For over 20 years now, three of my best friends and I have made a tradition of doing an annual sailing trip on the Chesapeake Bay with our dads. We “kids” are now grown up and dispersed around the globe, but our four dads still live within three miles of one another back home in Pennsylvania.
Bahamian reefs, which have suffered for years from over-fishing, pollution and plastic waste, now have a new environmental menace to contend with. Fortunately, this one is delicious.
There aren’t many sinking sensations to compare with the one you get when your GPS decides to take an unscheduled break, especially if you’ve been relying on an electronic chartplotter. One minute you know exactly where you are. The next you’re surrounded by a trackless sea, feeling distinctly insecure.
Frank Butler started out as a guy who just liked to make stuff, which is pretty much how he’s ended up, as well. It’s a California story, for the most part, and yes, in some ways it has been “a long strange trip.”
After over five months of sailing from the Pacific Northwest, down the west coast of North America, through the Panama Canal and on into the Caribbean, we were finally approaching St. Maarten. We were only 100 miles from our final destination, and a giddy feeling of anticipation had begun to set in.
Cruising the Great Lakes has one drawback: you don’t see many whales or dolphins, or frigatebirds or puffins, for that matter. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still have plenty of equally meaningful brushes with nature.
“Wake up! Wake up! I think we’re dragging anchor!” Peg’s words pierced my sleep like a needle popping a balloon. In an instant I was standing in the cockpit, face to face with the bowsprit of a large Island Packet that had been anchored three football fields away the night before.
Any boat under way in a crosswind, whether it’s a rowboat crossing a lake or a powerful cruiser reaching along the coast, will be pushed sideways to some extent. The effect is called “leeway,” and even big ships are subject to it. Sometimes leeway is insignificant; often it is not.
Getting a sail cover on and off a mainsail is often harder than it should be. Once it’s off the sail, it can be hard to tell which end goes where, and when you spread it out to check, the wind will wrestle you for control of it.
If there’s one thing I hate more than varnishing it’s not having all the tools at hand to do the job right. Besides brushes, old cans of varnish, new cans of varnish and thinners, there is the sandpaper.
On the eve of the Prada Cup challenger series, the official start of the 36th America’s Cup, New York Yacht Club American Magic skipper Terry
Endless Media’s Reaching Reality is the story of three friends, a 24-foot sailboat and 1,200 miles. With candor and humor, this series proves that you
Growing up on the coast of northern England, I dreamed about crossing oceans on my own boat. Like most of us, though, education, a family
A week ago, the canting keel on Isabelle Jocshe’s IMOCA 60, MACSF, failed. She managed a jury rig with a replacement ram, which held the
A devastated Hare talks about the breakage Pip Hare (Medallia) is back in the game after an emergency rudder repair deep in the Southern Ocean.
The schedule for the PRADA Cup has been revealed as a multitiered extravaganza featuring over a month of racing, stretching from January 15 through February
A Superbowl is a Superbowl, and a World Series is a World Series. Sure, the names of the players and the teams change from year-to-year,
Over the next few weeks, Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli Team, the New York Yacht Club’s American Magic effort and INEOS Team UK will all battle
Emirates Team New Zealand Defender, Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron Though pulling off an event like the America’s Cup during a global pandemic was never
The past year has been a strange and tragic one, to say the least. A funny thing happened, though, on the way to everybody just
