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Colin discusses how to set two anchors when there is no other way to anchor safely.

It’s an all too common story: a boat that has been structurally fine for years while sailing inshore starts to come apart as soon as she is sailed offshore. This chapter explains why and will give you a good basis in the underlying engineering theory that will help you choose a boat that won’t let you down offshore.

Your harness, its fit, and how you use it are among the most important parts of staying safe on a boat offshore. In this chapter I share what we have learned in 140,000 miles of offshore sailing, most of it short-handed, about harnesses and lifejackets, the features to look for, and their use.

Colin has some great tips that will help you maintain your engine’s raw water system.

Before we can come up with good and effective person overboard prevention systems, we need to think about and clearly understand the risks we are dealing with, which I examine in this chapter.

There are countless articles, books and courses that focus on recovering a person overboard, but what really matters to the short-handed crew offshore is making as sure as humanly possible that a person overboard situation never happens in the first place—we need prevention, not cure. This chapter introduces this Online Book and that basic concept.

A fundamental fact is that, even if you are rich, you can’t have it all in an offshore voyaging boat and that goes double for the rest of us with more modest means. So the most important step in selecting a boat that will be successful for you is to identify the things that you really need. In this chapter I give you an easy to use and apply test to do just that.

John answers the question of whether to use one anchor or two.

Meeting daily electricity needs using power and solar while at anchor is one thing, but what about when passagemaking? Solar can only do so much and wind generation works best when sailing to windward. So is hydro the answer? Colin talks about the pros and cons of hydro generation.

There are very few cruising boats these days that don’t have a solar panel fitted somewhere, and many have some pretty substantial arrays. Based on five years of real-world experience, Colin gives some tips and recommendations for how to get the maximum benefit from solar.

Should you install a wind generator on your boat? Find out from someone who has cruised with one for 5 years—invaluable real-world experience.

Let’s start this book off with some simple rules you can put to work immediately to make maintaining your boat less frustrating.

Through a combination of planning, frugality, solar and wind power, Colin and Lou have never had to run the engine of their OVNI 435 to charge their batteries when at anchor. How did they manage that? Read on to find out how.

There are probably more myths and downright wrong recommendations published about reefing than any other subject. In this chapter John exposes one of them and then goes on to explain how to do it right.