"If I'd known then what I know now," laughs Matt, "I'd have covered it in petrol and walked away." It's not quite the endorsement you'd expect from someone who's spent the past...

There’s more than a little irony in the need to keep a fiberglass boat away from water. The reason revolves around chemistry and the fact that water is the universal solvent....

Once again we broach a sanitation topic that folks would rather not talk about, and once again we’ve been surprised by the answers we found. Not the most glamorous investigations, but...

The East End of New York’s Long Island shelters within its North and South “forks” popular cruising destinations including Greenport, Shelter Island, Sag Harbor, and Montauk. What keeps many sailors hailing...

Boat buying is an exciting, maddening exercise that can test the tolerance of even the most patient sailor. Most of the maddening part has to do with trying to ferret out a boats problems before buying it-and making the problems your own. Hiring a professional marine surveyor can be expensive when youre looking at multiple boats, so save yourself some money-and potential heartache-by learning how to examine a used sailboat, from stem to stern and mast to bilge. Practical Sailors DIY survey how-to details common problem areas (like engines and rigging), what issues are easy to remedy, and what red flags you should walk away from.

The funny thing about the Gemini is that it's an old design. Ken Shaw drew the lines in 1969. There's nothing particularly contemporary about it. However, by painting the cabin sides black (Euro styling), adding a swept-back fiberglass "pilothouse" and gradually adding length to the full-bodied hulls, the Gemini has always looked like she belonged with her contemporaries, whether that was the 1980s or 1990s.

If your anchor chain is too light, your boat is on the rode to perdition. Forgive the pun, but an inadequate anchor rode (whether all-chain or a combination of chain and...

Before diving into the topic of responsible boating, we’re required to say something about global warming and carbon. Primordial carbon was sequestered by several mechanisms. Fossil fuels seem the most obvious,...

Clip on your safety tether. Far out in the North Pacific, solo sailor John Campbell was about to face the kind of ordeal most mariners hope never to encounter. The Vancouver...

A new Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) battery is sold as having a stated storage capacity, such as 100-amp hr. In practice, however, there will be a footnote to that figure stating...