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diy

Buying a New Main Sail

I’ve always known the importance of having good sails. As a low-budget boat punk, I prioritize making sure I can get where I’m going with

Refurbishing Shirley Rose: Part 2

If you missed the first installment, click here. Thankfully, the deck and cockpit of my decades-old Santana 27, Shirley Rose, were in pretty good shape.

DIY: an Antique Nav Station

Ever since the advent of GPS, I have not found much use for the chart table on my schooner Britannia. Most of our passagemaking navigation

Refurbishing Shirley Rose: Part 1

Shirley Rose, a well-worn Santana 27, sorely needed refurbishing. When I took ownership, she was on stands in a sorry state looking for someone to

7 Essential Knots for Sailors

If you didn’t learn knots when you were young, you can still master them with this quick guide to the most common knots a sailor needs.

Anchor Snubber Tips

At its most basic, a “snubber” is a short length of non-stretchy cordage attached to the anchor chain and to a strong point on a

DIY: A Better Saloon Table

The original saloon table in my Down East 45 schooner was a single heavy sheet of 3/4in laminated plywood, 27in wide by 57in long. It

Deck Gear: Low-friction Rings

You may be surprised to learn there’s nothing new about the half-doughnut-half-sheave-shaped bits of aluminum known as low-friction rings. In fact, low-friction rings, in one

This 2026 Top 10 winner is a functional and fashionable update to the 410.

Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 415

Developed in record time and on a shoestring budget, a new design hits the bullseye of the cruising market. 

Boat under shrinkwrap

Selecting a Marine Pro

Note: This story is excerpted from SAIL Contributing Editor Christopher Birch’s upcoming book The Four Seasons of Boat Maintenance—a compendium of lessons learned during his

Squalls at night are no joke, but good preparation will get you through safely. Photo courtesy of Andy Schell

Storms & Sea Stories

The wind built faster than it was forecasted to. We ate dinner with full sail, close-reaching on a building SSW’ly breeze. Before dark we had

Photo: Lisa Smith Molinari

A Charter Passage Rewritten

Sailing on a schedule is famously a recipe for disaster, but on charter you don’t have much of a choice. The adventure is what you make of it. 

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