Make holding-tank chemistry work in your favor Iss...
March 12, 2026
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...
This is a refreshing, at times bluntly candid, perspective of a couple entering the world of cruising. It’s an in-your-face reality check for everyone’s dreams of casting off convention an...
“Voyaging belongs to seamen and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in,” says Sterling Hayden in Wanderer. Roger Olson quotes him in Plot your Course to Adventure. H...
Would you like to go back in time and experience being on a naval ship during the Civil War? Robert Macomber’s Honorable Mention, third in the 11-novel “Honor series” of naval fictio...
Driven. Haven’t you experienced the feeling? At some time in our lives, we’ve all been driven to exceed, to aspire, to love, or even to forget. Neva Sullaway sits today in her quaint cotta...
“It is the intent of this book,” the authors write, “to demystify and standardize braided rope splicing …We have done our best to avoid illustration shortcuts, so that every step is ...
David O’ Neal is a funny guy. He’s written a sailors’ lexicon that will make any sailor laugh. I imagine him sitting with friends over glasses of wine while dreaming up crazy meaning...
Select your Swedish fid, your heaver, and your marlinespike; gather up your gunk, goos, and tar; consider your cordage. Then tie into one of the 28 ropework projects packed in this practical guide. Fr...
“…I walked the bow back until, when the shrouds were even with the end of the side tie, I stepped aboard. Nothing held to the country in which I was born almost 60 years earlier. I did not know ...
There are many books on the market that can help you take your first steps on your sailing career. I personally have about three feet of shelf devoted to that subject. Dan Spurr’s Your First Sai...
Are you a fan of nautical fiction, particularly adventure or murder mystery stories with a nautical twist? You likely know that it’s been a while since Sam Llewellyn has cranked out one of his s...
Anyone who hopes to live aboard or cruise full time someday will want to talk to others who have already lived this dream. Lots of others . . .as many as possible . . . with all kinds of opinions. For...
What do you get when you combine an undeniable fear of the ocean, a healthy dose of mid-life crisis, and a serious case of open-mouth-insert-footitis? Why, the makings of a cruising memoir, of course....
