Practical Boat Owner

To receive the editor’s monthly email newsletter, go to our website: www.pbo.co.uk We have two separate, unconnected stories this month about boats lost at sea. Of course, rarely an issue goes to press without a report on a life or lives lost at sea,

When offshore sailor Tony Curphey finished his solo circumnavigation in 308 days he didn’t just complete the Longue Route, but also entered the record books. At 74 he is now the oldest person to have sailed solo around the world non-stop and unassist

I saw this very pretty yacht in the Ionian but could not find its class from anyone there. Could any of your experts put a class to her? Dr S Barr Rupert Holmes responds: It helps when you recognise the location from the photo – I found the following

So many stories have been published on ‘How I Built a 40-footer in my back garden and sailed to freedom’ or ‘How to enter Puerto Obscuro in heavy weather’ that I thought PBO readers would welcome some practical guidance on the basic skill practised e

Aye, I remember well that day. The voyage that set my course through life started in the Queen’s Head tavern. Where it ends no mortal soul can say, for the round sea has no beginning, no end, no horizon nearer than eternity. I know not if it was an u

C.Toms and Sons’ yard in Polruan builds mostly fishing boats, deepdrafted in the Cornish manner. When they started to weld up their 2016 newbuild, nobody could believe how flat-bottomed it was. The Toms shed is enormous, but the object rising from it

PART 7 Popular Classics 2010-PRESENT A common complaint about the latest generation of new yachts is that they just represent ‘more big, white plastic.’ While it’s true some simply continue existing design trends without offering new ideas, there are

Douglas and I were 14 when we first met. We raced each other in Toppers for a few years, but then went our separate ways. Fate threw us back together when we found ourselves teaching for the Aberdeenshire Sailing Trust over 10 years later. Our first

Does your boat have an inadequate chain locker, which won’t accept all your chain without having to knock the pile over? If you can manage to fix it, it will come as a wonderful relief every time you weigh anchor, and all the chain mysteriously disap

Over the past few years I’ve spent extended periods moored against the single pontoon at Lymington Town Quay. There are spaces for five boats alongside and later arrivals have to raft alongside those already there, normally according to size. Increas

Entropy Resins is a new range of epoxy resins made from co-products or waste products from other industrial processes. Therefore, while these materials are plant based, they don’t displace foodbased agriculture. In addition, green chemistry technique

Those of us who sail off the west coast of Scotland are not too familiar with marinas. Mostly we still anchor, so are in a good position to judge what makes the perfect marina when visiting new cruising grounds. During my three cruises around the Bri

The Panama Canal is one of the world’s great engineering projects. Spanning the Isthmus of Panama, it connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and is 77km long. Construction began in 1881 by the French, who later abandoned the project due to engineer

Read all the build articles online: www.pbo.co.uk/Secret20 The Secret 20 is a beautifully designed classic sailing yacht that can be built from a kit, one of which was delivered to PBO in 2016. Regular readers may well have followed her gradual trans

On a brisk winter afternoon in Southern Florida I was sentenced to a year’s purgatory for being overzealous. So excited was I, when I set eyes on the Sea Ray Sundancer 270, that I failed to properly inspect her before purchase. Little did I know, whe

The cockpit table on Tessa Jane, our 2005 Bavaria 39 Cruiser, was looking a little worse for wear. Since we bought her early in 2017, it had been slowly moving up the to-do list. Not only did the cosmetic appearance need work, but the design didn’t r

It was a lovely Saturday morning in Cannes and it seemed just the right time to spend a night swinging on the hook by one of the islands five or six miles away. So I left at about 1030 and arrived half an hour later in my Nimbus 365 Let’s Go. The wat

Chafe damage has always been a problem on yachts, and owners are generally advised to preserve their sails by adding protective devices to the rigging. However, we don’t want baggywrinkles on our shrouds, nor do we wish to invite corrosion by encasin

It was always going to be a tall order: trying to turn a ‘quick ‘n’ dirty’ epoxy ply kit into a beautifully crafted family heirloom. Not quite as difficult as turning a sow’s ear into a silk purse or a bag of fish ‘n’ chips into a gourmet dish, but n

I have lived near the East Coast for many years but was born and bred in the south, which is where I learned to sail. For the first few years of living in the east I explored the many rivers and creeks, but in all that time never really fell in love

Back in the 1980s, after a slow (35-day) Atlantic crossing on my 22ft Hurley, my budget was in need of a boost, and I came up with the perfect solution!. I talked to a few friends running big charter boats from Antigua, and learned that coffee and ou

I bought Adhara, a Roberts 34, in the UK and sailed back to the Caribbean in January 1989. I met John Simpson in Venezuela, and incidentally my adventures during the haul-out have been featured in a book called A Small Slip by Cris Robinson. John men