When an anchor that thousands of sailors rely on seems to have a dangerous flaw, we need to write about that…and we do. Also, some thoughts on the the Vulcan and the Mantus anchors.

John and Phyllis want to buy a 40-foot sailboat. There are thousands of second-hand boats for sale, but most of them are not fit to go offshore. So how do we weed through all the junk to find a decent and safe boat at a fair price? And what about refitting an older boat? This is the first of a series of articles to answer those two questions.

We finally finished our transfer to a new membership system and so I have written about the many improvements it delivers for our members.

One of the saddest things that can happen to a cruiser is buying a fundamentally bad boat, and there are plenty of those out there to tempt the uninformed. Here’s how to make sure that the boat you buy is well designed.

First a book and then an article get Phyllis thinking: What does respectful voyaging mean? How do we know if we have crossed lines as travellers that we shouldn’t have crossed?

When the subject comes up of buying an old and tired boat and refitting it as a way to get out there ocean voyaging inexpensively, John tends to start throwing around a lot of cold reality, and generally being a spoil sport. But sometimes this approach can work.

More news about our efforts to choose and install a new membership system.

Beautiful and remote, Little Bay Islands, Newfoundland, is a gem of an outport harbour. Phyllis writes about the village’s struggle to stay viable and how it resolved.

In a previous two chapters we covered our favourite anchor and a second choice. In this chapter we move on to size and material—even tricker things to decide on. But not to worry, we make it simple.

Tucked into the heart of North America, five hundred miles from the sea, lies one of the world’s great adventure cruising grounds. A quarter-million square kilometres of water, and seventeen thousand kilometres of coastline, call out to sailors seeking a season or two off the beaten path.

Susie Goodall was one of the few competitors in Golden Globe Race 2018 with a series drogue to Don Jordan’s design. But it failed her, and her boat pitchpoled What went wrong and does Susies’ terrible experience indicate a fundamental problem with the series drogue and/or Don Jorgan’s science and engineering? John digs in to find out.

In the last two chapters we have reviewed the SPADE and SARCA Excel anchors. So which of the two is best, and are there other anchors as good or better?

Now that the Golden Globe 2018 is nearly over, it’s time to figure out why it turned into a demolition derby, and how to fix it so that there will be future editions.

We pursue a technical vein here at AAC. But sometimes it’s nice to take a break from anchors and electrons. To that end, John is trying his hand at fiction.