Innehållsförteckning för May 2025 från SAIL

“Be up in five minutes,” I said, as I looked up at Geo in the cockpit, his face ringed with the dew dripping off his black fleece hat. I’d unwrapped myself from the warm quarter berth, put on the kettle, switched on the red light over the nav station, grabbed my foul weather pants, dry socks, and fleece that I’d laid on the settee after my last watch. It’s hard enough coming up for watch after only a few hours’ sleep—I knew by this time that laying out dry gear in a logical place helped ease the process. It was mid-August, we were at the end of an overnight crossing of the Cabot Strait from Burgeo, Newfoundland, heading southwest, another turning point in a summer cruise that opened and unraveled…

We have a sad note from Don Casey’s wife, Olga, that Don, one of SAIL magazine’s most popular and prolific writers, died suddenly of a heart attack in his backyard in Miami Springs, Florida, on January 25. He was 77 years old. His very first book, Sensible Cruising: The Thoreau Approach, published in 1987, quickly established him as a leading voice in the Keep It Simple Stupid school of cruising under sail. Over the following decades he published 10 more books that became technical bibles of boat maintenance and the cruising lifestyle. One of his more popular works, Dragged Aboard, offered trenchant advice on making reluctant spouses comfortable and happy while afloat. His most popular book, This Old Boat, is still in print. His very last book, Marjoram & Mace,…

The Ocean Cruising Club, which makes grants to sailors to help foster adventure and conservation, has awarded its latest funding to a sailing family who is using their voyages to support citizen science of the oceans and marine environment. The award to Free Range Ocean and S/V Freeranger is to support its Ocean Citizen Science Project directory, a free platform through which people can find a project that interests them and then donate their time and experience to advance marine research—whether that’s offshore cruisers sampling for plankton, or inshore sailors studying water quality or more local flora and fauna. In a media release announcing the grant, the OCC noted that “the 2022 UNESCO State of the Ocean report highlighted that ‘scientific knowledge illuminates the way to reversing the decline in…

Time slows down as I carefully position the tip of my spike against the trigger of the Tylaska. No wonder this has traditionally been a boys’ sport, the thought flashes through my mind. Perched at the tip of a long piece of wood that proudly leads the charge of the powered-up schooner, delicately inserting the spike into the shackle’s opening…the sense of suspended power in my fingertips is incredible, and all of the accompanying images are distinctly male. I glance back up, read the words on my crew boss’ lips—“Three, two, one, SPIKE!”—and deftly insert and jerk. The reaction is explosive as the 4,500-square-foot A3 spinnaker rips away through the air. My job in the spinnaker douse done, I stow my spike into my harness loop and watch the battle…

Letters Intentionality Goes A Long Way I thoroughly enjoyed reading Wendy Mitman Clarke’s column in the March issue, “Let’s Be Careful Out There.” It seemed to be a very strong theme throughout all the articles in this issue. Take your time, slow down, be patient. All the concepts most sailors get out on the water for, but most seem to rush to try and find them. I’m taking these lessons to heart. Plot a less “hard” tack, carve a smoother wake, and slow down to what the wind and water provide. Thanks for a great read. —Rich Safranek, Lake Allatoona, GA Building Up From the Basics I enjoyed David Blake Fischer’s article (“Wine, Roses, and a Boat Named Delilah,” March 2025). It started out as yet another fool in the…

I awoke to the sound of New Zealand birdsong, a soft melodic drone of mingled voices—the dawn soundtrack in the wild parts of Aotearoa. The faint light of morning eased into the day as I eased out of my bunk to start the kettle for coffee. With a hot cup of brew, I went on deck and walked to the bow to take in the beauty of the Marlborough Sounds, the northernmost cruising grounds of the South Island of New Zealand. My 1965 Alberg 30 sloop, Triteia, was tied to a club mooring at Māori Bay in Pelorus Sound. I had joined the Pelorus Boating Club to gain access to its 100 shared moorings that are scattered throughout the Marlborough Sounds. Most of the sounds’ bays and coves are very…

It was 3:30 in the morning and damp. With four layers and a winter hat, I was jumping up and down in the cockpit to stay warm. A light breeze across my port beam hit my exposed cheek and pressed Wildcat north. The current was with me, finally, and it was approaching full ebb. No movement on the horizon—all the other boats around me had anchored short of Seymour Narrows for the night. Any decent bit of advice urged only passing through this treacherous stretch of water during daylight and near slack water. That’s because the current can rip through Seymour Narrows at up to 15 knots. Think whirlpools, standing waves, and no reprieve due to a rocky coastline lining either side of the 0.4-nautical-mile-wide pass. But now was the…

A lec Brainerd’s Artisan Boatworks in Rockport, Maine, is a modestly sized yard with about 25 employees that builds, restores, and maintains wooden yachts, many designed by legends. Inside the yard’s sheds you’ll find boats by Nathanael Herreshoff, William Fife, Starling Burgess, K. Aage Nielsen, B. B. Crowninshield, John Alden, Sparkman & Stephens, and other renowned naval architects. Every year, the yard keeps about 80 wooden boats in Bristol condition. And since its founding in 2002, it has rebuilt nearly 20 boats and completed 19 new builds of up to 29 feet. But in April 2023, Brainerd was approached by an experienced sailor, a man in his 80s, who was looking to construct something bigger than Artisan had ever built, a feature-rich daysailer in the 40-foot range. The caller had…

If you believe that our earliest memories can imprint upon us our future—like baby birds who will identify themselves with the first living creature or object they see—then Jesse Terry’s 39-foot ketch Abigail, designed by John Alden, was a foregone conclusion long before she came into his life. Growing up in Essex, Connecticut, his first memories were of watching his parents and their friends restore a 48-foot wooden yawl in the family’s backyard over the course of a decade. Designed by Sparkman & Stephens and built in 1938, Tomahawk became not only Jesse’s jungle gym but a revelation of engineering and structure in its frames, planks, and other members, rendered beautiful and magical as a sailing vessel that offered endless fun. “Wood boats were very close to my heart, I…

The way that sailors now can get corrected, printed-out charts from the federal government is causing some frustration, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration saying the next big fix for the system won’t happen until November. This past December saw a full transition to the NOAA Custom Chart (NCC) program for providing paper charts for U.S. waters. Instead of recreational boaters being able to order an updated paper chart by number—say, NOAA Chart 13230 for Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts—the NCC program now creates paper charts from the agency’s Electronic Nautical Chart database. This method satisfies regulations for larger ships, while sailors who want corrected, printed-out charts have to click to define an area, and then print out a chart based on their request. There don’t seem to be major concerns…

The saying goes that a calendar is the most dangerous thing on a cruising sailboat. Maybe the corollary is that expectations are the most limiting. When we headed to Panama toward the end of our time in the Caribbean, I had narrowed the country to two identities: the Guna Yala and the Panama Canal. Both were, of course, phenomenal in their own distinctive ways, but the real surprise came after we’d left both behind and started cruising Panama’s Pacific side. Taboga, Las Perlas, Coiba, Las Secas, not to mention Panama City itself—the list of new names and places just kept growing. In readying myself for this part of our passage into the Pacific, I had missed the obvious. Panama has a rich and fascinating history and a diverse and vibrant…

It felt like a wicked haunting, a cruel sense of déjà vu, as Chris once again found himself head down in the engine compartment, covered in oil and diesel. The swearing, though fitting, echoed the frustration of the ongoing engine saga on our Cheoy Lee 41, Avocet. Despite thinking we had left our engine troubles behind in California after a runaway incident (“Runaway Diesel,” March 2024), we were back at square one—perhaps even worse off. Our Perkins 4.108 had failed us again, this time reducing itself to nothing more than a very expensive, non-functioning piece of ballast. Surely our certified, rebuilt high-pressure fuel pump couldn’t be the cause of another near disaster, right? As soon as we limped into Banderas Bay from Isla Isabel and set our hook, Chris dug…