Sail Magazine

by David Schmidt

David Schmidt, a SAIL editor-at-large, is a recent transplant to the Pacific Northwest from SAIL's Boston offices

Alternative Rigs

by David Schmidt, Posted December 8, 2008

Sailors are a conservative lot. The sea takes no prisoners, and most people don’t care to experiment when the cost of failure is potentially great. That’s why both futuristic and some older traditional sailing rigs struggle for acceptance and often receive little more than patronizing smiles from so-called modern mariners.Ironically, the conventional marconi rig that now dominates sailing

Save the Whales!

by David Schmidt, Posted December 5, 2008

While everybody loves charismatic megafauna, whales occupy a special spot in the heart and imagination, especially amongst sailors. Watching these graceful creatures breach, swim, and dive is one of the true magic shows of offshore sailing, so it comes as little surprise that saving whales is popular everywhere from Washington D.C., to myriad yacht clubs worldwide, to even Team Russia’s

Leashed

by David Schmidt, Posted December 4, 2008

Leashed. Spinlock has been stepping up their already-deep line of safety products, first with their award-winning Deckvest, and now with their ORC-legal Connect Range tethers. The two-clip tether that I tested relies on a girth hitch, rather than a metal clip, to affix it to a PFD’s hard point (Spinlock recommends also carrying a knife, should a user need to escape her tether).

Flying Fish and Pounding Cats

by David Schmidt, Posted November 25, 2008

"Mike, are you going to catch dinner for us?” Mom asks as my brother pads barefoot down the docks of The Moorings’s base in Marigot Bay, St. Lucia, toward our Leopard 4300 charter catamaran, a rented trolling rod slung over his shoulder.“You know it,” he says, his excitement over spending the next week cruising St. Lucia, Martinique, and Dominica obvious. As we wrap up last-minute

Sensibulb LED

by David Schmidt, Posted November 7, 2008

Much has been written in recent years regarding LED light bulbs as a way of saving energy aboard, and about the many hours of use that each LED unit delivers, and rightly so. Why waste power and create heat by using inefficient incandescent bulbs? The Sensibulb is the newest LED offering from Sailor’s Solutions, and is purported to be the brightest aftermarket LED available. Best yet, the

The Giving Season

by David Schmidt, Posted November 4, 2008

Sailors are a fickle group to buy gifts for, as many old salts have their kit of choice and aren’t especially interested in shaking things up. Did I mention that by nature, we’re traditionalists? While some factions among us might be content to hang onto those old, musty-smelling foulies, the good news is that there is plenty of great innovation and bright ideas coming from the industry side of

ACC Racing — in Valencia?

by David Schmidt, Posted November 4, 2008

Is the America’s Cup saved? No. Sadly, the battle of the ego-heavy billionaires continues, with neither side showing any signs of backing down, even though the Socit Nautique de Genve/Alinghi has won an important victory by having Desafo Espaol, Club Nutico Espaol de Vela reinstated as the official challenger of record (BMX/Oracle of course claims that Desafo Espaol, Club Nutico Espaol

The Miracle Race

by David Schmidt, Posted November 4, 2008

The Vendee Globe is the real deal: A singlehanded sailor, a massively powerful, 60-foot canting-keel carbon-fiber racing shell with some of the fastest sails around, and Planet Earth. Solo. No assistance. Just the sailor, aboard his/her boat, taking on the world. What could be simpler?Obviously, “simple” is not a standard word used to describe the work list necessary to just arrive on the

North of Twenty

by David Schmidt, Posted October 22, 2008

“This thing is like a Volvo Open 70 except it doesn’t have a canting keel and its systems are more refined,” says veteran bowman Jerry Kirby as Numbers, Dan Meyers’s newly splashed Judel/Vrolijk 66, hits a big wave and jostles the crew, most of whom are stationed near the stern to keep the bow up. All around us are choppy seas; the true-wind instrument reads 18 to 21 knots, and our

Heavy Lifting

by David Schmidt, Posted October 22, 2008

We all want our boats to be more stable, but how can this be accomplished? The conventional solution is to hang more ballast off a deeper keel. Think more progressively, and you’re talking about water ballasting, which, while effective, also adds extra weight. Go sci-fi, and you’re canting your keel to windward—which is very effective, but is complicated, accident-prone, and still depends on