Features

• Rhythm of cruising life
  Living the bluewater sailor?s life isn?t all dreams: Tom Jackson contrasts the joys of passage-making with the stresses of shore life and everyday chores

• Song of the Solent
  A new pilot book for the Solent has been published in the YM Cruising Companion series. Author Derek Aslett reveals his favourite spots in this classic cruising ground to Dick Durham

• Light-savers
  The YM team test 16 lifebuoy lights, costing from £11.95 to £135. Which were the best and which failed the test? Toby Hodges reports with some surprising results

• And did he take sugar?
  Fred Lockey recalls a strange encounter with a mystery runaway yacht in the Tréguier River, North Brittany

• Gastro-navigation
  Some yachtsmen are more likely to perish through starvation than drowning. Paul Gelder recounts some galley horrors, Patricia Perkins tells how she was left with two cans of beans after an ocean passage and Miranda Delmar-Morgan offers a cook?s confession

• Westcoasting part 3
  Ken Endean cruises from Cornwall?s River Camel across the Bristol Channel to the rocky south-west corner of Wales

• Chart software part 3
  Simon Jinks and the YM team look at 10 software navigation package companies and pick the best buys

• Destinations: Morlaix
  Peter Cumberlidge discovers that Morlaix, one of the largest towns in North Brittany, has the slowest pulse and the grandest river estuary

• Crustacean crisis
  Carol O?Shea battles with an antifouling- resistant super barnacle with squatter?s claims on her boat

• Write of passage
  The three sailors who won the 2002 YM/RYA Cruising Log Competition open their pages to Dick Durham

• Copper bottomed
  Mike Kopman examines copper-rich alternatives to paint, including a new system to cover your hull in copper foil
  

Sailing Skills

• A Question of Seamanship
  Tide timing into a Brittany anchorage

• Learning Curve ? skipper overboard!
  Noel Barrott (skipper) and his daughter Sina describe their worst nightmare

• Yachtmaster Class
  Happy crew handling, by Tom Cunliffe

• Better Boat Handling
  Sail trim part 2 ? Simon Jinks on how to get the best from your mainsail

• Sailing quiz
  Win one of 10 Ocean Safety AQ98 lifejacket lights worth £25 each

• Knots
  The mooring hitch, by Geoffrey Budworth

• Sea Sense
  A skipper should learn to recognise the point of no return, writes Des Sleightholme
  

On Test

• Feeling 44
  She has a novel interior and French builders Kirié claim she is the largest production lifting-keel yacht you can buy. James Jermain sails her
• JS9000
  Mike Kopman revels in pure daysailing joy at 15 knots aboard this Aussie wonder

Every Month

• Editorial

• On Watch
  The best sailing news pages
  
  
• Readers? letters

• YM Books

• YM subscriptions

• Any Questions?

• Next month

• Libby Purves
  Drunk in charge?

• Blue Water Letter
  Niki Perryman takes a sprint across the Pacific

• New Gear

• A-Z of second-hand boats
  Continuing the Ns ? the Newbridges and Nicholsons
• Around the coast

• Property

• The Confessional