If there’s a reason that Gulf Coast cruising is not much talked about, I can’t tell you what it is. Three friends and I spent a month this past summer exploring the towns and marine parks of the Gulf shores under sail and found more than a few reasons to talk about it.
”Uh-oh,” I heard myself say. “We’ve got a problem!” Running aground was the last thing on my mind that gorgeous July afternoon as I guided Tackful, our “new to us” Catalina Capri 25, into the harbor.
My ketch Silverheels didn’t have any cockpit canvas when I bought her, just an old two-bow dodger frame. I had visions of installing a hard dodger and bimini, but a lack of time, patience and skill caused me to opt for a hardtop for the dodger frame instead.
Sailors love to talk about their “bucket lists” and dream of the day they’ll visit the azure waters of Croatia, the caves of Tahiti, the fjords of Patagonia.
Like most long-range cruisers I carry a lot of anchor chain, but I was having a problem with pyramids in my chain locker. When weighing anchor my chain piled up beneath its deck pipe, sometimes reaching up high enough to block it, so that the chain being fed in would suddenly jam the windlass gypsy.
Every cruising boat should carry a sailmaker’s palm along with a kit of essential sail-repair tools
It was a perfect afternoon on the Maine coast. After a pleasant sail to a spacious, uncrowded anchorage, my wife and I spotted the familiar shape of the handsome sloop belonging to our friends Trevor and Maria. We had prearranged the rendezvous.
The vertical windlass on my boat is designed to handle only one anchor. Like many cruisers, however, I carry two bow anchors and occasionally need to use both. The problem is my windlass, like most vertical windlasses, feeds just one anchor rode through a deck pipe built into its casing.
In episode 12 of the Celestial Navigation series, learn how to calculate planet sights, with two additional corrections to the sight reduction process. Read more…
If you’ve watched America’s Cup or grand prix sailboat racing you may have noticed the mindboggling technology that goes into moving a mass of magnificently
I was recently asked to run a charter for friends. As non-sailors, they didn’t know what to expect or who else to invite. I suggested
Born in Warsaw, Poland, in July of 1936, Krystyna Chojnowski-Liskiewicz did not learn how to sail until her family chose to relocate away from the
I walked up to the bathroom and the couple was just getting out of their boat. The man appeared to be in surprisingly good shape.
Major League Baseball is up and running again following a 99-day lockout, during which the league’s team owners basically said they weren’t going to play
HH44 Parallel Hybrid The HH44 sits in a sweet spot at the center of the two axes of ideal yacht design: performance versus comfort; safety
In episode 11 of the Celestial Navigation series, learn how to pre-calculate the time of nautical and civil twilight, as well as correcting a star
Born in September of 1909, Annette Brock spent her childhood traveling by steamer ship between Canada and Europe. Her mother was English and married a
. Episode 10 of The Nav Station’s Celestial Navigation series discusses the theory of the noon sight, how to take the sight, calculate your latitude,
