A friend, poking gentle fun, once told me that my august position at the top of the masthead as publisher just means that I get to drive the magazine bus. If that’s true, then I’ve been going on frequent busman’s holidays. I read magazines obsessively. Maybe that should be called an ink-stained wretch’s holiday.  I consume magazines with omnivorous taste, on subjects ranging from cars to cooking, but, naturally, sailing magazines get priority. I read every one I can get my hands on, good and bad, domestic and foreign.
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Istvan Kopar had just returned to his Florida home after spending nearly 263 days sailing around the world in the Golden Globe Race and he was facing his toughest challenge yet: returning to life on lSchedule

Lowell North won five Star world championships. Lowell North sailed his first regatta at age 14, when he and his father came in last in every race in a Star that came with cotton sails. Young Nor

It’s not uncommon for committed sailors to decide to share their love of the sport by teaching others to sail. But it is remarkable for a sailor to jump into sailing education by founding two school

There are times on every boat when you need to send someone aloft. This is almost never convenient, but it’s a necessity and one in which safety needs to be a priority. Fortunately, the days of a pl

Dear Boat Doctor, I own a Caliber 40 and have been working my way down the Windward Islands, planning to spend hurricane season in Grenada. The trip has been great, but we’ve been caught a little o

The college admissions scandal, aside from being distasteful and embarrassing, has taught me a new term. To all of you from nasty northern climates with very short sailing seasons, a snowplow is somet

I had to check the proofs of this page extra carefully, lest some snarky editor garnish this column with the headline, “Ancient mariner goes back to school.” It’s true, I did go back to school,ScheduleSchedule

Features  One love cruising A cruise of Jamaica left a sailor feeling irie The healing power of sailing Warrior Sailing military veterans sail Charleston Race Week A cruiser gets school

When you first look at the profiles of the new Gunfleet 43 and the Allures 40.9 you might peg them as very similar boats. The profiles look very similar and LODs are within a foot. But they are really

This month we have two very similarly sized and styled European production boats and one very unusual training dinghy to review. The Allures 40.9 is a Berret-Racoupeau design. It’s a handsome boat i

The forecast was for 83 degrees with a 12-knot wind. The water was a stunning aqua blue off the St. Thomas Yacht Club on Cowpet Bay, U.S. Virgin Islands, the site of North U’s midwinter racing clini

Seattle resident Paul Souders didn’t start out as a sailor. In fact, he didn’t really start out as a water guy at all; he was simply a professional photographer who had grown dissatisfied with his

In April, Sperry Charleston Race Week drew its second largest ever fleet, with more than 250 entries from across the U.S. and overseas. In the void created by the defunct Key West Race Week, Charlesto

The Hunter design team was listening carefully to what potential buyers had in mind in the late 1990s when it came to building the ideal racer-cruiser, with an emphasis on the latter. The result was t

Beneteau has long had the ability to put the go-fast into sailboats, with many of the boats in its First line winning offshore and inshore races. It even launched the foiling Figaro 3. Cushy comforts

If your boat lies unattended, even for a short time—be it in a marina, (in or out of the water), or on a mooring—it doesn’t take long for it to become grubby, from bird droppings or wind blown d

Dear Boat Doctor, My Selden boom vang doesn’t seem to hold up my boom any more. It was OK before I installed the main, but now the boom just sags. For now, I have resigned myself to holding up the