Sail Magazine

by MacDuff Perkins

MacDuff Perkins loves sailing on the Chesapeake Bay with her husband and their super mutt, Dixie Poo.

How a Racer Learned to Cruise

by MacDuff Perkins, Posted November 19, 2012

After working together at SAIL for two years, my coworker Christa asked me if I’d teach her to sail. Having never “learned” how to sail with either a coach or in a classroom, though, I knew my limitations as a teacher.

The SAILing Girls' Guide to Cute Boat Shoes

by MacDuff Perkins, Posted January 24, 2012

Women are constantly on a quest for the perfect shoe. And that extends to women sailors as well. SAIL editors MacDuff Perkins and Meredith Laitos went on the hunt to find that Jimmy Choo of topsiders, and here is what they came up with.

Hitched in a Hurricane

by MacDuff Perkins, Posted September 20, 2011

After a full day of racing, there's nothing I want to do more than put the boat away and hit the rum tent. When asked if I want to spend the night on a boat, what I actually hear is, “Do you want to sleep in a pile of recycling that we keep down in a wet cellar? There’s a bathroom right by your head.” So no, I am not a cruiser.

Television Worth Watching

by MacDuff Perkins, Posted September 15, 2011

In one of the more brilliant moves in modern sailing, the America’s Cup has opted to make live-streaming coverage of AC45 World Series events free and available to anyone with a computer. Broadcasting straight from Plymouth, England, World Series coverage began on Monday, September 12, featuring fleet racing in both 40 and 18-minute races. GPS trackers onboard the boats tracked everything

Bait Station Boil

by MacDuff Perkins, Posted August 24, 2011

This past July, while sailing in Maine, we were surprised to discover there were no lobsters to be had on North Haven Island. “Ya got a boat?” a woman with no lobsters to sell asked us.As it turns out, this year’s lobster season hasn’t been the best one for Mainers, and you’re just as likely to get a fresh catch in Brooklyn as you are in Rockland. Lobster “middlemen”—floating barges that

Volvo Ocean Race Rerouted Due to Piracy

by MacDuff Perkins, Posted August 18, 2011

The threat of piracy in the Indian Ocean has forced organizers of the 2011-12 Volvo Ocean Race to reroute racing for the second and third legs. Acting on the advice of the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) and other marine safety experts, organizers are opting to have the boats race from Cape Town to a “safe haven port,” and then ship the boats to Abu Dhabi to resume racing. This

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

Ten Minutes with Kenny Read

by MacDuff Perkins, Posted July 15, 2011

PUMA Volvo Ocean Race skipper Ken Read is fresh off a Transatlantic Race win, where his boat Mar Mostro hit 30 knots and made 551 nautical miles in a single day. The race wasn’t all white-knuckle sailing, however, as a steadily waning breeze made the last several hundred miles extremely slow going.The high-intensity skipper gave us 10 minutes of his time to talk about the

PUMA, Juan K, and Laird Hamilton Get Ready to Paddleboard

by MacDuff Perkins, Posted June 29, 2011

A mere five days before he and the crew of Mar Mostro set sail in the 2011 TransAtlantic Race, Ken Read sat down between surfing giant Laird Hamilton and legendary designer Juan K. to talk about a very different hobby: paddleboarding.Specifically, paddleboarding the PUMA way.“PUMA has always gone against the grain,” Antonio Bentone, PUMA’s Chief Marketing

Coutts Capsizes AC45 in San Francisco

by MacDuff Perkins, Posted June 14, 2011

Winds in the mid-20s and a small craft advisory didn’t stop Jimmy Spithill and Russell Coutts from heading out to test sail their AC45s in San Francisco Bay on Monday, June 13th. Owned by Oracle Racing, both boats were preparing to head to Cascals, Portugal later this summer for the America’s Cup World Series. But in a dramatic explosion of wind, wave, and carbon fiber, Coutts’ buried