Fleecy cotton candy clouds were stacked high across the southern horizon that summer afternoon as my Hobie 16 catamaran, Kat Baloo, ghosted silently along the low-timbered shoreline, leading us closer to the shipping channel into the Gulf of Mexico.
Years ago, my wife, Sandy, and I heard about a clump of islands about 40 miles off the coast of southern Italy, just north of Sicily in the Tyrrhenian Sea—a little archipelago known as the Aeolian Islands. The ragged, volcanic island group includes few natural, protective harbors, but plenty of “sheltered” anchorages that are considered suitable for hooking into, so long as the weather permits.
Around the world, there are only a few sailing events with a recipe potent enough to capture a sailor’s senses so effectively that they too become immediate repeat customers. For those events that have mastered the recipe, the result is a regatta with a long life.
Esli and Carolijn decided to spend a few weeks in the San Blas islands, a collection of 365 bounty-islands along the Caribbean coast of Panama. Before long, they found out they never wanted to leave.
We dropped anchor in the lee of an uninhabited island and pulled the dinghy up the sandy beach. Soon we had a campfire blazing and the entire island to ourselves.
Imagine sailing 4,198 feet above sea level on a lake that’s saltier than the ocean and larger than the state of Rhode Island—a lake where sudden storms erupt from nearby mountains and conditions shift from glassy to gale-force in an instant.
If you promise not to tell too many people, I’ll let you in on a little cruising secret: Bocas del Toro. Located on the Caribbean coast of Panama near the Costa Rican border, this unspoiled archipelago of nine big islands and many smaller ones creates an inland sea where the breezes are so tranquil the waves rarely exceed knee height. And because Panama is south of the hurricane zone, there is no “season.” You can safely cruise here all year round.
Scientists recently discovered what they believe to be an ancient “sunstone” at the site of a 1592 British shipwreck near the island of Alderney in the English Channel. Before the invention of GPS or even magnetic compasses, sailors may have used this as a navigatation tool on cloudy days.
Sailing alongside Florida’s Overseas Highway, the road that follows the route of Flagler’s historic East Florida Railway from Miami to Key West, it’s easy to picture the turn-of-the-century developer pushing to expand his vision of Florida.
Narragansett Bay is an ideal charter locale, but it’s also my home port. So when I found myself planning a charter out of nearby Bristol, I wasn’t expecting any surprises.
Bad puns aside, why do cats and sailing go so well together? It’s brain science.
Which modern synonym for “complain” originally was used to describe a ship that tended to round up into the wind due to a bad design
As the second fleet of starters get under way, a quick look at the tracker and the prep that goes into a race of over 2,000 open ocean miles.
Doubting his choices one chilly day, a sailor wonders whether he’ll have to make changes.
Catching and prepping your own dinner while underway is one of those one of a kind cruiser experiences. The process gets a whole lot better with the right gear.
In her first Marion-Bermuda Race as skipper of a Navy 44, Nancy Rhodes and her team of U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen aboard Integrity stuck to their strategy—even when things looked grim—and walked away with bragging rights and an armful of silver.
In addition to having the trophy for fastest circumnavigation named after him, what other Junes Verne reference might be found in the modern sailor’s vocabulary?A)
Managing Editor Lydia Mullan sits down with the winningest navigator in Transpac history for a breakdown of what this year’s fleet can expect.
By Tim Queeney (304pp, St. Martin’s Press, $27.00) In ancient times man responded to the urgent need for food, transportation, and trade by building all
The Marion-Bermuda Race wrapped up yesterday after a slow approach to the finish, but it certainly wasn’t a drifter for the whole way. The first
