Personal Gear & Apparel

While the keep-it-simple-sailor philosophy underlies our selection process, we do stumble upon products that, although far from necessary, fulfill their primary mission: incite an urge to splurge. If you have a sailor on your gift list who seems attracted to gadgets, bags, and cool apparel, here are three of our testers favorites.

One of the reason we pay premium for brand-name products is the expectation that if something goes wrong, wed get outstanding support. Some U.S. companies (think Buck knives) have built their reputations on their lifetime warranties. But in the global economy, when brands are sold and resold, it is getting harder and harder to obtain good warranty support.

The ideal pair of sunglasses will vary among individuals. Fair-eyed people, for example, often prefer darker lenses. Our list of must-haves include UV protection, polarization, impact-resistant lenses, and good fit.

Mustang Survivals EP 6.5 Racing Dry Suit is the crme de la crme of its drysuit line. The dry suit is part of an impressive line of EP 6.5 apparel and gear including dinghy smocks, dry bags, and foul weather gear designed for the professional racing sailor.

The holidays are upon us, and if youve waited until the last minute to get your gift shopping done, fear not; weve got you covered. Here are some great stocking-stuffer ideas that any sailor would love to unwrap.

Sailors are a practical lot. Sure, wed all enjoy a Fruit of the Month membership, but if you really want to make a sailors holiday bright, then gift them with something more useful. Weve rounded up some practical (and fun) gift ideas that any sailor would appreciate, whether theyll be decking the halls or the main saloon this season.

Each fall, Practical Sailor editors pick through the best test products of the past year to find the cream of the crop for our PS Editors Choice roster. To be named to the list, products must earn the Best Choice rating among their respective peers and clearly stand out above others in their field.

Like many sailors, were outdoor enthusiasts who enjoy activities that allow us to be outside often. So were always interested in crossover gear that we can use on the boat, in the woods, or even in our day-to-day lives. A few products reached our desks recently that fit this bill: the Nemo Helio portable shower and Good To-Go dehydrated meals. While both have obvious appeal for campers and backpackers, theyre also useful for small-boat sailors, and the dehydrated meals are ideal for those venturing offshore or packing emergency kits.

Garmin recently released a new-age-looking boat-data display that will certainly appeal to technophiles and racing sailors. The portable, hands-free Nautix In-view Display attaches to the users glasses, making the data always visible out of the corner of the users eye while leaving him or her free to choreograph a race start or monitor the depth.

A night-time man-overboard (MOB) scenario is the stuff of sailor nightmares. Darkness adds to the difficulty of locating a person in the water, a concern that has produced many types of MOB lights and strobes (see PS, February 2016 online) over the years to better the MOBs odds. Spinlocks recently released Lume-On takes a new approach to making an MOB more visible at night by turning an inflatable life jacket into the equivalent of a floating glowworm.