Being poked in the cheek and asked ‘Is this annoying? Is this annoying? Is this annoying?’ by my bored 11-year-old daughter Isla was indeed annoying. But what made it even…
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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…
‘We got battered by a storm that wasn’t forecast’
Although we had managed a brief visit to St Kilda, the Scottish weather during 2022 had not been great, so my wife Sarah and I pondered going somewhere warm. I…
Grand Soleil 42LC review: a serious boat for serious cruisers
Light winds may not make for the most exciting boat test images, especially when it’s chilly, the sky is grey and it’s threatening to rain, which was the weather we…
What can be learned from these 4 major accidents at sea?
There are few incidents on board more destructive than a crash gybe. The power unleashed when the wind catches the wrong side of the mainsail is hard to overstate, and…
Marie Tabarly: Stepping out from a famous father’s shadow
Marie Tabarly, the daughter of French sailing legend Eric Tabarly, has stepped out from the shadows of her famous father and rewritten history, becoming the first over the line in…
Why marking the lines on your yacht is crucial
Many cruising yacht skippers mark very little on board their boats. They rely on experience and remembering how the sails should be set in various conditions. But it is an…
Cruising Corsica and Sardinia by yacht
Cruising the Mediterranean in my own yacht has always been a dream, and it finally became a reality in 2023, with the June delivery of a new Hallberg-Rassy 372 in…
Don’t let Thames sewage kill off this ancient oyster fishing boat
Samuel Pepys mentions oysters in his diaries 68 times, but that was when they were as common as winkles along the banks of the Thames and when they were a…
Maiden crew’s First Mate Rachel Burgess: ‘The girls showed how tough they were’
I got the call while sitting in a little cafe in Horta in the Azores. Say ‘hell, yes’ first, think about the logistics second. So that’s how I became First…