Beside the quiet, sun-bleached Mexican town of La Cruz de Huanacaxtle lies a busy anchorage on the north side of Bahía de Banderas. Humpback whales cruise nonchalantly through the bay,…
Pacific
What you need to know to sail across the Pacific
Coffee in hand, I gaze out from our cockpit across the flat lagoon of the palm-fringed coral atoll in Fakarava. We are in the Tuamotus, French Polynesia. Yesterday we swam…
Two sailors’ epic eastbound journey halfway around the globe
Departure time is a time of optimism for Ginger and me. All the stress of decision making and the work of planning and provisioning is behind us, and we are…
Everything you need to know about sailing rallies and cruising in company
There is a pent up enthusiasm for experiences right now. After nearly two years of limitations, many of us are hankering for wider horizons, to escape the Zoom meetings, look…
Homeward Bound: across the Pacific
The tireless whirring of my coffee machine brought me back to my senses as I stood, lost in thought, in the cockpit of Mirniy Okean, my 40ft Boden South Sea…
World cruise: The secrets of 200k mile cruisers
Since 1981, when we bought our wooden, varnished, 39ft Sparkman & Stephens sloop Sunstone, my husband Tom and I have sailed some 200,000 miles. Our world cruise, with some racing…
Cruising New Caledonia: Spectacular sailing in the French corner of the Pacific
“OK, this time you’ll do it, right?” Wietze asks, full of hope that this time I’ll grab the mooring buoy without a hitch. I’m totally focussed on the white buoy…
Solo Pacific sailing: The adventures of Webb Chiles and his Moore 24 Gannet
As soon as I opened the companionway I knew we had up too much sail. Gannet, my ultra-light Moore 24, is a thin and often permeable membrane, but the wind…
Sailing Hawaii: A leisurely cruise around these picture-perfect volcanic islands
We started our Pacific voyage on board Distant Drummer, our 45ft Liberty cutter-rigged sloop, from Wellington, New Zealand, in June, 2015, bound ultimately for North America and the Pacific Northwest.…
Expert advice: How to sail across the Pacific Ocean
You can lose a lot of friends when you’re sailing across the Pacific. After the first couple of photos you post posing next to giant tortoises, swimming with hammerhead sharks…
Through the Panama Canal in your yacht: everything you need to know
Cape Horn sailors and ditch diggers sacrificed all to make the path between the Atlantic and Pacific easier for the rest of us. It is a surreal situation to find…
Lines to Hawaii: a dream cruise chasing the Pacific surf from Tahiti to Honolulu
I could only laugh. Travis Rice, world-famous snowboarding pioneer, had just jumped into the Pacific waves to chase down his once-anchored dinghy, which was now floating away. Meanwhile Ian Walsh,…
November 2018
On sale 11 October, in the November 2018 issue of Yachting World we have a complete guide to cruising the Pacific – the ultimate bluewater playground News Injured Golden Globe…
Pitchpoled in the Pacific in an open boat – survival depends on crossing a deadly Pacific Island reef
Webb Chiles is a one-off, writes Tom Cunliffe. The first American to sail single-handed around Cape Horn, he has circumnavigated five times, mostly in small craft, some of them open.…
Bear necessities: Cruising the Broughton islands on Canada’s Pacific coast
We left Dead Point at 0800 in a flat calm and entered Beware Passage – inauspicious names for cruising in dense fog, but we had used this rock-ridden channel before…