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
The scientists, researchers and crew at the Rozalia Project for a Clean Ocean are on a mission to hunt down ocean debris aboard the 60-foot “green” research sailboat, American Promise.
It’s a story you never like to hear: the inflatable’s oars had recently been stolen, so there were none aboard. When the outboard motor died outside a St. Thomas harbor they simply drifted away downwind, with no food or water.
Join Editor-in-Chief of PassageMaker Jeff Moser for a dive into 3D forward looking sonar technology with Bob Arrington and Matthew Zimmerman.
Brian Thompson could have become just another financial type on Wall Street, which would have been surprising enough in itself for a Brit who grew
In 1980, I owned a 26ft fiberglass ketch named Recycle, a full-keeled vessel with a 10 hp Honda outboard in a well behind the tiller.
For the past century—through a world war, 18 Olympics, and a pandemic—Star Class world champions have earned the honor of carrying a gold star on
With IMOCA 60s gaining more attention globally due to their inclusion as the principal class in The 2023 Ocean Race, events like Le Défi Azimut
Although they don’t generally make it into print, there’s often a backstory to the boat tests we do at SAIL: case in point my sail
Though they don’t reel off the miles like a performance-cruiser, I would argue that some of the purest, best sailing can be found aboard small
Now in its 43rd year, the Newport Classic Yacht Regatta presented by the International Yacht Restoration School (IYRS) brings together sailors who understand, support, and
While many sailors are said to be superstitious, I never had any qualms about casting off lines on a Friday or hanging a large stalk
As a former dinghy racer, I can be hard to please when it comes to “bigger boats.” And while the 27ft Saffier SE 27 Leisure
