Simply hoping that your rig is trouble free is not a good strategy, says Chris LabYou need to keep up to date on the condition of your standing and running rigging, both before you launch in the spring and continually throughout the season. Your rig is an integrated system, and anything that happens to any part of it can quickly turn your sailboat into a slow-moving
Making sailboats easier to handle (Sailing for Geezers, September 2007) apparently touched a responsive chord. Here are more improvements Ive made on my 30-year-old Pearson 40 to make it easier and safer for me to handle. Since Im approaching 60 years of age, easier also equals fun. The Geezer mainsail reefStaying in the cockpit when the wind is building is a
A covered foredeck helps keep the noon sun at bayBy Paul EsterleSpending a Tennessee summer on my 35-footer taught me that surviving the sun and heat calls for proper sunshades and awnings. I quickly learned that if I didnt put up adequate shades, the noon sun would heat the cabin to such high temperatures that even air conditioning could not cool the space down until
For the past 30 years, lead-acid batteries have always been the principal limiting factor in the design of high-capacity DC systems for sailboats. Over the years a number of technologies have been developed that attempt to circumvent this roadblock—NiCad, nickel metal hydride (NiMH), lithium ion (LiI), fuel cells—but none has had sufficient life expectancy at a price affordable enough to be
Castaway gets a new sparFor the last two years weve been involved in the full refit of Castaway, a 1978 Ericson 34T. We recapped the story of this BoatWorks Bailout project in the January issue, and now the boat is at last in the water. Any old-boat project runs into some kinks, and we hit a literal kink with Castaway when the mast was found to be so badly
Call me old-fashioned, call me daring, call me crazy, but I prefer not to have my cockpit full of lines that have been led aft. I enjoy going forward and working at the mast. It hasnt always been that way. During my first crossing from Isla Mujeres, Mexico, to the Dry Tortugas off Florida many years ago as crew on an Irwin 38, each trip forward was a crawl on my hands and knees. Oh, how I
Windage and drag are two of a racing sailboats worst enemies, especially around a sails leech. Many racers eschew in situ reefing lines until its absolutely necessary to reef. (Some cruisers also dont use reefing lines, as they can chafe sailcloth.) The risk is that you can get caught out if youre not careful. A smarter, faster way to reef without leaving reefing lines in
“You’re not carrying any paper charts?” is a question I’ve heard at all the exotic landfalls and cruiser’s hangouts I’ve visited during my circumnavigation. Many cruisers, it seems, aren’t quite ready to fully trust their electronic chartplotters. While almost all cruisers, other than a few diehards, do have plotters on board, they also carry enough paper charts and tools for measuring and
A sailor quickly learns the right way to gybe a mainsail: Trim the mainsheet carefully, and always keep the boom and sail under full control. But in all the moving around, the headsail, often a genoa, tends to be forgotten. Unless you have a crew of eager sailors in search of a permanent job, that’s usually a good course of action. Do nothing with the headsail until the mainsail has been
If you really want to know what kind of weather is coming your way, skip the radio and TV broadcasts and look up at the clouds. Even though forecasts are a lot more reliable than they used to be, this old-fashioned way is still valuable.With today’s sophisticated devices, including satellite imagery and Doppler radar, an international network of weather experts can keep an eye on
So much goes into preparing for a big regatta: finding reliable crew, boat repairs and maintenance, practice, time, money. But often it’s the simplest things
You can take the sailor out of racing, but you can’t take racing out of the sailor. So, when Nicolas Berenger, product and commercial director
I was launching a one-person plywood dinghy named Loner that a friend and I had just built, when the original boat girl walked by on
When Marvin Creamer, a retired geography professor and lifelong sailor, set out from Cape May, New Jersey, on Dec. 21, 1982, aboard the Ted Brewer-designed
“Vous parlez Français?” An elderly man was addressing me over breakfast at an inn in the French seaside village of La Trinite-Sur-Mer. “No, désolé, just
The 2023 Marion to Bermuda Race, which departed Marion, Massachusetts, on June 16, will be remembered for a new course speed record and as one
Leg 7 Leg 7 started off with a bang—literally—when Guyot-Environment hit 11th Hour Racing Team. Visibility is limited on IMOCA 60s, and a simple port-starboard
For certain sailors, boats from Swedish builder Hallberg-Rassy are the stuff of dreams, synonymous with stout, go-anywhere yachts delivered in a gorgeous, thoughtful package that
In 1942, Ray Greene and Company changed the face of boatbuilding when they built the first viable polyester-fiberglass composite boat. These materials meant that boats
In Cape Horn: The Logical Route, Bernard Moitessier wrote about the joy of sailing into a harbor at night. Not just entering a harbor, but
