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…
Seamanship
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…
Anchoring a boat: Top tips from a scuba diving sailor
Drifting in a hot air balloon over variable terrain and needing to drop an anchor, you’d surely try to select a good spot. When anchoring a boat, however, many people…
Passing planning for a shakedown voyage
With Maximus, our PBO Project boat ready for her shakedown voyage from Chichester to Poole, I turned my attention to passage planning. I dug out my old logbook and realised…
Lessons learned from sailing home in a Force 5 after engine failure
Philip, my husband, needed the car so I decided to take my Offshore 8m Karima S from Aith to Brae, where I teach sailing. Last time had been a bit…
9 expert sailing techniques to help you sail better, faster and safer
The best way to get a better boat is to improve the one you already have, I have long believed. Given many vessels are not set up as efficiently as…
What I learned from saving three boats during a record-breaking Force 12+ storm
Storm Eunice hit the UK on 18 February with the highest winds ever recorded in England at 122mph at the Needles, Isle of Wight. That’s literally off the scale: the…
“I had a banana for a mast” 300 miles offshore: Lessons learned from a mid-Atlantic knockdown
Golden Globe Race entrant and former Clipper Race skipper Guy Waites suffers mast failure 300 miles from the Azores
Anchoring a boat: 6 tips to keep you safe
If space is tight or the weather looks unsettled, it’s worth having a few skills up your sleeve to make the most of a tricky anchorage. Here are 6 tips...