Sailboat Cruising

• Jul 16, 2019

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. Baylee the 11-week-old Golden Retriever is getting used to our 32ft Irwin ...read more

• By Sail Staff
  Jul 12, 2019

On April 29, veteran circumnavigator Webb Chiles closed the loop on his sixth solo circumnavigation. Chiles and his Moore 24, Gannet, sailed into San Diego to complete the 29,989-mile epic five years after setting out. It was a leisurely circumnavigation by Chiles’s standards, ...read more

• By SAIL Editors
  Jul 8, 2019

We need a boat. Like, really need a boat. Not just, “Oh a boat would be fun.” But an aching, core-wrenching desire for a piece of water. We don’t find sailing just a pastime or a boat a status symbol. A boat is a part of the family; without one, we’re incomplete. We have always ...read more

• By Kerstin Lindquist
  Jul 8, 2019

Thirty-three years ago Jimmy Cornell launched a rally for boats crossing the Atlantic from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean. The pitch was safety in numbers and resonated with sailors who were seeking adventure but also looking for a bit of a safety net. It was a monohull ...read more

• By Zuzana Prochazka
  Jul 1, 2019

It all started with YouTube. Last year, when my wife, Marjorie, and I began planning to include the Exumas in our upcoming three-month cruise through the Bahamas, I searched the internet for information on what we might find there. As I was doing so I happened across a video of ...read more

• By Doug Weibel
  Jul 1, 2019

Way back in 1610, Henry Hudson, commissioned by the Dutch East India Company to find a northwest passage to China, was the first Western navigator to discover the bay that now bears his name. During his exploratory voyage (1610-1611), Hudson and his crew spent a miserable winter ...read more

• By Jean Lelievre
  Jun 28, 2019

There’s a unique cruising ground that combines access to urban locations with easy escapes to wilderness and nature. Its native people may be the friendliest on the east coast of North America. Its coastline runs 250 nautical miles in a straight line, but that should be ...read more

• By Tom Zydler
  Jun 10, 2019

Though I hate to think of myself as a “disaster tourist,” I can’t deny one of the things I was most curious about as I sailed south last fall to visit St. Martin, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico was how much hurricane damage I would see. I’m sure no one needs reminding that ...read more

• By Charles J. Doane
  Jun 7, 2019

On this idyllic California summer morning, Soncy, a classic 40ft Rhodes-designed sloop built in 1957, is on her way to Santa Catalina Island. On board are owner John Clark Jr., his 10-year-old son, Ian, and me. As we motor out of Newport Harbor while raising the sails, two other ...read more

• By Michael Petrie
  Jun 3, 2019

On December 23, 1816, His Majesty’s cutter Mermaid was launched in Calcutta, India. Built of solid teak and sheathed with copper, she was 56ft long and weighed 84 tons, with a beam of 18ft 6in and a 9ft draft. Australian-born Royal Navy captain Philip Parker King commanded the ...read more

• By Mo Fitzpatrick
  May 31, 2019

It is rare to leave the Antarctic Peninsula earlier than need be. No matter how much time you allow for a cruise in that splendid and awe-inspiring environment, it’s never enough, and the return across stormy Drake Passage is done with regret as much as trepidation. In February ...read more

• By Skip Novak
  May 30, 2019

With all the rallies to choose from, there’s a perfect route for every sailor in every corner of the world. While all rallies take pride in creating community, providing logistical support and most of all making sailing safer for their participants, they each have their own ...read more

• By Lydia Mullan
  May 30, 2019

The young racer had been sailing for days without sleep, but he was ahead of the fleet in the Solitaire du Figaro, a grueling, singlehanded race off the coast of France. Sailing into the harbor to the cheers of the crowd, he stepped from his boat onto the wharf to accept their ...read more

• By Charles Thrasher
  May 28, 2019

Back when I was a young man, sailing back and forth across the North Atlantic in an old fiberglass sailboat, it seemed fairly obvious to me how all that was wrong in the world might be set right. Everyone should be issued a boat at birth! Or so I declared to any who would listen ...read more

• By Charles J. Doane
  May 24, 2019

Depending on where you are, Puget Sound can look no bigger than a mountainous version of the Intracoastal Waterway. That’s what I thought when I first laid eyes on it from the lighthouse at Mukilteo Park on a sunny day last July. Then I went to the top of the iconic Space Needle ...read more

• By Capt. Robert Beringer
  May 21, 2019

Steve greeted my boyfriend, Phillip, and me as soon as we tied Plaintiff’s Rest, our 1985 Niagara 35, up to his dock on one of the Berry Islands in the Bahamas. He was tall, cheerful and clad in a hodge-podge of clothes one might wear to paint a house: oversized, grungy and old. ...read more

• By Annie Dike
  May 15, 2019

We, dog owners, understand the general expectations of ourselves in public places, like picking up after Fido and keeping him on a leash. There are, however, certain places where additional unspoken rules or expectations may apply—as in harbors or marinas. If you sail with your ...read more

• By John Woods
  May 15, 2019

It was the summer of 1952. The Eisenhower/Stevenson race was in full swing. I was in my junior year, studying naval architecture at the University of Michigan and had been offered a summer job at Jakobson Shipyard in Oyster Bay, Long Island. Practical experience is very useful ...read more

• By Bill Hickman
  Apr 29, 2019

We had left San Diego in early November and spent a month sailing down the west coast of Baja California on board Distant Drummer, our Liberty 458 sloop. After a week in Cabo San Lucas, a brash and brassy town at the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula where we provisioned the ...read more

• By Suzy Carmody
  Apr 29, 2019

Two separate racing fleets were streaming into the docks and a party was in full swing at the head of Marseille’s inner harbor. A group of bearded musicians cranked out lively jazz tunes while throngs of sailors jostled around the drinks and snack tables. Sipping a rather good ...read more

• By Peter Nielsen
  Apr 29, 2019

Are you really safer tethered to your boat? It’s something I’ve wondered about ever since I first started sailing offshore. The received wisdom is you should always wear a harness, preferably one with an inflatable life vest, and always be clipped in while underway. I’ve always ...read more

• By Charles J. Doane
  Apr 26, 2019

It would be hard to imagine a more secure spot than the Sunsail base on the outskirts of the beachside community of Placencia, Belize. The entire marina is protected by a robust seawall with a channel scarcely a few boatlengths across. It’s also located far enough up Placencia ...read more

• By Adam Cort
  Apr 11, 2019

Last April, my wife, Marjorie, and I decided to take our Tartan 4100, Meri, north to Maryland from her winter home in Hobe Sound, Florida. This, in turn, meant deciding whether to stay in the “Ditch” for the duration or go offshore part of the way. Although we had both been ...read more

• By Doug Weibel
  Apr 10, 2019