Rallies
Cruising: Salty Dawgs To The Rescue
If there’s one thing cruising sailors are good at, it’s going with the flow. When weather, gear failure or some other difficulty shuts down one carefully planned course of action, an experienced cruiser never bats an eye. He or she just plots a new course and carries on ...read more
Salty Dawg Fall Rally to the Caribbean Moving Forward
The Salty Dawgs made headlines last spring as they mustered a herculean effort to get cruisers home from the Caribbean amidst closed borders. Their expertise in organizing and disseminating information helped nearly 500 sailors get home safely. Now, for the second time in a year ...read more
The Spirit of Bermuda Charity Rally Announced with Socially Distant Scoring
It’s been a season full of disappointments for sailors as race after race have been cancelled, but some sailing centers are using their clean slates as a chance to reimagine what’s possible. The Spirit of Bermuda Charity Rally is one such event, announced as a collaboration ...read more
World Cruising Club: ARC Europe Rally
We’d been told to expect meteor showers on our first night out of Bermuda, so Sue and I were eyes-alert to the black sky when a green light, round like a traffic light, erupted from the sea 300 yards off our starboard bow. It arced toward us and Salamander’s foredeck and sails ...read more
Cornell is Off Again
Jimmy Cornell, father of the sailing rally, has turned to two hulls for his next epic voyage, the Elcano Challenge. Known for a string of monohulls all named Aventura, the founder of the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) is planning to follow the route of the first-ever ...read more
Atlantic Rally for Cruisers—2018
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
Choose Your Rally Adventure
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
2018 Atlantic Rally for Cruisers
Never let it be said that the World Cruising Club (WCC) rests on its laurels. Always looking for fresh ways to add more spice to the world’s longest-running and most popular cruising rally—the first was held in 1986, and entries regularly exceed 200—the WCC this year added a ...read more
Known Trouble Spots Along the ICW
Whether you are in the planning stages for a southbound ICW cruise in 2018 or you are looking at a northbound trip this spring, it is important to know where the shallow spots are along the ICW. It is wise to mark your charts and familiarize yourself with these so that you are ...read more
Navigating the Atlantic ICW Southbound 2017
After hurricane Irma bashed through Florida and the southeastern coast of Georgia and South Carolina, significant damage to infrastructure has been reported. Damage to marinas and other facilities is relatively easy to see and report. There are several resources to track the ...read more
ARC Pacific: US West Coast Rally to the French Pacific Islands to Take Place in 2018
While the World Cruising Club may be best known for the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (the origin of “ARC”) formed by Jimmy Cornell in 1986, its rallies have long since transcended those destinations limited to an Atlantic crossing. Today the WCC hosts rallies spanning the globe, ...read more
ARC: Three Decades of Atlantic Crossings
Every year since 1986, a group of around 200 cruising boats has gathered in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, ready to set forth across the Atlantic Ocean—their destination, the island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean’s beautiful Windward Isles. The Atlantic Rally for Cruisers ...read more
Classic Boats get Together in France
Photos courtesy of Simon Cohen; Alexis Courcoux; Jose Guijarro Back in 1992, when I was working at a British sailing magazine, I volunteered for some tough duty—covering the first International Festival of Sail in Brest, France. Someone had to do it, and as a wooden-boat owner, ...read more
Classic Boats Gather on the ICW
A decade ago, here in the pages of SAIL, I wrote of my experiences with the inaugural Classic Boat Rally fleet as it sailed along the Intracoastal Waterway from Savannah, Georgia, to Charleston, South Carolina. It was a six-day cruise that led the boats through some of the ...read more
The Importance of Good Bluewater Route Planning
On the one hand, timing is said to be everything. On the other, anyone in real estate will tell you the thing that really matters is location, location, location. When it comes to passagemaking, though, it’s not one or the other, it’s both. Making a passage from, say, Bermuda ...read more
Cruisers Head Down the ICW with the SAIL Snowbird Rally
As far as fleets go, the collection of boats that greeted me as I motored into Hampton, Virginia, in late October was as varied as they come: sloops, cutters, catamarans, a trawler and even a trailer-sailer, all geared up and ready for an adventure. I had brought our Norlin 34, ...read more
SouthBound with the Snowbirds: South Carolina
“In a cold world you need your friends to keep you warm.” Recognize that line? It was used to promote the 1983 film The Big Chill, which ultimately spawned the hit TV series Thirtysomething. That movie, made even more famous by its soundtrack, was filmed only a few blocks from ...read more
South Bound with the Snowbirds: North Carolina
South Bound with the Snowbirds: In my mind I’ve gone to (north) Carolina Cruising guide authors Mark and Diana Doyle, co-leaders of the upcoming SAIL Magazine Snowbird Rally, continue their eight-part tour of the Intracoastal Waterway. In this third installment they highlight ...read more
The ICW: A Sailor’s Paradise
Yes, you read that right! The Intracoastal Waterway is indeed a sailor’s paradise. Last October we left Hampton VA as part of SAIL’s ICW Snowbird Rally, and didn’t refuel until we hit New Smyrna, Florida. That’s a long, long way and we made 80 percent of the journey under sail. ...read more
ICW Snowbird Rally: Dismal Swamp Canal
Cruising guide authors Mark and Diana Doyle, co-leaders of the upcoming SAIL Magazine Snowbird Rally, continue their eight-part tour of the Intracoastal Waterway. In this second installment they describe one of their favorite runs, the Great Dismal Swamp. Since the ICW south ...read more
Planning, Preparation and Practice on a Long Coastal Cruise
Like many sailors, my wife, Cristina, and I cruise our local waters on the Chesapeake every chance we get. Like many sailors we have also long dreamed how wonderful it would be to one day just keep on going and not return to the marina on Sunday—that someday we would be able to ...read more
Meet ICW Seminar Speakers Paul & Sheryl Shard
Paul & Sheryl Shard, cruisers extraordinaire As producers of the award-winning “Distant Shores” TV series, Paul and Sheryl Shard have cruised more than 100,000 miles around the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Mediterranean seas. Not only are they highly experienced cruisers with a ...read more
Southbound with the Snowbirds
Cruising guide authors Mark and Diana Doyle, co-leaders of the upcoming SAIL Magazine Snowbird Rally, take us on an eight-part tour of the Intracoastal Waterway. In their first installment, they begin in Hampton Roads and transit Virginia Cut (Route 1) to the sounds of North ...read more
The World ARC Crew with the WWC for the Annual Around the World Event
If you think sailing rallies are for people of a certain “type,” think again. After mingling with a dozen of this year’s World ARC participants, I found that sailing around the world in 15 months takes all kinds—and that’s a good thing. While one posh new catamaran may carry a ...read more
ICW Hotspot: River Dunes, NC
Paradise lies just west of ICW mile marker 173 on the Neuse River in North Carolina, about a mile up Broad Creek. It’s not hard to find, but you do have to look for it. Once you get there, you’ll agree. River Dunes is paradise. Grace Harbor, River Dunes’s manmade 26-acre basin ...read more
Experience the ICW with SAIL
Let’s not kid ourselves—the ICW transit can be a long, lonely and sometimes daunting slog. Commercial traffic, strong currents, shifting shoal spots and lifting bridges—help! That’s why we came up with the idea for a Snowbird Rally down the ICW, to help make the ICW an experience ...read more
Coastal Cruisers join the ARC+ run to Cross the Atlantic Ocean
For many lake sailors and coastal cruisers, crossing the Atlantic is little more than a fairytale. It certainly was for us. But ours is an “if we can do it, you can too” story of a husband and wife who took time off work to sail their production sailboat from the Mediterranean ...read more
SAIL's 2015 Snowbird Rally Down the ICW
It’s on for 2015! Click on SAIL's ICW website here SAIL’s 2014 Snowbird Rally down the Intracoastal Waterway was such a success that we’ve decided to do it again The 2015 Snowbird Rally departs Hampton, Virginia on Saturday, October 24, and ends in St. Augustine, Florida, on ...read more
Sailing Rallies Around the World
Every year, nearly 50 cruising rallies take place around the globe. There are rallies that cross the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Gulf Stream and even the Indian Ocean, routes that circle the Baltic, the Delmarva Peninsula and the World. There are free rallies and paid rallies, ...read more
The ARC Rally Around DelMarVa
All the sailors who participated in the World Cruising Club’s (WCC) 2014 DelMarVa Rally this past June had one goal in common: start small, build big. At least that’s what Mark Johnson, skipper of Aisling, told me at the prize-giving ceremony afterward. Unlike those sailing ...read more
Adventures of the 2014 DelMarVa Rally
Sailing is often about the adventures you have and the people you meet, and this could not be truer for the participants of the 2014 DelMarVa Rally, which wrapped up on Saturday, June 14, in Annapolis, MD, with an awards ceremony and party for the cruisers. The DelMarVa Rally ...read more
Q & A with the Authors of an ICW Cruising Guide
On board any cruising boat, charts and guides are pivotal for route-planning. But have you ever thought about how those guides are created? We checked in with Mark and Diana Doyle, the co-authors of On the Water ChartGuides, to get the skinny on guide-writing and ICW cruising. ...read more
A Band of Sailors Transit the Panama Canal
The VHF sprang to life around 2100, just as the fleet was settling down for the night after a day of snorkeling, swimming and partying on and around the Chichime Cays in Panama’s San Blas Islands. The fact that the voice was composed and professional made the message no less ...read more
SAIL’s Snowbird Rally Plans a Stop in Beaufort, S.C.
This November 1, SAIL’s Snowbird Rally down the ICW will launch from Hampton, VA and make its way south to Miami, Florida. Along the way, it will stop in Beaufort, South Carolina where the locals have put together an extraordinary visit. Beaufort, S.C., Its charm, history, ...read more
Inaugural ARC+ a Success
For the first time in its 27-year history, World Cruising Club (WCC) has expanded its storied Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) by adding a new, parallel route: the ARC+. Like the ARC, the ARC+ starts in the Las Palmas, Gran Canaria in late November and ends in Rodney Bay, St. ...read more