Safety & Seamanship

Life Raft Materials, Construction and Servicing

A follow-up to our three-part series evaluates PU, PVC and various rubber fabrics.

Sea Anchors & Drogues

Taking bad weather bow-to or stern-to is a fundamental quandary. Much depends on your boat. Then you have to decide which sea anchor or drogue to buy. We sort through the decision tree.

Mailport 08/01/00

Handheld GPSI have the greatest respect for the equipment reviews in Practical Sailor, but I think that you overlooked very critical attributes for your...

Close As A Pencil Point

On May 1, President Clinton announced that the selective availability (SA) system used to degrade GPS (global positioning system) signals was terminated, effective at...

Mailport

Stripped Hose ClampsRe: The Case of the Stripped Hose Clamp in the September 1999 issue:First, torque is not the issue. Clamping force is the...

A Foolproof (and Simple) Way to Set Jib Leads

An excellent, surprisingly simple way to set jib leads is to use jib luff telltales as a guide. This technique applies to all types of headsails-genoas as well as working jibs.

Offshore Log:Escape From Lotus Land

As lovely as they found New Zealand, the crew of Calypso decides its time to move on…as soon as they can find a window between cyclones to cross theTasman Sea.

Offshore Log:Escape From Lotus Land

As lovely as they found New Zealand, the crew of Calypso decides its time to move on…as soon as they can find a window between cyclones to cross theTasman Sea.

Sailor’s Knives: 14 High-End Blades Tested

The Boye Dendritic Cobalt ‘Prophet’ tops the scoring, followed by three excellent models from Benchmade

20 Electric Bilge Pumps Tested

Top performers from Attwood, Lovett, Rule, West Marine and Whale vary considerably by model, but when all is said and done, we like the Whale Supersub, Rule-Mate and Lovett 1200.

O’Day 40 – A Budget Cruiser for the Bahamas

The O’Day 40 (1986) is one of those cruising sailboats that somehow slipped through the cracks of sailing history. Built during the final years...

Latest Sailboat Review

Caliber 33 Used Boat Review

The Caliber is a peculiar blend of tradition and innovation, of security and performance, of practicality and pizzazz. All of the owners we heard from were "satisfied." One called the 33 his favorite boat over six decades of sailing.