Category: Europe

No-one wants to end up in a liferaft, but if push comes to shove, your chances of survival are greatly increased by mastering your mind, say Frances and Michael Howorth You have no idea how frightening it is to step off a sinking yacht and into a liferaft. There is just you, the raft and…

James Stevens considers a problem sent in by a Yachting Monthly reader who asks how to deal with an unwell crew member Gerry is regretting taking three novice crew across the North Sea. They are on board Bellatrix, a 12m standard production yacht. They started from Stavanger in Norway and are on passage to Hartlepool…

Ivar Dedekam author of Illustrated Sail & Rig Tuning gives his guide on tensioning a yacht’s wire or rod rigging If you want to trim your rig correctly you should have some idea of the tension in the shrouds and stays, either by rules of thumb or a more exact method, such as this. Here,…

Theo Stocker is put through his paces on an RYA Yachtmaster Offshore prep week, before taking the exam itself. Find out how he got on The RYA Yachtmaster Offshore has long been the qualification that cruising yacht sailors, both amateur and professional, have aspired to. Quite aside from the fact that it is the gateway…

Mike Morgan offers advice on how to improve power management on a yacht and preserve precious amps for those that like their home comforts I confess, I’m not a marine electrician, and my understanding of boat electronics is at best rudimentary, but I’ve now been managing my boat’s power generation and consumption for three seasons…

In an age of digital navigation and walk ashore pontoons, how hard can the RYA Yachtmaster Offshore be? Theo Stocker prepared to take the test to find out Many very competent and highly experienced yachtsmen and women don’t have any qualifications at all and are content to keep it that way, but for some reason,…

James Stevens considers a problem sent in by a Yachting Monthly reader who asks how to to avoid this collision in fog while sailing a yacht Martin and Barbara, along with their teenage son, Rob, have sailed across to the Channel Islands from the Solent in their 10m yacht. Rob has crewed regularly and already…

Rigging a preventer or using a boom brake is just good seamanship when sailing downwind, but doing so badly is asking for trouble, says Rachael Sprot A well-designed preventer system is just as important as any other part of the rigging, but it’s often an afterthought, sometimes little more than an old mooring line tied…

A sailing newbie moves her hands from the keyboard to the furling line, surfing learning curves. Jenny Jasper dives into a Competent Crew course, surfacing with a love for yachting. When I signed up to improve my sailing knowledge via an RYA Competent Crew course, I didn’t realise it would involve gasping at fins breaking…

Accident reports make sobering reading, but if we want to sail downwind safely, then it pays to learn from gybes gone wrong, says Rachael Sprot There are few incidents on board more destructive than a crash gybe. The power unleashed when the wind catches the wrong side of the mainsail is hard to overstate, and…