Articles, radio, and more

I sold my first magazine article just after I graduated from college, a 5,000-word feature about my father’s 11-day ordeal in a 16-foot fishing boat on the storm-tossed Sea of Cortez. I wrote “A Long Time between Beers” in first person, as if I were H. Marvin Bird, and Sports Illustrated published it under that byline. Three decades later, I reworked the story from my own point of view and recorded it for Snap Judgment, the marvelous Oakland-based public-radio show (“Storytelling—with a Beat”).    

Throughout my thirties and forties, I wrote extensively for Sail and Sailing magazines, both feature and technical articles. I sailed tens of thousands of offshore miles during those years. Here’s a Viewpoint article I wrote for Sail, about the Whitbread Round the World Race and the passion engendered by sailing.

A number of my sailing articles featured voyages aboard Alaska Eagle, the flagship of the Orange Coast College School of Sailing and Seamanship. I also wrote (and illustrated) the beginning sailing manual for the program—Sails in the Sun (or: Masts in the Mud)—and contributed to the manual for Alaska Eagle.

In recent years, I’ve focused on book-length projects, both my own and those of clients. But I still love the feel of magazine pages, and the interplay of images and words. 

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