The publication that started as a newspaper for Lake Michigan sailors and grew into a glossy, oversized national sailing magazine respected by readers and advertisers alike for the quality of its writing and photography, published its last printed issue in January 2025.

Founded in 1966, it was America’s longest published pure-sailing magazine.

SAILING will continue to publish sailing information and photography on its website — sailingmagazine.net — and in its popular SAILING newsletter.

“As an independent, family-owned publication, it became impossible for SAILING to compete for advertising revenue as a print magazine in a publishing world dominated by media companies wielding the marketing power of combined magazines,” said Bill Schanen, SAILING’s publisher. 

Schanen cited recent acquisitions that have resulted in a single company owning almost all of America’s national boating magazines.

Schanen’s father, William F. Schanen Jr., a lifelong sailor who published a weekly newspaper in a small town on the shore of Lake Michigan, Port Washington, Wisconsin, introduced SAILING 59 years ago as a newsprint tabloid printed on his company’s offset newspaper press.

The magazine’s racing news and cruising stories, and especially its bold use of large photographs, attracted an audience of sailors that soon spread throughout the Great Lakes region and then across the country.

SAILING evolved into a magazine format with full-color printing on enamel paper, but for years kept the tabloid page size that enabled dramatic display of sailing pictures by a crew of international contributors that included the world’s best marine photographers.

Noted yachting writers signed on to the magazine, including columnists whose unvarnished opinions on sailing issues were avidly read by SAILING subscribers.

Early on, yacht designer Bob Perry joined SAILING in creating a feature that was unique among sailing publications—sailboat design reviews that were honest evaluations of the designs’ sailing qualities based on Perry’s technical expertise. SAILING’s editors gave Perry free rein in expressing his informed opinions, which he did in an entertaining writing style in more than 1,500 reviews.

Perry was inducted into the National Sailing Hall of Fame in 2024 in recognition of his own outstanding sailboat designs drawn over his long career, including a number of them that are regarded as classics of the fiberglass era.

“Writing the SAILING reviews had become a part of who I am, and an important part, and probably one of the reasons I received the Hall of Fame award,” Perry said.

Fittingly, the cover photograph on the January-February issue, a dramatic composition featuring a black J-Class yacht with its crew dousing a brilliant red spinnaker, was taken by the acclaimed sailing photographer Sharon Green.

“To have the final cover feature on the magazine is truly meaningful,” Green said. “Knowing that my work is part of SAILING’s incredible legacy means the world to me.”

SAILING’s family owners, now in the third generation, will keep the SAILING name and spirit alive with continuing sailing content at sailingmagazine.net.