Cruising Helmsman

IF you can keep your head, while all around you others are losing theirs ,,,, maybe you are not fully underestanding the gravity of the situation! It is an old joke but still gets a laugh, especially with yachties. Sailors are renowned for keeping th

WORLD renowned Australian yachtsman Jon Sanders AO OBE has passed the halfway point of his eleventh solo circumnavigation of the world, overcoming myriad problems including the COVID-19 pandemic. The 80 year old sailing legend is sailing due south of

CORAL Sea Marina Resort announced renewal of its platinum sponsorship for Volunteer Marine Rescue Whitsundays, committing to another three-year sponsorship. The Airlie resort is now entering its second term as platinum sponsor, after securing the nam

TAFE NSW graduate Arakel Hamamdjian pursued the job of his dreams and became the skipper of his own vessel. Now he has worked his way up from showboat waiter to proud owner of his own business, Magic Cruises. Now he wants others to consider a career

Hi Phil, I write in response to the 'Survey Says' letter from Scott Clarke published in the July 2020 edition of Cruising Helmsman as I too have fallen foul of a rogue survey inspection. I employed a well-regarded, or so I thought, surveyor from the

I thought I had a partner … I do not, for the man in question loves a yacht. They say man’s best friend is his dog … it is not, Man’s best friend is his yacht. My best friend is my dog. I write in my journal, he writes in his log He sleeps on his yac

Modern boats are extremely power hungry and David Williams’s Bavaria 46 Galadriel is no exception. With four fridges, a microwave and all the usual twenty-first century instrumentation to look after, one of the first things David fitted was a battery

WE began our trans-Pacific voyage in Wellington, New Zealand and over a twelve month period we planned to sail to French Polynesia then on to Hawai’i before finally arriving in Alaska in summer the following year. We had left Thailand some years befo

WHEN my husband announced he wanted to get another boat, I was not surprised. He had been trawling the internet for weeks during the Covid-19 lockdown, this time in search of a big catamaran at a bargain price. When we sold our previous vessel six mo

THE 34.14 metre custom sail training schooner Vela was launched by Marsun Public Company in Thailand at its Samutprakan shipyard. “We just finished sea trials aboard Vela, our new sail training vessel and sister ship to STV Argo, also built at the Ma

THE Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) is launching a focused inspection campaign targeting cargo securing arrangements on container ships visiting Australian ports. This inspection campaign is being initiated in response to several serious

The lockdown period has not stalled any of the projects at the shipyard. Announced in September 2019, the Samana 59 will be presented afloat at the Cannes Yachting Festival, named after an island in the Caribbean seas. This catamaran has large living

IN the northern hemisphere summer of 2014 the sailing yacht Drina completed a successful east-to-west transit attempt of the fabled northwest passage. Four years later, two of Drina’s loyal crew rejoined her skipper Michael Thurston for an attempt to

FOR many years I have been using a variety of laptop and tablet computers to run chartplotting software. The laptop arrangement has the great advantage of being able to have a back-up at a reasonable cost, not to mention portability. I have taken my

NAUTOR opened in Finland 1966 and quickly gained the reputation of an excellent solid built yacht under the Swan label, which would comfortably and safely take you anywhere in the world. They even won the first Whitbread round the world yacht race. B