Having capitulated, here’s how to raise the waterl...
September 25, 2026
A person who attains celebrity status arouses curiosity and inquiry about his or her past. It’s the price of fame. Patrick O’Brian, best known for his Aubrey-Maturin historical novel serie...
Knowing how to properly trim your boat’s sails is not only important in racing but has a place in cruising, too. As Peter Hahne says, proper sail trim “might even mean reaching the harbor ...
Bernard Moitessier, the sailor who might have won the first around-the-world-solo race but abandoned the attempt while leading, also abandoned his wife and children for idleness in the South Pacific, ...
The three greatest sailors who never lived are, arguably, Horatio Hornblower, Jack Aubrey, and Richard Bolitho. Their combined exploits at sea have entertained readers since the 1930s and inspired an ...
Assemble a band of motivated landlubbers, give them broadaxes and Danish oak, and pay them to build a replica of an 11th century Viking cargo ship heaved up from the bottom of a fjord. The resulting n...
David Vann’s memoir, A Mile Down: The True Story of a Disastrous Career at Sea, is a book devoted to the Dream. Everyone who sails — as well as many who have never hoisted a halyard — have at so...
If you enjoy time with Lin and Larry Pardey (and who doesn’t?), you’ll want to view their two new DVDs, Get Ready to Cruise and Get Ready to Cross Oceans. These professionally produced disks are the n...
(BEOWULF PRESS – SETSAIL.COM, 2005; 1.5 HOUR DVD; $12.95) REVIEW BY SUSAN LYNN KINGSBURY Do you dream of sailing? Maybe you’re a seasoned sailor . . . or a novice who simply loves the water and the ve...
When I received this waterway guide, I wondered how it could be different from the others I’ve seen and used. Well, believe me, it is different. Managing the Waterway contains all the information (exc...
Fiberglass Repair: Polyester or Epoxy is a useful book for anyone who is considering fiberglass repair, whether novice or old pro. It’s full of valid techniques that will yield a professional job if t...
One can’t read Ships’ Figure Heads in Australia without falling in love again with the great era of sailing that laid the foundation of many civilizations over the past 4,000 years. Author Gordon Mars...
Mark Nicholas is an expert. He’s lived the life and learned many lessons the hard way. His goal in writing The Essentials of Living Aboard a Boat is to share with readers all it takes to live aboard w...
With his newest book, Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Started Sailing, John Vigor alternates between being a wise old salt, a nautical curmudgeon, a patient teacher offering safety tips to a new sail...
“The notion of the ghost ship has long caught the imagination of the public . . . this popularity reflects our abiding interest in two linked phenomenon; mysteries of the sea and inexplicable, apparen...
If you want to learn about Sir Peter Blake, who he was, what he was like, why people followed him, or anything else about what made this driven man tick, this is not the book for you. If you want to l...
If you enjoy time with Lin and Larry Pardey (and who doesn’t?), you’ll want to view their two new DVDs, Get Ready to Cruise and Get Ready to Cross Oceans. These professionally produced disks are the n...
Back in the late 1970s, when I first felt the need to sail, I read everything our local library had on sailing and the adventure of the sea. One book I remember particularly well was Survive the Savag...
The romance of the sea is a strange thing. It manages to cling to some extent to every thing that floats. – C. Fox Smith On a rainy spring night, I received a package from Good Old Boat. I figured it ...
Heavenly. That’s the way I would describe night sailing. Since seeing the book, Stikky Night Skies, now I know why. (“Stikky” is the name of a growing series of books because each bo...
“This is the pleasure of life at sea — fine weather, day after day without interruption — fair wind and plenty of it — and homeward bound.” So begins this story, A Modern-Day Tall Ship Adv...
The first book ever sold by Good Old Boat magazine — call it the beginning of our Good Old Bookshelf — was the first edition of Illustrated Sail & Rig Tuning by Ivar Dedekam. Ivar, a Norwegian, ne...
What do you want to know about radar? How it works? How to work it? How to pick the right one for your boat? Where to install it? How to use it for position-fixing, close-quarters maneuvering, or avoi...
Twenty-five days into what should have been a two-week run, the T.W. Lawson approached the southwestern coast of England. Savaged by three gales, the ship had lost 19 of its 25 sails and all of its li...
Sail back into the mists of time with Captain Vancouver as he explores the Pacific Northwest aboard the HMS Discovery. In Sailing with Vancouver, Sam McKinney — in his 25-foot sailboat, Kea — uses Van...
Greg Smith set out in his sailboat to see the world. Those who choose to go along as readers of his book, The Solitude of the Open Sea, gain a fresh perspective of circumnavigating through the eyes of...
Ben Pester and his friends, Jeremy Burnett and Fraser Currie (aggregate age: 193 years) had an objective. They wanted to explore the waterways off Tierra del Fuego and celebrate the turn of the Millen...
Tucked away somewhere in a drawer or file cabinet are clippings from magazines and other sources. As owners of good old boats, we probably all have them. Those ideas that we saw somewhere and one day ...
I’ve just gotten back from an exciting cruising adventure from Japan to New Zealand, but I never left our cabin near the Chesapeake. I’ve just read Tere Batham’s new book, Cruising J...
Sailing Small is an anthology of tales of several sailors’ attempts to find a sailboat that would meet their need to get away from everyday life. Most are stories of finding a boat “on the...
This is a book that will be heartily enjoyed by any true sailor and will provide real thrills, along with useful information, for the few who yearn for adventure in small open boats. My copy arrived i...
