Cover Stories

London Boat Show
People’s choice: see how three couples on a budget shopped for their dream boat at Earl’s Court. PLUS: we make Miles Kendall a notional Lottery millionaire and ask, if It Could Be You, what would you choose?

Top gear
The YM team finds gadgets and gizmos to suit all pockets, from Musto’s Windstopper Snug to a Foldaway Survival RIB

Two days one summer
Tom Cunliffe, homeward bound in his new boat, confronts May gales across the Atlantic… and relishes the tranquillity of a lazy September sail in the Solent

Sail power
The mainsail. In Part Three of our major series, Peter Nielsen examines the sailplan’s workhorse; a complicated beast to trim and shape

Stop the world…we want to get on!
Paul Gelder meets a flotilla of adventurous couples sailing 28,000 miles around the world in the club-style Blue Water Rally

Onshore pilot
Mark Fishwick explores the colourful port of Tobermory on Scotland’s Isle of Mull

Mission control
The nerve centre of a yacht is her cockpit. Duncan Kent looks at what makes an ideal one and offers 10 tips to improve yours. And designer Adrian Thompson reveals the fly-by-wire cockpit he created for Pete Goss’s giant catamaran

King’s Ransome
It was love at first sight when David Jones saw the Peter Duck class ketch ? originally conceived by a somewhat less enthusiastic Arthur Ransome as ‘a marine bathchair’ for his old age

Blue water letter
Hugh Marriott, basking at anchor in exotic Bali, recalls a naked truth, admires a satisfying sheerline and discusses ‘stander uppers’

It’s my party…
…and I’ll cry if I want to. Birthday girl Jill Knight sails alone across 850 miles of Indian Ocean and finds passagemaking takes its toll on her social life

Also in this Issue:

• Holiday offer
  
  A 12-night cruise to the Land of the Midnight Sun
• Libby Purves
  
  Libby sees her life story scattered among the aisles of the London Boat Show
• A question of seamanship. A safe bearing?
  
  Yachtmaster class: If in doubt, suggests Tom Cunliffe, drop your main
• Readers’ tips
  
  We pass on your good ideas. PLUS: Des Sleightholme on how to stamp out boat bugs
• Learning curve
  
  Sandy Watson on losing his mast off Portugal
• Reading a weather map
  
  David Houghton unravels the mysteries of synoptic charts. Next month: how to draw your own chart
• Seamanship tips
  
  Tide-strapped; the ferry glide
• Win a GPS
  
  Test your chartwork with Tom Cunliffe’s pilotage quiz
• Taking the plunge
  
  Peter Bartlett and his wife Kay deliver their new yacht home to Lytham – a challenging passage from Hamble
• Wild child
  
  Second-hand focus casts off with the lively MG Spring 25
• Around the coast
  
  Correspondents report from your local cruising ground

Regulars

• Editorial
  
  
• On Watch
  
  
• Reader offer
  
  
• YM books
  
  
• Looking around
  
  
• YM Diary
  
  
• Gear test
  
  
• Around the Coast
  
  
• Subscriptions
  
  
• Reader’s letters
  
  
• The Confessional