We were sailing on a reach, a stiff 25-knot trade wind filling our sails and kicking up whitecaps across the teal water. Behind us, the dark form of islands rising from the water slowly retreated and,

 Charter sailors who fly into St. Thomas in the United States Virgin Islands, and quickly hustle to the ferry dock to catch a ride to the BVIs don’t know what they are missing. From Christmas C

I think we’ve lost steering,” my brother Alex said in a calm, matter-of-fact voice, his tone out of place in light of our situation. Kyoko and four-legged family members buzz back to the boa

Who jumps in a truck, drives 1,300 miles from one corner of the country to the other, to see a bunch of wooden boats? We do. Jerry, Marcia, Shelly and me. Together, and separately, the four of us have

Seth Salzmann was never a 9-to-5 guy living out an ordinary existence. His eyes were always on bigger dreams, like sailing around the world. These days, Salzmann is owner and captain of When and If, a

Cape 31   This exciting high-performance one-design racer exploded on the regatta scene in 2023, with super sportboat performance. Designed by Mark Mills and built in Cape Town, South Africa, t

Outboard sling Anyone who has tried to pass an outboard motor from a wobbly dinghy to a person on deck knows that it’s an unpleasant task with the potential for disaster. The Barton Marine outboard

One of our earliest family sailing charters was along the Florida Panhandle 20 years ago aboard a 34-foot Tony Smith-designed Gemini 105M catamaran. We thought our two kids would love this boat, but w

In his yellow house up the hill in the tiny settlement in Exuma, Bahamas, 80-year-old Hughrie Lloyd  rises each day and heads out back to his shop. On a sand floor, with no plans, he builds Baham

The 2023 Transpacific Yacht Race wasn’t a record-breaker if you check the top boat speeds and elapsed times. But from a relative standpoint, the race knocked it out of the park. The 52nd running of

It’s unlikely that any women or youth sailors will race aboard the foiling AC75s when the 37th America’s Cup gets underway next year in Barcelona, Spain. But they will have a chance to compete in

I was sold on the appeal of one of the Caribbean’s most popular cruising destinations before we’d even cast off from the dock for our weeklong bareboat charter on Wallis, a 45-foot Moorings c

The cays have rebounded after Hurricane Dorian. Perched like a tiara at the northernmost tip of the Bahamas, the Abacos is a chain of barrier islands that forms the cruising paradise known as the

Of my many madcap boating adventures around the world, transiting the Panama Canal is the one that always elicits the most oohs and aahs. It’s been declared “the epitome of man’s mastery over na

It was fast, it was frenetic, and it was fun. The Women’s Winter Invitational Regatta brought 26 teams from across the United States and Canada, plus one from Brazil, to the San Diego Yacht Club in

The breeze started to build as we powered out of Simpson Bay’s IGY Marina on our way to catch the 10:30 bridge opening. Hank Schmitt, the skipper of the Swan 48 Avocation, and the rest of the crew r

Sailing courses have come a long way. Long gone are one-size-fits-all courses that focus mostly on basics and pigeonhole students into a regimented curriculum. Today sailing courses are focused on lif

Buddy Melges understood wind like no other sailor, so it is all the more fitting to say he was a breath of fresh air in the world of sailing.Although he won national championships 10 times and two Oly