Looking back at our disastrous first trip aboard our motorboat Kay, we were under-equipped and complete novices who were convinced we could bring her down the river from Wargrave to…
Learning from experience
Making history in an Albin Vega 27 – Jazz Turner’s story
Adventurer and disabled sailor Jazz Turner reflects on her recent record-setting UK and Ireland circumnavigation
Force 10 in the Channel: ‘We took a colossal wave broadside, and the cockpit was suddenly knee-deep in water’
A routine Channel crossing became a nerve-shredding passage when a ferocious storm hit, as Ron Stride recalls
Embracing electronic navigation – one reluctant boater’s tale
Celestial navigation instructor Paul Jones reluctantly got to grips with electronic navigation and is now "out of the fog and into the future"
‘In a flash, I was hanging on the lifelines on the wrong side of the boat’
Solo sailor Tony Purcell discovered how quickly a tricky situation can develop when he fell overboard his 42ft yacht on a busy tidal river
Thames tidal lesson – getting stuck in the mud motorboating in central London
Faith Merrett gets stuck in the mud while cruising from Teddington to St Katharine Docks Marina in Central London aboard her Haines river cruiser
How a rogue water bottle led to a Mayday in a storm
Learning from experience: Steven Copeland reflects on how a rogue water bottle led to a stormy rescue off the coast of Pwllheli, north west Wales.
When your electronic navigation autoroute settings go wrong
Gilbert Park helps a fellow motorboater achieve his first voyage to the Channel Islands and gets a lesson in the perils of relying on electronic navigation
Lessons learned from a first Atlantic crossing
Ben Good, 60, swaps Drascombe pottering in the Suffolk estuaries for a “proper 60ft offshore yacht” to cross the North Atlantic
“I worried the mast might strike the rotor blades” – helicopter rescue from sailing boat
Talan Skeels-Piggins experiences a medical emergency in rough seas while attempting to sail around Britain in his Colvic UFO 34
“The boat was knocked down, our lifejackets inflated, and then we saw Keith in the water!”
A knockdown wave inflated the crew's lifejackets and broke the skipper's leg as they tried to rescue a man overboard in 3-4m waves and 45mph gusts close to shore
“Why changing to an electric motor was a disaster”
Felix Marks attempts to embrace a green future for his Tofinou 7, but his experiment with an electric motor proves costly when damp conditions prevail
“We recovered a stolen boat while cruising on the Norfolk Broads”
A quiet January cruise on the Norfolk Broads turns into an unexpected crime drama for PBO contributor Will Renilson when he helps in the recovery of a stolen 35ft Bourne…
Sunk by the rocks – an anchoring misadventure
When Jeff Middleton got into difficulties with a stuck prop shaft while trying to anchor in Bull Bay on Anglesey, he never imagined it would result in the loss of…
“What was I thinking?” Riding out a two-day blow on my Atlanta 25
Ray Lein tries to outrun Storm Babette in his Atlanta 25, before taking shelter behind Worm’s Head in the Bristol Channel
First offshore passage in a pocket cruiser – Essex to Belgium
George Stanton battles mal de mer as he crosses the North Sea from Suffolk to Oostende in a 17ft Hurley Silhouette
“I saved two other sailors on my boat’s maiden voyage”
Gilbert Park’s maiden voyage in his Mitchell Classique 28 culminates in the rescue of two men from the water after their yacht sank
Getting that sinking feeling in the Pacific doldrums
People think of the doldrums as an area of light or no wind (it can, indeed, be like this), but it is violently stormy, equally often, with wind from any…
Snap, shackle and drop: coping with a dismasted sailing yacht
Steve Hodges and his fiancée Sam McClements’ second attempt at the RYA Yachtmaster Ocean passage is scuppered by a dismasted yacht
‘By mid-morning the pontoon linking us ashore was listing… and sinking’
Following a two-year pause from cruising habits in our Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 349, Scoundrel, we were ready to set sail again. The hiatus was partly due to me being overseas…