Having capitulated, here’s how to raise the waterl...
September 25, 2026
High Seas Schooner chronicles a three-week voyage from the Virgin Islands to Gloucester. With veteran crew and student navigators, the schooner Harvey Gamage brings maritime history to life. It is ed...
The Small Craft Advisor magazine has been called the “successor to The Small Boat Journal.” Editors Craig Wagner and Joshua Colvin, “minimalist” outdoor adventurers, missed re...
Mike Riley, his wife Karen, and their son, Falcon, stepped outside the mold and cruised the world. Mike has published several books while based anywhere and everywhere in the wild blue yonder. Two of ...
Spirit Sail is about a special sailor’s vision, of seeing fundamental truths in much of what happens during his time afloat. The book’s premise is that, despite the contrast between the a...
John Karl provides the cleanest and most elegant introduction to the fundamental concepts of celestial navigation that I have read. I would even recommend this book to those who have a curiosity about...
Six years ago, John Kretschmer and Sheridan House came out with a compilation of 40 used-boat reviews that John had written for Sailing magazine. That book, Used Boat Notebook, was (and continues to ...
As a solid fan of the “Age of Fighting Sail” stories of Patrick O’Brian, CS Forester, Alexander Kent and Julian Stockwin, I have read the names Pellew, Corbet, the Nereide, Indiamen,...
Extended worldwide ocean cruising is a dream of many sailors. Yet a very small percentage of sailors ever turn their dreams into reality. Lack of money, busy jobs, limited time, the inability to adequ...
Norman Fortier, born in 1922, was still a youngster when he became interested in photography. Drafted into the military during World War II, he became an aerial photographer and honed his photography ...
According to the back cover of Cruising Catamaran Communique, Charles E. Kanter has been a marine surveyor for over 36 years, and has been a liveaboard-cruiser for 15 of those years. So to say that he...
Author Mary McCollum lived the dream. She retired from her teaching career, sold her home and belongings and moved onboard her boat. And she sailed. Unlike many navigators who map out their route in g...
Some of the best waters for finding pacific sailfish are off the shores of Guatemala. Although this species is quite popular among sport fisherman, little is known about their feeding and group behavi...
Sharks have existed on Earth for 400 million years. In the past few decades, their numbers have been greatly reduced, and their continued existence as a species is desperately threatened. Graphic vide...
Good Old Boat writer, Bob Steadman, and his partner, Kay Nottbusch, want to share their cruising adventures with the rest of us…those sailors who are dreaming, but not yet experiencing, the crui...
It’s no news to serious readers of Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey series that their hero’s character is based on the real life naval career and exploits of the late 18th and ear...
by Ben Shadick (Heritage House, 2007; 28 pages; $16.95 Canada, $12.95 U.S.) Review by Karen Larson The night sky is full of starry friends. The trouble is that most city folk (even the sailors among u...
Richard Cutler is everybody’s hero. Women readers will love him. Men will respect his strong character and code of ethics. It’s almost a shame that he’s a figment of our imaginations...
Bookstores’ shelves start filling up with calendars and daybooks this time of year. For sailors, there are many to choose from, including ones featuring gorgeous photos of vintage ships or exoti...
In The Why Book of Sailing, author Scott Welty tackles the challenge of explaining the science of physics, as related to sailing — without the heavy concentration on mathematics that usually goes alon...
BY MARTIN CARTWRIGHT, ILLUSTRATIONS BY DON SEED (GLOVER’S YARD PUBLISHING, GREAT BRITAIN, 2007; 85 PAGES; $18.04) REVIEWED BY SUSAN LYNN KINGSBURY A Year in Flagrante is a collection of illustra...
In Hard Aground . . . Again, Eddie Jones sends dispatches from the creeks, mudflats and sounds of the Carolina coast. The chapters are gathered from his magazine columns and can be read as separate st...
Author Amy Wood stated that she wanted to write a book that told the true story — not one with fluff — and she indeed accomplishes this feat with World Voyagers, an all-encompassing detailed account o...
For those who have sailed a time or two and are committed to learning more about our favorite water-based activity, Bennett Marine Video has introduced a practical sail-training DVD that was first pro...
It is a true pleasure working with Don Launer as a member of the Good Old Boat team. His articles go back almost to our first issue, since it was very early in our formation that he discovered us. We ...
The Black Swan is a stew of a novel — like the stews the narrator cooks up on the century-old stove in the galley of the Black Swan, a 90-foot steel schooner from the turn of the 20th century plying t...
Ed and Helen Muesch have left a wide wake on the sea of experience. They have lived as farm workers in a commune, raising crops and animals. Later they joined the rat race of corporate America. Then, ...
Subtitled “A Treasury of Good Reading on Coastal and Inland Cruising,” this collection of excerpts from well-known to as-yet- unpublished authors is enjoyable cover to cover. Although they...
This is the fifth novel in Robert Macomber’s series of historical naval fiction, which begins around the time of the Civil War with At the Edge of Honor. I have loved these books for the evoluti...
Island of the Lost is the well-written account of the fate of two sets of castaways on the Auckland Islands in 1864 through 1865. Remarkably, neither knew of the other’s existence as both groups...
Dancing With the Wind. I can’t decide about this new video produced as a DVD…is it the romantic sunset scene or the easy galloping motion of a vessel described through music? Perhaps it’s ...
