Staring out over the white-speckled blue, the wind pushes us gently west towards Shetland. In between, there is the ocean and life. I scan the horizon. The reward comes in…
Yachting Monthly
How do you navigate a drying channel when the charts disagree?
Tim and Josh have found a space for their Bowman 40, Artemis, which has a 1.5m draught, at Treluggan Boatyard which is five miles off the Tamar up the River…
Dispatches from Les Sables d’Olonne: Fifteen solo skippers start the Golden Globe Race
And they’re off! On the afternoon of Sunday 6th September, fifteen skippers left the Vendee Globe Pontoons in Les Sables d’Olonne, with one more soon to follow after a last…
Space-age navigation without the space-age price tag
Electronic navigation comes in all shapes and sizes these days, from an app on your phone to a purpose-made top-end marine chartplotting and instrument system costing multiple thousands, and from…
Forget good company, give me a crew who can fix the head! – Libby Purves
Kindly, tolerant people don’t usually rate their friends according to how useful they are. If they do it’s not so much a friendship as a networking opportunity, influence-and-patronage. In real…
Mad dash to the start line: How Swedish solo skipper Pär Nyman got Golden Globe Race-ready in under a year
‘I keep pinching myself in the arm to make sure I’m not dreaming,’ says Swedish solo skipper Pär Nyman. Days out from setting off to sail around the world solo,…
‘The joy is the journey’: How Golden Globe Race skipper Andrea Lodolo went from private equity to solo sailing
Andrea Lodolo is two weeks out from setting off to sail around the world solo, nonstop, and unassisted for the Golden Globe Race. Days out from the start, he reports,…
Sailing the Plymouth area: ‘We felt our way in over the shoaling flats and anchored in the evening light’
Plymouth Westwards from Berry Head, and pointing its toes out into the Atlantic, the Plymouth sea area stretches beyond Land’s End almost to the Isles of Scilly. It extends southwards…
Why two headsails are better than one
The vast majority of production sailing boats these days are rigged as sloops and fitted with a genoa on a furling system. Many older boats, from before the advent of…
How to humanely keep rodents off your boat
Among the many things that keep a skipper awake at night, few are as unwelcome as the pitter-patter of tiny feet scurrying across the deck. Discovering paw prints and droppings…









