Practical Sailor

Without really meaning to, over the past several years, Practical Sailor has acquired a considerable reputation for testing anchors and anchoring gear. On more than a dozen occasions anchor makers have sent anchors to be included in these PS tests. Inventors, too, have sent...

The usual advice for anyone seeking all-rope anchor rode is usually to just get some three-strand nylon anchor. The makes sense. Three-strand nylon is inexpensive, wears best, and is easy to splice. But one size, or even one type of rope, does not necessarily...

Join us for the full interview with Joe Cooper on sails. Joe shares his knowledge of sail fabrics, sail manufacturing, and sail selection for us based on our boats, what we aim to use them for, and how long we plan to make our...

While C&C did not invent the racer/cruiser, the Canadian-based company remained dedicated to the concept of the dual-purpose boat during its halcyon days in the seventies and eighties of the last century. With the notable exception of a few pure cruisers—the relatively low-performance Landfall...

I’ve borrowed my dockmate’s electric dinghy. I bought my wife an e-bike and I know she would like an electric motor.  Small gas motors can smell the fear of those that lack confidence with a manual choke. Gas motors are loud and you have...

The Universal name resonates with many of us as one of the best sailboat engines available. Despite Universal Motor Corp. no longer being in business, I plan to work on many more Universal engines in my time as a marine mechanic. Aboard my own...

Foaming mountains of cold black water loomed out of the darkness behind me, rushing under the stern as the Sabre 386 careened down the face of another wave, bullets of icy spray pelting my foul-weather gear.  I was on the midnight watch under a...

Aboard our Privilege 435 catamaran Confianza, we are teak oilers, not varnishers. Accordingly, our teak needs regular elbow grease. In our (seemingly never-ending) quest for the right teak cleaner, we decided to do a face-off between the two most-often recommended products: Snappy Teak-Nu and...

n early March, as the short austral summer was ending, I stood beneath a red-and-white striped lighthouse at the southern tip of South America. Sitting on weathered beech stump in the lee of the abandoned light, I watched through binoculars as a bright red...

I’m an avid cyclist. I raced in college, and I still take my college bike on my cruising cat and just hang it on a rack on the stern rail. At Practical Sailor, we’ve looked at folding bikes in the past and touched on...