The first time I tried to pick up a mooring singlehanded in a stiff breeze, I approached from dead downwind in the usual manner and stopped the boat with the pickup buoy right where I wanted it.
This past summer U.S. shorthanded veteran Jonathan Green won both his class and IRC overall in the fabled OSTAR race, from Plymouth, England to Newport, Rhode Island, aboard his Beneteau Oceanis 351 Jeroboam, beating a varied fleet that included a high-octane Open 60 in the process. SAIL recently caught up with Green.
When the customs officer in Bermuda asked for our next destination, I replied “the Azores,” just to keep things simple.
One of the more mundane aspects of bluewater cruising is having to clear in and out of all the foreign countries you visit. The task is often routine, but can sometimes be frustrating, perplexing or even hilarious. We have found this to be true on any number of occasions.
Four decades, five boats and 150,000 nautical miles ago I bought Autant, a William Hand gaff-rigged ketch built in 1927. She was 40 feet overall with a sweet sheer, a club-footed jib, no electrical system, no winches and no engine.
“Have you ever sailed into San Juan?” “No, but we’ve chartered in the Virgin Islands” is the response I often receive…
Over the course of the past 56 issues, we’ve brought you “Windshifts,” a reflective collection of pieces written by a host of different sailors on sailing, sailboats and life lived among them. However, in 2014, we’ll be taking a slightly different tack with “Waterlines,” a column in which Amy Schaefer and Paul VanDevelder take turns using this last-page space to fill you in on their unique whereabouts and reflections.
When an offshore earthquake near Japan resulted in a destructive tsunami in March 2011, I, along with sailors everywhere, held my breath. My eyes were glued to the Internet. I watched videos of massive volumes of water rushing ashore, displacing families, killing people and destroying villages.
Following two unsuccessful attempts to circumnavigate the globe non-stop under sail, 70-year-old British sailor Jeanne Socrates finally succeeded in July of this year, completing the journey in 259 days and becoming the oldest woman in history to do so.
It all began when I was eight. The bilge pump on our wooden skiff was running nonstop, and my mother had been pointing this out for some time before my father finally peeked under the hatch and saw water slopping around just inches below the battery.
For fans of the Vendée Globe, the “Boss Boat” and its skipper Alex Thomson have long been favorites. In a race so heavily dominated by
In episode seven of The Nav Station’s Celestial Navigation series, learn how to use the sight reduction tables in order to find calculated altitude and
After a year off due to Covid-19, the Miami International Boat Show starts February 16 at the Miami Beach Convention Center. The show will run
As many readers may have noticed, last year SAIL’s annual Pittman Awards were one of the many things that had to be cancelled as a
The first map of the Gulf Stream, which Benjamin Franklin helped create by tapping the combined knowledge of the whalemen and merchant captains of his
In the sixth episode of The Nav Station’s Celestial Navigation series, you’ll learn the parts of a sextant, how to check and correct its errors,
Pre-cook your meals for the first two days. Reef early. Don’t drink too much the night before departure. Don’t expect to poop until the third
Time was sail-powered vessels ruled the waves. The Age of Sail, as we now call it, lasted millennia. Then came steam engines and the internal
Celestial Nav 5 – The fifth installment of The Nav Station’s Celestial Navigation series discusses the contents of the Nautical Almanac, and how to use
Ryan Finn’s second attempt at sailing the Cape Horn Clipper Route has begun, after damage to the hull cut his first attempt short last January.
