For those of us on smaller boats, it’s always a challenge to figure out how and where to place enough solar panels to power our electrical needs. The past several years have brought lots of innovations, and now comes an Italian company that has created a foldable solar panel inspired by science …
It’s about a two-block bike ride from Bill Pinkney’s house in Fajardo, Puerto Rico, to the marina where a 44-foot Norseman catamaran is moored. He knows the boat well. Until the pandemic crushed the charter boat industry last year, he and his wife, Migdalia, led charters aboard it for a …
When talking shop among sailors or reading about safety at sea, ventilation is not a topic that comes up much. Evidently it’s secondary to things like angle of vanishing stability, survival equipment, and overboard rescue skills. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a big effect on safety and …
Beneteau’s new 37-footer is the latest in the seventh generation of the French builder’s Oceanis line, which began in 1986. It updates the popular 38.1, now in its its ninth season, and according to a media release, the brief given naval architect Marc Lombard and Nauta Design, who developed the …
I had been at the U.S. Sailboat Show in Annapolis for a couple of days when I took a brief break from the 50-footers and seven-figure multihulls that new sailors were reportedly buying as starter boats. My friend Steve Earley was in town on his 17-foot gaff-rigged yawl, Spartina, and he’d invited …
Steve Earley doesn’t sail like you and me. Example: One night, he and his 17-foot open boat, Spartina, were anchored in a cove near Crab Point just off the Chesapeake Bay’s Honga River. Spartina is a John Welsford design that Steve built, and she is, in a word, sweet. Because she can maneuver in …
It’s not ordinary for a sailor to be captivated by the sight of boulders the size of pianos slipping beneath the keel. In my experience as a lifelong big-boat sailor, visions such as this would have left me gasping rather than breathless (a subtle, yet significant, distinction). But this was …
I was but a shiftless wharf rat, recently shipwrecked, working the docks at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in search of a ride across the Atlantic, when I first met one Geoff Hill in 1992. He was an Aussie, a prosperous young merchant banker, with a new Taswell 56 he had named Antipodes, and was happy …
The first question to ask about a boat should be, “What is its purpose?” The new Elan 50.1 answers that clearly. It is a long-range cruiser for a couple or family who like to sail efficiently and comfortably and then have a spacious home for living and entertaining at the destination. It all …
“Grenada.” The woman, a passenger on a seven-day charter I was captaining in the British Virgin Islands, looked expectantly at me. “I’ve heard there’s a lovely spice market in Grenada. When will we be stopping there?” I carefully adjusted my expression and explained that Grenada would not be on …