Yacht sailors push their boats harder, sail further, night and day, and go out in rougher conditions than almost any other kind of boat owner. As a result, they tend…
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Just how visible are yachts to shipping?
Having worked aboard merchant vessels as well as being a yacht sailor myself, I’ve gained invaluable insights into the visibility challenges posed by small vessels and the critical importance of…
How to plan a cruising route to the north: Sailing to Shetland and Norway
The wind is cold, the air clean and the light majestic. While sailing north might not be everyone’s idea of a relaxing holiday in the sun, for the adventurous of…
‘Sometimes your boat knows best’
Zen Again was heading west for Africa. We had departed our home port of Fremantle, Western Australia in June. We visited Shark Bay, Cocos-Keeling Islands, Rodriquez, Mauritius and Reunion. Now…
Sailing Around Norway’s South Cape
This is what Thor-Erik had meant. ‘When you sail past Cape Lindesnes, you go from one world to another,’ he had said when we had moored alongside his boat in…
Dos and don’ts of a yachts engine mounts
Lots of jobs on your boat are relatively straightforward and don’t need a great deal of skill. However, if you haven’t tackled a certain job before, you may not know…
‘If someone had offered me a third of the asking price to buy the boat back, I would have bitten their hand off’ – Monty Halls
I sat back on the saloon roof, leaned against the mast, sipped my beer, and revelled in the moment. Here I was, at long last, perched on my very own…
How to survive in a liferaft should the worst happen
You have no idea how frightening it is to step off a sinking yacht and into a liferaft. There is just you, the raft and whatever you have managed to…
‘Boat builders seem to take pride in making stuff tricky to get to’
They say that the definition of cruising is ‘fixing your boat in exotic locations’. Well, crouched, sweating, in the aft heads using a head torch and a mirror to extract…
‘Never before have I sailed in such wild weather’ – struck by a ‘weather bomb’ near New Zealand
Sammy, my sister, was ready to go. She couldn’t wait to put on her skipper’s hat and head off on a great adventure. It was 1998 when offshore sailing was…