Sail Magazine

3 days ago | sailmagazine.com | Sam Fortescue

Not for the first time this trip, I find myself wondering why the folk at Grand Soleil have opted for a boat test on an inaccessible stretch of fresh water hemmed in with 6,000-foot-high alpine peaks. It is early spring, and there is a dusting of fresh snow up there. Down on the shores of Lake Garda, where a succession of trains, buses, and taxis have delivered me to the ancient olive town of Malcesine, the water has a glacial blue tinge to it and the bite of winter still.

1 week ago | sailmagazine.com | Charles Doane

This passage reflects on the enduring impact of Steve Callahan’s remarkable survival story—his 76 days adrift in a life raft after his sloop Napoleon Solo sank in 1982. The experience, chronicled in his bestselling memoir Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea, has secured its place in maritime and adventure literature since its 1986 release. Now, the story has taken on new life through a documentary film by emerging filmmaker Joe Wein, who discovered the book by chance and was deeply inspired.

2 weeks ago | sailmagazine.com | Lydia Mullan

When it comes to night sailing, everyone has their own light best practices and preferences. Spotlights, headlamps, red lights, dimmed displays…they’re all part of the arsenal. Another popular option is Streamlight’s Wedge EDC series, a tactical flashlight with. The flashlight is USB-C rechargeable and now comes in more colors so that crews can better keep track of whose light is whose.

2 weeks ago | sailmagazine.com | Tom Cunliffe

You won’t often find water as slack as it is in this Dutch canal, so if you aren’t sailing in a locked-in system, check a passing lobster trap buoy around the turn of the tide for current. If there’s no stream you’ve a great opportunity to set up compass and log. Compass checking was once a big deal; calibrating a distance log was time-consuming and inherently inaccurate, involving measured miles between charted ranges. That’s all history now. Set the GPS readout to degrees magnetic.

2 weeks ago | sailmagazine.com | Zuzana Prochazka

Tamas Hamor, founder of Xquisite Yachts, has his camera on every detail of hull No. 1 of the Xquisite 60 Solar Sail as we reach down the Chesapeake Bay. He’s more like an anxious owner about to take possession of the boat rather than the CEO of the company that built this powerful machine, which dwarfs his silhouette on the foredeck. “In a way, I build boats for myself,” he shouts over the wind.