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Articles by Drew Maglio
Adventures in Boat Repair: The Art of Gelcoat Restoration
Our narrative now picks up from our last iteration, “Adventures in Boat Repair Part I: Shattered Dreams,” during late summer, 2023 when I trailered Soul Rebel back from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to her homeport of Shady Side, MD.
Across Northern Lake Michigan: Part 2
Editor’s Note: If you missed Part One, you can read it here. Last month the author covered the necessary preparations and outfitting required to get Soul Rebel, a 1995 Chaparral 2550 SX, from Maryland up to Lake Michigan and then undertake an extended cruising voyage. This month, the journey begins. Life on a boat is dynamic; one must constantly adapt to the environment. I always chuckle when landlubbers ask, “what are you going to do?
Across Northern Lake Michigan in a 25-Foot Powerboat: Part 1
There’s an ancient Latin proverb that says, “audentes Fortuna iuvat:” fortune favors the bold—an idiom engraved on my watch. While not the most daring trip, it takes some serious planning, preparation, and gall to cross any amount of open water (as in non-protected) in a single-engine, planing-hull powerboat.
Winterization: Preparing Your Powerboat for Winter
Another season has come and gone, and winter will soon be here! It is that unfortunate time of the year when boaters, far and wide—with the exception of those occupying more southerly states—must face the unfortunate reality of the changing season. But how does one begin to winterize one’s vessel, particularly when time is of the essence? For starters, you must determine if you are inclined to undertake the task of winterization yourself.
Against the Florida-fication of the World
Upon moving back to my once-beloved, home state of Florida in the beginning of 2024, I began to experience a disorientation. This seems counterintuitive; after all, I was coming home. But Florida is increasingly become a no-place, a space in which it is very difficult for humans to make a home. In many ways, South Florida is the perfect microcosm of modern civilization.
Genuine Education: Guiding the Rational Soul to Happiness
Liberal education is about absorbing the great traditions of the past in order to form one’s own faculty of judgment, aiming at the end of living well. There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the ‘wisdom’ of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue.
Spring is Here! And so is Spring Commissioning Season
The days are growing longer, the birds are singing, flowers are blooming. Spring is here! And with these harbingers come the added responsibility of making one’s vessel fit to launch for the upcoming spring commissioning season, which will soon be afoot. The anticipation that spring brings provides the inspiration, before winter has been relinquished for good, to dedicate long hours to the improvement of one’s vessel so that the upcoming season will be a smashing success.
Top-End Engine Rebuild On a Chaparral 2550 SX
Last month (December PropTalk) the author detailed his journey of buying his dream used boat, a Chaparral 2550 SX, only to discover engine troubles as soon as he got home. In this article he begins the process of repairs.
5 Used Boat Buying Tips
Finding the proper boat for one’s boating needs is paramount in determining whether boating will be a blissful and blithe experience, or an unwelcome burden. Over the course of my boating life, I have owned seven vessels, ranging from an eight-foot imitation Boston Whaler to a 38-foot Ericson cruising sailboat and have had my share of trials as well as triumphs, which I aim to impart to the reader below. Here are my five used boat buying tips.
“Equality” and the Tyranny of the Majority
I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true.
The Historical Case Against Censorship
“If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.” —Benjamin Franklin “Information is the currency of democracy.” —Thomas Jefferson “The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” —Oscar Wilde The Return of an Old Foe Censorship is a recurring plague upon the free society that has once again reared its ugly head in recent times.
Genuine Education: Guiding the Rational Soul to Happiness
Liberal education is about absorbing the great traditions of the past in order to form one’s own faculty of judgment, aiming at the end of living well. There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the ‘wisdom’ of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue.
Virtue: How to Live & Die According to Montaigne
In his “Essays,” Michel de Montaigne rejects notions of virtue as a quasi-divine state and instead embraces Stoic and Epicurean notions of virtue as a sort of tranquility of mind and soul. A virtuous man restrains his natural vices and lives an orderly and moderate life. For the French nobleman and philosopher, Michel de Montaigne, knowing how to live and die was fundamental to the human experience. Central to this great task of living and dying well (which is the proper function of man) is virtue.
The Historical Case Against Censorship
Drawing from history, our founders understood that liberty and justice could not exist in the same neighborhood as censorship. The solution for our current state, then, is not censorship but civility and a steadfast clinging to the American principles codified in our founding documents, which must be common and applicable to all equally under the law.
Why Adam Smith’s Critique of Mercantilism Matters Today
Adam Smith, the father of the discipline we now refer to as economics, was a moral and political philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment and contemporary and acquaintance of Edmund Burke. Long heralded as a proponent of self-regulating markets, limited government, and free-market “capitalism,” Smith is often invoked by proponents of corporate capitalism as an archetype of reason, worthy of reverence.
Prometheus Unbound: Mary Shelley’s Admonishment About Scientism
Mary Shelley was perhaps the first to illuminate modernity’s insatiable appetite for temporal progress. Today humanity continues its quest to maximize its knowledge, not to attain truth, but in a bid to achieve a new age of heaven on earth, powered by the rule of applied science. “I agree Technology is per se neutral: but a race devoted to the increase of its own power by technology with complete indifference to ethics does seem to me a cancer in the Universe.
RIP Miami Football, 1980-2005 (Part 1)
Author’s Note: I wrote this piece after Miami’s debacle against Georgia Tech early in the season and was happy I did not have to publish it in the following weeks when Miami racked off three impressive wins in the row. The debacle against FIU proved that the 3-game winning streak was a mirage, as Miami suffered its worst loss in program history to a team that Miami’s backups should beat soundly.
An Ode to the Orange Bowl
On October 7th, 2000 a six year old boy attended his first Miami Hurricanes home game, oblivious to the significance of that momentous occasion. In fact, the boy had to be coaxed into attending the game by his parents, who had offered a Scooby-Doo rolling backpack if he would attend. Begrudgingly, the boy accepted his parents’ gracious offer, but quickly regretted his decision due to the heat waves radiating off of the Orange Bowl’s bare metal footways on that hellishly hot day.
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