The Price of Radio Silence
I hope there are some parents or grandparents out there with some sage advice for a man in my predicament. I didnt realize how...
Rigging and Deck Gear
Testers reviewed a slew of rigging and deck gear products during the last year-ranging from furling blocks to lifeline chafe protection and rigging terminals....
How Much Drag is in a Drogue?
Weve long been interested in drogues, devices specifically designed to be towed behind a boat to reduce speed and to produce directional stability in...
Field Testing Drag, Behavior
We did not test every drogue that appears in the accompanying table, PS Value Guide: Drogues. However, we collected a huge amount of test...
Doubling Up: Full-size Tandem Anchoring
When you've tested anchors as long as Practical Sailor has, you feel pressed to explore unconventional arrangements that others advocate-particularly if the advocates include...
The Ubiquitous Winch
The underappreciated winch is a sailors best friend-and if Sir Isaac Newton was around today, he would give the ubiquitous selftailer a nod of...
Old Winches Worth their Salt
Part of our ongoing, long-term testing includes keeping track of a still-in-use set of 40-something-year-old Barlow 28s, a 30-year-old pair of Barient 25s, and...
Tandem Anchoring
Recent tests on a miserable holding bottom in the Chesapeake Bay (see PS, February 2015 online) showed that conventionally sized anchors just don't hold...
Small Versus Large Anchors
The consensus among anchor makers (Fortress, Bruce, Manson, Mantus) is that holding power in soft bottoms increases in approximate proportion with anchor mass; exponents...
No Drama Anchoring Approach
This months report on tandem anchoring rigs was on my mind as the winds began gusting above 30 knots in the Dry Tortugas. Wed...
The History of Cape Dory Sailboats
Cape Dory Yachts was founded in 1963 by Andrew Vavolotis in East Taunton, Mass. In the following 28 years, the company built over 2,800...
Latest Sailboat Review
Catalina 22 Used Boat Review
In its 10th anniversary issue in 1980, Sail magazine named the Catalina 22 the boat that had represented the breakthrough in trailer/cruisers in those...