Faith Merrett gets stuck in the mud while cruising from Teddington to St Katharine Docks Marina in Central London aboard her Haines river cruiser
Learning from experience
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…
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…
“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…
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
‘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
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…