Imagine owning a yacht with all the class, style and history of a J Class, but without the monumental costs and logistical challenges. This dream is well on the way…
Yachting World
Weather briefing: Chris Tibbs explains the formation of a secondary low
Some years ago while racing somewhere south of the Kerguelen Islands in the Southern Ocean, an area well known for cyclogenesis (where lows are born or develop), we went from…
Solo sailor dodges hurricanes and ice on a North Atlantic crossing
An eastward crossing of the Atlantic in June or July should be easy for a well-found gaff cutter like Iron Bark. Wind and current are generally fair, gales few and…
Rio, a cruiser’s perspective – should you drop everything and sail there?
Scarcely ruffled by a lazy late afternoon breeze, the sea was an oily pink and orange lake. Two miles to the north, an endless chain of tall, strangely curvaceous grey…
Pollution in Rio spoiling the sailing Olympics? Skip Novak says: ‘This is Brazil; just enjoy the carnival’
I know Rio well enough. We stopped there in the Whitbread Round the World Race in 1978. That was the year many of the competitors – and the security guards,…
White Glacier Arctic 25 immersion suit
This immersion suit is a much more serious product than it perhaps looks with me pictured in it. It will keep an occupant alive for up to 25 hours in…
Get out of that – heaving to in strong winds. Advice from Dee Caffari
This image should be entitled ‘Get into That’. Bernard Stamm had 120 miles to go to the finish line – to the north of Great Barrier Island – when he…
Christophe Harbour: Welcome to your Caribbean hideout
Led by the renowned developer and superyacht owner, Buddy Darby, Christophe Harbour is a luxury development nestled on the south-eastern peninsula of the untouched Leeward island of St Kitts. Located…
Skip Novak on harnesses, ocean racing risks and the most vulnerable time of all
Of course the loss of crewmember Sarah Young from the Clipper Round the World Race yacht IchorCoal in April was a tragedy. We should be under no illusions, though, that…
Chris Tibbs weather briefing: the dangers of cold fronts or ‘squall lines’
Outside the tropics much of our sailing takes place in the disturbed westerly airflow that generates depressions, and within the depressions (or lows) the most active feature is usually the…
5 tips: spinnaker drop – how to drop the kite without drama
The leeward drop and mark rounding was looking fine and you were about to nail a few more places, so how come just two minutes later you are looking at…
36ft Zest is hit by a ‘14m’ rogue wave and dismasted off Spain. Skipper’s story
You know when you’ve been hit by a rogue wave. The energy within it is of a different order of magnitude from an inconvenient, but ultimately harmless, wave crest that…
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…
Cockroaches, weevils, moths. How to keep bugs at bay on board
A movement caught out of the corner of my eye: something furtive, small and fast. I must have imagined it, but I’ll have to take a closer look. Reluctantly, I…
Chris Tibbs weather briefing: how air mass affects the wind direction
I have a lovely old instrument at home which belonged to my grandfather; using dials on concentric circles you can set the direction of the wind, barometer reading and trend,…
The life of Tom Perkins 1932-2016 – entrepreneur, innovator and mastermind of Maltese Falcon
Tomas J. Perkins 1932-2016 Tom Perkins, who has died aged 84, was one of Silicon Valley’s most successful venture capitalists and a prolific superyacht owner whose innovative thinking led to…
Paul Larsen, world speed record holder, advises on how to avoid a pitchpole
I can see the boat has a reef in and the daggerboards slightly raised, so it is obviously windy. Judging by the lazy sheet, the gennaker is still furled so…
French sailor on a world tour via the North West Passage with a red hen
Guirec Soudée met Monique during a stopover in the Canary Islands when she joined him on what had been up to then a solo transatlantic voyage. The 24-year-old Breton was…
How to be a good crew member on a long ocean passage
Matching skippers and crew can be a difficult process and while there are characteristics we can identify in a good skipper, there are also some points that need to be…
A skiff with stabilisers? Meet ep0h, a skiff that anyone can sail
This is a skiff with big ambition: ep0h stands for ‘exponential pleasure, zero hassle’. The goal was to create a skiff that anyone can sail even if they are not…