George and Janet are on holiday in North Brittany on board their 10m yacht, Roller Coaster. North Brittany has a spectacular coastline with numerous offlying rocks which are up to…
How to
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…
How to deal with an unwell member of your crew
Gerry is regretting taking three novice crew across the North Sea. They are on board Bellatrix, a 12m standard production yacht. They started from Stavanger in Norway and are on…
How to tension your yacht’s rig with wire or rod rigging
If you want to trim your rig correctly you should have some idea of the tension in the shrouds and stays, either by rules of thumb or a more exact…
How to pass your Yachtmaster Practical Exam
The RYA Yachtmaster Offshore has long been the qualification that cruising yacht sailors, both amateur and professional, have aspired to. Quite aside from the fact that it is the gateway…
How to improve power management on a yacht
I confess, I’m not a marine electrician, and my understanding of boat electronics is at best rudimentary, but I’ve now been managing my boat’s power generation and consumption for three…
How to prepare for your Yachtmaster Offshore exam
Many very competent and highly experienced yachtsmen and women don’t have any qualifications at all and are content to keep it that way, but for some reason, not being a…
How to avoid this collision in fog while sailing a yacht?
Martin and Barbara, along with their teenage son, Rob, have sailed across to the Channel Islands from the Solent in their 10m yacht. Rob has crewed regularly and already has…
How to rig a preventer and boom brake: Our expert guide
A well-designed preventer system is just as important as any other part of the rigging, but it’s often an afterthought, sometimes little more than an old mooring line tied around…
How we installed a new engine on our yacht
Auxiliary engines, as they were called in the old days, were hot, noisy, smelly lumps of metal that weren’t usually powerful enough to motor into wind or tide. My first…