ARMCHAIR RECOLLECTIONS

Your reminiscences about the Armchair Sailor (“Time to Go,” Editor’s Log, August) brought back a fond but bittersweet memory for me. I sailed around the world with my family on the installment plan, leaving the boat and returning home each fall for a few months. Before returning to our travels, we would go to the Armchair Sailor to stock up on charts, chips and cruising guides for the next leg. One January day, we found ourselves in the store—a quiet refuge on a cold, snowy day. There we were, midway through a circumnavigation, with our boat in Australia. There was an older couple also partway through a circumnavigation, with their boat in Turkey. There was a single man who had just finished his second circumnavigation, this one around the five southern capes. And there was Ted behind the counter, a delivery skipper with some 300,000 miles under his keel. And that was it. The six of us shared stories, plans, advice and conversation, and went away feeling recharged by a mental respite from winter, and ready to continue our adventures. The Armchair Sailor was a part of what we were all doing, and we really miss it.