According to Boat US, boats sinking at docks account for a disproportionate number of insurance claims. Frankly, I’m not surprised. Even a modest boat often has six or seven through-hull fittings below the waterline. Should one of these fail, the inrush of water will swiftly sink the boat
He was more tentative going forward on deck and his sore shoulder made getting out of the dinghy awkward. Would this be his last summer on the boat, especially now that he’s 15?
I woke from a deep sleep to the sound of my 8-year-old daughter, Asha, exclaiming: “Daddy, we are really close to the rocks! I can step out onto them!” That was enough to get me out of my groggy, dreamlike state, and I leapt out of bed and headed for the companionway with my shorts in my hand.
Those are the two words no one on any boat ever wants to hear. It is no surprise then that MOB recovery is a subject high on the list of any sail training activity. Kids in Optis and 420’s learn about it. Sailing schools teach it, offshore races have seminars on it, and there are detailed reports and debriefings on it.
Dropping the hook in remote Bahia Magdalena—on the Pacific coast of Mexico’s Baja peninsula—I was instantly attracted to Puna, a plucky little fire engine-red cutter anchored nearby.
We have an inflatable globe that hangs in our saloon, and it is ruining my life. It is an innocuous-looking thing: the different countries are decked out in cheery purples and oranges, and a there’s jagged Sharpie line showing our route from the Chesapeake to the South Pacific. But somehow, whenever talk turns to the future, the globe jumps off its perch and into someone’s hands. Mesmerized, we turn it and turn it, trying to take in every country, every possibility, every tiny harbor. And we begin to play an endless game of And Then We Could.
How and why one sailor went from bluewater cruiser to creek crawler
Eighty-some thousand miles and two children later, we crept up on Alaska from the west, sailing from Hokkaido, Japan, down the Aleutian chain in May aboard Seal, our 56-foot aluminum cutter.
One beautiful afternoon last August I sat on an old-growth cedar stump that had washed up on the beach in a winter storm and watched a blue gale blow up the Straits of Juan de Fuca. The straits are straddled to the south by the aptly named 11,000-foot-high Hurricane Ridge and 20-plus miles to the north by the beach where I sat.
Whether it’s racing with dad, weekending with a baby or circumnavigating with the whole tribe, these five families are proving that sailing brings them together
Almost anywhere a sailor drops the hook someone else has been there before. We are hardly ever the first. That remote Maine harbor without a
During the pandemic, I was stuck aboard Guiding Light, a Lagoon 410, in St. Lucia for over a month. During that time, as I worked
Anacortes, Washington, is an unassuming sea-salty town near the San Juan Islands of Puget Sound, and the Betts Boats yard is easy for a passerby
The Xquisite X5 Plus is a major update of the boat that SAIL awarded Best Large Multihull and Best Systems titles in 2017. The changes
When I began preparing Minx, my 1987 Pearson 39-2, for extended Caribbean cruising, I had to balance my champagne wish list against my beer budget.
The decision to host the next America’s Cup in Barcelona ruffled the feathers of some fans, but the Defender is happy with how the venue
Elan’s first sporty “Grand Turismo” yacht, the 43ft GT5, launched in 2017, and was actually a bit of a mash-up. It combined an existing go-fast
The days of multihulls being the weirdos of the sea are gone. Nothing illustrated this better than the 2021 Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC), which
There is, of course, nothing new about bowsprits—sailing ships have been using them for centuries. That said, these days they are more popular than ever
