know how

I found my sailing “dream boat” in the spring of 1979 while racing on Lake St. Clair in Michigan. Everyone had heard about the hot new boat in town, and we were anxiously awaiting the appearance of this new Pearson 40. She made it to the starting line just before the race ...read more

In the second of a two-part series on light-air sails, Rupert Holmes looks at how today’s furling gear has revolutionized sail handling off the wind. Read part 1 here. It’s easy to look at long-distance racing yachts of 60ft and above with multiple downwind sails set on roller ...read more

In this first part of a two-part series on light-air downwind sails, Rupert Holmes looks at the different types of Code 0’s and A-sails now available to cruisers. To learn more about how to handle these kinds of sails. Read part 2 here.  The list of potential downwind sails for ...read more

When we acquired our new project boat, a 1987 Pearson 39-2, it was evident that she was in need of much TLC. Not only had she been sitting forlorn and unloved in a boatyard for a couple of years, but those of her systems that were not original were a couple of decades old. ...read more

With today’s ever-increasing reliance on chartplotters with AIS overlay for collision avoidance, what role should radar play as a safety device? Duncan Kent investigates While your chartplotter will (hopefully) show you where the land and sea should be, only radar can show you ...read more

Can you list the things you never want to see on a boat? A fire, perhaps? Windows shattering from lightning, water spewing from…anywhere? I can now add one more to my list: movement in the rudder post. On Day 3 of a five-day passage from Pensacola, Florida, to Cuba on our 1985 ...read more

Without a doubt, the best way to “clean” stainless steel parts is to have them electropolished. Electropolishing is an electrochemical process that cleans the stainless and removes any surface iron particles, leaving a shiny and far more rust-resistant surface. The downsides of ...read more

“Ready to take the dink ashore?” Never had those words invoked as much anxiety as when my husband, Jeff, and I first moved to the Pacific Coast. Why? Because we had exactly zero experience with dinghy surf landings, and the possibility of being flipped upside down along with our ...read more

So, you want to find a great deal on your next charter vacation? Sure, you can scour the internet, hope for Black Friday deals or ask friends. But an even better way to find good prices on charter boats is to go to a boat show. Not only do charter companies like The Moorings, ...read more

The rigmarole of stretching a cover over a dinghy in choppy water prior to hoisting it on davits can become a very wet business if you’re not careful. Leaning right over either end, trying to stretch a cover over the bow and stern pods can quite easily result in a head-first dip ...read more

In-mast furling systems have come a long way. Forget the hollow-leeched, baggy triangles we first saw decades ago; a well-specced modern in-mast system can offer more sail area than a traditional slab-reefed mainsail, so the performance gap has narrowed significantly. ...read more

We were 1,100 miles from the nearest land when we received a text message on our Iridium GO: “Rudder gone. Water in bilge. Worried pumps can’t keep up. Please call!” We had been in contact with the owners of Rosinante, a 38ft Island Packet, since they had first announced over ...read more

Portland, Oregon. The fuel nozzle at the dock had a recoil like a small caliber pistol. The fuel tank sits tightly immediately beneath the cockpit of my sailboat. The fill pipe, if you want to call it that is 3in long. I couldn’t just squeeze it off, the fuel hit the tank point ...read more

CETOL SKIN I used Sikkens Cetol on the bare wood on my Catalina 30, Morning Dew IV. The can was compromised over the spring, and I put the balance in a 16oz clean glass mayo jar. Last spring when I went to use it, a skin had formed over the top of the liquid, so I just cut the ...read more

Sailmaking ain’t what it used to be, especially out in the Nevada desert Some years ago I visited the Bavaria factory and was amused at the thought of a powerhouse boatbuilder turning out its products smack bang in the middle of rural Germany, surrounded by fields of cows and ...read more

I was originally drawn to sailing not by the pull of the water but by the pull of land, land beyond my horizon. The idea that one could step aboard a boat, hoist a triangle of canvas like a hitchhiker’s thumb and catch a ride on a passing wind to an exotic island, to a foreign ...read more

All last winter the faded red Achilles inflatable floated in an empty slip, a rose with its bloom most definitely gone, abandoned, I was told, by a cruiser who’d moved up to a RIB. In the autumn gales she filled with rainwater and in the coldest New England months, she cradled a ...read more

Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is the cooking fuel of choice for most cruisers, but it can kill you if you don’t respect it. Here’s how to keep your propane system healthy and your boat safe It’s often the things we cannot see that pose the greatest danger on our boats. A recent ...read more

My partner, Jeff, and I needed crew for a two- to three-week sail down the Mexican coast of Baja California on our new-to-us Antares 44i catamaran, El Gato, so we put an ad in one of our local sailing publications. We received some promising letters of introduction, but thanks ...read more

STOVE TROUBLES Q: I have a Broadwater two-burner propane stove with an oven and broiler. It’s from 2003 but still looks new. When I acquired the boat in 2015 all four burners worked. But after I had the boat transported to Wisconsin and then back to Florida, it went from four ...read more

For many years I hated drilling stainless steel. It’s hard, it requires expensive cobalt or carbide bits and it takes a long time to drill. In other words, I had many good reasons for feeling this way. However, as it turns out, all of them were based on incorrect information. ...read more

Over the last 25 years, there has been a dramatic shift in the types of refrigeration systems carried aboard cruising boats. Today, 12-volt systems prevail, but the systems most often installed up to the late ‘90s were driven by the main engine. Engine-driven refrigerators ...read more

From the first time I switched on the lights on board our new project boat, one thing was certain: they would have to go. The 1987 Pearson 39-2 had been updated in some ways, but not in others—and it was obvious that interior lighting had been way down the previous owner’s ...read more