Is 88% A Good Number?
If you want a nice vacation, a boat charter seems close to a sure thing. Readers who responded to a survey published in last...
Lifesling Goes Throwable
Were safety conscious at Practical Sailor. Readers know that, from the numerous articles about our in-the-water and bench tests. We rarely fail to comment...
Gimbaled Radar Mount Concern
Calypso is equipped with a Questus model 100 backstay-mounted gimbaling radar mount for her Furuno 1831 radar. We have always liked this system, since...
Offshore Log: A West Indian Respite
Calypso arrived in Falmouth Harbor, Antigua, just before Christmas, 1997. She covered the 1,600 nautical miles from Newport, Rhode Island to Antigua in almost...
Offshore Log: Bermuda-bound Trial by Water
We never seem to do things the easy way. In late November, Calypso left New England once again, this time bound first to Bermuda,...
Offshore Log:Do You Know Where Your Emergency Tiller Is?
The great racing sailor, Paul Elvstrom, preferred the superior sensitivity of tiller steering to wheel steering even on larger offshore boats. Elvstrom, however, seems...
Handheld GPS Chart Plotters: Watch Out For That Rock!
Almost all portable GPS receivers include track plotting that may sometimes be confused with electronic charts. The units discussed here, however, have in addition...
Offshore Log:The Whitbread 60s After 20,000 Tortuous Miles At Sea
By the time the nine Whitbread 60s reached Sao Sebastiao, Brazil in late February, they had raced more than 20,000 miles, averaging well over...
ITT Night Vision 260-A Star Among Night Vision Scopes
When the only thing that keeps you from going aground at night is an unlit channel marker buoy, a night-vision device suddenly becomes less...
New Handheld GPS Plotters
No sooner had we wrapped up our review of three GPS plotters in the May 1, 1998 issue than we got a preview of...
Latest Logbook
Practical Sailor Logbook – September 2026
In September we tour the Hans Christian 48T — the offshore cruiser many sailors call the holy grail — walk the custom Antigua 60...
Video: The BEST Sailboat You Can Buy for $35,000 – Catalina...
If you’re searching for a mid-30-foot sailboat, affordable cruising sailboat, liveaboard sailboat, first sailboat, or a capable used sailboat for coastal cruising, the Catalina...
Latest Sailboat Reviews
Cal 2-27 Used Boat Review
Our story begins in 1970, with the introduction of the Cal 29. Looking for something similar but a bit smaller, the company asked designer Bill Lapworth for a 27-footer, which at first was the Cal 27, a fin keel, spade rudder design with a convertible pop top; another incarnation of this basic hull was the T/2. But the concept of the 29 found its full expression in the Cal 2-27, which began production in 1975 and continued to 1977, after which it was again modified and called simply the Cal 27...again. Production of it ceased in 1986.
