Having capitulated, here’s how to raise the waterl...
September 25, 2026
Install a day tank to ensure a clean fuel supply at the ready. Issue 129: Nov/Dec 2019 Few things give me the willies more than the thought of navigating an inlet, cut, or tricky channel when we’re ru...
A tool roll stocked with these top indispensable tools will be your go-to kit. Issue 129: Nov/Dec 2019 After nearly a decade of living aboard full-time and earning my keep fixing other people’s boats ...
An automatic bilge pump for the dinghy solves that sinking feeling. Issue 129: Nov/Dec 2019 For the past couple of years, I’ve kept my dinghy at the dock, butter side up. It’s easy to stow it and use ...
Affordable and innovative, these five boats were multihull game-changers. Issue 129: Nov/Dec 2019 Anyone who’s read this magazine for a while can appreciate how deep and broad the roots of monohull sa...
… And Two Other Interpretations of Timeless Cutter Design Issue 129: Nov/Dec 2019 It is relatively easy to assign a time or decade to the design of most production fiberglass sailboats. That’s particu...
My wife, Rhonda, and I didn’t grow up around boats. But after moving to Florida and raising a family, we grew fond of the idea of buying a boat and perhaps one day sailing away. New to the world of wi...
Quick and Dry Boat Building Contest Good Old Boat contributing editor Cliff Moore sent the following report from this year’s Boatbuilding Challenge held at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufo...
None of us is getting any younger, and some of us may have begun to ask ourselves how long we can continue a boating lifestyle. For an answer to that question I enthusiastically refer you to Tim West ...
Compass & Sextant: The Journey of Peregrin Took, by Phil Hoysradt, with Carol Hill (Yankee Publishing, 2019; 157 pages) Good Old Boat uses affiliate links and may earn a small commission if...
Eye Patches for Night Vision? I believe that the depiction of scurvy, salty, scalawags—buccaneers and privateers all, matey!—wearing eye patches is almost certainly a Hollywood trope, meme, or ...
An Exhausting Sail By Bert Vermeer We had been sailing the west coast of Vancouver Island over the past 30 days. Our final day dawned hot and sunny without a ripple on the water, and so we moto...
We had been sailing the west coast of Vancouver Island over the past 30 days. Our final day dawned hot and sunny without a ripple on the water, and so we motored our 1978 Islander Bahama 30, Natasha, ...
Deadly Magnificent I was still green, having only a month ago traded my Great Lakes home in Michigan for the salty sea air and hot sun of the Caribbean. Now, here I was, crewing with a bunch of strang...
Arrow’s Fall, by Joel Scott (ECW Press, 2019; 340 pages) Good Old Boat uses affiliate links and may earn a small commission if you purchase anything after clicking through one of them. This com...
Good Old Boat uses affiliate links and may earn a small commission if you purchase anything after clicking through one of them. This comes at no cost to you. When Tracey Edwards and her all-woman cre...
I was still green, having only a month ago traded my Great Lakes home in Michigan for the salty sea air and hot sun of the Caribbean. Now, here I was, crewing with a bunch of strangers aboard Windy an...
Department of Corrections Introducing Ira Klurfield’s “Poem of the Month” in the August issue of The Dogwatch, we got our wires crossed, completely. Ira’s first boat was not a...
Distinctive Isla Ventana has long been used as a navigational aid by Sea of Cortez sailors. Raul Martinez III sent this photo from the 38th annual running of the Spring Regatta in San Carlos, Mexico, ...
A refit turns a Great Lakes daysailer into a Caribbean cruiser Issue 128: Sept/ Oct 2019 When my wife, Sheila, and I bought Her Diamond, our 1991 Freedom 38, she was the ideal daysailer and vacation b...
A first cruise after downsizing Issue 128: Sept/Oct 2019 Like many baby boomers, my husband, Chris, and I aren’t quite as quick, strong, and nimble as we once were. Increasingly attracted to the advan...
A diver’s insight can reveal the hull story Issue 128: Sept/Oct 2019 As I eat oatmeal and berries for breakfast, I make the day’s schedule. The oatmeal will be the last food I have until late afternoo...
An old galley gets a new view Issue 128: Sept/Oct 2019 “Take a look at all these small cracks in the window, it looks like frost.” “I don’t think the Sea of Cortez gets frost, Hon,” was my wife’s dist...
A true racer/cruiser from the world’s largest boatbuilder Issue 128: Sept/Oct 2019 Beneteau is arguably one of the oldest and most successful boatbuilders in the world. The French company traces its r...
…and a couple North American racer/cruisers Issue 128: Sept/Oct 2019 The 1980s were a transformative period in the sailboat industry in North America. After years of incredible expansion in the ...
A Bristol and her crew are schooled on the Chesapeake Issue 128: Sept/Oct 2019 It was a calm, foggy Friday morning in Rock Creek, just southeast of Baltimore. The day before, Keith, Scott, and I had s...
Life and the sailing season don’t always align Issue 128: Sept/Oct 2019 My wife sits down on the seawall above the beach. I tell her that I won’t be long. She laughs and waves me away. “Take your time...
There’s more than one way to fasten the two biggest boat parts Issue 128: Sept/Oct 2019 It is the nature of boats that they be built as two primary pieces — hull and deck. Over the decades, boatbuilde...
A J/40 races celestially to Bermuda Issue 128: Sept/Oct 2019 On the way back from Bermuda after the 2014 Newport-Bermuda Race, the inevitable “What’s next?” came up. Captain Dana of his J/40, Eagle, s...
Better than new after half a century Issue 128: Sept/Oct 2019 There are few experiences I enjoy more than dropping the hook in an empty anchorage, early or late in the Lake Superior sailing season, wh...
The go-slow art of sailboat repair Issue 128: Sept/Oct 2019 I don’t go to boatyards, not unless I’m in Florida, working on my friend Brian’s boat. There the ground is shell and coral, palm trees line ...
