Forget those pricey marine compounds. Rope caulk, a non-hardening stranded putty that costs a few dollars at any hardware store, is ideal for bedding just about anything above the waterline.
Sailors have always been a self-reliant bunch. Now, here are two tips for producing and preserving your own provisions on board
When we tell folks we sail in Kansas, they are never quite sure if they should believe us. With deep roots in America’s Old West, Kansas is more likely to be associated with prairie schooners—a nickname for covered wagons—than schooners with keels and masts.
The process of piloting in deep water is the same at night as in the daytime. Once clear of channels and buoys, it’s down to GPS fixes checked against estimates, distances and courses to steer.
Over his three decades of ocean voyaging, author John Kretschmer has been in more than his fair share of heavy weather. In this excerpt from his new book, Sailing a Serious Ocean—Sailboats, Storms, Stories and Lessons Learned from 30 Years at Sea, he looks back at his darkest hour at sea
To superstitious sailors, the ocean holds many perils—some more legendary than others. There’s the Kraken, that fearsome tentacled beast that drags ships into the ocean’s depths, the ghost ship Flying Dutchman, the cursed Bermuda Triangle and, of course, the Gulf of Tehuantepec.
One day I discovered the romantically named Belt Tension Jack. Suddenly belt tensioning not only lost all its emotional tension, it even acquired a certain elegance.
If you had told my wife, Mindy, and me 28 years ago that someday we’d be sailing from Florida to the Bahamas and back in a boat little bigger than a dinghy, we wouldn’t have believed you. Back in 1986 when we began dating, the most adventurous thing we had done together on the water was sailing on the Hudson River in Wet Feet, my leaky 13-foot wooden dinghy.
Just before sunset, nine hundred nautical miles from shore, three sailors and a dog jump into in a four-person liferaft as waves crash around them. For four hours they bail water by the gallon, surrounded only by a vast and encroaching darkness.
John D. Macdonald, through his iconic character Travis McGee, observed that one thing never goes wrong on a boat. Instead, things go wrong in threes.
After years of hard work, The Sailing Museum has now officially opened in Newport, Rhode Island. Located in Newport’s historic Armory Building, the museum offers
Offshore racing in the Caribbean is a relatively new concept. In years gone by it was deemed unsafe to even sail at night in the
It’s not often that sailors get a chance to put their rescue and MOB training to the test, rarer still that they do as quickly
The first thing you notice when you look at the sailplan for the Farr 65, Falken, which Mia and I recently added to the fleet
Where does an old VO70 go to retire? Right back to the racing circuit, apparently. This spring saw a remarkable contingent of Volvo Ocean Race
With 2,000 miles of coastline, 270,000 islands and seemingly countless bays and inlets, Sweden is truly a sailor’s paradise. One of the top sailing destinations
Strong winds and a brutal sea state made for record-breaking conditions for a least some of this year’s Newport-Bermuda Race fleet. However, these same conditions
Although big, multi-million-dollar projects like the Large Hadron Collider and the human genome project with their legions of PHD’s tend to grab headlines, there’s still
For years now, maxi-trimarans, both solo-sailed and fully crewed, have been racing the clock on their own around the world in an effort to set
The museum’s Juneteenth celebration, now in its third year, is a true cultural immersion[/caption] Discovering Amistad and Mystic Seaport Museum have partnered to organize their
