Safety & Seamanship

GPS Plotters: Trimble NT200D and Raytheon 620 Our Top Picks

GPS plotters, which combine satellite positioning and charting functions, make a vast amount of information instantly available to the navigator. Relatively new on the...

Is 88% A Good Number?

If you want a nice vacation, a boat charter seems close to a sure thing. Readers who responded to a survey published in last...

Lifesling Goes Throwable

Were safety conscious at Practical Sailor. Readers know that, from the numerous articles about our in-the-water and bench tests. We rarely fail to comment...

Gimbaled Radar Mount Concern

Calypso is equipped with a Questus model 100 backstay-mounted gimbaling radar mount for her Furuno 1831 radar. We have always liked this system, since...

Offshore Log: A West Indian Respite

Calypso arrived in Falmouth Harbor, Antigua, just before Christmas, 1997. She covered the 1,600 nautical miles from Newport, Rhode Island to Antigua in almost...

Offshore Log: Bermuda-bound Trial by Water

We never seem to do things the easy way. In late November, Calypso left New England once again, this time bound first to Bermuda,...

Offshore Log:Do You Know Where Your Emergency Tiller Is?

The great racing sailor, Paul Elvstrom, preferred the superior sensitivity of tiller steering to wheel steering even on larger offshore boats. Elvstrom, however, seems...

Handheld GPS Chart Plotters: Watch Out For That Rock!

Almost all portable GPS receivers include track plotting that may sometimes be confused with electronic charts. The units discussed here, however, have in addition...

Offshore Log:The Whitbread 60s After 20,000 Tortuous Miles At Sea

By the time the nine Whitbread 60s reached Sao Sebastiao, Brazil in late February, they had raced more than 20,000 miles, averaging well over...

ITT Night Vision 260-A Star Among Night Vision Scopes

When the only thing that keeps you from going aground at night is an unlit channel marker buoy, a night-vision device suddenly becomes less...

Sailing Couple, Woman Falls Overboard, Murder Charges

A sailboat disaster of a different sort for a young couple who set off on their honeymoon from Sint Maarten aboard a Fountaine Pajot...

Latest Sailboat Review

Ranger 33 Used Boat Review

The Ranger Yacht division of Jensen Marine was created in 1969 to build performance-oriented boats designed by Gary Mull. Jensen’s Cal division had been...