Southbound with the Snowbirds
Cruising guide authors Mark and Diana Doyle, co-leaders of the upcoming SAIL Magazine Snowbird Rally, take us on an eight-part tour of the Intracoastal Waterway.
Cruising guide authors Mark and Diana Doyle, co-leaders of the upcoming SAIL Magazine Snowbird Rally, take us on an eight-part tour of the Intracoastal Waterway.
If you think sailing rallies are for people of a certain “type,” think again. After mingling with a dozen of this year’s World ARC participants,
Paradise lies just west of ICW mile marker 173 on the Neuse River in North Carolina, about a mile up Broad Creek. It’s not hard to find, but you do have to look for it. Once you get there, you’ll agree. River Dunes is paradise.
Let’s not kid ourselves—the ICW transit can be a long, lonely and sometimes daunting slog. Commercial traffic, strong currents, shifting shoal spots and lifting bridges—help!
Becuase of our limited experience, we decided our first Atlantic crossing should be the “milk run,” from east to west. Our plan was to sail up the East Coast, spend a summer on the Chesapeake, ship the boat to the Mediterranean, cruise Greece and the rest of the Med for two summers and bring the boat back to where we started—the BVI—via the ARC
SAIL’s 2014 Snowbird Rally down the Intracoastal Waterway was such a success that we’ve decided to do it again
Every year, nearly 50 cruising rallies take place around the globe. There are rallies that cross the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Gulf Stream and even the Indian Ocean, routes that circle the Baltic, the Delmarva Peninsula and the World.
All the sailors who participated in the World Cruising Club’s (WCC) 2014 DelMarVa Rally this past June had one goal in common: start small, build big. At least that’s what Mark Johnson, skipper of Aisling, told me at the prize-giving ceremony afterward.
Sailing is often about the adventures you have and the people you meet, and this could not be truer for the participants of the 2014 DelMarVa Rally, which wrapped up on Saturday, June 14, in Annapolis, MD, with an awards ceremony and party for the cruisers.
On board any cruising boat, charts and guides are pivotal for route-planning. But have you ever thought about how those guides are created? We checked in with the co-authors of an ICW cruising guide to get the skinny on guide-writing and ICW cruising.

You’ve probably seen the clips online. During the first day of racing in SailGP’s New Zealand series, the worst crash in the league’s six seasons

Log the Glass These days with weather forecasts available wherever there is WiFi, it doesn’t do to forget the old ways. Last season I was

This weekend saw the fourth annual Northeast Ocean Racing Symposium (NORS), held at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts. The day of technical lectures and networking

Contributing Editor Christopher Birch’s much anticipated book The Four Seasons of Boat Maintenance is out now. Billed as “the maintenance manual that should have come

On March 1, the U.S. SailGP Team shook up the Grand Prix series and won the Sydney Sail Grand Prix, marking their first victory since

Lessons learned by others are a great guide when putting together a vacation to remember.

After being the Chief Designer at Tartan Yachts for 48 years, Tim Jackett has found a new home with Niche Watercraft. The company has announced

A trans-oceanic performance catamaran loads up on practical features and comforts of home.

A classic racing yacht, three weeks at sea, and eight crewmates you’ve never met. What could go wrong?

Editor’s Note: This story is excerpted from SAIL Contributing Editor Christopher Birch’s upcoming book The Four Seasons of Boat Maintenance(available for order soon)—a compendium of