Coast of Summer

The New England coast, a small cruising sloop, warm winds - and Anthony Bailey's seductive storytelling powers. Lochinvar sails the waters between eastern Long Island and the tip of Cape Cod, poking into deep harbors and shallow ponds, anchoring off fashionable resorts and in remote coves, encountering the rough and the smooth, and exploring, as is Bailey's way, the present life of the coast while keeping a perceptive eye on the past.
The Coast of Summer is an account of a season afloat into which is woven an autobiography of half a lifetime sailing New England waters. It portrays a number of unusual men and women - friends, acquaintances, and chance-met strangers - who live on these shores. Not least, it is an often amusing and sometimes touching record of how Bailey and his wife, Margot, struggle to coexist aboard Lochinvar, the nomadic home from which, by the end of summer, they are loath to come ashore.
For the armchair sailor, this book will be as gratifying as a full-sail breeze. To practical yachting people, it offers modestly but enticingly the fruits of much hard-won and not always heroic experience. And for readers curious about the bays and the sounds, the Cape and the islands (including Shelter, Gardiners, Fishers, Block, Prudence, the Elizabeths, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket), The Coast of Summer provides dramatic dips into history and personal incursions into contemporary high-season life. It amply demonstrates Bailey's ability to evoke wind and water, the way of a boat, and the lively interactions of individuals who depend upon the coast.