How-to: Seamanship

How crazy are the French about long distance adventure sailing? Crazy enough that photographer Yvan Zedda could get a plane ride and a picture to be captioned thus: Flyby of the maxi trimaran Groupama 3 to the NE of the Azores aboard a Falcon 50 fleet 24F from the Naval Air Base of [...] …Read More

Mobile Mariner LLC has announced the official launch of the Mobile Mariner™ for the Blackberry® smartphone, which will provide NOAA marine weather forecasts, tide information and life weather conditions for the coastal United States, including the Great Lakes. More upcoming releases will expand the application to other smartphone platforms and cover more international areas. Mobile Mariner [...] …Read More

KVH Industries said today that it will offer rebates up to $200 through the end of April on its TracVision M1 and M3 satellite TV systems.  The M1 and M3 systems are typically used on smaller boats, although the M3DX unit, with its HDTV capability could easily serve as the workhorse on almost any size [...] …Read More

Do you really need to update your electronic charts, and the chartography in your chartplotter’s brain? A three year old unit, for example, may seem plenty “new.” Unfortunately, the Coast Guard has this pesky habit of moving nav aids. Worse yet, Mother Nature has this pesky habit of moving sand bars, shoals, and inlet channels. [...] …Read More

Sea Sense, the St. Petersburg, Florida-based sailing and powerboating school for women, is offering a new international class on Ireland’s Shannon River and canals. Every year, the company offers a different international course, with previous locations including various Caribbean locales, as well as Italy, Greece, France and Tahiti.  The 2010 course will be aboard a [...] …Read More

Ranger Tugs recently introduced a variation of the popular Ranger Tugs 25 — a Sport Cockpit version with an extra 16 inches of cockpit room. In the video below, you’ll see that they stole the 16 inches from the galley counter inside the house, but that it doesn’t seem to have taken away any capability. Check [...] …Read More

Two prominent Ranger Tugs dealers in the Northeastern U.S. have 2010 models of Ranger Tugs available for sea trials this weekend. Wilde Yachts in Essex, CT, is having an open house this weekend (March 13 and 14) and has the R-21 and R-29 available, as well as the Nordic Tugs 32 and NT-37. Essex is [...] …Read More

By Jeffrey Siegel (ActiveCaptain); Videography by Karen Siegel Here’s a great technique for anchoring the dinghy off the beach. Our dinghy weighs about 800 pounds. She’s a rigid inflatable with a 40 HP engine. It’s our family car when we’re cruising and we put a lot of demands on her. So I was telling Larry how much [...] …Read More

We were never out of sight of land on this day-trip, but we still packed the gear we'd need if something went wrong. …Read More

With classic American racing yachts, there’s more than one meaning to the phrase, bring’em back. Any wood boat that’s been out there a while will surely have been “brought back” one time or more through restoration procedures that we can reasonably hope are unreasonably fanatical. There’s also: Bring’em back home. Dorade, courtesy Sparkman & Stephens [...] …Read More