Wow!
I wrote to L&A and got a reply. It's not going to change much. The crew there is hard pressed to put out an issue like they do. The selling of
marine gear and organizing all that they do is
work. Bob and Jody are good people and they've done a lot to get jerks like me to consider going out to sea and actually...Gulp, should I say it, Go Sailing!, and I have to thank them for that. I've read a lot of their magazines, mostly free, but if I get one or two awful badly written articles, I read them anyway. There might be something there that I can use. I'm glad that they will still get to do what they do and let someone else worry about the consequences.
Compare reading an edited magazine to reading an unedited forum (sorry admin), and a lot less time is spent hearing about some bashing back and forth than some maybe useful information.
I've written a few embarrassing nautical narratives that they published. What did I get? A L&A burgee to fly. I went to the
west coast with an L&A hat on and no one nodded or acknowledged it. It was useless. What I wrote was probably not useful to anyone on this forum, but if you were a
newbie and didn't know about it, it was useful. I will continue to send out such stuff, because when I was starting out, I didn't have
funny little stories about how a mouse could ruin your
cruise.
I really like Tania Aebi's reflections and Captn Woodie's yacht
delivery stories. There is a lot of experience and insight in about two pages for each. Hard to do. I always look for a certain blue
boat in the classifieds, even though they run many pages, twice. Maybe I'll see Aku there, the little blue
sloop that should still be sailing and maybe on the market.
If another L&A came up, I would go over it like a mutt in a McDonald's drive through.
I want to know how to get off my
dock, gybe around, down the inlet inspite of the powerboats and jetski's, and go out, down the bay, click in the auto pilot, shut off the
radio, and get down to Wiloughby Bay. Then out to sea.