When it comes to my passions, I’d be hard-pressed to choose between sailing and skiing. That’s how I found myself standing on the snow-covered runway of Troms airport, the northernmost city in the world, ski gear in one bag, sailing gear in the other.
Sailors on the lower Great Lakes regard Lake Superior with a mixture of awe, respect and—frankly—fear. Tales of cold and fog, shipwrecks and wind keep most of us from exploring Superior’s shores. But there is another side to this greatest of the Great Lakes, and I found it on a summer cruise aboard my Westsail 32, Antares.
Avatar, a 37-foot Swiss-flagged boat with owners Beat and Lola on board, had set sail from Tahaa, an island a few miles southeast of Bora Bora in French Polynesia. Just a day later, while sailing westward on a comfortable reach, the boat’s helm suddenly became unresponsive.
I’ve been on both sides of the fence when it comes to cruising rallies. My very first transatlantic experiences, way back in 1992, were in two cruising rallies organized by Jimmy Cornell, the man who can rightfully lay claim to having invented the concept when he launched the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC), from the Canaries to the West Indies, in 1986.
While Pacific Northwesteners are a laid-back lot, some things are sacrosanct. Take seafood. Sure, we might roll into the marina in an aging Subaru wearing worn-out Birkenstocks, battle-scarred jeans and an old regatta T-shirt, but you can bet your last roll of duct tape we don’t tolerate inferior seafood. Why should we?
The sailors of old may have filled their free time with activities like scrimshaw and fancy knot work. But during a recent yearlong cruise with her family, 8-year-old Emily Ehlers (now 12) stayed busy creating a new card game, which is now being marketed under the name “Mermaid Beach.” A native of Portland, Oregon, Emily, her parents and two brothers sailed their 42-foot Pearson 424,
Most sailors only go aloft when necessary—either to do some kind of repair or maybe to get a better view while picking their way into a strange harbor. For French sailors Franck Rabilier and Delphine Lechifflart, though, messing about in their boat’s rigging is the most natural thing in the world. Currently partway through a circumnavigation, the two acrobats have staged dozens of performances at
With Halloween fast approaching, sailors across the nation are finding ways to combine the holiday with their love of the water. Here are a few family-friendly options that you may want to consider: 1. Haunted Ship Tours Forget haunted houses; let’s talk haunted ships. Many vessels become supernatural hotspots during the Halloween season, offering both guided tours
What better place to protest wealth distribution inequity than at a boat show featuring the likes of super-yachts and personal submarines weighing in at a cool $2.9 million? At least that’s how participants in the Occupy Ft. Lauderdale movement feel. Occupiers will join roughly 100,000 international boating enthusiasts at the 52nd Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show (FLIBS), which launches on
Food, fauna, flora and sailing: A week’s charter aboard a traditional clipper ship
Click on the closed captioning, CC, for subtitles. Ahead of the start of the Vendée Globe, a panel of industry experts got together to discuss
The following story is part of SAIL magazine’s recent 50th-anniversary coverage. For more, click here. Watching a tropical sunset from the deck of a sailboat
Thanks to Covid-19, 2020 has been a year like no other. Human nature being what it is, though, sailors and the boatbuilding industry have continued
In a year full of drama, the America’s Cup has been matching the news cycle step for step, supplying their own fair share of scandal.
Following the latest national lockdown measures announced by French President Emmanuel Macron as part of the fight against Covid-19, the 2020-21 Vendée Globe Race Village
Just in time for a fresh class of Vendée Globe sailors to attempt their circumnavigations, The International Association of Cape Horners (IACH) has taken on
The following story is part of SAIL magazine’s recent 50th-anniversary coverage. For more, click here. I cannot say I have been reading SAIL magazine since the very
B&G’s HALO series of radars now includes the HALO20+ and the HALO20, a pair of compact radomes expressly designed for use aboard smaller sailboats. The
The Picton Castle is set to begin its eighth circumnavigation this spring under the command of Captain Daniel Moreland. A professional crew of 12 will
Q: I have an early ‘70s Catalina 27. The keel bolts look pretty good. My question is, why not glass over the keel to bond
