Boat Maintenance

Hatch Tinting Test

UV is the enemy of both hatches and interior fabrics. Acrylic can resist UV for 15 years or more, but polycarbonate generally begins to...

Making the Dinghy Decision

Spring and fall on the Chesapeake Bay delivers cruising at its best. Last fall, we were ready to go, the crowds were gone, along...

Binos and Aging Eyes

A dockside expert told me that larger objectives made binoculars brighter, and that his optical view was actually brighter than ambient conditions. The problem...

Folding Kayak Field Trials

Small boat sailors are plagued by a lack of storage space, and nowhere is this pinch felt more dearly than dinghy storage. Transportation to...

Deck Core Repair, from Underneath

One of the “never-evers” of boat building is to use high density polyethylene (HDPE) as a backing plate or load bearing spacer, but the...

Scrubbis Test Defies Skeptics

We like premium multi-season paints, particularly for sailors who sail year round. The copper leaches into the water more slowly than single season paints...

Is Azek the New Starboard?

I’d heard Azek described as a low cost alternative to Starboard, but never paid much attention. I’d used a few boards around the house,...

Sailing Gear of the Year 2021

What a difference a year makes! Last year, Practical Sailor testers were holed up in their home workshops, garages, basements, and home offices, meeting...

Non-Skid Ten Years After

Boat decks take a beating from sun and salt that eventually take their toll on factory-molded nonskid. Once nonskid loses its grip, resurrecting it...

A Beach Plastic Disposal Dilemma

Ninety percent of micro plastics generation comes from laundry fibers. Fortunately, standard primary, plus secondary wastewater treatment removes 88-94 percent of this, lowering laundry’s...

$650,000 Yacht Tour : Hanse 460 – This Luxury Cruising Sailboat...

In the $500,000+ cruising sailboat market, the competition for world traveling sailboats is full of exceptional sailing yachts like the Catalina 445, the Amel...

Latest Sailboat Review

MacGregor 26M Used Boat Review

MacGregor 26 has been a staple in the trailerable sailboat market for decades, and company literature claimed more than 7,000 of the original model...