The first annual SEMOSA Winter Cruise aboard Lunacy was unfortunately cancelled due to the death of my mother, but we were able to schedule a Spring Cruise in its place. Participants included myself, Phil "Snake Wake" Cavanaugh, and Chas. "May I Cast Off Now?" Lassen (pictured above). Regrettably, Martin "The Geek" Hansmann, who had...

Tom Wylie, as we all know, has long been designing and building high-performance sailboats. In the latter part of his career, he's focussed on perfecting the unstayed wishbone rig, and his line of una-rigged Wyliecats, ranging in size from 17 to 48 feet, are certainly among the most exciting alternatives to conventional Marconi-rigged boats. The...

Aside from its displacement, which we discussed before, another important factor to refer to when evaluating a boat is its length. We usually think first of a boat’s length overall (LOA), but when it comes to sussing out a boat’s performance potential, the more relevant measurement is actually the load waterline length (LWL). This refers...

During much of that long night as our fine Alden schooner, Constellation, lay crippled on her side in the river, I found myself thinking of the bulls. Tim, the first mate, and I had gone to see them at the Plaza del Toros in Puerto de Santa Maria, across the bay from Cadiz, not long...

The Princess 36, built by the long defunct Allied Boat Company up the Hudson River in Catskill, New York, is a robust character ketch that does not pretend to be anything other than a simple, comfortable cruising boat. In truth, it is a boat only a cruiser could love. Designed by Arthur Edmunds and first...

There's a lot to admire in Catalina's new 445, and it's little wonder it won both SAIL's Best Boats and Cruising World's Boat of the Year competitions at the Annapolis show last fall. What I like best is the so-called utility cabin in the aft port quarter. I have often bemoaned the current accommodations status...

My mom was never really into boats, though she had to cope with them for much of her life, having grown up on an island. She did love the water and was always happiest when in close proximity to it. So when she became terminally ill last month, it was pretty obvious where she should...

The record might be broken as of today (according to his harshest detractors), or it may actually be broken less than two weeks from now on Saturday March 27 (according to my own calculations), but either way Reid Stowe is now (or soon will be) the unequivocal record-holder for longest non-stop voyage of any type...

  Even as our nascent eLoran system is being shut down here in North America, concerns over the vulnerability of GPS and other sat-nav systems are growing elsewhere. Late last month in the U.K., at a symposium hosted by the Royal Institute of Navigation and the Digital Systems Knowledge Transfer Network, several scientists and engineers...

In the interest of general enlightenment with respect to matters nautical I thought I should explain some of those mysterious numbers that always appear at the end of boat reviews and evaluations, both here on WaveTrain and in the marine press in general. Being able to intelligently interpret a boat's numbers doesn't mean you'll be...