Faced with a sudden dismasting in 40-knot gusts, Rupert Holmes explains how he and his crew saved his boat, and offers advice for simple safety checks you can make to…
Seamanship
Lessons learned from a disastrous start to the sailing season
Fairey Atalanta A142 Sugar Plum, being a mature lady, needs a lot of maintenance. Living in the north of Scotland, she’s stored over winter in a building for her protection…
Margaret and Frank Dye: open boat pioneers
Roger Barnes reflects on the legacy of small-boat sailors Margaret and Frank Dye
“We appeared to be travelling sideways, the adrenaline had now peaked”
Crossing dangerous coastal bars asleep and sideways is certainly not a habit of mine, but strange things can happen on the water, and like many incidents they often happen slowly…
Nautical know-how: The Bernoulli principle
Andrew Morton describes the Bernoulli principle and its effect on manoeuvring in tight spaces in a motorboat
Blind navigation: how to find your way in restricted visibility
Is blind navigation a foggy notion for Yachtmasters, or a useful seamanship skill? PBO investigates
Antila 33.3 review: The ideal lakeland explorer
Lake sailing in Poland is very different to coastal sailing. In many ways it’s more relaxing. There are no tides to contend with and because you can find a marina…
“Just as I was thinking about cutting the engine, the decision was made for me”
Sailing, with the wind, sea and tides, is a sport ever ready to reward complacency with challenge. From an estuary dinghy sailor to an ocean voyager, there are endless opportunities…
Squatter onboard: ‘Rather than heading out on a perfect sunny day we set about sanitising the boat’
Rory Church’s much anticipated visit to his beloved boat doesn’t go quite as planned when he discovers evidence of a squatter onboard
Jimmy Cornell: “How I’ve coped with almost every type of emergency at sea”
Perhaps it is inevitable in my long and eventful sailing life that I’ve faced a number of emergency situations. In every case I was able to deal with them successfully.…
‘Towing the Drascombe, a racing fleet appeared and like a swarm of locusts gathered around us’
Following a white knuckle marina rescue of three boats during Storm Eunice, Gilbert Park experiences two fairer weather towing adventures
Handling rough conditions in port
Rupert Holmes describes the course of action he pursued – and the lessons learned – when storm conditions threatened to cause damage to his moored boat
Are we sinking? My worst day as a pregnant sailor
Fraser and I have almost sunk several times in all the years we’ve sailed together. Once was when we unknowingly towed a lobster pot on our prop shaft from Coleraine…
How to pass your RYA Day Skipper Theory course
James Wood gets to grip with navigation, passage planning, tides, buoyage, Colregs and more on his RYA Day Skipper Theory course
Mud team to the rescue! Lessons learned from running aground on a sandbank
Paul Simon used to sing to me that ‘the nearer your destination, the more you’re slip-slidin’ away’. I never knew he’d sailed the Suffolk coast. It was mid-summer and I…
Man overboard: recovering a casualty from a marina
Rupert Holmes shares top tips on how to avoid the dangers of falling in while in a marina and how to recover someone from a pontoon
Boat towing: lessons learned from assisting a dismasted yacht in the Atlantic
Ali Wood meets the ARC+ crew who battled squalls and rough seas to tow a dismasted yacht to safety
Baptism of fire: Sailing Biscay in a Force 8 on my first (and last) yacht delivery
Despite having never had aspirations to be a yacht delivery skipper, I was coerced into delivering a Moody 426 from the Algarve to the UK in 2006. It all started…
Boat engine failure in the path of a bulk carrier – lessons learned
Perhaps I should have known better. My sailing companion for the trip from Chichester Marina to Gosport, in my 19ft Mk1 Shrimper, was Scaf, a bearded friend from Belgium. I’d…
Dinghy rescue: How I helped two teenagers recover their capsized boat
The evening was warm and pleasant with just enough wind to keep the sails filled; autumn dusk had begun to obscure the distance. Yachts that had ventured up the narrowing…