Cruising

My wife, Carla, and I had no intention of going to the Berry Islands. I had never even heard of them. We were at anchor in Nassau, though, when the pandemic finally reached The Bahamas. Immediately, everything started to close down. We needed a new plan, and we needed it fast. ...read more

Navel gazing doesn’t get much better than from the deck of a sailboat anchored somewhere exotic. You can think great thoughts staring up at the stars from a South Seas anchorage. It’s also better doing so on a catamaran. Full confession: I’m a cat convert, a cat evangelist if ...read more

When you say “sailboat,” most people envision a lovely sloop with a tall mast and single hull. Say charter, though, and people think colorful brochures with catamarans anchored off some tropical island. Here’s why. Space Invaders Conventional wisdom says a catamaran has about ...read more

It’s easy to run out of superlatives when you’re talking about sailing in Croatia: the 1,800 miles of coastline, arguably the most beautiful in the Mediterranean, stretching most of the length of the Adriatic; the hundreds of inlets and bays in the scores of islands that make it ...read more

Our driver, Dracula, has a thick slack body, and his head leans heavily to the right. One eye wanders and looks only up and left. The other is covered with an opaque membrane. His ungainly body is covered with a loose, soiled shirt and pants. It is a hot day in March 2007, and ...read more

It was the last week of May and the hurricane season was fast approaching. My wife, Carla, and I made plans to take our Lagoon 40, Ocean Fox, west from Grenada to the Dutch Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao—better known as the ABC Islands. The first leg from St. ...read more

It was sometime on day four that my resolve began to waver. It had held strong through the challenges of Charlotte Amalie, Road Town, Leverick Bay, Anegada and Cane Garden Bay; but now, sitting at a beachfront bar on Jost van Dyke, I had to face up to the sad fact that I just ...read more

My heart still races when I think about that day. Nightmares haunted me for weeks afterward. The roar of big surf pounding on a reef tenses my entire body. My mind still sees the enormous waves next to me, and I imagine our boat broken to pieces on the surf-beaten coral. A lump ...read more

The other day I was thinking about the very first time I sailed a multihull. It was in New Zealand, of all places, on the Bay of Islands, midway through Christmas break at the school where I was then teaching as a Peace Corps volunteer in Western Samoa. Stranger still, I was ...read more

Sailing at 19 knots in 15 knots of breeze is not an earth-shattering experience anymore. I was thinking about that on a perfect late summer day in Narragansett Bay while we were slicing along on the most technologically advanced cruising catamaran I’ve ever seen—the Eagle Class ...read more

With 118 islands and atolls stretching over 1,200 miles of the South Pacific Ocean, French Polynesia has a long and intimate relationship with the sea. When my photographer, Michaela, and I finally found time to put this epic destination into our sailing calendar, it was both a ...read more

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

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

After completing the European Great Loop on our 1987 40ft Catalac catamaran, Angel Louise, my wife, Sue, and I sailed home to the States and spent two years sailing up and down East coast between Maine and Florida, like migratory waterfowl. Eventually, though, we decided to ...read more

As our boat was readied for our Tongan adventure, we sat at Mango, the waterfront restaurant at the Sunsail base. We were relishing the free Wi-Fi when the checkout manager, Raymond, came by our table, stuck his hand out to the nearest graybeard and said, “You must be the ...read more

Flying into Tortola in the British Virgin Islands one December morning, three months after Hurricane Irma, I felt like a war correspondent dispatched to the battlefront rather than a sailing magazine writer on an assignment to go cruising. As my LIAT plane descended toward Beef ...read more

Our bareboat charter in southwest Florida had crept up on me, and though I had a fair idea of what awaited us. I had not spent much time researching our destination or potential itineraries in depth. My crew had expressed a desire to spend as much time as possible “off the grid” ...read more

The memories are vivid. Dolphins and diesel fumes. A blood-orange moon rising to starboard as engine trouble loomed to port. A spinnaker like a taut, glowing veil before a sun that shone down later on its wet, shredded remains. We were 30 days at sea, a virgin ocean-crossing crew ...read more

First Time with a Frenchman by Annie Dike MHS Summer 2017 ...read more

You almost have to pinch yourself sailing around Thailand’s Phang Nga Bay. It’s like entering a lost world in a Hollywood movie. Rising dramatically from an emerald sea are surreal, gravity-defying limestone towers (karsts) which have been sculpted by millennia of monsoon rain ...read more

Five Farangs in Thailand A motley crew explores Thailand’s fabled Andaman Sea on a charter catamaran Read Paul Gelder's full story HERE. ...read more

Four decades after his time drifting about the islands of Caribbean, a lifelong sailor returns to the waters he once loved so much. Read the story A Multihull Boat Delivery to St. Maarten here ...read more

In the late 1970s, I spent a few months cruising the Windward and Leeward islands, gunkholing remote anchorages and living off the land, fish and fruit mostly. Sure, I was broke, but I was living like a king. Earlier in the year, I had raced across the South Atlantic from Cape ...read more

Even after more years of sailing than I care to admit,I can honestly say I learn at least something new every time I get out onto the water. This goes double whenever I have an opportunity to venture offshore aboard a brand-new boat: triple when I recently had the chance to help ...read more

Captain’s log, Different Drummer, Swansboro, N.C., 6-10-2011: “Well, well, well…limped back into Swansboro, tied up at Casper’s Marina. Sam’s alive, but sick. Heading back to River Dunes.”Sam’s our port engine, Dave’s our starboard engine; twin Yanmar three-cylinder diesels. Sam ...read more

The Cat Sailor’s Bucket List Here are some ideas that will get you to some new cruising grounds that are guaranteed to make your twin-hulled excursion an adventure. Click here for details and links to these exciting travel destinations by Zuzana Prochazka MHS Fall 2016 ...read more

A great pioneer of multihull voyaging, James Wharram sailed from Las Palmas toward Trinidad two days before Christmas 1955. His crew consisted of two girls, Ruth and Jutta, and Pepe the dog. His boat was the 23ft catamaran Tangaroa, which he had designed and built himself. ...read more

An eye-opening East Coast delivery aboard a performance trimaran By Adam Cort September 2016 ...read more

Are you the sort of person who asks boatbuilders for performance polar diagrams? Do you measure a catamaran’s power-to-weight ratio? Do you spend hours poring over multihull-related owner’s blogs or forums? Do you know the difference between various foam cores, glass materials ...read more

My good friend Tim Ainley asked me to take our 43ft catamaran, Destiny II, on a two-week expedition through the Bahamas from Grand Turk Island to Ragged Island. His plan was to retrace the first landfall made by Christopher Columbus on Grand Turk, according to Josiah Marvel, a ...read more

Imagine you’re about to make landfall in the South Seas after a 21-day odyssey on a not-so-Pacific ocean. You’re envisioning lush mountains, beautiful beaches, turquoise water, a bright blue sky and local beauties awaiting you with baskets full of tropical fruits and fragrant ...read more

As the sun dropped below the western horizon one evening in December 2014, we watched the parting glow from the cockpit of Archer, our Outremer 51 catamaran. We were anchored in Bequia’s Admiralty Bay, our first island stop after completing the ARC+ rally from Gran Canaria to ...read more

Though never really long enough for a decent vacation, a week is a longer time in some Caribbean destinations than others. In the compact BVI, for instance, you can go a lot of places in a week. It’s the same in the Grenadines. In St. Lucia and Martinique, not so much. ...read more

As multihull sailboats, particularly catamarans, have become increasingly popular, multihull designs have grown richer and more varied. Once it wasn’t too hard for an aspiring catamaran buyer to sort through the options presented by the marketplace. But these days there is such ...read more