North America

The Lakes Effect

by Kimball Livingston, Posted December 20, 2006

Once you’re out of sight of land for a while, you understand why they speak of “offshore sailing” in the Great Lakes.Once you’ve been through a few sail changes, you might think of the prevailing wind as “variable.”And once you’ve gone the length of Lake Michigan, you will be, in a small way, a veteran of sailing in the heart of America. I say “in a small way” because there is a lot of

Getting away from it all on Lake Michigan

by Fred Bagley, Posted September 3, 2009

Every time my wife Jennifer and I sail to the Beaver Islands, something goes wrong. So why do we keep going there? Initially it was because of where they are, but now it’s because of what they are.First, the “where” part. The Beavers are a dozen islands in northern Lake Michigan, 30 miles from Michigan sailing centers like Mackinac Island, Harbor Springs and Charlevoix.

A Big Lake Upgrade

by Lyle Frizzell, Posted July 27, 2011

Driving up to Lake Champlain with our 21ft San Juan sloop Puffin in tow, my wife Dawn and I felt our excitement mounting. We’d had plenty of sailing experience on our home lake in New Hampshire, but this would be our first time on the big body of water in the northwestern corner of Vermont. We were looking forward to a week-long sailing vacation in a beautiful locale.A light rain

Tricky Waters: Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake

by David Schmidt, Posted January 3, 2013

When I was 11, my Dad, his buddies and I sailed Wind Dancer, his C&C 37, from Long Island Sound to Chesapeake Bay. It was my second offshore passage.

Driving The Interstate ICW

by Sail Staff, Posted August 8, 2008

Unfavorable winds turn an offshore adventure into a sleepy crawl down the DitchBy Dave BaldwinWe emerged from the darkness of an overnight passage 10 miles off the North Carolina coast when Joe asked an ordinarily easy question: “Should we turn off the engines and sail?” The light breeze had finally clocked around so that it wasn’t hitting us on the nose and—having spent

Valley Boy

by Sail Staff, Posted April 29, 2010

The early morning air was redolent with the tang of low tide on the Hudson River as I steered upriver, bound for Lake Ontario via the Erie and Oswego canals. I’d gotten underway shortly after dawn to ride the flood tide north. The Manhattan skyline towered above me to starboard. Behind me the green-hued Statue of Liberty looked grand in the soft sunlight. The sounds of bustling Manhattan and

Maine Windjammer Cruising

by MacDuff Perkins, Posted July 28, 2011

When I boarded Mercantile, an 80-foot schooner docked in Camden Harbor, Maine, my iPhone’s battery had about five minutes of life left on it. “Hey—do you have an iPod dock or outlet on board?” I asked a scruffy-looking young man who could have walked straight out of a modern-day Moby Dick casting call.“Aw, lady, you don’t know how much fun yer gonna have once that thing’s

Trailer Sailing Lake Huron's North Channel

by Rebecca Waters, Posted February 1, 2007

We cruised by the Strawberry Island Lighthouse in Canada’s North Channel at 7 knots in a brisk 25-knot wind. I was aboard Henk Vanderhulst’s Precision 23, Go Gently, and he, despite his 80 years, was unwilling to risk his reputation for leaving the fleet in his wake.

A Sense of the Journey

by Kimball Livingston, Posted August 11, 2008

There’s always an anchorage around the bend when you’re cruising the rivers and sloughs of California’s Central ValleyMuch of our world has lost a proper sense of the journey, but not the world of sail. A friend of mine once told me how he sailed his two boys 80 miles up the Sacramento River from San Francisco. “We went when the boys were 14 and 12,” he said. “Along the way we

It's the End of the World

by David W. Shaw, Posted June 14, 2010

The sun shone a milky white. Its weak rays were barely able to drive off the damp chill of the early afternoon as we made our way eastward in the Deer Isle Thorofare, a passage snaking between Deer Isle and the beautiful smaller islands of Merchant Row in Down East Maine. I carefully checked the chart against the red and green buoys marking the channel, mindful that straying off course could mean