Doug Ryan I noticed something this summer. For the first time I don’t know any of the boat owners around my boat. I go there quite a bit. I haven’t had a conversation with a single other boater since launching my boat this spring. Usually doing a project on the boat at least draws a couple people … Read more
Your slip neighbor lives about four feet from your bedroom. That’s closer than any house neighbor you’ve ever had, and the walls are made of fiberglass. That can be the best part of marina life or the worst. On a good dock, neighbors catch your lines, watch your boat when you’re away, and hand you … Read more
Walk down to almost any old boat club today and you’ll see it. A rack built to hold forty dinghies, holding four. Dock lines coiled up and untouched since last season. One faded life jacket hanging where a whole row of them used to hang, sized for an eight year old who isn’t coming this … Read more
Every old boat guy has a theory about why the Catalina 22 is everywhere. The marina, the boat ramp, the club racing fleet, your neighbor’s driveway under a blue tarp. There’s a Catalina 22 in all of them. Frank Butler didn’t set out to build the most popular sailboat in American history. In July 1969, … Read more
Long before anyone slapped the words “sport boat” on a sailboat brochure, there was a stubby little 25-footer out of Costa Mesa, California, that beat everybody to the punch. The Cal 25 wasn’t marketed as revolutionary. It didn’t have a marketing department dreaming up a category for it. It just showed up in 1965, went … Read more
If you own an older boat — and if you’re reading this, there’s a decent chance you do — you’ve probably noticed the same thing I have: getting insured is getting harder, not because your boat got worse, but because the actuarial tables got stricter. Somewhere in a windowless office, a spreadsheet decided that fiberglass … Read more
Nobody hands you a manual for this. You get a boat, a vague sense of confidence borrowed from a weekend course, and a whole ocean’s worth of ways to be humbled. The good news is that every mistake you’re about to make has already been made by somebody else — usually several thousand somebody elses, … Read more
Every marina has one guy who owns a trimaran, and every marina treats him the same way: half curiosity, half suspicion, like he showed up to the potluck with a dish nobody recognizes. Three hulls. No keel to speak of. A boat that looks like it’s trying to be a bug and a sailboat at … Read more
Picture a California beach in the summer of 1979: a wall of striped sails at the waterline, a dozen boats flying a hull at once, everybody on the trapeze laughing like idiots. That was a Hobie 16, and for a stretch of about fifteen years, that boat basically was the beach. Then, in 1988, the … Read more
You feel free out there—wind in the rigging, horizon wide open—but the law is quietly on board, too. Coast Guards don’t accept “I didn’t know,” insurance won’t cover “Oops,” and that sleepy cove you anchored in might be off-limits. Here are the 10 rules sailors break most—and how to avoid getting boarded, fined, or denied … Read more