Sailing Gear

The Coast Guard says that the best life jacket is one you will wear, so comfort and function are important considerations when picking out a life jacket that suits your needs. Here are some things to consider when picking out the right PFD. 1. Getting kids comfortable on the ...read more

I’ve just returned from a week offshore on SEA’s Corwith Cramer (which I will be very happy to tell you all about in an upcoming issue of SAIL) but as the magazine’s gear reviewer, I wanted to give a quick shout out to some of the packing list’s MVPs. This isn’t my first rodeo, ...read more

As many readers may have noticed, last year SAIL’s annual Pittman Awards were one of the many things that had to be cancelled as a result of Covid-19. Due to the complete lack of boat shows, trying to gauge the state of the industry with so little opportunity to see what it was ...read more

Andrés Reséndez, Mariner Books, $28 Conquering the Pacific is a rich historical narrative that tells the story of the last great discovery of the Age of Sail—the vuelta, or the return voyage from Asia to the Americas. Though many attempts had been made, all had ended in failure. ...read more

Sailor Song is the ultimate guide to the music of working sailors during the 18th and 19th centuries. The book includes lyrics and sheet music for 50 of the most beloved sea songs with fascinating historical background on the adjoining page. Chapter introductions provide ...read more

One of the paradoxes of sailing is that water is both one of the best and worst parts of the experience. Plenty of water under the keel? Essential. Fresh spray on a hot afternoon? Heaven. Having damp clothes that never fully dry out on a chilly passage or a phone that drowns ...read more

In this age of the smartphone, everyone has a timepiece in their pocket at all times. As a result, like so much else in the past 20 years, the watch is now teetering on the brink of technology’s endangered species list. Out on the water, though, watches are anything but ...read more

Everything offshore is subject to wear-and-tear, including the head of your furling genoa. Indeed, between UV exposure and the working loads that come as a result of both the wind and halyard tension, it’s one of the most stressed parts of your boat. Enter the JibCap, a ...read more

Despite the fact sailors have long since embraced the use of wireless devices offshore, few thing get along less well with water than non-marinized electronics—which is why we were so excited to learn about the ugo line of tablet and phone cases. The key to these great little ...read more

Ready to earn some extra funds by renting out your boat or yacht? Sail.me is an interactive service that allows you to monetize your boat in a secure, safe, and easy way. A user-friendly app and website will help you manage reservations, add-ons, and set customized routes to ...read more

Reviewed by Amanda Balasubramanian As we were preparing for our first significant offshore passage in 2013, I read every book on ocean sailing I could find. However, while there were a number of helpful books full of technical information, I also longed for the personal stories ...read more

Henri Lloyd looked to the past for inspiration when designing its newest line of racing gear—specifically the kit worn by Dennis Conner’s Stars and Stripes campaign (also designed by Henri Lloyd) during the 1987 America’s Cup in Fremantle, Australia. The new collection, with its ...read more

“What is the color of the ocean that rolls beneath Pacific trades? How does a wave curl and crash at 47 degrees south? Can an albatross remain awing in the worst of weathers?” Randall Reeves has always found images to be the most compelling part of the stories we tell about the ...read more

From splicing lines to emergency escapes, the right knife is an essential piece of safety equipment in any sailor’s kit. So how do you go about choosing a knife that’s appropriate for you? There are many features to consider, so let’s get down to the nuts and bolts of what you ...read more

B&G’s HALO series of radars now includes the HALO20+ and the HALO20, a pair of compact radomes expressly designed for use aboard smaller sailboats. The units measure 20in in diameter and weigh a mere 11lb. The HALO20+, in particular, delivers a full 360-degree sweep every ...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

The lightweight, three-layer Musto BR2 Sport Jacket (BR2 refers to Musto’s proprietary three-layer, breathable laminate) is expressly configured for inshore racing aboard sport boats and small keel boats, and a great outer layer for any sailor venturing out for a quick sail on a ...read more

Luxury meets functionality in Garmin’s new MARQ Captain watch. Advanced sailing-specific features include GPS technology to help pinpoint your starts on the racecourse, a tack-assist function for playing the shifts and an MOB button. Other sensors include a compass, gyroscope, ...read more

Profurl NEXe motorized flying-sail furlers make it possible for shorthanded crews and solo sailors to handle large reaching sails, like gennakers, Code 0s and other A-sails, with minimal effort and in safety. Two versions are available, the NEXe 5.0 for boats with LOAs up to ...read more

There’s nothing like having nice, big, fat fenders when it comes time to raft up with another boat or tie up alongside a nasty-looking dock. The problem is what to do with them given the limited storage aboard a sailboat when you’re underway, a problem that becomes especially ...read more

Prop Coat Barnacle Barrier 1792 is now available in a quart-size can and, as always, can be used on all underwater metals, including saildrives, shafts, strainers and folding and non-folding props. Two or three coats are recommended, after which the coating will purportedly ...read more

ACR Electronics’ Overboard Location Alert System (OLAS) technology works by creating a “virtual tether” between an OLAS wearable transmitter and any properly configured phone or tablet. ACR transmitters include the “Float-On” wearable strobe and wristwatch-like “Tag.” In an MOB ...read more

New England Ropes’ “Viper” line of lightweight cordage provides a combination of exceptional strength and flexibility, in the process providing better performance than an all-polyester without the premium price of more exotic high-tech line. At the heart of the line is a ...read more

Following up on its popular form-fitting Sta-Plug emergency plug, marine equipment manufacturer Forespar has now come out with an even smaller version that it calls the Sta-Plug Mini. As is the case with the original, the soft cone-shaped configuration of the Mini is designed to ...read more

Digital Yacht has announced that all of its wireless AIS and wireless NMEA servers are now compatible with the AIS feature added to the Navionics Boating App last year. The free update, which included a number of other features as well, enables real-time AIS data to be overlaid ...read more

There are solar panels, and then there are solar panels specifically designed and manufactured for use in a marine environment. Among the latter are the new SunPower flexible solar panels from SunPower Corp., featuring the company’s proprietary Maxeon technology, a cell ...read more

Today’s high-performance dinghies and other small boats—full-foiling designs, in particular—subject their control systems to higher loads than ever due to their high speeds and ever-higher apparent winds. To help tame these forces, Ronstan has come out with a line of 30mm “HHL ...read more

Although they can be easy to forget or neglect, hose clamps are among the most important pieces of kit aboard any boat with through-hulls for the simple reason that all it takes is for just one to fail to send your boat to the bottom. With this in mind, PYI Inc. has now unveiled ...read more

Standard Horizon’s HX890 handheld packs a lot of technology into a small package, including DSC and 66-channel WAAS GPS. It’s available in black or Navy Blue and not only floats but is equipped with a water-activated strobe, providing an extra measure of safety, especially when, ...read more

James Barber Harbour Publishing, $14.95 I’ll bet a filet mignon against a can of Dinty Moore that almost every cruising cook has read and discarded a goodly number of seagoing recipe books. Some are so simple as to be insulting. Others require too many exotic and perishable ...read more

Building on the success of FLIR’s Raymarine Element HV Series with HyperVision sonar, the Element S line features a top-notch all-weather display, best-in-class speed and straightforward operation, all at a competitive price. The chartplotters are available with a 7, 9 or 12in ...read more

One of the neat things about sailing is the incredible variety of equipment that sailors use while doing it, whether crossing oceans or just out for a daysail—one of the many reasons why even after all these years SAIL magazine’s annual Pittman Innovation Awards remain as fresh ...read more

Scanstrut ROKK charger  Like it or not, smart phones are a fact of life offshore. This, in turn, leads to problem of keeping said phones charged, which typically results in yet more wires running around your boat’s already cluttered nav station. To solve this problem, Scanstrut ...read more

Zen Watermaker Created with an eye toward providing a kind freshwater nirvana offshore, Zen watermakers from Italy’s Schenker strive to take the complexity of installing these otherwise somewhat intimidating systems. Available with capacities of either 8 gph (gallons per hour) ...read more

Knowing Where to Go The easy-to-use GPSMAP 8612 chartplotter, one of three new smaller variants of Garmin’s celebrated 8600 series, comes standard with such premium features as BlueChart g3 coastal cartography and a 12in HD IPS touchscreen display that’s refreshingly easy on the ...read more