Newspaperman: Inside the News Business at The Wall Street Journal

CHAPTER 16Storms and Other Not-So-Carefree Days at Sea

“The family that sails together drifts apart.”

—BARBARA PHILLIPS, proposed bumper sticker

VERMONT ROYSTER AND I shared a love of boats. He had commanded navy ships. I helped him bring Covenant, a Hatteras motor yacht he had bought, from Providence, Rhode Island, where its previous owners turned it over to him, to an anchorage near New York City. It was a rough voyage: We came down Narragansett Bay in pea-soup fog, then through turbulent water and steep following seas in The Race, the famously tricky passage off Fishers Island, before entering the more protected waters of Long Island Sound. I preferred sailboats. Like skiing or flying, they offered the relative quiet, solitude, peace, and ...