Practical Sailor

Aboard our Privilege 435 catamaran Confianza, we are teak oilers, not varnishers. Accordingly, our teak needs regular elbow grease. In our (seemingly never-ending) quest for the right teak cleaner, we decided to do a face-off between the two most-often recommended products: Snappy Teak-Nu and...

n early March, as the short austral summer was ending, I stood beneath a red-and-white striped lighthouse at the southern tip of South America. Sitting on weathered beech stump in the lee of the abandoned light, I watched through binoculars as a bright red...

I’m an avid cyclist. I raced in college, and I still take my college bike on my cruising cat and just hang it on a rack on the stern rail. At Practical Sailor, we’ve looked at folding bikes in the past and touched on...

Are you having trouble with your boat’s critically important seacocks? Maybe the handle is frozen and attempts to free it using penetrating oil, a breaker bar, or heat failed to loosen the sea’s vicious corrosive grip. Or maybe you can open and close the...

August through October are hurricane months in the Carolinas. While it’s almost always best to haul out for a hurricane, it’s not an option for every boat owner. In the summer of 2018, our only viable option for securing our 36-foot Cape Dory Far...