engines on our dinks in those days. Chris and Garrett with me in the bow. Good thing it was a calm anchorage. Rub a dub, dub…
We joined the Catboat Association and were members for many years. Eventually, Brenda and I ended up on the board, or “steering committee”. Get it “steering” the association, like a boat? Clever? We thought so.
And anchor we did. I particularly like this shot of Brenda. What a dish. I’d totally date that girl. To starboard, a mop, or some bleach blond chick. No, a mop, really. 
However, anchoring alone was rare for us as we nearly always rafted up with other small boats. Somehow three tiny boats tied up together don’t seem, well, so tiny. That became even more important when we all started popping out kiddos. However, we weren’t in a rush, as while we were “yacht owners” we didn’t want to bring kids into the world until we were really settled.
This is where Toby and Martha lived, in the main house. It was built by 
I was a really charming little cottage, once the home of the estate gardener and also built by Remington. 
It was a great spot and the deck, nearly as large as our cottage, provided a spectacular view. 
I loved working out in the yard, or should I say, the South 40, clearing brush and cutting dead wood for the wood stove. Toby and Martha were very happy to have the help, I think. I am not absolutely positive about that, but they were always very gracious. They left us pretty much alone and it wasn’t until years later that we really became good friends. We all wished we had spent more time together when we lived in the cottage.
It was a lovely cottage. I believe this is a shot of the living room. Want to guess what time of the year it is? That’s right Christmas. Gold star for you.
It was aboard Tao that we learned to enjoy gin and tonics, perhaps from Toby and Martha. It must have been too early in the day for that when this shot was taken. We are still in regular touch with Chris and Pat, to this day. Our youngest is named for Chris, actually.
We fished but once caught, we had no idea what to do with our catch on on such a small boat. Besides, who actually eats bluefish?
In those days, no protection from the weather so foul weather gear was in use nearly all of the time. Brenda just loved being coated with salt, even on a sunny day. Tao was a wet boat and to make matters worse, no shower. There’s that hat again. I guess it was on sale. I can’t think of any other reason I’d buy it. Heck, perhaps it was free. Had to be…
Not sure about how this shot fits in. I just like it. 
We sailed as late into the season as we could and I can still remember the one Memorial Day Weekend when I couldn’t get the boat ready in time. I wasn’t happy at all about that. Mechanical problems, I recall. Isn’t that always the reason?
I guess Brenda hadn’t yet seen “Jaws”. Thanks Stephen, I never really got over that, myself. DUH DUH…DUH DUH…DUH DUH DHU…
We sailed Tao, far and wide, farther and wider than was reasonable, in such a tiny boat. Oh, did I mention that it had an even tinier 5hp one cylinder diesel? When it was running, it sounded like someone rattling a stone in a coffee can. Bang, bang, bang… I still have the prop on my desk as a paper weight.
Remember Buzzards bay Light near Martha’s Vineyard? It’s now a tall flasher but no longer manned or with a chopper deck for switching crew.
We passed the light on our way to the Vineyard and Nantucket. It was a really long way to go in a 20′ boat. Perhaps easy to get there, with the SW prevailing winds but tough to get back in time to go to work after our two week holiday. And, when it got foggy, no radar, GPS, just dead-reckoning in pea soup, not sure what was coming our way.
Our one trip to Nantucket aboard Tao was to visit the Opera House Cup, an annual gathering of classic yachts. This is the original Malabar class schooner, by the same name, designed by John Alden . I tried my best to get a spot on this boat for one of the races. No luck. 
Back in the early 80s, there we still a lot of older fishing boats out on Block Island Sound. That was before the modern draggers that decimated the fish population.
And, there was no fishing village more charming than Menemsha, Martha’s Vineyard. This is an old style sword fishing boat. A spotter would stand on the cross tree on the mast, supported by the hoops. When they saw a fish swimming along the surface, they’d go up on a long bowsprit and harpoon the fish. A lot of swordfish were landed at these docks.
However, adventures aside, and there were plenty of them aboard Tao, we had some of our best times just lazing along on a calm summer evening, G&T in hand.
And it was on this very evening, when this shot was taken by our artist friend Chris, while aboard his own boat, that he immortalized Tao and her crew in the painting that he did for me as a gift on my 25th birthday. For me, that painting immortalizes those wonderful times along with those famous words, “hey honey, let’s buy a boat”. 
I’m pretty sure that sometimes Brenda still wishes she had said, “let me think about that for a while”.
I chose this particular model as it was recommended by Brenda’s publisher as easy to use and fairly fast, even with high density scans. It even has a few “magic” features that removes dust spots and scratches as well as re-color faded slides and photos. How do it do dat?
She was a beautiful, if slow boat. We sailed her quite a bit, although she wasn’t very fast, with her 25′ waterline and small sail plan.
A lazy day ghosting along in light air with her mizzen staysail up and drawing nicely. Brenda and Chris enjoying the easy sail.
I always thought that she was had beautiful lines, and felt the same way about Artemis. Here we are at the dock at Norwalk Yacht Club, where we were members for many years. 
Yes, we had some great times aboard. However, good times do come to an end, sometimes more dramatically than others and Artemis met her end in the harbor during the October nor’easter of 1996. Many boats went up on the rocks in Long Island Sound that night, over 200, I heard. There was considerable damage in Wilson Cove, where Artemis was moored with nearly every boat ripped from their moorings.
During the few short years I owned her, I took great care of her and did what I could to make her a proper yacht. The name on the transom was hand painted by a sign painter. That was in the days before the computer created vinyl lettering of today. 
So, there I found her, poor Artemis, tucked up against a granite dock. You can’t see it, but she was sitting on top of a J24 which she had crushed under her heavily built fiberglass bulk. You know the phrase, “they don’t build them like they used to?” That’s how Artemis was built, but she was still no match for the granite blocks she was pitted against. 
They duked it out, Artemis and the dock, for hours and the dock won. Being the “d0-it-yourselfer” I was and still am, I set about to salvage her myself. First I stuffed bedding, cushions and towels in the huge crack, over 30′ long that ran down much of the port side where the deck and hull separated. Notice the oil slick that covered everything down below and around the boat. 
I was able to get a work boat from Tavern Island nearby to help pump her out with a huge fire pump. All that “stuffing” of the holes helped and once the bulk of the crack was above water, up she rose like Lazarus, from the depths. 
When the pumps finally took hold she came up in only a few moments. Then I towed her to a marina where she was hauled out of the water. I don’t want to think about what would have happened if she had sunk in the middle of the channel on the 2+ mile run to be hauled. Oh, the ignorance of youth.
She had a lovely galley with a very nice Force 10 Stove and oven. 
Not quite as nice after…
How about the fridge. At least, I think that’s what this was. 
Those cushions, the ones I plugged that 30′ crack with, well, they were never all that nice. 
But, by comparison, beautiful… 
Oh yeah, we had recently had her re-powered, about a month earlier actually, with a brand new Westerbeke diesel replacing her worn out Atomic 4 gas engine that finally gave up the ghost on our trip up to Martha’s Vineyard only two months earlier. I think that the engine only had ten hours on it. Particularly easy access from the cabin sole and particularly easy access for the engine oil and diesel to rise up and soak everything. Thank goodness that the EPA wasn’t paying attention as I worked to raise her. 
Note the mooring pennant in the cockpit. Oops. Didn’t hold. 
She was a great boat and, boy, was I sad when I lost her. However, she was the only boat I ever owned that actually paid me back. Not only was she insured for an agreed value of twice what I paid for her, prior to all the improvements, but I was also paid to salvage her. When all was said and done, I ended up nearly doubling my money. Not likely to EVER happen again, that’s for sure. We are talking about boats, after all.
These days that harbor is chock full of moorings and it’s party city on the weekends with boats rafted up from one shore to the other.
And, Christopher and his girlfriend Melody, as we dropped them at the airport last week after their visit for Thanksgiving, to head back to CA. They will be back soon. So great. 
Yes, things have changed, but in a really good way.