Judging Distance at Sea!

Lt. Angelina Hildago, commanding officer of the 

CGC Kingfisher, views a vessel spotted by her 

crew through binoculars. USCG photo by PA3 

Beth Reynolds.

Photo by: Courtesy of the United States Coast Guard

By Mario Vittone

When standing at the wheel of your boat, do you know the height of your eye off the water? You should.

I once sailed with a quartermaster who had two uncanny talents that were perfect for his particular line of work: spotting things in the water and judging their distance. Both are quite useful skills on the bridge of a Coast Guard patrol boat, and to date I’ve never met or heard of anyone better at those two things than Will Absher. Will’s ability to see things on a vast expanse of blue was impressive enough, but what was remarkable was his ability to tell you exactly how far away something was just by looking at it.

Heavy weather sailing

By Bob Pingel

Practice heaving-to and forereaching before the storm clouds gather

A strong line of thunderstorms will reach you just after dark,” is exactly what you don’t want to hear as you are preparing to round Cape Hatteras. A few years back I was delivering a Beneteau 461 from Connecticut to Tortola, a classic fall milk run. Insurance required that we use a weather router and we chose longtime routers Dane and Jenifer Clark. The Clarks gave us updates every day via satellite phone and things were good until that storm came up.

Learn to Read the Water

By Connie McBride

Reading the water is an important skill you should practice often to ensure there’s always water under your keel.

Sailing through the tea-colored water of the ICW, it’s hard to imagine ever being able to read water depth visually. If you’ve never actually experienced being able to spot coral heads on the bottom, 80 feet down, such stories seem like fairy tales.

But it’s true. In fact, in the Bahamas and much of the Caribbean, even along parts of the U.S. East Coast (especially in the Florida Keys), it can sometimes be difficult to accurately judge the water depth simply because you can see so far down—to a point where it’s hard to believe the water is truly as deep as your chart and depthsounder say it is.

Tablet vs Plotter

Is a tablet PC as good as a dedicated chart plotter for on board navigation? Duncan Kent looks at the pros and cons of tablet navigation and tries out four of the most popular apps

An increasing number of boat owners are using touchscreen tablets with marine charting apps as a backup for their normal means of navigation. Indeed, for some smaller boat skippers it has become their only means of navigation on board. Should we be worried that the latter are placing themselves and other water users in danger, or are these devices and apps now good enough to be a legitimate form of electronic navigation in this digital age?

Begginer's guide to Sailing!

By Paula Irish

Sailing is one of the most accessible sports in the country, whether you live by the sea or inland, and it’s among the most rewarding. Paula Irish looks at how to get started

Helming your own boat or crewing for someone else might seem like a daunting prospect for a beginner, but it doesn’t have to be. There are sailing clubs and training centres across the UK offering taster sessions and courses catering for all ages and abilities. Wherever you live, there will be a sailing club nearby, be it next to the sea or an estuary, a river or lake. And if the risk of the British weather being unkind puts you off, there are plenty of specialist holiday operators offering sailing tuition abroad.

Autopilot Safety Tips

By Jim Hendricks

An autopilot can be a valuable boating tool, if you know how to use it safely.

Every year in my home waters off the coast of Southern California, boats run into offshore islands. Many of these incidents occur on the watch of experienced and otherwise vigilant captains who fall asleep at the helm with the autopilot engaged.

Survival Suits: More Important than You Think

safe returns abandoning ship

Photo by: Courtesy of the United States Coast Guard

By Mario Vittone

They go by a few names: survival suits, quick-donning immersion suits or gumby suits. You need them on board, and Mario Vittone explains why.

If you head offshore beyond a reasonable swim to the beach, then you need to have a survival suit for every person on your boat. Think that’s too strict? I’ll give you a pass only if you sail the tropics—and only during the summer. (The waters off Key West were 69 degrees in January. Think you’ll survive in waters less than 70?).

Rigs and Rigging

By Rupert Holmes
The advent of new materials has made buying rigs and rigging much more complex than in the past, as Rupert Holmes reveals

There will always be a place for aluminium spars, at least for the foreseeable future – they are well understood, well proven and inexpensive. In addition, they are still specified by a great many one-design classes. However, carbon is nowhere near as expensive as in the past, it too is now well proven in the reliability stakes and the weight benefits are not to be underestimated. Every kilogram saved aloft equates to a 5-7kg saving at the bottom of the keel, as well as reduced pitching in a head sea.

Solaris ONE 58

With all the hallmarks of its Argentine designer, Soto Acebal, Hull number 1 of the Solaris ONE 58 is under construction in Aquileia, Italy.

Trial underway for Cowes Week yacht skipper

Roland Wilson's yacht was in collision with an oil tanker in 2011

The trial has begun for yacht skipper Roland Wilson who faces three charges of flouting maritime law.

The 31-year-old's boat, with a crew of seven, was in collision with a 120,000-tonne Hanne Knutsen oil tanker during Cowes Week 2011.

Lagoon 52: Tower and Power

by Herb McCormick

Billy Black

The Lagoon 52 is a big, rangy cat with an expansive flybridge steering station, oodles of room on both levels for lounging and relaxing, and multiple headsail options, including a versatile code zero light-air reacher.

Enlarge Photo

As one of two Lagoons introduced earlier this year in the United States at the Strictly Sail Miami boat show, the new 52 shares many characteristics with its smaller, 39-foot sibling. (See“Little Big Boat.”) The exterior lines and features of each cat—including the sweet, elegant, “diamond-shaped” vertical bows—were sculpted and specified by the well-respected French naval architecture consortium Van Peteghem Lauriot Prévost, while the accommodations plan and interior styling were the domain of the Italian firm Nauta Design.

Use the Magic of an “Aim Point” to Dock Your Sailboat

Captain John from www.skippertips.com shares this essential docking tip.

Two half-million dollar sport-fishing boats are tied up to a marina pier. And the dockmaster has just enough space to fit your small sailboat in between. Add wind and current to the mix and you have a real challenge ahead of you! How can you dock your boat smoother and easier? Discover this little-known secret used by master boat handlers worldwide.

Anchoring a multihull

By Bob Pingel

Master the nuances of anchoring a big cat and you’ll be the envy of the charter scene

Anchoring is an essential cruising skill, and one that you’ll notice not everyone has grasped if you spend a cocktail hour in a busy anchorage. Compounding the problem is that the techniques for anchoring a multihull, as many charterers prefer, are different than those used for centuries on monohulls. So even a sailor who can anchor his monohull at home with few dramatic moments can have some problems when it comes to anchoring the big cruising cat he chartered.

Inspect your Lifejackets

By Peter Nielsen

They say you should never take anything for granted in life, and I reckon that applies to lifejackets too. While exhuming my inflatable lifejackets— one manually actuated, one auto-inflating—from their basement crypt last spring, it struck me that I had never once inspected them or serviced them since they were new—and that, I realized guiltily, was many years ago.

It was obviously past time. It’s easy enough to inspect a lifejacket; you basically just open it up, blow it up using the inflator tube on the left-hand chamber, and check it over for obvious signs of damage—chafed seams, punctures, cuts. If it’s dirty or salty, sponge it down with warm soapy water, rinse it and let it dry overnight, still fully inflated. If it leaks, throw it away and buy a new one.

Sailing in Greece

Sailing in Greece is really a much loved pastime for many individuals and a number of them use bareboat charter greece services to explore the waterways near the landmass. Yacht charter services in Greece supplies a number of boats  for sailing and exploring the places across the shore. Ships, flotillas, cottage cruises and skippers are a number of the different types of watercraft that may be used for sight seeing and accessing diverse regions of Greece.