We had left San Diego in early November and spent a month sailing down the west coast of Baja California on board Distant Drummer, our Liberty 458 sloop. After a week in Cabo San Lucas, a brash and brassy town at the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula where we provisioned the ...read more
Half a century ago I signed on as a deckhand aboard a 90-ton trading ketch that had recently been sold out of service in the Danish Baltic Sea. She had made her way to the South Coast of England, where I was based and was refitting for a voyage to the Caribbean. The old girl was ...read more
Let’s face it—without islands to sail to, cruising wouldn’t be nearly as much fun. No matter where you sail, arriving at a destination by boat has a magic of its own. Mount Desert Island By Tom Egan44.3924° N, 68.3021° W All the qualities that make Maine a great cruising ...read more
Coasting is less a sport than art and those who wander under sail spend a good deal of energy seeking an elusive balance of mind, body, boat, sea and subtlety that elevates it from the merely functional to a certain state of finesse. The way we address time is first among such ...read more
The Dry Tortugas By Mark & Diana Doyle24.6285° N, 82.8732° W Yep, they’re out there, 70 miles from Key West…the wrong way! In the 1500s Ponce de Leon named this cluster of seven islands the “Tortugas,” acknowledging their abundant sea turtle population. “Dry” was sagely added to ...read more
Specialty Charters A warm breeze across the deck and an azure sea are enough for me, and it’s what I remember most when I’m not on the water. But for many sailors, a long-awaited vacation had better include more than tropical isles and quiet anchorages. That’s why charter ...read more
The proposal struck a chord: Jock, an old sailing buddy, had his Pacific Seacraft 37, Annie, in Puerto Rico and welcomed hands to bring her back to Florida for sale. And since Cuba was opening up, Havana would be the intermediate destination. Jock was a colleague from Foreign ...read more
Time was that mapmakers would append the designation “Here be dragons” to those portions of the globe still unknown to them. But the terrors of the unknown pale in comparison to the fog, tides and rock (and lobster pot!) strewn harbors of coastal Maine—or so I thought until I ...read more
There’s a reason New England sailors are so dedicated; New England is simply one of the world’s best cruising grounds. The southern side of Cape Cod and its off-lying islands—Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, the Elizabeth Islands and Block Island—are a cruiser’s dream. The weather ...read more
It’s not every day you can run aground twice in the space of 10 minutes and extract yourself gracefully each time. Chesapeake neophytes, we were feeling our way into the picturesque harbor of Rock Hall, and as we discussed the approach to the marina the boat slowed ever so ...read more
It’s just another day in the San Blas islands. We are in the dinghy, heading out with our snorkel gear to a site we’d heard about called the Hollandes Caves. As we make our way through the gin-clear water of the channel to the shallow back reef, a 4ft wide southern stingray ...read more
If you’ve ever dreamed of anchoring behind a reef with palm-fringed island lined with white sandy beaches and crystal clear water, you may have been dreaming of Panama’s San Blas Islands. Read about Panama’s San Blas Islands here... January 2017 ...read more
When you’re sailing in the Aleutians, Kodiak, and Prince William Sound, common wisdom says you need to be out of the Gulf of Alaska by September first at the latest before the hurricane-force winds of autumn arrive. So, you could just head south to Mexico, escape the band of ice ...read more
Are you out there sailing, cruising and living the sailing life? If so, we’d love to see it. Send your sailing photos to sailmail@sailmagazine.com for a chance to have your sailing memory featured in SAIL Magazine. Here are a few pictures from our readers of their latest cruising ...read more
For years I’ve been hearing about the Spanish Virgin Islands, as they’re called, on the eastern edge of Puerto Rico: how they’re like the U.S. and the British Virgin Islands once were before being discovered by the charter and tourist trade, with their wide-open anchorages, ...read more
I was feeling nervous as my mom, my brother and I walked to the baggage claim area at St. Thomas airport to meet my three best friends from college. Non-sailors all, Andrew, Alex and Wayne were joining us for a week’s bareboat charter in the BVI aboard a brand new Moorings 45.3. ...read more
I remember once hearing someone refer to Georgetown as “Trail’s End Harbor,” because it’s as close to the Lesser Antilles as many U.S. and Canadian cruisers ever get. Not surprising, really. It’s relatively easy to bring a boat this far, playing the wind shifts and weather ...read more
Who, except two crazy old guys—skipper Tony Smith was 71 and I was 68—would trail a 28ft trimaran 7,000 miles across America to go sailing for a few days among icebergs, breaching whales, soaring eagles and those pesky grizzlies? Our long-planned, once-in-a-lifetime adventure to ...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
Cuba is huge—it spans more than 600 miles from east to west. We saw abundant signs of civilization as we sailed along the coast and closed in on Havana after a six-and-a-half day passage from Fajardo, Puerto Rico. We dodged fish pots, usually laid out in strings of eight to 10; ...read more
As sailors, every day we survive school, our jobs, the monthly bills—and some of us may eventually face disease, crippling accidents or some other crisis. Still, nobody wants to obsess about surviving at sea. Nobody wants to spend a fortune on a liferaft or other safety ...read more
The first time I laid eyes on Phoenix, my 1976 Mark II Telstar trimaran, she was being smashed against a concrete harbor wall near my home in Emsworth, England, during a Force 10 storm in January 1990. Declared a total loss by her insurers, the boat was rescued by a keen ...read more
NEEL TRIMARANS NEEL Trimarans is designing and building cruising Trimarans. We offer a new and unique concept in cruising: All the sensations of a monohull with the comfort of a multihull (fine helming, exhilarating performance and generous interior volume on single deck ...read more
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
