Being a cruising sailor, one is already practicing a kind of social distancing. But coastal cruisers, and those transiting the Intracoastal Waterway, in particular, still have to return to land for re-provisioning and things like water, fuel, and pump-outs. When you dock in a ...read more
There are many mantras experienced cruisers like to pass on to those less experienced. First and foremost among these is: “Never sail to a schedule.” After that comes: “Choose your weather window carefully.” Unfortunately, this past spring, my husband, Brian, and I violated both ...read more
Learning to sail is an organic process. Often we’re introduced to the sport by a family member or good friend who loves sailing and wants to share their passion. As such, one learns in bits and pieces. The problem is you can end up with lots of missing bits, and thus many ...read more
Panama is truly the crossroads of the world, bridging the North and South American continents, with the Caribbean and Europe to the east and Asia and the Pacific to the west. We’d already crossed the Pacific aboard Distant Drummer, our Liberty 458 sloop, and after spending three ...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
It had been seven years since I’d taken my Westsail 32, Antares, out for more than an afternoon day sail. Such is the reality when taking care of an elderly parent. However, a year ago my dad passed away at the age of 100, and after we sold the family home, I found myself living ...read more
My goal, I thought, was modest: two weeks from Cyprus to Mykonos and then two more weeks for the return via Santorini and Rhodes. Not too much to ask of a boat, skipper and crew that had crossed the Atlantic. I had even envisioned the article I would write: Five Best Isles of the ...read more
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
It was an early alarm. My wife likes it loud, and loud it was. The clanging clanged my nerves. I was suddenly wide awake and, looking out my bedroom window, I noticed that a soft snow was falling. Icicles had formed on each window pane and the pre-dawn view was bleak. Gray on ...read more
One of the formative influences on modern cruising, Jimmy Cornell has been uncharacteristically quiet since his attempt on the Northwest Passage a few years ago. Now the founder of the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers is all fired up again about yet another circumnavigation and, yes, ...read more
It was a dark and stormy night. Actually it was a cold and windy mid-February afternoon. We were into our fifth or sixth day of single-digit temperatures, our cove in Connecticut was covered with a layer of ice about half a foot thick, and the wind was howling out of the ...read more
The magenta line was first added to charts in 1913. It was created to aid commercial navigation up and down the East Coast and around the Gulf Coast. To aid pilots running through the convoluted mix of waterways, a magenta colored line was drawn on the charts to indicate which ...read more
For years, I’d been wanting to visit Grenada. There are many things that fascinated me about this island: its rugged, mountainous interior, its rainforests and waterfalls, and the fact that it’s less traveled than some other Caribbean sailing destinations. My photographer ...read more
It’s goodbye to the paper chart, at least those produced by NOAA. The agency’s Office of Coast Survey is soliciting comments on plans to completely phase out the production of paper charts and associated products within five years. Its tighter focus on ENCs (electronic ...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
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
Last year, Alberto Duhau sailed Shaima, his Hylas 63, from Florida up to Nova Scotia and then to Greenland, Iceland and the Scottish islands, following the route established by Viking explorers a thousand years ago. It was a trip that took a lot of preparation but which, Alberto ...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
I sat on the bow of our pitching boat, 400 miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean, looking up at the mess of carbon fiber and taffeta that was once a laminated headsail, thinking that this wasn’t part of the sailing dream brochure—nothing like this happened in the La Vagabonde or ...read more
I have been a sailor my whole life and knew the moment I accepted a job in Zanzibar that I would need to find my way onto a sailboat and into the sailing community there. This led me to Google, where I started searching for anything sailing-related in the area. Once I made it ...read more
A boat is a set of tradeoffs, and a perfect boat doesn’t exist. That said, if you’re searching for a proven bluewater multihull that can be sailed shorthanded, has all the comforts of a luxury home and is wicked fast without beating up your wallet, you owe yourself a test sail ...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
One of the first things I noticed when I started mucking about on sailboats big enough to be manned by more than one person is that it is much easier to crew than to skipper. Being one step removed from primary responsibility for the many things that can go wrong on a boat ...read more
This past fall at the Annapolis Sailboat show, we had a chance to catch up with Hanse’s Maxim Neumann, who kindly provided us a tour of the company’s new flagship, the Hanse 675. An impressive, well-built production yacht that boldly ventures into maxi-yacht territory, the ...read more
