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.
For years I’ve been using a 3-gallon insecticide spray can as a portable pressure-water dispenser. You’ll find these in any hardware store.
I am a desert sailor. My wife, Noelle, and I live in New Mexico and normally sail the small inland lakes scattered around our very dry state. On arriving in Norfolk, Virginia, one sunny Thursday afternoon, we were looking very forward to sailing with our good friend Mike and his wife, Heather, on our first cruise on Chesapeake Bay.
Although the 1903 defender of the America’s Cup, Reliance, was deemed a “racing freak”—the boat pushed design rules to their limit and couldn’t be beaten,
Three tips on managing the madness First-time charterers and first-time sailors aren’t at all the same thing. One group may struggle with beginner chartering issues,
Even the dome of light glowing above the city behind us had disappeared as if swallowed in a gulp by Noah’s whale. The moon was
Every year, countless parents find themselves navigating the do’s and don’ts of enrolling their children in a summer learn-to-sail program for the first time. While
Some thoughts on a couple of recent developments on the U.S. racing scene that are more than a little at odds. To start with, congratulations
The 52 Super Series is widely considered one of the top circuits in the world for monohulls, and in this era of rapid change, the
“Keep it simple, sailor,” was always our mantra. Aboard our 1985 Niagara 35, Plaintiff’s Rest, my partner, Phillip, and I didn’t have heat, AC, a
February 2, 2019. Somewhere near mid-Atlantic, on passage aboard the Swan 48, Isbjørn, from Gran Canaria to Antigua, from my personal logbook: “Something clicked for
The Ocean Cruising Club’s 2022 Lifetime Cruising Award has been bestowed posthumously to James Wharram, a pioneer in modern offshore multihull design and sailing. Wharram,
