Sailboat Cruising

A new adventure begins for Nanni thanks to a partnership with the famous SV Delos, whose YouTube channel is followed by thousands of sailing enthusiasts around the world. The family of sailors, known for sharing their maritime adventures, cultural discoveries and moments of life ...read more

There is a certain allure to sailing a boat designed for the solitary purpose of sailing well; the way the quarter wake licks along the toerail towards the transom, or the lightness of the helm as balance in motion, like a vintage sports car perfectly tuned. The Luders 27 (L-27) ...read more

“The worst part about buying a boat is that the search is over!” Isbjørn’s skipper and one of my business partners, August Sandberg, had that to say when he and I recently recorded a Quarterdeck podcast on boat shopping. This is where August and I differ; of the five boats I’ve ...read more

Editor’s Note: Cruising sailors well know the joys of pulling into a marina or gathering space that dedicates a shelf or three to the nautical version of the lending library—even if that’s just a pile of books next to the laundry machines. It’s like beachcombing or treasure ...read more

Editor’s Note: Lin Pardey and her late husband, Larry, are legends in the sailing community both for their epic voyages in their two purpose-built cutters, Taleisin and Serrafyn, as well as the numerous books they’ve written that have inspired countless sailors to follow their ...read more

We are sailing along in 12-15 knots of easterly wind on a sparkling afternoon on Lake Huron’s Thunder Bay, and I should be ecstatic because I’m finally sailing in a place that has loomed large as legend in my mind for many years. But I’m not quite feeling it, and it’s not ...read more

Editor’s Note: During the Newport Bermuda Race this year, the J/122 Alliance struck a submerged object in the Gulf Stream in the middle of the night, suffering damage that caused her to sink (see “A Eulogy for Alliance,” October 2024). Fellow racers aboard Ceilidh, a J/121, and ...read more

Get the Best From the Wind Hawk Wind Indicator A masthead wind indicator is now standard equipment on most yachts. A quality example is remarkably stable, and apart from a natural-born adventurer of my acquaintance who bent his during some unpleasantness in a famous English ...read more

This is the column where I hopelessly date myself, and it came to me in the weirdest place—the short passage just beyond the bar at The Black Pearl in Newport, Rhode Island. I was in town for the Newport Boat Show in September, making the annual trek for my favorite chowder, when ...read more

The November/December issue of SAIL is here, and we’re closing out the year with stories to fire your imagination, expand your knowledge, and broaden your sailing horizons. Here’s a quick preview! Jumping on the Starwagon: Starlink is becoming ubiquitous on sailboats, changing ...read more

The year is 2010, and British adventurer Geoff Holt has just completed a transatlantic crossing aboard a custom 60-foot catamaran named Impossible Dream. He has two non-sailors aboard along for the ride—one to help with life aboard, one to document the trip. For 28 days at sea, ...read more

It was a spring afternoon and my sister Laura and I were chatting on the telephone, she in Michigan and I in Los Angeles. Days earlier, I’d accepted an invite from NAOS Yachts to tag along on a weekend getaway aboard a Lagoon catamaran to celebrate the manufacturer’s 40th ...read more

Dan: Hey Wendy, what are your thoughts on doing a press trip down in the BVI next year? Could be a great opportunity, but we need to choose if we want a sail or powerboat. Seems like a no-brainer to me. Wendy: Hey Dan! Of course it’s a no-brainer: sailboat. They’re called trade ...read more

The best winter storage location for your boat is a sunny, tropical place with palm trees swaying at the shore, turquoise water gurgling in her bow wave, and you ensconced at the helm. But if your boat lives where winter delivers ice and snow, and if sailing south to avoid the ...read more

Relieving the Load In an ideal world, any boat that needs to move her genoa fairleads forward when reefing would have dedicated purchases for the job. The trouble is, lots—like mine—don’t have them. The horrible old standby is to ease the load by jamming a foot down on the sheet ...read more

Picture this: We’re anchored Swedish-style, bow up against the rocks, stern anchor pulled tight on the starboard quarter, pine trees gently rustling in the light summer breeze, parked up in the outer Stockholm archipelago. Our 4-year-old son, Axel, is climbing up and down the bow ...read more

Josh Fody and Jessie Wilde each came to their shared dream of living aboard full time from different places. Josh nurtured the notion of buying a boat and sailing south during his years aboard an aircraft carrier in the Navy. Jessie first tasted the idea when her grandfather ...read more

It was almost midnight when our catamaran surfed down the 4-meter swell, and a giant wave broke between her hulls. The impact hit with a thunderous crash under us, reverberating and shaking the entire boat. I flew out of the salon bed in a panic. It was a new moon, and the ocean ...read more

About halfway through the 635-mile Newport to Bermuda Race, in the middle of the night, partway through our Gulf Stream crossing, the boat I was sailing on struck a submerged object and sank. I won’t go into all the details here (you can find an account of the disaster in SAIL’s ...read more

We were sailing from Atlantic City to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, on a breezy summer day, and I’ll admit we were kind of a hot mess. The boat—a 45-foot Solent-rigged sloop—was new to us, and we’d just embarked on a monthlong shakedown cruise to New England. Or someplace. It was hard ...read more

It was during my eighth and most recent transatlantic, this one a classic trade wind route from Mindelo, Cape Verde, to Barbados in the Eastern Caribbean, that the beauty of rigging a downwind pole really shone through. “The bonkers tradewind sailing continues, faster and ...read more

Hard to believe it’s pumpkin time—which also means boat shows time—and the October issue of SAIL magazine has the latest in new models making the rounds. Here’s a sneak peek of what else you can expect in this issue—don’t forget to stop by our booth at the U.S. Sailboat Show in ...read more

For more multihull reviews and stories, subscribe for free to Multihull Power & Sail You haven’t done it, have you? You haven’t put Catskill, New York, on your bucket list. Or even on your someday-if-I’m-cruising-in-the-neighborhood list. I get it. Catskill is just a ...read more

Dan: Let’s settle a debate: Which is the better cruising ground, the Chesapeake or Narragansett Bay? Personally, I’ll take Rhode Island over the tartar sauce-covered crustacean capital any day! Wendy: Dan, Dan, Dan. You reveal your New England blinders so quickly. One does not ...read more

Hanse 360 With the new 360, Hanse Yachts continues its design partnership with Berret-Racoupeau, extending the line that began with the 460 and 510 (both SAIL Top 10 Best Boats winners in 2023 and 2024, respectively) and now also the new 410. Remarkably, many of the same ...read more

The sudden sinking of the superyacht Bayesian, which killed seven people, has been rife with rumor and speculation as it has captured the world’s attention. SAIL’s sister magazine, Power & Motoryacht, asked yacht designer and naval architect Bill Prince to help set some of the ...read more

You might say I learned to sail on my family’s 32-foot Pearson Vanguard. But my most memorable lessons came after we dropped anchor, when my father taught me in our Dyer Dhow sailing dinghy. Half a century later, I still remember his precise instructions for an eggshell landing: ...read more

Our 1979 Cheoy Lee 41, Avocet, was anchored in Morro Bay during the worst storm system the state of California had seen in two decades. It had been two weeks of what seemed to be nonstop rain and high winds while we patiently waited for some sort of weather window to safely get ...read more

Nestled on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, Annapolis has long been a pilgrimage site for sailors. Dubbed America’s Sailing Capital, the city’s narrow streets are steeped with a maritime legacy that spans over three centuries. Its skyline has a unique dynamism, typified by an ...read more

The Cruising Club of America (CCA) is a collection of 1,400 ocean sailors with extensive offshore seamanship, command experience, and a shared passion for making adventurous use of the seas. Their experiences and expertise make them, collectively, one of the most reliable ...read more

It’s late May in Sweden, the sun is shining, and boats are launching. Sweden, with its thousands of miles of spectacular coastline and DIY culture, has a wonderful—and wonderfully unpretentious—sailing scene. Mia and I have a Norlin 34 called Spica that we keep 20 minutes from ...read more

There’s a scene in the movie Moana when Tala, the grandmother figure of Motunui, a fictional South Pacific island, is lying on her deathbed, speaking her last words of wisdom to the titular character, who must go to sea to save her village and the world. But Moana is afraid of ...read more

Sometimes you add value to the boat, other times the boat adds value to you. Own a sailboat? Pete Van Hamersveld didn’t even know how to sail. Plus, who’d be crazy enough to pay slip fees? The year was 1988. Pete was 29, newly married, and looking for a hobby to replace hang ...read more

In the early spring of 1893, a seemingly unassuming young man, a clerk who then worked in the British House of Commons, made a fateful decision—he would learn to sail. His name was Erskine Childers. He had a slight build, poor eyesight, a weak chin, and was partly disabled, ...read more

Join us for a unique conversation during the Annapolis Sailboat Show with special guests Cole Brauer and Lin Pardey who encompass 50 years of sailing, the racing rockstar and cruising legend will explore common threads in their unprecedented careers—the spirit of passagemaking, ...read more