About the Author

Jim Ruddle, longtime radio and television journalist, has a similarly long attachment to sailing. He enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard in his teens and became a radio operator aboard ocean station vessels in the Atlantic and Pacific. Following his discharge, he pursued a life of broadcasting and academics, earning graduate degrees and teaching at two major universities. For a break, he crewed on a hurricane-battered schooner attempting a transatlantic crossing and learning the limitations of old wooden boats. Later, he concentrated on television news broadcasting in Chicago for many years, sailing Lake Michigan from May until the snow fell. Leaving that career behind, he lived and cruised aboard a steel-hulled cutter for four years before settling down to residence in the northeast U.S. and sailing the Long Island Sound and New England waters in smaller sailboats.