A big trailerable boat with a lifting keel Issue 1...
May 6, 2026
I get up and check the calendar. It’s late in the season and only a few days remain before the marina’s deadline for hauling out my boat. I check the weather; 7 to 9 out of the east, sunny with...
Need to replace a prop? Pull the lower unit on an outboard without pulling the engine? How about installing an external strainer without pulling the boat? Working on most anything below the trampoline...
Replacing a fabric interior hull covering with oak-on-cedar strips transforms a V-berth. Issue 129: Nov/Dec 2019 Manufacturers of many good old boats of the ’70s and ’80s were looking for time and cos...
A short solo voyage comes with challenges faced and lessons learned. Issue 129: Nov/Dec 2019 When I was 12, my parents bought me a Sunfish, a little board boat with a lateen sail. I’d been reading abo...
When our keel started weeping and our bilge started filling, a keel bolt repair came next. Issue 129: Nov/Dec 2019 Losing a bolt-on keel is a relatively uncommon occurrence, but it’s also about the mo...
Spicing up a marriage with a sailboat means learning some new ropes. Issue 129: Nov/Dec 2019 A few years ago, just prior to our 24th wedding anniversary, I got to wondering what made our marriage so s...
Blackberries, apples, and balancing stones grace a princess’ gift in the Salish Sea. Issue 129: Nov/Dec 2019 Somebody reminded me the other day that my wife June and I have been cruising around Puget ...
New crew in the fam? Here’s how to take them sailing. Issue 129: Nov/Dec 2019 When my husband, Michael, and I found out we were going to be parents in eight short months, the first thing our family an...
Suffering’s for singing the blues, not sailing. Here’s how to stay pain-free on the water. Issue 129: Nov/Dec 2019 When I was in my 20s, a long breezy day on my beach cat invariably resulted in a grim...
Can you call it sailing when you’re not leaving the dock and the work list? Issue 129: Nov/Dec 2019 Seaview, Washington. For about half the year, half the time it’s raining and blowing, the other half...
A Traditional Masterpiece Issue 129: Nov/Dec 2019 Styled by builder Cecil Lang after William Atkin’s classic Tally Ho Major, the Cape George 38 is a traditional cutter with a counter transom, fairly f...
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...
