Nights drawing in, equinox approaching, but pressure still high, and today it is just about possible to imagine that the summer will go on forever. Ghosting along, small breeze from the south, anchorage somewhere in that blue-grey shadow on the horizon, no tide to speak of. No hurry, only as much anxiety as produces safety; and the stories come drifting in.

They start with Samson Evans, visiting a wooden boat festival in Norway - an ordinary enough event on the face of it, but showing, on investigation, features somewhere between weird and surreal. Then more Scandinavia with some incidents from the early career of Elis Karlssen of Åland, sometime chief mate of the Herzogin Cecilie, learning his trade at considerable personal risk on a Baltic schooner. After which comes more trading with Julian Blatchley, who takes us in his inimitable style through the conditions that make the Gulf a horrible place to work as a merchant seaman even when there isn't a war on.

It is a relief to leave superheated anchorages, corrupt officials and religious bigots to accompany Andrew Grainger into the world of a Vietnam-era draftee on a US Navy oiler, which simultaneously reveals not only that some admirals are actually human but that Frank Sinatra can stand in for a lethal weapon. Then we experience humanity in adversity in Mark Browse's account of a dirty night in the north Pacific during a Clipper race; and plenty of the same in a story by the great Ian Nicolson - recently awarded an MBE, and quite right too - about the wit, wisdom and idiosyncratic business practices of the yacht builder and designer Alan Buchanan, with whom he spent part of his early career.

The oyster fishery of the Fal is conducted only under sail, and its boats and techniques are unique. Alun Davies has been a dredgerman himself, and writes about this truly interesting business with deep authority. Next come two letters home from distant places - one from G Andy Chase, a US merchant seaman describing to his parents the travails of cargo handling in South Africa, plagued by union inaction, bad machinery, bloody awful weather and segregation horrors; and another from Laura Hudleston, who travelled from England to Madras in 1858 to join her husband, who was in the Indian Army. The letters she wrote to him en route are a fascinating chronicle of life on board an Indiaman from the point of view of a brave passenger with very young children, absolutely no experience of the sea, and apparently illimitable patience.

Plenty of people have headed for the Med via the French waterways, and Humphrey Holland is one of them. His was a delivery trip, which meant it had to be made in winter. He had to cope with (among other vicissitudes) ice on the canals, a spate on the Rhone, and objectives rendered hazy by a touch of lotus eating. Then Duncan Smallman, a seaweed expert, gives an account of the growth of seaweed farming in British waters; and finally Adrian Morgan, Vertue owner and sailplane pilot, investigates a couple of books full of the boat-maintenance dodges and wheezes of yesteryear.

As usual, in fact, plenty of maritime life is here.

Welcome aboard!