Safety & Seamanship

With all the talk about a record El Niño coming this summer and climate change generally leading to more severe storms, we all need...

Exploring beaches, marshes, shorelines—and yes, small towns—is one of sailing’s greatest joys. The challenge is getting in and out of a dinghy or kayak,...

Although laminating epoxies can tolerate some moisture, we know that excessive moisture can prevent a good cure. So how can we manage an emergency...

The sailing season is here again and everyone is doing their spring checks. Something that is often overlooked are the alarms that may one...

With all of the products out there claiming to be green or non-toxic, surely there must also be villains that are now best avoided. In just a century weve begun to make a fine mess of the world that we need to live in for the next few million years. Yet we are making progress, and finding less hazardous replacements is a part of the answer.

In the process of our ongoing investigation on the effect of time and wind gusts on anchor setting and holding capacity, we performed limited testing at short scope and couldnt help but notice that holding capacity at short scope varied greatly. When recovering the test anchors, some anchors would lift out of the bottom while we were pulling the dinghy over to them, while others required heroic efforts even when the rode was nearly vertical.

Noted seamanship authority John Rousmaniere offers a problem-focused approach to determining and selecting basic but essential safety equipment for the coastal cruising vessel.

All sailors start somewhere. As a teen I eagerly absorbed National Geographic stories in the late 60s of young Robin Lee Graham sailing singlehanded...

In our ongoing study of ways to compare, and hopefully improve the way our anchors set, weve learned that it takes time and slow, delayed setting to make best advantage of very soft mud. However, firm sand and weeds can have the opposite character-making it hard for the anchor to penetrate.

“Is everything okay? Your EPIRB was set off.” It’s a call no sailor wants to receive. For Josh Verstoep and Sierra Grant, that call set off...