Practical Sailor

From the drawing board of Philippe Briand, a renowned marine architect over the past four decades, comes the Jeanneau Yachts 65. This boat is a development of the very successful Jeanneau...

You can’t maintain a boat without ordering a few marine supplies, so Practical Sailor readers offered (mostly) high praise and appreciation for our guide to “16 Independent Marine Suppliers You Should...

I often ask myself the point of all the effort and expense of owning a well-aged sailboat. This usually happens after I crack a knuckle breaking loose some frozen fitting or...

Stagger while you anchor? It sounds like Ive either been drinking too much or sailing too long. Bear with me.

The hallmark of an overboard fall protection system is a system of jacklines running along the deck, with tethers attached so that the sailor can move throughout the boat with relative freedom. But this is not the real backbone of the system. A review of overboard accidents reveals that very few fall when transiting from cockpit to bow-they get washed overboard when they stop to perform a task. While moving, sailors are focused, holding on with two hands, and mindful of the approach of waves and the motion of the boat. But while taming a headsail or straightening up a tangle of line in the cockpit, the mind wanders, the hands are occupied, and risk increases. A wave strikes, we tangle our feet or step on a sail, and whoosh . . . were overboard.

Comfort, robustness, performance—choose two. At least, that’s the usual tradeoff to keep in mind when buying a sailboat. A stout and solid boat with a well-appointed interior will rarely win races,...

We all want a crystal ball that tells us exactly what we will be in for during a passage, however long or short it might be. Personally, the main thing I...

Manufacturers will recommend returning damaged foul weather gear for evaluation, and in some cases there may be remedies under warranty. On the other hand, the gear may be well used, the...

For my small F-24, with no cabin heating and no justification for the complexity of an installed system, this has been one of my best upgrades. I made it entirely from...

With a double-headsail rig, you already have some powerful gear-shifting options. Putting your staysail on a furler adds an overdrive.