Sometimes the best education happens when you’re too busy having fun to notice that you’re learning something. That was the hope behind the American Sailing Association’s Sailing Challenge app, a sailing game for mobile devices, said Lenny Shabes, ASA’s founder. Schedule

boot Düsseldorf is the world's largest boat and watersports show with activities, exhibitors and boats to keep sailors busy for days.Schedule

SAILING Magazine, the oldest continually published American magazine dedicated to the sport of sailing, announced today that it will unveil a new design in its January 2017 issue.  A new premiumSchedule

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 Successful husband and wife teams are rare in the competitive sailing business. But Heidi and Steve Benjamin, each accomplished sailors in their own right, have found a winning formula racing together for several decades. Intrigued by their success I caught up with the pair in Cowes, Isle of Wight, United Kingdom, during the recent Etchells World Championship where Steve was racing.Schedule

 Whether by choice or chance, at some point most sailors will find themselves sailing shorthanded. Your first experience might be a trip to the fuel dock with your own boat, an end of the season delivery with a loyal friend or sailing with a group of four or five friends before realizing only a couple of them are sailors. The sooner you learn shorthanded seamanship, the sooner offshore waters become a comfortable backyard in which to play.Schedule

 Our picks for holiday gift giving.ScheduleScheduleSchedule

Growing up in Florida, I was often envious of my friends who spent their summers going to camp or a theme park for a family vacation. Could I spend a week visiting an overgrown and overpriced mouse? Oh no, our family headed to the Abacos for our summer vacation.  I vividly recall the image in my head as my mother explained that we would be making “the crossing” to the Bahamas. I pictured our family, all with water wings on our arms, swimming from island to island, with cartoonish sharks circling in the distance. In reality, the crossing was the 12-plus hours it took to sail from somewhere near Jupiter, Florida, to the Abacos, a part of the vacation that I loathed then, as seasickness was something I was prone to. 

It’s hard to imagine a better place to be introduced to sailing than a Caribbean island, where the water is warm and the sun is always shining. And that’s exactly where more and more people are getting a taste for the sport thanks to a partnership between the American Sailing Association and Sandals and Beaches resorts. 

Terry Kohler, who discovered a love for sailing as a boy aboard his mother’s Alden-desigend schooner Venturer, dedicated himself to making the sport more technologically advanced as well as more accessible to sailors of all abilities, all from a sleepy blue-collar town on the shore of Lake Michigan.

Features  New boats for 2017 A look at some of the new models in advance of the fall boat shows Paradise times two Exploring the native beauty of Tahiti is even better on the stab

Next year’s crop of new boats is anything but cookie-cutter. From push-button control to origami trimarans, there is something to pique the interest of every sailor. New refinements in manufacturing and design are evident, and the payoffs are boats that offer more in terms of speed, storage, sail area and safety. Turn the page to catch a glimpse of what will be gracing the docks at upcoming boat shows.

It started as an April Fools’ joke. I never would have thought of  Kyle Ryan as particularly gullible. He’s an experienced sailor, a big wave surfer and a divemaster. He has spent years at sea as an officer with NOAA. And he recently proved to be sound crew on a rough crossing from Fiji to New Zealand aboard my Beneteau 473. Which is why I was surprised when he believed the ridiculous story my wife and I concocted in the early morning hours of April 1.Schedule

Few seamanship skills are more important than recovering a person from the water. Although many sailors are well versed on MOB recovery methods on monohulls, the sailing and handling characteristics of a catamaran require a different approach to rescue, one that should be practiced before any multihull passage.

On the second afternoon of a Chicago-Mackinac race that would be remembered as one of the fastest in years, most of the 326-boat fleet was charging up Lake Michigan in a 20- to 25-knot southerly breeze with chutes full and a building sea pushing down waves. The 10 sailors on the 1D48 WhoDo were enjoying their own rollicking ride as they entered the Manitou Passage about two-thirds of the way up the course when a gust buried the boat’s bow knocking it down and causing it to round up only to get knocked down on the other side. 

Have you ever used a scythe, Nic?” asked Cathy Mac Aleavey when I met her at Jimmy Furey’s house on the banks of the River Shannon in Ireland last summer. Now, I’ve been to dozens of sailing events around the world, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never been asked that question before.  

 You can’t escape history when sailing in the Mediterranean, not even your own. We were off the Lycian coast of Turkey. My wife Tadji was at the helm, searching for zephyrs as Quetzal ghosted over a shimmering sea. I was below, rummaging through the nav station looking for a detailed chart for the approach to Kekova Roads. I am a luddite, I still use paper charts and I knew it was in there somewhere.

 There’s an old saying, “Step up into the life raft,” implying that you should not launch your life raft prematurely in an emergency. And while many old sayings are often just that, old and out of date, there’s merit to this wise advice.