A big trailerable boat with a lifting keel Issue 1...
May 6, 2026
Feel-Good Holiday Juice Our own Behan Gifford sent me an email that included this heads-up: “I am smitten with the whole concept. It is just loaded with feel-good holiday juice!” Indeed! Residents of ...
Author and Olympic sailor Carol Newman Cronin’s fourth novel, Ferry to Cooperation Island, takes readers to a fictional setting in Rhode Island Sound between the real Block Island and Newport, where t...
This is the perfect book for these times. When you can’t get out cruising on your own boat (very far, anyway), voyage logs like this one help to cure stuck-on-land blues. The title doesn’t lie: it’s t...
A Condemnation of the Chipper While reading the latest Dogwatch, I followed a link to Rob Mazza’s review of Dick Carter’s sailing autobiography. Rob mentioned that Carter began his offshor...
Three New Legends In 1906, Thomas Fleming Day founded the Bermuda Race with the revolutionary aim of providing an ocean race for amateur sailors in normal boats. In the process, he started the world’s...
We were preparing for our spring cruise and going over our on-board dry-cell battery inventory. Our conclusion? Our inventory of AA and AAA batteries stays fresh because we go through them, whereas we...
Dynamic climbing rope can be an intriguing option for some uses aboard. Issue 135: Nov/Dec 2020 I’m a sailor, and I’m a climber. For both pursuits, rope is central. Not surprisingly, because the use c...
Tips from a world-cruising fellow sufferer It never fails. Every time we get into a discussion with a new or would-be cruising sailor, there comes a moment when a concerned look crosses his or her fac...
Easily taken for granted, rope is a critical thread throughout human history. Issue 135: Nov/Dec 2020 What do sailors, the Egyptian pyramids, Britain’s cotton mills, and the first space shuttle all ha...
Tricing is a quick fix for a multitude of dangling dinghy issues. Issue 135: Nov/Dec 2020 For a sailor on the hook, few things are more convenient than a dinghy on davits. As soon as the anchor is set...
…and Two More Lift-Keel Performers Issue 135: Nov/Dec 2020 Everyone knows that deep draft improves sailing performance but restricts cruising options. The ability to reduce draft would certainly...
Circumnavigating Vancouver Island provides stiff sailing, natural wonders, and kind locals. Issue 135: Nov/Dec 2020 Years ago, after decades of sailing the Salish Sea, my wife, Carey, and I decided we...
No halyard? No bosun’s chair? No problem for this crew. Issue 135: Nov/Dec 2020 It was a warm July day when my crew and I set out from Chesapeake Bay aboard Sequoia, our modest but trusty 1977 T...
Sailing seemed over, till an old friend returned. Issue 135: Nov/Dec 2020 “Sailboat for sale. $400.” The ad caught my attention: just what I was looking for, and the price was right. “It just ne...
Edson Marine clearly has an eye for what the market needs, adding to its products a garden hose connector fitting made by Banjo, one of the best-known manufacturers of this style of fitting. It’s an i...
In my experience, quick-release fire extinguisher mounting clasps are cheaply made and easily broken. Bungee cord can solve part of this problem, but it eliminates any quick-release capabilities. A be...
Issue 135: Nov/Dec 2020 Marvin Creamer, a New Jersey geography professor who became the only known person to circumnavigate the globe without any instruments whatsoever—not even a timepiece—died in Au...
Issue 135: Nov/Dec 2020 At Highland Yacht Club in Toronto, two of the last three years’ sailing seasons were cut short by months due to high water levels. It was the same for all Lake Ontario sailors....
Issue 135: Nov/Dec 2020 When I think about my friend, Larry Pardey, I picture an old cowboy crossing the open range and coming across a barbed-wire fence. Though he cuts it in disgust and drives his h...
A simple elevator system enables top efficiency for depth sounder transducer. Issue 135: Nov/Dec 2020 If you haven’t run aground, you haven’t sailed the Chesapeake,” is a common refrain among those wh...
Even a small boat can teach big lessons when it comes to abrupt, discontinuous change. Issue 135: Nov/Dec 2020 Ellen and I have owned our 12-foot catboat, Finn, for 16 years. We love how the working c...
Bolted boltrope? Try this handy harpoon to retrieve it. Issue 135: Nov/Dec 2020 Many good old boats (and newer boats with laminate sails) feature mainsails that attach to the mast via a boltrope in th...
Working alongside shipwrights shines a new light on hands-on. Issue 135: Nov/Dec 2020 Not long ago, as I was combing through the employment want ads, one job leaped from the page. A shop that speciali...
“There you are! Are you out for a sail, or out for a swim?” With these thoughtful words, a fellow club member sailed by us in his Laser. We were indeed swimming, next to my swamped open-hulled ...
In the August edition of The Dogwatch, we published Janie Meneely’s wonderful poem about Nasty Nell, the mermaid who was not to be gotten the best of by two hungry sailors. Here, Meneely revisits the ...
Offense Taken While I appreciate the idea of the umbrella for creating easy cockpit shade (“Cockpit Umbrella,” September 2020), as a 40-years veteran of the Navy, I take offense at your statement that...
“We are inching toward the middle of nowhere,” reads an entry in Michael’s log of the cruise of Juliet, a CSY 44 sailboat that is carrying the Partlow family of four through the San Blas Islands of Pa...
Time to Winterize If you live and sail where it gets really cold, you know about winterizing your boat. But did you know that insurance companies insure against freeze/thaw damage? And that coverage m...
Laura S. Wharton’s debut novel The Pirate’s Bastard, is set in colonial America in the first half of the 18th Century. This was an exciting place, especially for a young, ambitious man like Edward Mar...
