2020 February 1
To be a real sailor is more than knowing your knots and how to trim sails for the conditions. It’s also looking the part. Just as Boy Scouts have merit badges, so too do sailors have their status sy
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2020 January 1
Footage of the foiling IMOCA 60s is sci-fi. And I’m not just talking about the sailing shots.
Watching the new Apivia emerge from its shed is like seeing a stealth fighter jet for the first t
2019 November 1
I admit it: I belong to way too many yacht clubs. I realize this, but it seems to be a chronic issue, like keeping every copy of the New York Times for 30 years or creating huge balls of string.
2019 October 1
Last August a friend issued a challenge. John and his partner Pat were enjoying frequent summer weekends at a cottage on Flathead Lake in Montana, but their sailboat—a 15-foot centerboard trailer-sa
2019 September 1
I was skimming a boating blog when my eye was caught by a plaintive headline: “How do I stop a Seagull?” I thought for a moment and then I started laughing, to the point of tears running down
2019 July 1
Sailing friends who sail the Chesapeake endeavor each year to join a select group called the Century Club. To qualify, one must sail 100 days in a year. Of course, this is easier for folks who don’t
2019 June 1
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
2019 May 1
In our family, every gift-giving opportunity—birthdays, Christmas and Hanukkah, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day—are less about thoughtful and creative generosity, and more about collecting what
2019 April 1
I really do understand that “it’s-all-about-me” seems to be pre-installed in today’s precious snowflakes at the factory before delivery, and snowflakes are apparently old enough to have t
2019 March 1
Sailors usually have more stories than their nonsailing friends have the patience to hear. Surround a sailor with sailing friends and liquid refreshments and colorful and unforgettable tales will flow
2019 February 1
As faithful (and even unfaithful) readers of this column know, I’ve teed off in the past about products that promise to take us sailing. No, not boats, but offerings such as a perfume that vowed to
2019 January 1
I’ve been captivated by the intentionally regressive singlehanded Golden Globe Race, which has knocked out more than half of its entrants and unleashed months of Southern Ocean drama with giant stor
2018 November 1
To quote Peter Finch as newscaster Howard Beale in the movie “Network,” “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
What led to this state of affairs was a phone call to an
2018 October 1
Listening to racers talk about handicapping is like listening to patients explaining the health care market. In health care, nobody knows who is paying what, to whom and for what. In handicapping, nob
2018 September 1
Hello, my name is Chris. I’m a charterholic. It’s been four months and 12 days since my last bareboat charter.” Whoops, wrong meeting. Or maybe not. If you’re reading this, you might be a char
2018 July 1
You may be familiar with the concept of the sailing timeshare, that is, fractional sailboat ownership in order to be able to sail for a few weeks a year in an idyllic place like the tropics. A f
2018 June 1
Longtime readers know that I have a few rants that pop up from time to time, so consider yourself warned. This is going to be one of them. One of my rants has been the late, great, America’s Cup, wh
2018 May 1
We’re sailboat shopping. Replacing one beloved family boat with another is a big change, so we’ve spent a lot of time pondering the ideal design. Our wishlist asks that it be:1. Large en
2018 March 1
We live in a 9-to-5 world, our calendars, computers and appointment books jammed with scribbled must-dos and don’t-forgets, and we have very little time that isn’t scheduled. The very concept of “spare time” has disappeared from our vocabularies. Kids scurry from soccer practice to dance lessons without pause for either kid or parent.
2018 March 1
A popular one-design dinghy class association recently announced that its rules committee had approved new class-legal digital compasses. I was curious to learn more about the breakthrough, wondering if the committee had finally given in to data. Cruisers and handicap racers find that data can simplify sailing: inexpensive computers tie routing to actual weather, a start can be precisely timed with clocks that account for speed and distance, and tactics can be determined based on actual fleet and global positioning. Instead, I learned that the committee had barely budged: Finally allowing its sailors to pick from two 20-year-old digital compass designs, in addition to the analog kind, but only “provided that the devices do not have the capacity for information other than heading.”
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A svelte cruising cat that has performance front and center
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This cruising cat’s palatial accommodations have sailors living in comfort
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This raised saloon offshore cruiser offers comfort and performance
