Whether you’re looking for insights into the best cruising grounds of the East Coast, West Coast, Caribbean or Great Lakes, or the latest in tips and techniques for doing everything aboard from set the anchor to fix your engine, recover a man-overboard victim or trim your sails, our editors and contributors have the answers.
It’s not often that a Frenchman urges Americans to take more chances. With its 35-hour workweek and comprehensive social security net, France can make America look like the land of hazard and reward. To celebrated French naval architect Philippe Briand, though, who has seen more ...read more
If you like the thought of easy sailing, affordable travel costs and a low hassle factor, you can’t beat the Virgin Islands for a wondrous winter charter. Whether you’re headed to the Spanish, British or U.S. Virgins, here are some tips on chartering in a tropical paradise ...read more
Many cruising sailors find themselves having to leave their boat unattended for an extended period from time to time, and that’s where people like me come in. For some reason, people trust me. My home, Brunswick, Georgia, hosts hundreds of cruising boats every hurricane season, ...read more
Last weekend I went to a boating swap meet. There were at least 50 sellers trying to get rid of everything nautical, from bent outboard props to darling ceramic figurines of baby elephants on Noah’s ark. Who buys all this junk, anyway? Well, probably you do, so I’m here to tell ...read more
Are you out there sailing, cruising and living the sailing life? If so, we’d love to see it. Send your sailing photos to sailmail@sailmagazine.com And don’t forget to sign up for our free eNewsletter. This photo was taken recently while sailing the Sea of Cortez. We were ...read more
Technologies are adopted because they make some part of life easier, safer or more efficient. Socrates argued almost 2,400 years ago that the new technology of writing would displace teachers, memory and wisdom. Since then other technologies have often led to the loss of the ...read more
Ever since they first appeared in my navigational toolbox decades ago I have been wary of waypoints. They certainly do seem helpful, these electronic flags we plant in the ether to guide us to where we want to go. But I noticed early on they also tend to distort our perception. ...read more
The chart showed 45ft of vertical clearance, and I knew the boat should be able to pass under the bridge. Still, there was that nagging voice in my head that wouldn’t let me be. “What if your air draft calculations were wrong?” it said. “And if you’re just a little too high the ...read more
Chasing leaks on boats is a time-honored obsession. Rule number one in all galaxies of the nautical universe through all of nautical history has always been the same: keep the water on the outside. When water somehow finds its way inside and you don’t know where it’s coming ...read more
After 320 days at sea, British sailor Jeanne Socrates, 77, arrived in Victoria, British Colombia, on Saturday, completing her latest circumnavigation and in the process becoming the oldest person ever to sail solo, nonstop around the world. Prior to the voyage, Socrates was ...read more
My husband, Neil, and I had left Mexico in March on board Distant Drummer, our Liberty 458 sloop, with a plan to spend the rest of the year on a leisurely cruise down the west coast of Central America. It was in this way that, after enjoying the delights of El Salvador and ...read more
After 14 days at sea, the 16-year-old Swedish climate-change activist Greta Thunberg has arrived in New York Harbor aboard the IMOCA 60 Malizia II. Now that she’s there, she plans to both continue protesting what she sees as the world’s failure to adequately address the problem ...read more
There’s a lot to be said for a trailer-sailer. Say goodbye to expensive boatyard haulout and storage fees. Forget about the laborious annual bottom scrub and paint. Park your pride and joy in your backyard so you can keep a fond eye on her over winter. Luxuriate in lower ...read more
There is something exciting about the extended anticipation of making landfall in a faraway place for the first time: the imminent meeting of expectations and reality, the inevitable differences from the mental pictures you’ve shaped. Through our decade of offshore sailing, my ...read more
For a few sweet years, American cruisers had the freedom to sail to Cuba. It was good while it lasted, says Addison Chan Cuba has assumed near-mythical properties in the community of sailors around the world. It is almost impossible to utter the name without conjuring up images ...read more
It is with great sadness that we read of the murder of New Zealand cruiser Alan Culverwell, and the attack on his family, by criminals who boarded their boat in Panama’s Guna Yala/San Blas Islands early in May. The San Blas were known as a “safe” area to cruise. Aside from petty ...read more
Amid the widespread devastation caused by hurricanes Irma and Maria when they swept across the northern Caribbean in September 2017, the destruction of the iconic Bitter End Yacht Club on Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands was particularly keenly felt by sailors. The ...read more
I arrived on the docks of Beaufort, North Carolina, in late April with two backpacks filled with new gear—everything I’d need for my first offshore passage. Though I’d been sailing for 16 years, graduating from dinghies to keelboats to a J/122, I’d spent my time racing and, in ...read more
They are the worst of times, they are the best of times There’s a fabulous line from an old Paul Simon song that I often sing to myself while sailing: I can gather all the news I need from the weather report. It is part of the magic of sailing, this ancient process by which we ...read more
One of the most wonderful childhood vacations I can remember was back in 1971 when my best friend invited me to his family’s summer home on Nantucket Island. For a 10-year-old kid, this was a thrilling trip for many reasons, not the least of which was the fact it was also my ...read more
Many cruising boats, especially smaller ones, don’t have a conventional oven. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t have all the baked foods you want, from bread to brownies to breakfast rolls to casseroles and even a roast chicken. All it takes is the right bit of gear and a ...read more
After sailing on Puget Sound and in British Columbia for over 30 years, my wife, Jeri, and I retired to Florida, bought a house on Punta Gorda and worked hard to get it straight. The walls had been painted, furniture bought and assembled, belongings packed, transported and ...read more
Back when I first started ocean sailing, the most routinely challenging part of standing a watch was just keeping track of vessel traffic. If you didn’t have radar or couldn’t run it 24/7—as was and still is the case on most modest cruising sailboats—it could be downright ...read more
With 118 islands and atolls stretching over 1,200 miles of the South Pacific Ocean, French Polynesia has a long and intimate relationship with the sea. When my photographer, Michaela, and I finally found time to put this epic destination into our sailing calendar, it was both a ...read more
