In 1940, magazine editor Howard Bloomfield, his wife Connie, their baby son, and the family dog set sail on Kittywake, a thirty foot gaff rig sloop – destination Florida.
This is the story of their voyage; the harbors, the towns along the way, the people they met at the docks where they tied up.
My husband and I and our seven year old son had made the same trip in 1968, and this book brought back memories of rivers we’d crossed and anchorages we’d found. Though I imagine the 21st century has brought many changes, or “improvements”, for the comfort and convenience of the boats heading South, the magical names on the charts are still the same: The Alligator, the Ashepoo, Beaufort,Callibogue Sound, Dafuskie, the Dismal Swamp Canal, Hobucken Bridge , Mantanzas inlet, Thunderbolt, Oriental, and back to Oxford, where Bloomfield’s trip ends. Ours had begun from there.
The book describes the challenges as well as the pleasures of compressed living: a stroller crowding the cockpit, the delight of having porpoises swimming beside you, the satisfaction when the wind is on the quarter and the sails are set just right, the joy of feeling solid ground under your feet when you make port.
The Bloomfields pulled it off, decided to put off another such trip until the baby, who had been content to lie snug in his hammock, but was now crawling all over the place, would be able to, “swim, steer, reef, splice … and explain the engine to his father.”
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