Simple Lithium for Outboard-Powered Tenders, Daysailers, and Sport Boats
Lithium is cool. Your cell phone uses it. Cameras, laptops, flashlights … everything. But “cool” is not a reason. Fire is not a big...
Special Report: How to Prevent AIS and VHF Antenna Malfunction
Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) ships-including tankers, passenger vessels and cargo ships over 300 gross tonnage-must be equipped with Automatic Identification Systems (AIS). In the U.S., carriage requirements also includes vessels over 65-feet. AIS can allow you to see a distant ship, but is not a substitute for radar.
Vesper Marine WatchMate 850 and Icom M91D: Where Credit is Due
AIS (automatic identification system) transponders put out a signal that describes your boat and what it is doing to other ships. It also receives...
How to Create a Bullet-Proof VHF/SSB Backup
In this short article I want to chat about ideas for making the radio bombproof in an emergency. I haven’t “invented” any of these...
Tips From A First “Sail” on the ICW
My dream to sail from New England to the Bahamas involved a trip down the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), also known as “the ditch”...
Tillerpilot Tips and Safety Cautions
Autopilot is not autodrive. The International Rules of the Road (COLREGS) makes your responsibility clear: You must keep watch. There are no exemptions for...
Best Crimpers and Strippers for Fixing Marine Electrical Connectors
If you own a cruising boat, you will have to learn to be an electrician (in addition to a painter, a detailer, a mechanic,...
Thinking Through a Solar Power Installation
The practical aspects of your solar panel system will be governed by the design and size of your sailboat, your overall project budget (%...
How Does the Gulf Stream Influence our Weather?
“Big High, Blue Sky, Goodbye…” All you need to get started, right?
...Not so fast. Heed another quote from Captain Ron, hero of the 1992...
Can You Run a Marine Air-Conditioner on Battery Power?
Our 16,000 BTU MarinAire A/C is sufficient to maintain our Privilege 435 catamaran at under 26.5°C (80°F) on days up to around 35°C (95°F)....
DEEP DIVE into the Lagoon 380 – The Worlds Best Selling...
Are you Catamaran Shopping? The Lagoon 380 is one of the best-selling cruising catamarans ever built, and for the first time, used models are...
Latest Sailboat Review
Bob Perry’s Salty Tayana 37-Footer: Boat Review
With several hundred boats sailing the seas of the world, the Tayana 37 has been one of the most successful products of the U.S.s Taiwan-built boat invasion that began in the early 1970s. Its shapely Baltic stern, scribed plank seams molded into the glass hull, and lavish use of teak above and belowdecks have come to epitomize the image associated with Oriental boats.