Practical Sailor

When a sailor needs to connect point A to point B, he reaches for rope. We make an exception for jacklines because rope rolls under foot and webbing doesn't.

Do you remember the August 1979 Fastnet Race when a worse-than-expected European windstorm wreaked havoc on the 303 yachts that started the biennial race? This storm resulted in 21 fatalities—15 yachtsmen...

When it comes to sailboats, performance is a relative term, especially when it comes to a crews concept of how the boat will be used. Racing sailors, cruisers, and daysailors each have very different perspectives on performance. For example, those facing a light-air, around-the-buoys race measure performance in terms of how well their speed through the water holds up against the decrease in true-wind speed. Cruisers, on the other hand, especially those crossing oceans, often define it as a measure of versatility under sail, not just how a boat copes with near calms or gales, but how it performs in everything in between.

Many coastal cruising production sailboats designed during the heyday of the 70s and 80s emerged from the factory with plexiglass cabin windows. These larger-than-standard portlights allowed copious amounts of light into...

In my opinion, 2025 was a weird year for the sailboat buying and selling world. We saw listings pile up, price cuts, motivated seller edits, and dock-talk about boomers dumping boats...

Sailors obsess over the health of their engine; it is the heart of the boat (other than the rig, sails, and through-hulls). Failure is inconvenient, expensive, and even dangerous. And sailors love their maintenance, or so it seems. Anything that promises to ease the mind for a few dollars merits investigation.

Unlike other C&Cs, whose interior and deck layouts are designed for racing as well as cruising, the Landfalls are geared toward cruising, with more comfort, a slightly higher degree of finish detail, and deck layout concessions to the cruising couple.

Have you ever noticed that when people want to post beautiful serene moments, they use images of sailboats in the distance, usually seen from a dreamy, tropical palm-fringed beach, quietly sailing...

La Solitaire du Figaro Paprec is a unique, solo, multi-stage annual racing format created in 1970 by Jean-Louis Guillemard and Jean-Michel Barrault. In 2025, for the 56th edition of the race, professional...

Southern sailors often put their boats away for a few months when the water gets a little cool. Northern sailors have a more definitive reason; they put their boats away when the water gets hard. Often, freezing is limited to harbor areas, where shallow water, freshwater input, and limited tidal flushing encourage ice formation. Far north, you can walk on it for weeks, while in the mid-Atlantic, the layer is often thin and transitory. And while a few inches of ice are generally harmless to a sound boat, thick moving ice can damage paint, exposed steering gear, and planking. Although we can't make the weather any warmer, there are measures boat owners can take to keep ice at bay.