Good Communication—A Vital Key To Cruising Happiness

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Good communication is a skill that, like every other skill on a cruising boat, needs to be developed and practiced. Molly shares tips for good communication on board, garnered during the last three years while living aboard and sailing 36,000 miles with her family on Sila, a Boréal 47, including an expedition to South Georgia.

Voyaging With Children: Ten Tips From A Kid

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Jack, 12 years old, shares ten tips for kids and parents to help make life on a boat easier and filled with great experiences. This is stuff he learned over three years while living aboard and sailing 36,000 miles with his family on Sila, a Boréal 47, including an expedition to South Georgia.

Nobody’s Perfect

Reading Time: 4 minutes
There are times when only a tripping line will do

One of the strangest exchanges I have ever had occurred in my days as a sailing instructor. My manager sidled up to me one day and asked, “Do you demonstrate all of the manoeuvres to your students in advance, before asking them to do it?”. Thinking this might be some kind of trick question, I thought for a moment, before replying that of course I did—how else would they know what to do? He then floored me by loudly proclaiming that “I never do—what if you get it wrong?”. I could have told him that surely that was the whole point of it—it would show that we can all make mistakes. That it’s how you recognise your error, take the appropriate action to stop it getting really messy, draw breath, and then go round again and do it right that matters. Mistakes are what we learn from, and that in itself was a valuable lesson for the students. But somehow I recognised that I’d be wasting my breath.

Finding Crew, Finding A Boat

Reading Time: < 1 minutes

Two of the more frequent requests we have been receiving lately are how to find crew or find a boat to crew on. So we decided to post what we know about this topic and then open it up for you to add to it.

Q&A: On Being A Newbie

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Question: I’m planning a five-year circumnavigation. While I grew up as a live aboard cruiser, two of my crew have limited sailing experience. We have cruised the Chesapeake Bay extensively together and both are becoming good seamen but neither has been on a blue water passage.

Phyllis, I understand that you had little or no sailing experience before you started cruising in 1996, do you have any personal advice for them (or for me and how to coach them) about acquiring sound blue water seamanship for our planned five-year circumnavigation?

What Happened To Teamwork?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Eleven years ago I met John and started scaling the voyaging learning curve. Since I was starting from scratch, it often seemed to me that the learning curve was vertical.

QA&: Preparing For A Trans-Atlantic As Crew

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Question: I have perhaps a total of 40 hours sailing the New England coast. I have been invited by an experienced sailor to sail from Newburyport to Ireland in 2008 on a 32’ boat. My question is, what could I do between now and then to better prepare myself as a useful crew member?