To sail around the world is an ultimate endurance test and a dream that has for centuries tempted explorers, adventurers and those who love sailing. Ferdinand Magellan was the first maritime globe trotter, and he gets all the credit — even though he didn’t finish the journey.

During a skirmish with natives in the Philippines, he was shot by a poisoned arrow and left by his crew to die. His navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano then captained the Victoria, a 31-foot, 85-ton ship with a crew of 45 men back to Spain in September of 1522, three years after Magellan led his flotilla of five ships westward across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a new route to the Spice Islands.

In September of 2022, Ellen Magellan set off down the Trinity River in East Texas in the Evelyn Mae, a 22-foot, carbon fiber rowboat outfitted with two cabins and a solar power generator, on her way to the Gulf of Mexico in the first leg of an audacious, seven-year attempt to row a boat solo around the world. At the age of 27, Ellen seeks to raise awareness of the state of the ocean and promote the notion that it’s okay for women to travel alone and experience life-changing experiences.

Will Magellan complete her journey? Who knows. But, inspired by her passion, Marinalife presents the stories of eight trailblazing women who circumnavigated the globe via boat in their own ways, taking on a challenge historically reserved mainly for men.

JEANNE BARET of France became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe, albeit without knowing it. Jeanne disguised herself as a man to illegally accompany her botanist lover as part of a French Navy scientific voyage looking for exotic plants. Women weren’t allowed on Navy boats. In Brazil, it is believed she discovered a new exotic flowering vine and named it Bougainvillea in honor of Louis de Bougainville, who headed the around-the-world expedition. Her identity was eventually discovered in Tahiti where some historians claim she was sexually assaulted by her crewmates. Baret and her lover Philibert Commerson were later left behind in Mauritius in the Indian Ocean as the expedition continued. On Mauritius, they befriended the governor, an avid botanist, and studied the flora of the region. When Commerson died, Baret married a Frenchman and together they returned unceremoniously to France three years after Baret’s journey began, thus completing the around the world journey. Bougainville later arranged for Jeanne to receive a Navy pension in recognition of her contributions on the exhibition.

NELLIE BLY was an American investigative journalist widely known for going undercover to report the terrible conditions of a New York City insane asylum. In 1888, she began what would be a 72-day trip around the world via steamship, horse and railroad to emulate Jules Verne’s popular fictional character Phileas Fogg in Around the World in Eighty Days. She was the first person to turn the fiction into fact. New York World Publisher Joseph Pulitzer initially was against it, believing only a man could make such a trip. He eventually acquiesced and published daily updates on her journey. The entire nation followed along as Nellie raced not only time, but also another woman. Elizabeth Bisland, representing Cosmopolitan Magazine, finished her circumnavigation four days after Nellie triumphantly arrived in New York. Bly was honored with a U.S. postage stamp in 2002.

KRYSTYNA CHOJNOWSKA-LISKIEWICZ, an experienced Polish sailor and ship construction engineer, became the first woman to sail around the world solo. Krystyna was selected for the challenge in a competition held by Poland’s Sailing Association to promote Polish sailing during the United Nation’s International Women’s Year. Her husband, also a shipbuilder, custom- designed the Mazurek, a 9.5-meters long by 3-meters wide boat for Krystyna. During her voyage, Krystyna was stopped and suspected of drug trafficking, overcame storms, and battled not only kidney stones, but New Zealand sailor Naomi James, who was also trying to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe by herself. Krystyna beat Naomi by 39 days. Now retired, Krystyna continues to sail and encourages women to take up the sport.

TRACY EDWARDS was expelled from school in Britain at the age of 15 and began traveling the world. She worked on charter yachts in Greece and learned how to sail, eventually taking part in the prestigious Whitbread Round the World Race as a cook in 1985. Four years later, Edwards skippered the first all-female crew in the Whitbread Race. Edwards’ Maiden, a restored second-hand racing yacht, went on to win two of the six legs of the race and finished second overall. The media covering the race was often derogatory. One sailing journalist described the Maiden as a “tin full of tarts.” Nevertheless, Tracy and her crew garnered worldwide praise, and she was awarded Britain’s Yachtsman of the Year Trophy and the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE). Today, she works with charities around the world to break down barriers preventing girls from getting an education.

DAME ELLEN MACARTHUR, a British sailor, broke the world record for the fastest solo circumnavigation of the globe in 2005 on her first attempt. Her time of 71 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes and 33 seconds beat the previous record by more than a day. Shortly after her return to England amid a flotilla of boats and cheering crowds, MacArthur became the youngest woman in modern history to be made Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE). In 2009, she announced her retirement from competitive sailing and subsequently launched a foundation promoting the concept of the “circular economy” — rethinking how to design, make, and use the things people need, from food to clothing, to transform our economy into one where waste is eliminated, resources are circulated, and nature is regenerated.

LAURA DEKKER, a New Zealand- born Dutch sailor became at age 16 the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe single handedly. Because her parents were divorced, Dutch courts stepped in to prevent her departure earlier at age 15 because national law prohibited a captain of a boat younger than 16 to sail a boat longer than 7 meters in Dutch waters. Dekker, who was born to parents living on a boat off the coast of New Zealand, first sailed solo at the age of six and soon thereafter began dreaming of sailing around the world. When she finally won the right to sail, she launched from St. Maarten in her 38’ boat Guppy. In 2018, she founded the Laura Dekker World Sailing Foundation to provide programs for young people to develop life skills such as teamwork, self-confidence, responsibility and leadership.

British sailor JEANNE SOCRATES became the oldest woman at age 77 to single-handedly sail around the world, non-stop and without outside assistance. It was her third attempt. When she departed Victoria, British Columbia, aboard her 38’ boat Nereida, she was still recovering from a broken neck and broken ribs from a fall in a previous attempt. Socrates accomplished the feat in 11 months, sailing around all five great capes (Cape Horn, Cape of Good Hope, Cape Leeuwin, South East Cape of Tasmania and the South Cape of Stewart Island) and dodging three cyclones. In honor of her feat, the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority in Victoria named the inner harbor commercial dock the Jean Socrates Dock. Socrates is still sailing today.

Hurricanes are nature’s grandest, most ferocious storms. They fascinate us, and they repel us. As a radio news and weather reporter in Miami for 30 years, my grandfather was obsessed with hurricanes. (Confession: I am, too.) Using colored pencils and a wooden ruler, he meticulously plotted their paths onto an enormous paper map tacked up on the wall of his study. It was a beautiful and mesmerizing record of these ferocious and complicated storms that somehow feel alive as they zigzag and wobble across the ocean like drunken sailors.

Science has improved dramatically since my grandfather’s era. A fleet of Earth- observing satellites providing real-time data now help thousands of scientists around the world answer three age-old questions: Where and when will the hurricane hit and how strong will it be? Modern forecasts are pretty accurate. Long gone is the day when a storm could sneak up and hit without any warning. Here are the stories of three men who helped pave the way.

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Three Who Paved the Way for How We Track & Predict Hurricanes Today

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Father Hurricane

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When the regime of Queen Isabella II of Spain collapsed in 1868, many who supported her thought it wise to flee the country. Father Benito Viñes, a Jesuit priest and educator, was one of them. He emigrated to Cuba and found a position as director of the meteorological observatory in Havana. Shocked by the damage hurricanes regularly inflicted upon the island, he made it his mission to learn everything he could about them.

Within five years of arriving, Father Viñes knew more about hurricanes than any living person. He was the first to discover that the cloud pattern and the behavior of the wind well in advance of a storm could be used to track it accurately. Using this information, he designed the “Antilles cyclonoscope,” a kind of slide-rule that could estimate from a considerable distance the current position of a hurricane and calculate its likely path. Up until then, weather observers could tell when a hurricane was coming but not where it was going.

His first forecast was published in a Havana newspaper on September 11, 1875 — two days before an intense hurricane ravaged the southern coast of Cuba. Many lives were saved because of the timely warning. Throughout the 1880s he exchanged hurricane information with other weather observers across the Caribbean via telegraph. It was the first hurricane warning system and a model the United States. Weather Service later emulated it. Father Viñes was so well-respected that for a short time hurricanes were even called Viñesas and identified numerically. The pronunciation, however, was difficult for Americans, so the practice ceased. Father Viñes died in 1893.

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The Aerial Acrobat

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Len Povey was a self-taught pilot who flew with the new U.S. Army Air Service until 1922 when he left to pursue a more “colorful” career testing race planes, flying bootleg liquor and barnstorming over the Great Lakes as a headliner with a flying circus. His aerial acrobatics at the All-American Air Maneuvers show in Miami in 1934 caught the eye of a Cuban Air Force official who hired him to train Cuban pilots and serve as the personal pilot for Fulgencio Batista, the chief of the armed forces and later president and dictator of the island nation.

When Cuba’s Weather Service detected a storm intensifying several hundred miles east of the island in early September 1935, Len Povey volunteered to help pinpoint the location and movement of the storm. He jumped in his Curtiss Hawk II, an open cockpit biplane, and flew over the Straits of Florida where he located the hurricane farther north than predicted and moving northwestward toward the Florida Keys. The Cubans dispatched a warning, but it was too late. Later that same day, the storm roared ashore at Islamorada, FL, with winds of 200 m.p.h. and a 20-foot storm surge that drowned more than 400 people, mostly Army veterans who were building the Overseas Railroad.

Povey later joined the faculty at Embry-Riddle, a private Florida college focused on aviation and aerospace programs, where he was a tireless advocate for aerial hurricane patrols. However, the type of reconnaissance mission he envisioned didn’t happen until July 1943, when Air Force Colonel Joe Duckworth flew a plane directly into the eye of a hurricane churning toward Galveston, TX. Len Povey died in 1984. His obituary claimed he survived a mid-air collision and an encounter with a turkey buzzard that sheared off a portion of his plane’s wing.

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The Data Cruncher

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One of the most recognized voices on hurricanes in the late 20th century emanated ironically from a mile-high lab at Colorado State University. That voice was Dr. William Gray, a professor of tropical meteorology from 1961 until 2005.

Bill Gray grew up in Washington, DC, wanting to be a baseball player. He was a standout pitcher for George Washington University until he hurt his knee. During service in the Air Force, he turned to a career in climatology. He once told the Los Angeles Times he was inspired to study hurricanes after he flew a plane through one off the east coast of Florida in 1958.

Dr. Gray was an outlier when it came to hurricanes. He eschewed computer modeling, focusing instead on observational science: historical storm data, old maps featuring storm patterns, and statistics on wind speed, water temperatures and other meteorological factors. He was the first to determine that the intensity and frequency of storms in the Atlantic was cyclical and that likelihood of a hurricane reaching the East Coast of the United States depended on a variety of factors including the amount of rainfall in Africa and the impact of El Niño (the periodic warming of the Pacific Ocean that produces powerful winds that shear off the tops of storms developing in the Atlantic). In short, he figured out Mother Nature’s recipe for powerful storms.

In 1984 Dr. Gray unveiled the first Atlantic seasonal hurricane forecast and quickly became a hurricane superstar and media darling. He, however, considered his greatest legacy the students whom he taught and mentored, many of whom went on to become leaders in weather research and forecasting. He died in 2016.

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Check out Marinalife's recent article about How Hurricanes Get Their Names.

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Hurricane Tracking Apps for Your Phone

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You don’t need all six of these apps, but we’re certain you’ll find one here that you like. All are available on Google Play and the Apple App Store.

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THE WEATHER CHANNEL

Rain radar, storm tracker and severe weather warnings help you prepare for hurricane season, as well as storms and heavy rain. Monitor live radar updates, an hourly rain tracker, storm radar news, and local weather forecast on the go. Free. Available in English and 30 other languages.

NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER DATA

Official data, custom graphics, updates and maps from National Hurricane Center (NHC) experts. Considered the grandparent of all hurricane trackers. Free. Available in English and French.

WEATHER UNDERGROUND

Reliable, real-time and hyperlocal forecasts combining data from 250,000+ personal weather stations and a proprietary forecast model provide an incredibly accurate local forecast. Interactive radar and customizable severe weather alerts. Free. Available in English and 30 other languages.

CLIME

Previously called NOAA Radar, this is a good hurricane tracker app, because it lets you overlay rain, radar or satellite images on top of the tracker. This gives you a detailed look at what’s happening in the storm. Add multiple locations to the map to get alerted if you’re in the path of a hurricane. Free. Multiple languages. Paid upgrade packages available.

RADARSCOPE

If you’re willing to spend some money on an app favored by weather nerds and professional storm chasers, then check out RadarScope. The learning curve is steeper than with others, but it features high-resolution radar data sourced from NOAA’s next generation radar and Doppler Weather Radar. Available in English, French, German and Spanish.

HURRICANE – AMERICAN RED CROSS

Monitor conditions in your area or throughout the storm track, prepare your family and home, find help and let others know you are safe. Free. Available in English and Spanish.

Historically, hurricanes in the United States were referred to by their time period and/or geographic location, e.g., the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900. In the West Indies, they were named after the particular saint’s day on which the hurricane occurred. A colorful Australian weatherman named Clement Wragge began assigning Greek and Roman mythological names to Pacific cyclones in the late 19th century. He later began naming them after politicians he particularly disliked.

During World War II, U.S. Air Force and Navy meteorologists plotting storms over the Pacific needed a better way to denote tropical cyclones while analyzing weather maps. Many began paying tribute to their wives and girlfriends back home by naming the cyclones after them. In 1954, the National Weather Bureau officially embraced the practice of giving hurricanes women’s names. Because America led the world in weather tracking technology, the practice was adopted elsewhere.

In response to pressure from women’s groups, the National Weather Service and the World Meteorological Association began using both men’s and women’s names starting in 1979. More recently, the lists of names, which are predetermined and rotate every six years, have been further diversified to reflect names used in the many regions where tropical cyclones strike. Names of devastating storms, such as Katrina in 2005, are permanently retired.

With its sandy beaches and boardwalk attractions, Ocean City is the quintessential family summer vacation destination. It’s also a popular spot for sport fishermen and boaters traveling up and down the East Coast. But it wasn’t always that way. 

Ocean City was established on a barrier island called Assateague that extended 60 miles from the Indian River Inlet in Delaware to Chincoteague, VA. The section of the island belonging to the State of Maryland had no outlet to the sea, and early visitors came to bathe in the surf and take in the fresh ocean breezes. These travelers arrived by ferry boat from the mainland until 1876 when a wooden trestle train bridge was built. 

In its younger days, Ocean City was half resort town and half fishing village. The fishing was “pound fishing,” a style I’d wager few people today have ever seen. It was practiced originally by Native Americans and became popular in the 19 century along the East Coast from Maritime Canada to the Carolinas.

Pound fisherman used wide nets attached to wooden poles to catch fish. They drove these tall poles into the ocean floor about a half mile from shore, creating permanent structures called pounds. When fish entered the open end of a pound, they were then corralled by the nets and couldn’t escape. 

With no passage into the Atlantic, crews of Ocean City fishermen needed to launch 40-foot boats from the beach directly into the ocean and row out to the pounds. To harvest the fish, the crew would remove the ends of the nets from the poles and pull them up by hand. The fish were then brought back to shore, carted across the island, packed in barrels of ice and shipped via railroad to fish markets in Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York.

It was laborious work, and for years local businessmen petitioned state and federal agencies to create a manmade inlet to connect the bay directly to more fertile fishing grounds farther off the coast.

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A Fierce Storm Carves Out a New Inlet

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In August of 1933, a hurricane came ashore in Norfolk, VA, and then tracked up the center of the Chesapeake Bay, bringing up to 10 inches of rain per day and flooding the back bays to the west of Ocean City. Oceanside, wind and waves destroyed homes, hotels and businesses on the town’s boardwalk. 

When the storm subsided, the railroad bridge and fish camps had been washed away, replaced by an inlet 50 feet wide and eight feet deep that formed when built-up water driven by high tides rushed east over the barrier island from the swollen back bays to the ocean. Mother Nature did what governments wouldn’t do, and it changed Ocean City forever.

It didn’t take long for officials to take advantage of this event and enlarge the inlet to ensure its permanence. As a result, a commercial harbor, marinas and docks began sprouting up around the inlet and across the bay on the mainland. Most fishing was commercial in those immediate post-hurricane years, but a few captains realized the recreational fishing potential in the shoals and fertile canyons offshore that were teaming with billfish and other species. During World War II, a lack of fuel and the presence of German U-Boats in the Atlantic virtually shut down offshore fishing. Things picked up after the war, and by the late 1950s and 1960s more and more fishermen were coming to Ocean City. 

But it was the white marlin that really put Ocean City on the sport fishing map. A challenging fish known for its beauty, the white marlin wows anglers with its speed and jumping antics. These fish travel in packs and are prevalent in Maryland waters in late summer and early fall. 

Sport fishermen have been chasing white marlins off the coast of Maryland since 1934 when President Franklin Roosevelt visited and caught two of the feisty billfish. To celebrate this exceptional fish and attract more attention to Ocean City, local fishermen launched the White Marlin Open in 1974. Fifty-seven boats entered that first year. By contrast, the 2021 Open drew 444 boats, more than 3,500 contestants – including NBA superstar Michael Jordan – and awarded $9.2 million dollars in prize money making Ocean City the undisputed “White Marlin Capital of the World.”

Ocean City today counts eight marinas, 20 fishing tournaments and numerous charter boats. According to the city council, boating and sportfishing are significant economic drivers bringing tens of millions of dollars annually to the local economy. 

So, whether you’re a hardcore sport fisherman, casual angler or a boater who simply enjoys a cocktail dockside at sunset, there’s something for everyone “Goin’ downy O, Hon!” as native Marylanders like to say about a visit to their beloved Ocean City.

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Check Out Three World-Class OC Fishing Tournaments

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Ocean City Tuna Tournament‍
July 8-10, 2022
Entering its 35th year, this has become the world’s largest tuna tournament with more than 100 participating boats and a record payout that eclipsed $1 million in 2021. 

White Marlin Open
August 8-12, 2022
First held in 1974, the WMO is inarguably the highlight of the Ocean City fishing tournament calendar. Now the biggest and richest billfish tournament in the world, the WMO drew 444 boats and 3,500+ contestants last year.

Poor Girls Open
August 17-20, 2022
‍Launched in 1994, this is the largest ladies-only billfish release tournament benefitting breast cancer research. Despite its charitable overtones, the tournament is all about the fishing, and the hundreds of boats and hundreds of competitors take it very seriously.

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The Orange Crush: A Cocktail Born on the OC Docks

The Orange Crush is a staple cocktail in most Maryland bars. It’s basically a screwdriver with a shot of triple sec and a splash of lemon-lime soda. The secret to a good one, though, is fresh-squeezed orange juice. And there’s no place better to try one than the Harborside Bar & Grill in Ocean City where the cocktail is said to have originated on a slow night in 1995 when a couple of bartenders were bored and playing around with a bottle of orange-flavored vodka.

Harborside is a wooden establishment whose backside opens onto the commercial harbor in West Ocean City. Gritty is the word that comes to mind. As you would expect, the sign out front boldly announces the home of the Orange Crush, as do newspaper articles framed on the walls and t-shirts for sale. Inside, people pound crabs and watch the Orioles play baseball. Ceiling fans whirl, and it smells of Old Bay and French fries. White lights strung across the ceiling add a festive touch. It doesn’t get more Maryland than that. 

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To try your first Orange Crush, visit Harborside Bar & Grill, in Ocean City, MD, 410-213-1846.

For many reasons, boat lovers and landlubbers love Nantucket. The well-known island 30 miles off the Massachusetts coast has great maritime history, picturesque scenery, unspoiled beaches, boutique shopping, a nice marina and seafood galore.

It's also home to a unique basketmaking tradition developed in the second half of the 19th century by manly men who manned the lightships that warned of dangerous waters around the island.

Today, the Nantucket baskets they wove are ubiquitous to the island as both a popular souvenir and a highly collectible object that reflects the island's fascinating history and heritage.

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Baskets Born of Necessity and Boredom

In 1820, the United States began building and converting ships into lightships in coastal waters and the Great Lakes. These vessels served as floating beacons to identify perilous shoals, reefs and shifting channels in places where lighthouse construction wasn't possible. The ships housed bright and navigational light beacons atop their masts to guide maritime traffic.

The waters around Nantucket were well traversed and very treacherous. In Nantucket Sound, sandbars muddled traffic, so the U.S. government placed a lightship there in 1823 to help mark a safe path by the island along a popular commercial route between New York and Boston. It became known as the Cross Rip Lightship.

The Nantucket South Shoals off the island's southeast coast proved hazardous for transatlantic shipping. In some locations, the water can be as shallow as three feet. The shoals were a notorious shipwreck site, so the government stationed a lightship at the South Shoals in 1854. A lightship operated at the South Shoals until 1983 when it was replaced by a large navigation buoy. It was at the time America's last working lightship. By 1985, new technologies rendered the old lightship program obsolete.

Lightships were manned vessels, and many Nantucket men were hired to work on the ones around the island. Some of these men had been whalers from back when Nantucket was the epicenter of the whaling industry. Rough coastal weather made the lightboat service perilous. For example, they had no onboard electricity, and the crew's only warmth was furnished by manually tending coal-burning stoves always at risk of breaking loose from their mounts and spilling hot coals during fierce storms that churned up mountainous waves that crashed over the ship.

It was lonely, too. I've read how life on a lightship was likened to a term of solitary confinement combined with the horrors of seasickness. It's no wonder these men began making baskets to while away the time.

According to several sources, it is likely a man named Thomas James introduced basketmaking to men on the lightships. James, the story goes, had worked in the whaling industry and during his voyages supposedly made baskets in his spare time. When he began working on the South Shoals Lightboat, he took up his old pastime while on duty and sold his work on leave in Nantucket town. It wasn't long before he taught his skill to his fellow lightship men.

Though the classic Nantucket basket is attributed to men aboard lightships in the mid-19th century, it's important to remember that its distinctive design was probably inspired by baskets originally woven with ash wood by the Wampanoags, the island's indigenous people.

Lighthouse baskets typically were round and built on a mold with flat wooden bottoms to which staves (ribs) were attached to form the basic shape. Cane, also known as rattan, was then woven in and around the staves from bottom to top. Each basket was finished with a wooden handle. Tops and decorative elements weren't added until later. These baskets became popular with locals and tourists and thus became known as Nantucket lightship baskets. They're very desirable today among collectors.

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Basketmaking Enters the 20th Century

By 1905, the last man from Nantucket manned a local lightship. Shortly thereafter, the federal government banned basket-making aboard lightships to end moon-lighting commerce. The craft then moved on island where it was taken up by a new generation of basket weavers who began personalizing their work and looking for ways to make them stand out and appeal to the growing tourist trade.

One of the most significant of this new generation of basket makers was José Reyes, a Filipino with an Education degree from Harvard, who served in the U.S. Navy fighting the Japanese and then after the war immigrated to Nantucket where his wife's family had a home. Unable to find a job in education, he repaired cane furniture and learned to make Nantucket lighthouse style baskets.

Reyes is credited in 1948 for adding a top to the lightship basket and turning it into a purse for women. These purses, later known as friendship purses, quickly became de rigour for well-to-do summer residents. Reyes later included ivory carvings to adorn the purse tops. Rumor has it the name originated when a woman carrying one of Reyes' purses while visiting Paris noticed another woman with the same purse. She yelled out Friendship! and the two strangers became lifelong friends linked by their shared love of Nantucket.

Paul Whitten, another basket maker, helped elevate artistic appreciation for the Nantucket basket when he was invited in 1974 by the Smithsonian Institution's Renwick Gallery to submit one of his pieces in a national arts and crafts competition. His basket was selected to appear in the gallery and then tour the country with other competition winners as part of a traveling exhibit. Whitten's basket was purchased by the Smithsonian for its permanent collection. Whitten also wrote extensively about Nantucket baskets, which has been important to preserving the history of this unique craft.

Today the lightship basket influence can be seen in jewelry, cribs, bike baskets and all sorts of decorative pieces sold on and off island. Yours truly even owns a pair of tall handsome lamps modeled on the classic Nantucket Basket. There's even an auction market for exceptional baskets woven on Nantucket. A recent piece went for more than $100,000. Who'd have thunk it?

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Nantucket Lighthouse Basket Museum

If you're visiting Nantucket and want to delve deeper into the history of these unique baskets and learn more about their makers, you won't want to miss the Nantucket Lighthouse Basket Museum. It features a permanent collection of baskets, special exhibits and basket weaving classes. The museum website also has a variety of fascinating videos, including an interview with noted basket weaver José Reyes.

Location: 96 Main St.,Nantucket, MA 02554

Hours: May 28 - October 17, open daily 10:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.

‍nantucketlightshipbasketmuseum.org

I've never had much luck saltwater fishing. My first outing as a young boy was holding a handline over the side of my grandfather Pop Hunter's motorboat in the shallow bay behind Alligator Point east of Apalachicola, Florida. Pop and my father were after redfish, and I wasn't expected to catch anything. Sit and be quiet, they said. So I did, until something grabbed my line, and I let out a scream.

My grandfather snatched the line and began battling a strong fish with just his tough freckled hands. That fish turned out to be a small hammerhead shark! When he finally pulled it onboard, he tossed it at my feet where it thrashed about, and I began screaming again certain it was going to bite me until Pop threw it back in the bay. He thought it was hilarious and told the story repeatedly that summer. Somewhat traumatized, I didn't go saltwater fishing again for years. When I finally did, all I managed to hook was a four-inch starfish. Like Pop, the fishing boat operator laughed. It was a first, he said, and he lamented that he didn't have an appropriate starfish flag to hoist for our return trip to the dock.

Spend time around harbor docks and marinas, especially in the afternoon when the fishing boats come in, and you'll undoubtedly notice rectangular flags featuring different kinds of fish fluttering on outrigger halyards. Though they might look decorative, they're not. These fish flags, more formally referred to as capture flags, are colorful signals to let others know which fish were biting that day. It's a tradition born in the days before daily fishing reports began to appear in newspapers and on radio.

The earliest capture flags on record are attributed to The Tuna Club of Santa Catalina Island, California, a private fishing club started in 1898 by Los Angeles Times editor Dr. Charles Holder for the southern California and Hollywood elite. The Tuna Club refers to itself as the oldest fishing club in the United States, and it's still going strong.

Charlie Chaplin, Bing Crosby, Cecil B. DeMille, William Wrigley and George S. Patton were among its early members. Teddy Roosevelt was an honorary member. Members flew large colored flags on their boats to alert their fellow anglers when they caught tuna, swordfish and marlin. The practice quickly spread, and sport fisherman and charter boat captains on both coasts began hoisting flags to announce their catch as they pulled into the docks.

In Florida, the West Palm Beach Fishing Club (WPBFC) added a different twist to the fish flag. Founded in 1934 during the Great Depression, the WPBFC's mission was to promote fishing to lure visitors to the Palm Beaches and stimulate the local economy. Given the proximity of the Gulf Stream and its big game fish, the club initiated the Silver Sailfish Derby fishing competition, a celebration of one of the world's most elegant and iconic sport fishes. The Derby was the first serious billfish competition in the country. It quickly became the in thing to do for wealthy tourists. And it still occurs every January.

Here's the twist. Club members soon became concerned that too many sailfish were being caught and not consumed or mounted as trophies. As a result, WPBFC established new rules to restrict the number and size of sailfish captured and brought aboard boats during the derby. To help incentivize the policy, they encouraged contestants to raise a triangular red pennant to signify smaller sailfish that were caught and released so they could still be given their proper due. The national media seized on it with vigor. And in turn, the red pennant inspired other contests geared toward catch-and-release fishing and helped change the nature of big game fishing. It also furthered the practice and the prevalence of flying fish flags.

As sport fishing became more popular and accessible to Americans in the 1960s and 1970s, so too did fish flags. This was driven in part by a growing number of game fishing tournaments with affordable entry fees and guaranteed prize money. Competitors wanted to show off their fishing prowess, so flag companies were more than happy to begin making and supplying 12"x18" canvas and nylon flags featuring the most popular varieties of sport fish marlin, swordfish, sailfish, tuna, mahi-mahi, wahoo, etc. that we still see on boats today.

Sharks, by the way, merit a capture flag. You can't miss it. It's usually a vibrant red color and features a white shark. To the best of my knowledge, there's still not a starfish flag.

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HOW TO FLY YOUR FISH FLAG

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You need not worry about official regulations for displaying fish capture flags. Protocols vary from location to location. That said, more experienced fishermen tend to follow some informal rules of thumb.

• Fish flags are generally flown on the port or starboard outrigger halyard and in order of merit, meaning game fish with bills (marlins, swordfish and sailfish) go at the top and others follow in order of size from largest to smallest. Shark flags are often flown on the bottom.
• It's appropriate to fly a flag for each fish caught, though some say you should only fly one yellow mahi-mahi flag no matter how many you land. In Hawaii, some boats will run a black pirate flag beneath the mahi-mahi when more than 20 are caught.
• Never run flags all the way to the top of the rigger; keep them about three quarters up the rigger and spaced at least six inches apart as this is optimal for visibility.
• Flying a fish flag upside down is the most common way to signal a successful catch and release. Some fishermen, however, prefer to fly a fish flag right side up with a smaller square red flag beneath it or a red T-flag to indicate a fish was tagged and released. Red pennants are still sometimes used.
• A fish flag should never hang on the halyard for more than a few hours, though charter boats might fly them for 24 hours to help attract clients.

Mornings at the home on 907 Whitehead Street in 1930s-era Key West were filled with the faint sounds of a pencil on paper or fingers flicking the keys on a Royal-brand typewriter. By early afternoon, this illustrious inhabitant had finished his work for the day, satisfied with the progress on his latest novel and went for a walk.

Sometimes, the destination was his favorite watering hole, Sloppy Joe's. Other times, he'd head for the docks and cast off on a fishing trip aboard his beloved Pilar. Still other days, he went to the Key West Arena to referee in boxing matches featuring local fighters of Bahamian descent.

Today, it's possible to retrace the footsteps of one of Key West's most recognizable past residents, Ernest Hemingway. The same is true of the Bahamian island of Bimini to the north and Cuba to the south. This trio of tropical locations is where Hemingway lived and visited for more than 30 years and inspired some of the Pulitzer and Nobel prize-winning author's works.Born in 1899 in Oak Park, Chicago, Hemingway grew up excelling athletically and academically. High grades in English led to his first literary pursuit, as editor of his high school newspaper and yearbook. After graduation, he worked as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star, where the periodical's style guide shaped his writing - short sentences, short paragraphs, no slang, no superfluous words.

Over the next decade, he served as a World War I ambulance driver, a Paris-based foreign correspondent, and then transitioned from journalist to writer with the novel, The Sun Also Rises, centered on bullfighting in Pamplona, Spain. Hemingway then married his second wife, Pauline, in 1927, and the two moved back to America.

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KEY WEST, FLORIDA

1928-1939

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Ernest and Pauline never meant to call Key West home. The two first arrived at the southernmost town in the Continental United States on a steamship from Cuba after a long cold winter in Paris. It was April 1928.

Pauline's Uncle Gus had bought the couple a Model A Ford, and it was supposed to be in Key West when they arrived. There weren't the bridges we have now. Most everything was shipped in by boat or rail. The car dealer was so embarrassed the car wasn't there that he offered Hemingway and his wife an apartment above the dealership to stay. That dealership was on Simonton Street. It was called the Trev-Mor Ford. Today the building is a private residence called Casa Antigua. Hemingway was so inspired by Key West that he finished A Farewell to Arms while staying at the apartment. Just think, if the car had been ready, he might not have lived in Key West, and it would have been a whole other story, says Carol Shaughnessy, a 40-year Key West resident, who works with Newman PR's Florida Keys News Bureau, and is former director of the city's Hemingway Days festival.

Pauline's Uncle Gus bought the Hemingways' home on Whitehead Street for them in 1931. Originally built in 1851, the two-story Spanish Colonial-style house undertook a massive restoration and remodeling that included the addition of a pool in the late 1930s. Today, the Hemingway Home is a National Historic Landmark, open for daily tours.

His writing studio probably was his favorite room. He was able to get out of bed in his master bedroom and walk across the catwalk and start his day writing. He would continue writing until around noon, says Alexa Morgan, director of PR for the Hemingway Home & Museum, who adds that the author penned a huge portion of his life's work here.

Hemingway was an animal lover, so he enjoyed it when a ship captain gifted his sons a kitten and they named it Snow White, adds Morgan. Polydactyl cats are meant to be of good luck. A quote of his, 'One cat just leads to another,' is one of our favorites, since we currently have 58 (many are six- and seven-toed) cats on the property. We kept his tradition alive by naming our resident felines after famous people from Ernest's time, adds Morgan.

Several other Key West places to visit can pick up on the vibe of Hemingway. One of the most famous is Sloppy Joe's Bar, now located at 201 Duval Street. Local legend tells that Hemingway drank with the owner, Joe Russell, before the bar's official opening date of December 5, 1933, when Prohibition was repealed. Hemingway is also credited with encouraging Joe to re-name his saloon Sloppy Joe's, in remembrance of a bar in Havana, which had 'sloppy' melted ice on the floor.

‍The Blue Heaven Restaurant, at the corner of Petronia & Thomas streets, is where Hemingway slipped in unrecognized at Bahamian boxing fights in the then-named Key West Arena. The SALT Gallery at 830 Fleming Street, a half-mile north of Hemingway's home, was once called Mrs. Rhoda Baker's Electric Kitchen, where he dined on 20-cent 'club breakfasts.'Hemingway's passion for big game fishing ignited in Key West. He bought Pilar, a 38-foot wheeler, and often fished with Charles Thompson, who owned a hardware store at Thompson's Docks on Caroline Street, the location of Key West Historic Seaport today. The two pushed far into the gulf stream, as well as to the Dry Tortugas, fishing for monster blue marlin and bluefin tuna. Charter boat captain Bra Saunders was at the helm on Hemingway's and Thompson's first trip to the Dry Tortugas. Saunders' gnarled hands are said to be the author's inspiration for those of the old Cuban fishermen, Santiago, in Old Man and the Sea.

The last time Hemingway and his friends fished in the Dry Tortugas, a tropical storm marooned them for two-plus-weeks at what is now Fort Jefferson. Nowadays, a high-speed catamaran ferry takes visitors on day trips from Key West to Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas National Park.

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BIMINI, THE BAHAMAS

1935-1937

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Hemingway's love of fishing, bolstered by his adventurous spirit and 1933 trip to hunt big game on Africa's Serengeti plains, enticed him to stalk giant bluefin tuna. In 1935, he first ventured to Bimini, with catches of 514- and 610-pound tuna soon to his credit.

When he wasn't aboard Pilar, he was at his home on Alice Town's Main Street, where only cinder rubble and a commemorative sign remain today, or at a small hotel and bar called the Compleat Angler. This hotel burned down in 2006, and with it all the Hemingway memorabilia, though a monument stands there today.

Across the way, at the Bimini Big Game Club Resort & Marina, two framed photos on the wall at the bar are real finds for Hemingway aficionados. One is a 1939-written letter from Michael Lerner, of New York's Lerner Corporation store fame, to Hemingway, in what was initial correspondence between the two avid anglers to promote releasing rather than killing their catch. The second is Hemingway's concurring reply.

We don't have a chair at the bar where we can say Hemingway sat, but the old-time Bimini vibe, the way it felt when he was here, is still very much alive, says Stephen Kappeler, the club's managing director. We have guests that come to soak up that feeling of when Hemingway was here. Of course, they also come here to sport fish off their own boats as Hemingway did or on charters.

Just west of the club off Queen's Highway is the Dolphin House. This museum and home were hand-built from recycled materials by Ashley Saunders, a fifth generation Biminite. Saunders' relatives boxed with Hemingway on makeshift rings on the beach. Open to the public, the museum showcases Hemingway artifacts, his sayings like Write drunk, edit sober on the walls, and old photos such as Pauline cutting his hair outside.

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HAVANA, CUBA

1940-1960

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Hemingway divorced Pauline, and with his third wife Martha, he bought a home he called Finca Vigía in the San Francisco de Paula neighborhood, about 15 miles south of Havana. The 1886 property, with its incredible view of Havana, is where Hemingway wrote The Old Man and the Sea. It's now a museum, and the grounds are open for public tour. He and later fourth wife, Mary, enjoyed Havana's bohemian nightclub scene in the late 1940s and 1950s with Hollywood glitterati like Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn and Ava Gardner. Up until the last year of his life, Hemingway continued to sport fish.

In 1960, Hemingway last participated in an Ernest Hemingway International Billfish Tournament. It was then that he and Fidel Castro, also a participating angler, met. When we founded our Hemingway International Yacht Club in 1992, we wanted to recall the history of the former International Yacht Club of Havana, which, in 1950, organized the first Ernest Hemingway International Billfish Tournament. We have a seat of honor at the club and photos on the wall that show that meeting, says Commodore Jose Escrich.

The area between the Morro Castle at the entrance of Havana Bay and the town east of Havana called Cojímar is known as the Hemingway Mile. Here he frequently fished aboard Pilar. Escrich says anglers competing in the tournament today catch most of their fish in this area.

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Hemingway Days

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Immerse yourself in the life, legend and lore of Ernest Hemingway, at the Hemingway Days festival in Key West. Set for July 19-24, 2022, to coincide with Hemingway's birthday on July 21, the week-long celebration features a Hemingway Look-Alike Contest at Sloppy Joe's Bar, a Running of the Bulls where contestants and past contest winners parade down Duval Street with hand-built bulls, a fishing tournament, 5K run and paddleboard race that are both a nod to Hemingway as an avid sportsman, and the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition, coordinated and judged by the author's granddaughter, Lorian Hemingway. For more, go to hemingwaydays.net

When you think about Miami Beach, I seriously doubt avocados and elephants come to mind. Nightlife and models probably do. Art deco architecture might. Don Johnson might if you're above a certain age. Luxury boats certainly should, because they are big business in South Florida.

Companies that promote boating lifestyles from family fishing to yacht cruising contribute $12.5 billion annually to the regional economy, according to the Marine Industries Association of South Florida. The re-tooled 2022 Miami International Boat Show is expected to be one of the largest events in the world.

Yet, it was the humble avocado that lured a New Jersey Quaker by the name of John Collins to a desolate strip of mangroves, swamp, mosquitoes and crocodiles four miles off the shore of Miami. Earlier men tried growing coconuts there, but they had neither the horticultural experience nor the passion of John Collins, who ran a successful nursery and farmers' supply yard in the Garden State and had a reputation as an innovative farmer.

In the late 1890s, Collins joined a partnership with fellow New Jerseyans to turn the untamed barrier peninsula between the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay into a full-fledged, modern farm growing exotic crops such as avocados, commonly known back then as alligator pears. Native to Mexico and Central and South America, the first avocado groves were planted in Florida in 1833. The state today is the second largest producer of avocados in the United States.

Clearing the land proved to be a time-consuming and costly venture. Work was done by hand by black laborers with machetes until Collins built a tractor with special knife-bladed wheels. By 1909, he had cleared 1,670 acres of land, bought out his partners, and was successfully growing avocados, mangos, and tomatoes. He was 71 years old.At this point, younger members of the Collins family got involved, curious to know what the old boy was doing in South Florida and where the family money was going. They immediately saw the tourism potential of the seaside property and formed a development company. One of their major projects was to build a bridge to the mainland. They dreamed of riches derived from creating a new "Atlantic City" in south Florida - a nod to the wildly popular New Jersey beach resort they knew at home.

The bridge project proved much more expensive than planned, mainly because instead of using basic wooden support pilings they had to sink the pilings in sheet iron casings filled with concrete to stave off the wood-eating teredos (aka shipworms) in Biscayne Bay. Work ground to a halt with only a half mile of bridge built.

Enter Carl Fisher, a wealthy entrepreneur from Indiana who made his fortune in the early years of the automobile industry. Fisher was also a sportsman with an affinity for fast cars and boats. He launched the Indianapolis 500 and was involved in developing the Dixie Highway that linked the Midwest to Florida.

The story goes that while on a fishing trip, the unfinished bridge sticking out into Biscayne Bay caught Fisher's eye. With Fisher's money, the Collins family completed the bridge in 1913. At the time it was the longest wooden bridge in the world.

Carl Fisher and his wife Jane settled on the peninsula. They too started a real estate development firm and built the first luxury hotel The Flamingo along with tennis courts, a swimming pool, golf course and polo field. Fisher also joined the Collins family and other early developers to incorporate Miami Beach in 1915.

By now you must be wondering where the elephants come in? Well, Carl Fisher had a talent for promotion. He realized his hotel and local businesses and the fledgling city would need publicity to thrive. He hired beautiful young women in skimpy bathing suits, organized speed boat races, and even went so far as to bring in a pair of pachyderms Rosie and Carl Junior.

Fisher sent the media photos of bathing beauties on the beach and at The Flamingo and of the elephants helping clear the land, rolling out the polo grounds, and performing for childrens' birthday parties anything he could think of to attract attention.

Rosie once made an appearance at a bank opening. Cameras flashed, people cheered and Rosie shat all over the bank floor. Rosie, however, could do no wrong. The media and the public went wild for her. Rosie became so popular across the country that she even had her own fan club.

Fisher's pièce de résistance was luring President Warren G. Harding to Miami Beach and to his Flamingo Hotel in the winter of 1921 where the President was photographed swimming, enjoying cocktails and sport fishing aboard Fisher's yacht. The President even agreed to be photographed with Rosie as his caddy during a round of golf. Fisher's publicity put Miami Beach on the map as a fashionable resort. Visitors came. Property prices boomed. Fisher even recruited architects to design hotels in the Art Deco style du jour.

And during it all, while his children prospered in real estate, John Collins never forgot about his avocado trees. By 1922, Miami Beach had the largest avocado and mango groves in the world. But you already know how this story turned out. Avocados and farmland gave way and were simply no match for the tourist trade. Hotels kept getting built, and visitors kept on coming.

John Collins died in 1928 at the age of 90. The city named its main thoroughfare Collins Avenue in his honor. Carl Fisher died in 1939, and the city erected a monument to the man known as The Father of Miami Beach in 1941. Rosie the elephant outlived them both! And the city they helped build enjoys a reputation today as a world class tourist destination with no sign of slowing down.

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Must-See Historic Properties in the Miami Area

Villa Vizcaya Museum & Gardens

‍vizcaya.org

‍James Deering, the co-founder of International Harvester built this over-the-top Italian Renaissance-style villa in 1914. Deering used the 34-room home as his winter retreat until his death in 1925. Of note is the elaborate stone Venetian barge built offshore in Biscayne Bay to protect the house from storms and used as a venue for parties and a mooring point for Deering's yacht, Nepenthe, which sank in the ferocious hurricane of 1926.

‍The Barnacle

‍floridastateparks.org/parks-and-trails/barnacle-historic-state-park

‍The oldest house in Miami-Dade County still stands in its original location on Biscayne Bay. It was built in 1891 by Ralph M. Munroe, a noted south Florida photographer, yacht designer and first Commodore of the Biscayne Bay Yacht Club. An active naturalist, Munroe preserved the property's original tropical hardwood forest (aka hammock) and fought against establishing of artificial islands and pumping raw sewage into the bay. He died in 1933 and his family lived here until it became a state park in 1973.

The Ancient Spanish Monastery

‍spanishmonastery.com

‍This 12th century monastery of St. Bernard de Clairvaux was purchased in Spain by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst in 1925. He had the stone structure dismantled and shipped across the Atlantic in 11,000 boxes to New York. Mr. Hearst intended it to grace the grounds of his San Simeon estate in California. But the Great Depression intervened, he lost interest and the crates sat in a warehouse in Brooklyn until 1952. Eventually, the monastery was purchased and painstakingly re-assembled in Florida. In 1964, it was given to the local Episcopal Diocese in North Miami Beach and is one of the best Medieval reconstructions in America.

One of my fondest summer memories was back in the late 1960s when my brother and I took sailing lessons at Pelican Harbor in Miami's Biscayne Bay. Our mom outfitted us in matching blue bathing suits and white Sperry canvas boat shoes. Boy, did we feel just like real sailors tacking and jibing around the Bay in our little fiberglass Sunfish sailboat.

A decade later at the University of Virginia, I discovered the brown leather Sperry Top-Sider. The wooden floors at dear old Theta Chi were incredibly slippery on Friday nights due to vast quantities of spilled beer. Smart preppies wore Top-Siders to keep their balance while executing intricate dance maneuvers such as dips, spins, pretzels and double pretzels.

Preventing a slip and fall is what drove Paul Sperry of New Haven, CT, to invent the shoe in the first place. An avid boater, Paul had served in the Naval Reserve in 1917 and was a member of the New York Yacht Club. His grandfather was a boat builder before serving in the Civil War. You could say boating was in his blood.

The story goes that one winter day in 1935, Paul was watching his Cocker Spaniel Prince run around on ice when he had an aha moment. Just a year earlier, Paul had slipped from the deck of his sailboat and tumbled into the Long Island Sound.

After examining the dog's paws, he used a penknife to recreate its design on pieces of rubber. He kept modifying the design until he came up with a herringbone zigzag design, which proved to be even more slip resistant than Prince's paws. Within a few years, he was producing and selling a canvas boating shoe with this unique non-slip sole to members of the Cruising Club of America.

A leather version soon followed. It was innovative too with its moccasin design and lacing that wrapped around the shoe so it could be tightened up. The leather was tanned using a unique process to enable it to hold up to salt and water. He named it the Top-Sider because it helped keep you topside on a boat deck.

Paul Sperry's shoes subsequently caught the eye of War Department officials who used its sole design for U.S. Navy shoes. The canvas shoe became official footwear of the Naval Academy's casual uniform. In 1941, Paul sold his patents and the Sperry name to the U.S. Rubber Company, which made Keds sneakers among other products, and focused his career on the family textile business. He passed away in 1982 at the age of 87.

After the war, U.S. Rubber continued marketing and selling Top-Siders to the boating community. Then a couple of unexpected events forever changed the perception and marketability of Sperry boat shoes.

The first was the dashing young John F. Kennedy who was photographed wearing Top-Siders around Cape Cod during his presidency. His casual and sporty-style sensibility influenced college students in the early 1960s, especially those in the Northeast, and what we now call the preppie style was born. Top-Siders were among their shoes of choice.

Secondly, surfers in southern California began wearing canvas Sperry shoes to the beach. The shoes became part of the 1960's California surf culture craze.

Boat shoes became cool with a youthful demographic. Actor Bob Denver wore canvas ones on the popular 1960s TV sitcom Gilligan's Island. Author Lisa Birnbach brought them front and center to prep school and college campuses in The Official Preppy Handbook, published in 1980. (I still have my original copy.)

Yachtsman Dennis Conner's three America's Cup victories in the 1980s helped to raise the shoe's visibility even more when he became the brand spokesman. I don't think it's a stretch to say Top-Siders were the de facto footwear of the 1980s, worn sockless, of course. Until they weren't. As they say in fashion: one day you're in, the next day you're out. Though I don't think they ever truly went out of style with boaters.

Today, the Sperry boat shoe is experiencing a revival in popularity with new colors, designs and fabrics. I recently went in search of a pair. While I had in mind the original brown leather Top-Sider, I purchased instead a blue and white striped canvas model, but still with the ubiquitous rawhide lacing.

Once I slipped my feet into them, I remembered why they were my go-to casual shoe for so long. And though I'm unlikely to be on a fraternity dance floor this summer, I'll certainly be able to maneuver the ramps and decks at some of my favorite watering holes with comfort, confidence and style thanks to Paul and Prince.