Personal Gear & Apparel

In February 2006, we compared four folding bikes, the Dahon Helios, the Dahon Cadenza, the Montague Paratrooper, and the West Marine Port Runner, with the Dahon Helios rated as our Best Choice. After the article ran, we received a pile of mail from readers offering their insight into folding bikes.

If you like trolling while you sail, and youre good at it, youll inevitably land some fish too big for the cooler or ice box. Heres a powerboat-oriented product that might save you the trouble of spilling blood, and guts on your nice clean deck, just so you can put that oversized striper, wahoo, or mahi on ice. Enter insulated fish bags. We looked at three bags capable of holding a fish weighing 50 pounds, plus ice.

Necessity, as the saying goes, is the mother of invention. And sailors tend to be an inventive lot. So, its not surprising that when Ed Kriese, a veteran racing sailor and the owner-founder of Oceanracing.com, became dismayed at the lack of a reasonably waterproof backpack for laptops, he invented one.

Stocking Stuffers for Your Nauti One

MARINE INSURANCE REDUXI have been reading with much interest your articles about marine insurance this year (April and May 2006).

Is it really worth dropping a few extra bucks for binos?

It was mid-July 1990 on the Caicos Banks, a stretch of shallow, gin-clear water extending for about 70 miles east to west in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Along with a dozen other cruisers whod chosen to thumb our noses at hurricane season (ah, those were simpler times), we were pausing in Providenciales before heading south. …

Nikon, West Marine top the field of binos under $300.

Helly Hansen, Musto and Victory Wetsuits also measure up in our fabric test

Our last wholesale evaluation of boating shoes was published in the Oct. 15, '98 issue. More recently, we evaluated newcomers to the market in...