Heavy Weather Sailing Gear
From sea anchors, drogues, and trysails to forereaching and heaving to, tactics and gear for surviving a storm at sea vary greatly. During a...
Getting Rid of Mold and Mildew Onboard
Among the marine maintenance products Practical Sailor evaluated recently were 14 pump-spray mildew cleaners to find out which one was the most effective at...
Practical Sailor Names 13 Products Best Gear of the Year
Practical Sailor’s annual wrap-up of the year’s best sailing equipment looks at our favorite top-rated products from November 2007 to November 2008, including the...
Farewell to Skip Allans S/V Wildflower
Anyone who has ever run before a gale knows how exhilarating it can be. On the right boat, in the right conditions, the adrenaline...
Snatch Block Test Update
Although it has a comparatively small sheave diameter (1.75 inches), the RF-6831 can handle loads up to 3,310 pounds, which is on par with...
A Tale of Two Trysails
A storm trysail rarely gets the close look it deserves. Designed to replace the mainsail in a severe storm, it spends most of its...
Singlehanded Sailors Notebook
First sailed in 1978 and held in even-numbered years, the Singlehanded TransPac (SHTP) crosses 2,120 miles of Pacific Ocean from windy San Francisco Bay,...
Taming the Main: Sail-Handling Systems for Bigger Mainsails
The mainsail continues to be both the heart of most sailplans, and the bane of many short-handed cruising sailors. In its modern bigger-than-ever context,...
Used Nylon Three-Strand Rope Faces The Ultimate Endurance Test
Nylon three-strand dock lines, anchor rodes, and mooring pendants are the sailors safety net, so to speak, and have been for nearly a century....
Practical Sailor Test Boat Gets Half a Refit With Powerlite PBO Rigging
Although stainless steel wire and rod rigging are still the traditional, most popular, and economical material of choice for mast rigging, metal is rapidly...