Before Joshua Slocum could become the man we remember today--the one who invented bluewater cruising by sailing around the world singlehanded in a rebuilt oyster smack named Spray--his prior life first had to be unmade. Identifying such turning points is sometimes an arbitrary business, but in Slocum’s case there is little doubt about when his world was first turned upside down. The date most certainly was July 25, 1884, when his first wife, Virginia, age 34, died after a brief illness aboard the family’s 138-foot bark Aquidneck in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The Tayana 37 is the most successful of the many Taiwan-built double-ended full-keel cruisers that were conceived in the mid-1970s in the wake of the great success of the Westsail 32. Designed by Bob Perry and originally marketed as the CT 37 when first introduced in 1976, over 600 Tayana 37s have since been built. Technically it is not still in production, but Tayana, a.k.a. the Ta Yang Yacht Building Co., has all relevant molds and tooling and still fills orders for new boats on a spot basis.

This boat is quite heavy by today’s standards, but it sails remarkably well and can serve effectively as both a coastal and bluewater cruiser. It has a particularly strong reputation as an offshore boat and is certainly one of the more popular bluewater cruisers ever built. Reportedly at any given time there are more Tayana 37s out there wandering the globe than any other single type of sailboat.

Twas about 6 a.m. yesterday when we aboard the good ship Avocation arrived at Sandy Hook and found Reid Stowe aboard the schooner Anne getting ready to hoist anchor and head up the bay to Manhattan for his big homecoming. The wind had been southerly when Reid first anchored two days earlier, but now it was westerly, blowing about 15 knots and building. It looked like he might have a hard time hoisting anchor and getting under sail without getting blown down on to the Coast Guard station a few hundred yards behind him.

"You need some help?" I shouted.

Reid glanced around at the 70-foot, 60-ton gaff-rigged vessel he'd been singlehanding out on the open ocean for the past two years. Then he looked to windward.

"Yes," he shouted back.

For marathon sailor Reid Stowe, as for many of us, the Internet is very much a two-edged sword. In Reid's case, it has on the one hand allowed him to document and verify his record-breaking 1,000-day voyage to the world as it has unfolded. Through his 1,000 Days website he has been able to connect with and solicit support from an audience who might otherwise have been oblivious to his efforts. On the other hand, the Internet has enabled and served as a venue for a small band of anonymous critics who have sought tirelessly to mock and humiliate both Reid and Soanya Ahmad (his former crew member and the mother of his young son) through out all the three years he has been at sea. I can think of no other long-distance ocean sailor who has ever endured such relentless and venomous public abuse while actively engaged in a voyage.

If I wanted to I could now blog about this almost hourly and seem relevant, but really I have better things to do with my time. Abby's rescue in the Southern Ocean has unleashed a firestorm of publicity and commentary, with one legion of critics denouncing Abby's voyage and her family and another smaller legion denouncing the larger legion as being armchair after-the-fact ignorant sexist nay-sayers. As a member of the larger legion (one who has been nay-saying, I should note, from the very beginning of the voyage), I'm going to respond to some of the points raised by the smaller legion (which evidently includes my fellow BoaterMouth blogger Zuzana Prochazka) and by Abby and her family… and then that's it. I'm over it!

Abby has been taken off Wild Eyes and is now aboard F/V Ile De La Reunion. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority has released the following statement:

The rescue of 16 year old US solo sailor, Abby Sunderland, from the yacht Wild Eyes to the fishing vessel Ile De La Reunion was successfully conducted at 7:45pm AEST today - approximately 2000 nautical miles off the West Australian coast.