SAIL.SailMagazine

Call me old-fashioned, call me daring, call me crazy, but I prefer not to have my cockpit full of lines that have been led aft. I enjoy going forward and working at the mast. It hasn’t always been that way. During my first crossing from Isla Mujeres, Mexico, to the Dry Tortugas off Florida many years ago as crew on an Irwin 38, each trip forward was a crawl on my hands and knees. Oh, how I

FULL STORY

Windage and drag are two of a racing sailboat’s worst enemies, especially around a sail’s leech. Many racers eschew in situ reefing lines until it’s absolutely necessary to reef. (Some cruisers also don’t use reefing lines, as they can chafe sailcloth.) The risk is that you can get caught out if you’re not careful.

A smarter, faster way to reef without leaving reefing lines in

FULL STORY

"You're not carrying any paper charts?" is a question I've heard at all the exotic landfalls and cruiser's hangouts I've visited during my circumnavigation. Many cruisers, it seems, aren't quite ready to fully trust their electronic chartplotters. While almost all cruisers, other than a few diehards, do have plotters on board, they also carry enough paper charts and tools for measuring and

FULL STORY

A sailor quickly learns the right way to gybe a mainsail: Trim the mainsheet carefully, and always keep the boom and sail under full control. But in all the moving around, the headsail, often a genoa, tends to be forgotten. Unless you have a crew of eager sailors in search of a permanent job, that's usually a good course of action. Do nothing with the headsail until the mainsail has been
FULL STORY

In general, a line is happier and therefore behaves better if you coil it in a clockwise direction. Any three-strand line will try to kink up if you force it the other way. A multibraid line may be able to go in either direction, but the habit of right-handed coiling should be so ingrained that you couldn't do it counterclockwise if you wanted to. Old-time sailors called it "coiling against the
FULL STORY