Sailing other people’s boats is a good way to find the right size Issue 122: Sept/Oct 2018 The essence of cruising by sailboat is not about crossing vast oceans, but about living by sail. My husband, ...
Lobster pot lines aren’t the only things to avoid while cruising Maine’s coast. Issue 144: May/June 2022 It had been a gorgeous Maine sailing day up from Biddeford Pool across the wide mouth of Portla...
The boat was small, but the crush was huge. Issue 145: July/Aug 2022 At the age when girls often dream of riding horses, I was falling in love with a sleek, white, fiberglass hull. And though I’ve com...
A cherished daily ritual helps a passagemaking sailor transition to cruising Issue 150: May/June 2023 Waking up in the V-berth of mySabre 30, Ora Kali, I can tell by the sun shining through the compan...
Restoring a Dyer Dink 10 for dreamy daysailing Issue 151: July/Aug 2023 We hauled out our 1983 Sabre 30, Ora Kali, on a blustery day last November. In retrospect, we should have done it sooner. Winter...
Rebedding a cabin top eyebrow to solve a pesky leak Issue 154: Jan/Feb 2024 Winter covers come off boats late up here in Maine, leaving a short, often cold window to get ready for launch. Last year, b...
The Deepest Map: The High-Stakes Race to Chart the World’s Oceans by Laura Trethewey Sailors don’t use “maps” for navigating, we use charts. So why review a book called The Deepest Map? The short answ...
Memoir of a Sailor’s Voyage in a Bygone Era San Juan, Puerto Rico. My husband Tom and I and our crew member sit at outside tables in the old city. We have cold drinks before us and she is lookin...
The fluffy snow that fell a few days ago has gone slushy. The wet cold soaks my gloves and stings my hands as I clean off the dinghy’s gunwales before turning her over on my front yard. My palms...
When Tim Severin died at 80 in December 2020, I thought, “I know that name. He wrote stories about the sea.” The particular book that came to mind was this one, The Brendan Voyage, which recounts an A...
As I write this review, I am a few weeks into a winter move to the Maine coast. The picture window to my right is dark at 4 pm, and the house shivers under a squirrely wind gusting over the island tha...
Rarely do I really enjoy a cruising memoir that melds a family story with descriptions of white-knuckled adventure. I also tend to identify with solo sailors or the male half of a cruising couple, bei...
“We are inching toward the middle of nowhere,” reads an entry in Michael’s log of the cruise of Juliet, a CSY 44 sailboat that is carrying the Partlow family of four through the San Blas Islands of Pa...
For this couple, one time around with a special boat just wasn’t quite enough. Issue 133: July/Aug 2020 It had been a rather sad Christmas; my husband and I had not yet hit on a way to resolve s...
Good Old Boat uses affiliate links and may earn a small commission if you purchase anything after clicking through one of them. This comes at no cost to you. When Tracey Edwards and her all-woman cre...
Sailing an obscure board boat had big-boat consequences Issue 127: July/Aug 2019 When writer Nathaniel Philbrick felt stranded in mid-life, he dug out the hull of his old Sunfish, the boat on which he...
“People have told us how lucky we are, to get to sail far away. My typical response is to say luck has little to do with it, that we’ve worked so very hard, made many difficult decisions, and given up...