I am sailing with Robin Lee Graham, but there is no wind. It’s a hot day in July and Montana’s Flathead Lake is glass. The mountains around us are blurred by haze. A wildfire burns to our east. Robin’s blue eyes light up—he’s spotted catspaws ahead.

Yacht design is an evolutionary process, built on the successes and failures of previous designs. Those that plied the trade before us provided guidance through formulas and reference charts, and these have held true as the fluids we design against h

ARE YOU OUT THERE SAILING, CRUISING AND LIVING THE SAILING LIFE? Share your experiences with other readers. Send your photos to sailmail@sailmagazine.com And don’t forget to sign up for our free eNewsletter, Under Sail, at sailmagazine.com/newsletter

Daniel Hays, at age 63, is now almost 10 years older than his father David was when they sailed around Cape Horn together in a tiny 25-foot cutter named Sparrow. That was back in the mid-1980s. They co-wrote a book about their adventure and spent sev

Sixteen years ago, I installed solar panels on my boat. At the time, the peak efficiency at converting sunlight to electricity was around 16%. Today’s panel technologies enable substantially more energy to be harvested from a given surface area, boos

Grizzly bears? Check. Tidal currents at up to 15 knots? Check. Wild weather? Check. This is the Race to Alaska (R2AK), 750 nautical miles of unsupported racing through Canadian wilderness from Port Townsend, Washington, to Ketchikan, Alaska. Oh, and

Fun fact: The island of Newfoundland is home to zero snakes, zero ticks, and zero skunks. Like a dog, I do best when kept clear of this trio of critters, and that was reason enough for me to sail up and pay a visit. For my wife, Alex, the idea of sai

SAIL magazine took home 11 awards at the annual Boating Writers International (BWI) writing contest, winning first place in five of the 16 categories for stories that cover the range of the sailing life, from racing, chartering, and cruising to safet

It’s mid-December, and I’m more than 3,500 miles from Cape Town, South Africa, bound for Fremantle, Australia, having—at the moment—too much fun. Indian Ocean conditions are near perfect with 15 to 17 knots of wind at an apparent 120-degree angle. Wi

Patience B. Wales, former editor of SAIL magazine and two-time circumnavigator, died on February 16, 2024, of colon cancer. She was 89. A native of Massachusetts, she lived in Ipswich for 34 years. Born in Brockton, Massachusetts, to Ralph and Retha

Sailing hasn’t been a sport of the masses during Cole Brauer’s lifetime. In fact, there’s a full generation of young adults who grew up after the United States’ America’s Cup golden age, after the era when non-sailors and national media followed the

“Charles, are you OK?” A pause. “Charles?!” Although a stranger to us, the person’s panic was universal. Something’s wrong, said the look my partner, Phillip, and I shared before darting our eyes to the splashing in the water by the power cat next to

They call themselves the Vagabonds. A psychologist, a healing arts practitioner, a traveling millwright, a widowed restaurateur—this is only a fraction of the colorful characters that make up Watauga Lake Sailing Club. Just west of the North Carolina

Good things come to those who wait, and sailing the HH44-SC confirmed the adage. Even under delivery sails—and only a main and genoa, at that—we fairly flew across the Chesapeake Bay on a breezy fall day after the U.S. Sailboat Show in Annapolis, whe

Let’s be honest: Transducers aren’t as sexy as the cool graphics and touchscreen capabilities of today’s navigation and electronics packages. But the information that those packages deliver, like speed and depth, is only as good as the instrument tha

ARE YOU OUT THERE SAILING, CRUISING AND LIVING THE SAILING LIFE? Share your experiences with other readers. Send your photos to sailmail@sailmagazine.com And don’t forget to sign up for our free eNewsletter, Under Sail, at sailmagazine.com/newsletter

Peter Harken needs little introduction in the world of sailing. With his brother, Olaf, he started a shoestring business building collegiate and Olympic class dinghies (Vanguard Boats) in Wisconsin in 1968, which evolved into Harken Yacht Equipment a

When we decided to add windvane steering coupled with a hydrogenerator to our sailboat, our focus was on the practical aspects: conserving battery power, adding rudder redundancy, and enhancing our off-grid capabilities. It wasn’t until we sailed wit

You could argue that best thing about the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) isn’t really the camaraderie, the energy, or even the excitement of taking on the big challenge of a transatlantic passage. It’s possible that next to the sailing itself, the

Ever since the government started polluting our fuel with ethanol, I’ve agonized over how best to power the dinghies I use when cruising. I did experiment with an early version electric motor years ago but was not impressed, as the battery sometimes

You may know Corsica as the island just north of Sardinia in the Mediterranean where, in August 2022, a violent derecho swept through with 140-mile-per-hour winds, tossing boats onto beaches like so much kindling and wreaking havoc across the island.