In my continuing effort to acquire miscellaneous skills, I took up celestial navigation a little while ago. Yes, I mean using a sextant, some printed tables, and a rudimentary grasp of the principles of spherical trigonometry to find my position on Earth. It’s unlikely anyone really needs to do this here in the 21st century, when we all carry GPS receivers in our pockets that are accurate to a few meters, but utility isn’t the only reason, or even the best reason, to learn things.

None of the research blogging posts in my queue are quite ready yet, so it’s time for another update on the weird world of Wesorts. If you’re a Piscataway Indian reading that sentence, please don’t take offense - I’m talking about Wesort sailboats here, for the benefit of the six people in the world who’ve heard of them. And if you have absolutely no idea what any of this is about, hang on, because it’s going to get weirder.

Boatbuilders come and go, so it’s no surprise that virtually all of the vessels in my earliest sailing memories are now out of production. Most of them, though, survive in boatyards and have fan clubs online, so information about them is never more than a Google search away. Not so the Wesort. Before I was even big enough to hold a tiller, I remember my father teaching older kids how to sail at Indian Landing Boat Club on the upper reaches of the Severn River.