Lifestyle

My first job ever on a boat was picking weevils out of bags of sugar in preparation for a 1,200-mile delivery from the South Pacific island of Tonga to Opua, New Zealand, aboard a 43ft catamaran. Up to that point in my life, the sum total of all my sailing experience had been a ...read more

As long-term cruisers, my partner, Timo, and I are used to up-cycling our belongings into any new items we might need rather than looking for a store-bought solution. Making a crib for our son, Nemo, was no exception. A few weeks before I was due to give birth, Timo and I ran an ...read more

I was never supposed to take my boat through New York City. After getting sucked backward through the Cape Cod Canal on my way south from Maine, when the speed of the current exceeded the maximum speed of my little electric auxiliary, I wanted nothing to do with Hell Gate and ...read more

Every year, countless parents find themselves navigating the do’s and don’ts of enrolling their children in a summer learn-to-sail program for the first time. While the prospect of getting your kid on the water is exciting, as a sailing camp program director, there are a lot of ...read more

February 2, 2019. Somewhere near mid-Atlantic, on passage aboard the Swan 48, Isbjørn, from Gran Canaria to Antigua, from my personal logbook: “Something clicked for me in the early morning hours after midnight. I had slept well before Mia woke me up at 0200 to finish her ...read more

The Bath Freight Shed is a long, low building that smells like wood shavings and is lit by twinkling strings of lights in the rafters. When you first enter, a small exhibit space introduces the significance of the place, complete with historic artifacts and models of a tall ship ...read more

The first map of the Gulf Stream, which Benjamin Franklin helped create by tapping the combined knowledge of the whalemen and merchant captains of his day Although enormous multi-million-dollar projects like the Large Hadron Collider and the Human Genome Project with their ...read more

Pre-cook your meals for the first two days. Reef early. Don’t drink too much the night before departure. Don’t expect to poop until the third day at sea. Don’t sail to a schedule. Some lessons are ubiquitous and obvious (including the pooping one, though it might not be as ...read more

. In episode three of the Practical Celestial Navigation course, Andy Howe examines the theory behind celestial navigation, the celestial triangle and the celestial sphere, and why it is important to have a basic understanding of each. Topics introduced include zenith position, ...read more

Celestial navigation is an invaluable tool for all kinds of sailors. In episode two of the celestial navigation series, learn the basic elements of navigation and the sight reduction process using declination and GHA to determine the Geographic Position and navigate using a ...read more

Along with other timeless pursuits, like baking sourdough and gardening, singing sea shanties surged back into popularity during the recent lockdown, thanks, in part, to the app TikTok and its “duet” feature, which allows singers from around the world create music together. By ...read more

Have you ever wondered how sailors navigated before GPS? Do you want an analogue backup if your electronics fail? Are you just curious about navigating by the stars? Enter Practical Celestial Navigation from The Nav Station. This free, online course will cover celestial theory, ...read more

While neither my wife, Ivy, nor I came with a sailing pedigree, there has always been a sailboat in our marriage. Now, with our careers approaching their final curtain, we’re drafting plans to cross old waypoints and establish new ones as we retrace a journey that takes us back ...read more

Bluewater sailing is 25 percent actually sailing and 75 percent learning how to live on a boat at sea, in constant motion and with no chance to get off the roller coaster. I cannot over-emphasize how difficult normal daily functions become at sea, even on nice, calm days. ...read more

In early 2019, the 52ft steel expedition vessel Bagheera celebrated her 10th birthday. During that time, and in the years since, she has carried my wife, Krystina, our clients and me over 75,000 miles in Arctic and subarctic waters. This is the story of how Bagheera came to be ...read more

It was a simple craigslist ad that started all the rumpus. A guy named Milo in Belfast, Maine listed a well-worn 1969 Tripp 29 sloop for sale for $6,000. A young acquaintance of mine, Emily Greenberg, who maintains an intriguing sailing blog at dinghydreams.com and sometimes ...read more

November, 2009: Mia and I were sailing our 1966 Allied Seabreeze yawl, Arcturus, on our first-ever offshore passage together, a short hop from Wilmington, North Carolina, to Jacksonville, Florida. Our second night out, the brisk northwesterly wind shut down, but the sea state ...read more

When you talk to Beetle Cat sailors, it’s immediately apparent you’re talking about more than just a 12ft 4in catboat. “It began with my great-grandmother, who bought a boat for her four sons in 1928. They named it after her, called it the Queen Mary,” says New England Beetle ...read more

I lost a third of my crew the moment we arrived at the boatyard. My middle son and second mate, Julian, took one look at the dark sky overhead and hid behind his mother’s skirt. I glanced at my oldest son and first mate, 10-year-old Emil, and said, “I’ll understand if you want ...read more

As I write this, another hurricane season has passed. In hundreds of harbors and marinas, sailors are breathing a sigh of relief. I know the feeling since I rode out eight spinners aboard my sturdy 30-footer. I can recall the precise moment when I said, “No more!” It was in ...read more

I’m sitting in a yacht club, having dinner with three other members of my crew, all of them men 40 years my senior. They’re lamenting the tragic state of sailing. “Look around us,” one of them says, gesturing to the other patrons. “Where are the young people?” Another turns to ...read more

Summer Sailstice’s will celebrate its 21st birthday this year. This annual worldwide celebration of sailing occurs on the weekend closest to the solstice, landing on June 19th this year. Over the past two decades, the event has grown to include nearly 5,000 boats and 19,000 ...read more

I am 90 years old, dwindling in mind and body and fear living too long. Twenty years have passed since I last weighed anchor. Still, when a Carolina blue sky is polka-dotted with billowing cumulus clouds and the wind blows fair, I sorely miss raising sail and setting forth. I ...read more

In partnership with the Antigua and Barbuda Marine Association, Antigua Sailing Week is launching a mentorship program to encourage women and girls to join the sport of sailing. President of Antigua Sailing Week, Alison Sly-Adams says, “When we devised the program, we looked at ...read more

How you approach offshore sailing is key to the success of each passage. In addition, some of the most valuable, even crucial attitudes and skills may not be either learned or valued in everyday life on shore and may even fly in the face of talents that are greatly admired and ...read more

In October of 2018, Randall Reeves departed for a second attempt at what he called his “Figure 8 Voyage,” a solo circumnavigation of both the North and South American and Antarctic continents in one season. He had something to prove. During his first attempt, knockdowns off Cape ...read more

We were sailing in the Indian Ocean from the Seychelles Islands to Madagascar on my brother’s plywood-built 40ft trimaran, Romany Road, a 1,000-mile voyage. It was a clear, calm day far from land. The gentle wind drove us smartly along through the royal-blue ocean. Out of ...read more

This year marks half a century for New England’s largest boat show, and the celebration will be in person. In a statement released yesterday, Nancy Piffard, Show Director of Newport Exhibition Group said, “We are excited to kick off the boat show season in-person this year… We ...read more

Growing up on the coast of northern England, I dreamed about crossing oceans on my own boat. Like most of us, though, education, a family and a career took precedence, and before I knew it, we had mortgages, young children and endless work obligations. We also became landlocked, ...read more

Historic anniversaries have always held a special fascination for me, especially if they mark a significant nautical achievement. In 1992, on the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ would-be voyage to India, I organized a transatlantic rally that followed the historic route of the ...read more

The following story is part of SAIL magazine’s recent 50th-anniversary coverage. For more, click here. I cannot say I have been reading SAIL magazine since the very beginning, but I come pretty darned close. Sometime around 1974, when I was in high school, I began buying it ...read more

Sailing Into Oblivion by Jerome Rand $15.99, available through Amazon As refreshing and inspiring as Jerome Rand’s 2017-18 solo-circumnavigation may have been, his account of the voyage in the book Sailing Into Oblivion: The Solo Non-Stop Voyage of the Mighty Sparrow may be even ...read more

Back in early 1970, Bernie Goldhirsh and the recently founded “Institute for the Advancement of Sailing,” publisher of an annual sailboat and gear guide, launched something called SAIL. A half-century later, a look back at the magazine’s first few years provides a glimpse into a ...read more

On Tuesday, August 4, US Sailing’s Leadership Forum is hosting a town hall style conversation to help individuals and organizations achieve diversity, equity and inclusion goals. The conversation will be centered on providing practical guidance for conducting outreach and best ...read more

Rare, indeed, is the sailor who has not at one point in his or her life dreamed of shrugging off the bonds of the landlubber’s life and moving aboard a sailboat. It’s a seductive vision, usually colored with promises of soft tropical breezes and joyous beam reaches over azure ...read more