Sea Salty Articles of 2024

A maritime medley of published pieces for you

“Where can I read your stuff?” is a question I get regularly. These days my published works are scattered across a variety of magazines and the odds any given person has a subscription to them all is slim. But here in the pocket universe of Substack, scooping them all up for an end-of-year collection is just a matter of me taking the time to hunt down the various links online. I have done so here. Below are most of my published pieces for the good year 2024. Hail to the stories of this past year and skål to the ones before us!

2025 is shaping up to be exciting for me. I’m particularly eager for a few articles of mine that are set to drop in January. There is also a literary review development brewing. Multiple book manuscripts are in various stages of completion and publication pitching. If you don’t hear about these wannabe books again, I failed and am too embarrassed to talk about them. But hey, that’s life for ya. I also plan to try a few new things here on Norris Note for 2025. Hopefully The People get something out of the effort.

The Sea Chest

I’ve had the pleasure of serving as editor of all three 2024 The Sea Chest issues. The publication is the tri-annual journal of the Puget Sound Maritime (PSM) historical society and truly a one-of-a-kind 48 pages of longform sea salty goodness.

The 2024 lineup!

You can learn more on the PSM website here. These beauties are behind a PSM membership paywall.

Passagemaker

I've written a handful of what’s widely dubbed “good old boat” Passagemaker magazine features that profile interesting vintage yachts and their masters.

First up, my piece about Teal:

“…Teal is immaculate and is as seaworthy a coastal cruiser as when she was first pressed into service in Alaska for the Bureau of Fisheries (now known as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service). Seattle marine architects H.C. Hanson and L.E. Coolidge designed her. The Kruse and Banks Shipbuilding Company built her in 1927 from Douglas fir at North Bend in Coos Bay, Ore…”

A nice reader comment.

The Ballad of Teal can be read here.

Next, my article Making Memories features a very cool Bill Garden designed steel trawler and the very sweet Stewart family:

“…For Andy Stewart and his father, Roger, the steel-hull William Garden design Nightfall serves as a bond over a shared passion for salty boats.

‘We really liked commercial boats and had this idea of maybe one day we’ll convert a boat ourselves,’ Andy says. ‘We also liked single-screw, displacement-hull, efficient trawlers.’ His two kids, who are 6 and 8, were also a consideration for Andy and his wife. ‘We just want everyone to have a good experience and get there safely and comfortably. This is kind of the right fit for us’…”

You can read the entire Making Memories article here.

Power & Motoryacht

I got a chance to sit down with the king of stitch-and-glue boatbuilding, Sam Devlin. I originally titled this piece The Whimsey Factor because that was one of the uniquely Devlin takeaway insights to his style:

“It would be easy at first glance to not fully appreciate the boatbuilding significance of Sam Devlin’s Olympia, Washington, homestead-turned-boatshop. Rain pitter-patters through the deep green of the mossy forest. A boat transom with rudder is mounted to the flank of a venerable unpainted wood barn. A shy German shepherd approaches for a pet.

Perhaps most importantly of all, the quirky outbuilding dubbed Goose Lodge II sits across from a babbling brook amidst sword ferns and cedar boughs. The cabin/design office hybrid is covered in nameplates from Devlin’s projects, from commercial fishing boats turned yachts like the iconic traditionalist love letter Josephine to Electric Philosophy, a 40-foot, 100 percent solar propulsion yacht launched in 2021 that cruised to Alaska and back in 2023 without a single input from shore power.

In short, Devlin’s Cascadian farmhouse styled HQ exemplifies the builder’s core design philosophy: Whimsical. Unusual. Unpredictable.

‘I think that it’s really important that boats have a very strong whimsy factor,’ said Devlin. He reasoned that pleasure boats specifically make little practical sense, so artistic, human, and frankly, fun elements are of fundamental value. To access the daydreams of boaters with unique character and charming lines is his goal—and superpower.

Devlin’s explanation of boatbuilding sounds more like a painter or musician: ‘It’s an excuse for this expression of art…’”

You can read the whole article here.