I Saturday, JULY 11
AT 0800, FUEL TANKS TOPPED off, on a favorable ebb flowing out of Maine’s Penobscot Bay, we were off to Scotland. Away we went. There were four of us aboard the Valiant 42 Eleanor of Hewes Point: skipper Dave Logan, from Seattle, the best all-around sailor I know; owner Billy Gammon, a neophyte offshore voyager from Texas, who was financing the endeavor and chasing a dream; mate Carol Hasse, a nurturing soul and instinctive mariner almost too good, and smart, to be true (and also an elite sailmaker whose Pacific Northwest loft, Port Townsend Sails, had built Eleanor’s very complete sail inventory); and me, a sailing writer out of Newport, Rhode Island.
I was there for a very simple reason: Logan had called me a year…