Few yachts have issues caused directly by the design of the keel. Almost all the failures I deal with are from hull damage that has gone unnoticed or poor repairs…
Yachting Monthly
Dufour 41 review: unashamedly aimed at coastal cruising
There have always been yachts that claim to offer the best of all worlds. They lure you in with the promise of being able to luxuriate in spacious opulence after…
Man who died after falling overboard from Pelican of London was under the influence of alcohol
Mark Glover died after falling from the gangway on the Pelican of London. The owner of the sail training vessel has now reviewed and amended their training for rigging gangway…
Dos and don’ts of a yachts engine mounts
Lots of jobs on your boat are relatively straightforward and don’t need a great deal of skill. However, if you haven’t tackled a certain job before, you may not know…
Jeanneau Sun Light 30 Review: A Family Cruiser With Racing Influence
When the big French production builders started launching boats like the Jeanneau Sun Light 30 in the mid-to-late 1980s, they got the British builders worried. I was working in the…
‘Why I went over to the dark side’ – Pete Goss
Falling off a ladder teaches you many things. For a start the NHS treats a one-metre fall as serious, so my fall, from above first-floor level, should have had spectacular…
Isles of Scilly Storm Dodging: ‘We had to gain steerage way from a standing start while neighbouring boats were dancing around wildly’
Mary and I are very fond of the Isles of Scilly. In fact, we regard the archipelago as the most delightful cruising destination to be found anywhere around the British…
‘If someone had offered me a third of the asking price to buy the boat back, I would have bitten their hand off’ – Monty Halls
I sat back on the saloon roof, leaned against the mast, sipped my beer, and revelled in the moment. Here I was, at long last, perched on my very own…
How to survive in a liferaft should the worst happen
You have no idea how frightening it is to step off a sinking yacht and into a liferaft. There is just you, the raft and whatever you have managed to…
‘Boat builders seem to take pride in making stuff tricky to get to’
They say that the definition of cruising is ‘fixing your boat in exotic locations’. Well, crouched, sweating, in the aft heads using a head torch and a mirror to extract…