This could be one of those Twilight Zone triple-coincidence stories that once upon a time kept me up to my armpits in pulpy comic books. Cue orchestra; dial up the basso profundo Rod Serling voice-over: "And there's the signpost, straight up ahead…"

Should taxpayers have to spend large sums of money rescuing overzealous sailors who get into trouble they might easily have avoided? Should they pay to rescue sailors who don't actually need rescuing in the first place? Questions like this are bubbling up into the public consciousness, thanks to teen sailor Abby Sunderland, who was recently plucked at great public expense from her dismasted boat after she foolishly tried to transit the southern Indian Ocean during winter.

Coincidentally (or not?), French legislators last week started debating a new law that would enable the French government to seek compensation from "people who have deliberately exposed themselves, without a legitimate motive stemming from their professional situation or a situation of emergency, to risks of which they could not have been unaware." This, evidently, in reaction to a spate of expensive rescue operations financed by the French government, including the launching last year of a full-on commando raid to liberate bluewater sailors on a French yacht that was hijacked off Somalia.

Here's one interesting weirdness about this tragic Mike-Got-Mauled-On-His-Boat tale: initial reports, which basically came verbatim from the victim himself, had the location all wrong. First it happened in Martinique, or in Guadeloupe, then finally it was St. Martin. The Aussie Sail-World site (which I believe originally reported the location as Guadeloupe, though they seem to have covered their tracks on this) has just posted another missive from Mike, in which the ex-paraplegic thrill-seeker shares a few more details re the attack. Turns out Mike was in fact anchored inside Simpson Bay Lagoon, near the Witch's Tit (aka Mt. Fortune, which is identified in the photo above). This is not exactly the most heavily trafficked area of the Lagoon, but it certainly isn't the most remote either.

Seeing as how I've kept Lunacy in St. Martin the past two winters (though not in the Lagoon) and have frequently cruised and raced there with friends and family, this is a sobering piece of news, to be sure.

FROM AN EARLY AGE it was this image in particular, by artist Rockwell Kent, and a few others like it, that were pressed into my mind as nearly Jungian archetypes of what a life afloat must be like. There were several of Kent's dynamic high-contrast wood-block prints hanging about our house while I was growing up, most of them of nautical subjects, and they made an enormous impression on me. Later, when I was older, my grandfather presented me with one of Kent's books, N by E, which had just been reissued by the Weslayan University Press. This made an even bigger impression.

It helped, of course, that several of the prints I'd long admired turned out to be illustrations from the book. It helped, too, that Kent's prose style is just as muscular and dynamic as his illustrations. The art in the book takes up nearly as much space as the text, and the two complement each other exceedingly well. Together they today seem a tad archaic and mannered (delightfully so, IMHO), but they also present a unique account of cruising under sail in what almost amounts to a very modern "graphic-novel" format.

Some very ugly news from the W'Indies. Latitude 38 has just published a grim first-person account by bluewater cruiser Mike Harker, who was recently assaulted aboard his Hunter 49 Wanderlust 3 while anchored at St. Martin. Mike, who was grievously injured in a hand-gliding accident two decades ago and was told he would never walk again, has long been a poster-boy for Hunter Marine and has been an active cruiser for several years. Any who have met him while hanging around Hunter's booth at the big national sailboat shows will, I am sure, remember him as an exceedingly gregarious and unpretentious fellow. According to his Latitude account, which you can read here, he was woken in his berth at 4 a.m. by two thugs who swam out to his boat. They threatened him with a harpoon, beat him senseless, and plundered the boat.

Having spent a full day of my July 4 weekend moving Lunacy north from Portsmouth, NH, to her summer quarters in Portland, ME, I was reminded for the umpteenth time of several things I love about sailing in this part of the world. I was reminded, too, of a few things I don’t love so much. Number one on the latter list: lobster pots!