Have your boat text you when it’s in trouble Issue...
June 24, 2026
San Francisco is one of the top tourist destinations in the world. What better way to see the city and its environs than from your own cruising yacht? Bob and Carolyn Mehaffy, using many photos, chart...
Lovers of sailboats, the shapes of their hulls, and the shapes of their sails (no matter how many masts or how the sails are cut) . . . people who are caught immobile in contemplative reflection at th...
A book like this comes around rarely. It reads like a gothic novel but has all the research and facts of a court presentation. It is a true story, but its truth may be instinctively denied by the read...
Don Casey wants to make electricity as simple as possible. So in Sailboat Electrics Simplified, part of the International Marine Sailboat Library series, he omits extensive theory and keeps his explan...
It is nice to see a story about an older boat and one rich in history like Tristan Jones’s Sea Dart. I have followed some of Jones’s writing and knew he was quite an adventurer, one who ha...
To some modern navigators the admonition: “Do not rely on a single source of navigation” means they are safe with a second GPS receiver aboard. I remember one night sailing down the East A...
People who love to sail tend to dream. Any body of water, fresh or salt, and a little time on one’s hands can provoke compelling fantasies. Dreams played a significant role in the decision of Ch...
“You know, especially now, that life does not exist to be fair. It throws us obstacles to our well-being, as it’s supposed to. Who we are depends on how we handle those obstacles, how we d...
A camera is probably the only tool that Dee Carstarphen and her husband, Stu Hopkins, don’t use in telling the tale of a trip down the Intracoastal Waterway. Dee’s book, Narrow Waters: An ...
I purchased my good old boat at the end of the 1997 sailing season. As a first-time boat owner I knew that what I didn’t know was what I needed to know the most, but I didn’t yet know what...
It may be an oxymoron, but Tom Dove’s book, The Cruising Sailor, is a great little book. Its 133 pages are only 8.5 by 5.5 inches but full of helpful ideas and information. The author’s ai...
In The Seaworthy Offshore Sailboat, John Vigor offers a hands-on guide to the evaluation and upgrading of a production fiberglass boat for long-term bluewater cruising. He shows what to look for, what...
If you ever wondered what life is like on a sailboat during a passage at sea, this is a real-life account of the interaction of a family of four: the husband, an experienced son of a sailor; the wife,...
Reese Palley has written about things he knows — sailing, people, and art. His sailing books are: There Be No Dragons, Unlikely People, and Unlikely Passages. There Be No Dragons gives the wanna...
At 33,000 feet over the Atlantic, I look down on a cloudless day and imagine someone on a small sailboat living and dreaming down there. It is one of those days when my “eight to six” has ...
Readers of Good Old Boat know Mary Jane Hayes as one who captures the beauty of boating eloquently in vibrant pictures. We print these photos to remind ourselves why we’re doing all this work on...
Illustrated Sail and Rig Tuning is a little book which takes on a big job. Since it’s 9 1/2 by 6 3/4 inches and 80 pages, we had to wonder. The book is intentionally small and of high quality pa...
Most readers of Good Old Boat are likely to have a good old sense of adventure. Quite a few will harbor dreams of striking out to distant horizons aboard their less-than-state-of-the-art vessels. Shac...
When I made a career change requiring I move to Philadelphia, I had to decide where to live. My home was more than 100 miles away on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Despite the relative proximity, I ha...
Builder of the Seawind and other legends The Allied Boat Company established its building site on Catskill Creek in Catskill, N.Y., 100 miles north of New York City. Just off the Hudson River, it was ...
Douglas Whynott spends June 1996 to July 1997 observing events at the Brooklin Boat Yard in Maine. It turns out to be a significant year for observation, and he weaves a detailed tapestry of the boatb...
Susan Peterson Gateley of Silver Waters Sailing/Whiskey Hill Press has a new book out on Lake Ontario — Sweet Waters, Tales of Fishing, Sailing, Romance and Adventure, with a special photo suppl...
Not on AMAZON (SIX ISSUES USA $38US; CANADA $39.50) REVIEWED BY JERRY POWLAS Water Craft magazine is a little different. It is a publication from “across the pond” that has all the mystiqu...
Why do some yachts have long overhangs and sharp ends while others have plumb bows and very broad sterns? In Yacht Design Explained, Steve Killing and Douglas Hunter explain how different racing handi...
A while ago and some miles off Los Angeles Light, I was sitting in my boat with water over my shoes watching the remains of a breaking sea trickle out of the cockpit footwell. I remembered that dog h...
Another little gem which has crossed our desks in recent weeks is a revised version of John Rousmaniere’s Illustrated Dictionary of Boating Terms: 2000 Essential Terms for Sailors and Powerboat...
If you ever wondered whether a long-term commitment to a small fiberglass home is for you, you’ll want to pick up Cruising 101: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Paradise by Amy Sullivan and Kevin Donnel...
Before we contacted Don Casey to invite him to get involved with our new magazine, we decided to take another look at his best-known book, This Old Boat. Unfortunately, our copy wasn’t w...
Sailors’ libraries are filled with every conceivable subject matter from dinghies to clipper ships – alcohol stoves to diesel engines, etc. but missing is a book to explain personal relati...
