Make holding-tank chemistry work in your favor Iss...
March 12, 2026
A professional yacht designer says you might be happier with one The summer winds are fickle and light in many of the waters of North America. I’ve sailed in a number of them: Lake Ontario, Long Islan...
This is a chronological story of the life of Donald Crowhurst. The authors give insights into the psychological growth followed by the decay of the man into lunacy. Donald grew up in a time of heroes ...
BY MELISSA FISHER (MELISSA FISHER PUBLISHER, 2002; 94 PAGES; $14.95) REVIEWED BY KAREN LARSON Good Old Boat writer Melissa Fisher (Rudder Renewal, May 2001) has just developed a cruising cookbook of i...
HISTORICAL REVIEW Readers of this magazine generally agree on the virtues of small boats, modest budgets, and sailing trips that may start out less ambitious than Cape Horn voyages. Seamanship, simpli...
Have you dreamed of laying your own teak deck, installing a holding tank, or sprucing up your boat’s interior with new vinyl headlining but lack the know-how to achieve these dreams? If so, Boat...
In the story, Susan’s Sailing Adventures by Jahnn Swanker Gibson, Susan is a 12-year-old girl who tells of her many sailing trips with her mom, dad, and several family friends. Throughout the st...
Jack the Ripper in the 1880s. The sinking of the Lusitania during World War I. The British Royal Family. Modern day lovers enmeshed in a series of life-threatening events over which they have no contr...
When out of nowhere this voice said to me, “You will sail around the world”. Before I could even think, ‘Where did that come from?’ another part of me just said ‘yes.R...
When Good Old Boat editors asked me to review this mystery novel, I happily agreed because mysteries are my favorite junk food. But the editor/proofreader in me is always on duty, and it took me five ...
Beware of the gales of November. Those who sail the Great Lakes — especially Lake Superior — take that admonition seriously. Recreational boaters have the luxury of hauling boats out in Oc...
Cruising in Catamarans is an ideal primer for any Good Old Boat reader who has been thinking about the possibility of getting into multihulls but hasn’t a clue where to start. Chuck Kanter offer...
John Kretschmer has just published a new book of interest to good old boaters, Used Boat Notebook, offering 40 reviews of good old boats which have been published in Sailing magazine over the past six...
When Sandy Mackinnon set out on a vacation trip down the River Severn, in England, he wasn’t planning to be away more than two weeks. His boat, after all, was a 10-foot 10-inch Mirror Class ding...
In Volume 6 of C.S. Forester’s Hornblower saga, the hero cuts out a captured British cutter, the Witch of Endor, in Nantes harbor to complete his escape from the bowels of Napoleonic France down...
The highest compliment you can pay to some people is to say that they’ve never held down a job. For anybody with the goal of long-term cruising, the first question might be how to achieve that g...
One sailors’ lament might very well be “so many sailing books, so little time.” If time for reading them is not the issue, then space for storing them (particularly if you are cruisi...
More than a century ago some people opposed the use of fountain pens in schools because the art of using a pen knife to sharpen a quill would be lost. The boating community long ago quit using manila ...
BOYS DIED IN VAIN TRY TO RESCUE DAD This headline, from the July 2, 1935 Boston Post, chills the heart. It refers to the story of the ketch, Hamrah, and the Ames family, lost at sea during an ocean vo...
Most sailors have daydreamed about sailing away to escape life’s inevitable troubles . . . point the nose of your boat toward the horizon and keep going. Pat Henry didn’t daydream about it...
At Sea in the City is no grim tale of surviving the savage sea, but a quiet journey through the spaces and history of New York City’s archipelago. Author Dr. William Kornblum and friends sail a ...
How much time will you sacrifice by sailing at a more comfortable angle to the wind? Why does that gust of wind “come from the side” when you thought you were close-hauled? Would you like ...
BY GEORGE SNYDER (XLIBRIS CORP., 2001; 335 PAGES; $20.00) REVIEWED BY DARYL CLARK It was a long winter and an even longer spring, here in the land of Ventura . . . Minnesota, that is! Spring departed,...
The American Sailboat takes us through a literary and pictorial history of American pleasure craft. As readers, we are given a whirlwind tour of our nation’s coasts, bays and inland waters. Such...
Pull up a stool at a tiki bar and listen to Frank Papy spin a few yarns about his life and times in and around boats. If you can’t catch up with Frank in the Florida Keys, his latest book, Saili...
“It seemed a very long day confined to our room. Still no hot water. We couldn’t shower; it was too cold. We waited for someone to come and question us. Nobody did. Our imaginations ran ri...
Thirty-somethings Dave and Jaja Martin were in the midst of what they termed their “midlife cruising crisis.” They had already sailed around the world in a Cal 25, and Jaja had just given ...
Your boating library may include Chapman’s for general rules and seamanship, Eric and Susan Hiscock for practical instruction, Don Casey for maintenance, Bowditch for navigation, maybe even Tris...
If George Sigler has just one regret it is that he didn’t publish his book, Experiment in Survival, sooner. The book details the Pacific crossing that he and a friend made in a Zodiac inflatable...
From the Cockpit of the Rubaiyat is a book that speaks to the amateur sailor in those of us for whom sailing is a passion beyond logic and yet who, in all likelihood, will never venture forth upon the...
Turn your imagination on and transport yourself to 1912. You’re aboard a 24-foot 6-inch Cape Cod Catboat, named Mascot, with one other person and a real cat, named Scotty, sailing from Massachus...
