Andy Turner suffers a debilitating heart condition while sailing his Bowman 46 offshore with his son and a friend, resulting in an HM Coastguard helicopter airlift from an RNLI lifeboat.
Learning from experience
A stroke off the Isles of Scilly: How a medical emergency left this skipper’s wife “hanging from a wire in a near gale”
Early July 2025 found my wife, Veronica, and I sailing in our Dufour 40, Spook from Falmouth in Cornwall to the Isles of Scilly, blissfully unaware of the dramatic rescue…
Craig Wood shares his biggest takeaways from his record-setting solo Pacific crossing
Before I set off on my solo sailing challenge, my wife suggested I take yeast. I remember saying, ‘Am I really gonna make bread when I’m out at the sea…
Sailing through a thunderstorm at Portland Bill: How I survived a solo knockdown
David Edgar experiences a knockdown on a fraught solo sail round Portland Bill as a gale gathers strength
‘My boat was a write-off’: Lessons learned from an on-the-water boat collision
Leo Heaney’s regular yacht club race night quickly turns dangerous after an unexpected boat collision. After seven months of repairs and frustration, here are the lessons learned.
‘We were sinking, mastless, and adrift’: The crucial lessons learned from my shakedown sail
Paul Hayes is shaken by a shakedown sail in the Bristol Channel when his junk-rigged Coromandel springs a leak, loses its mast and suffers a snarled prop
How a faulty chainplate turned a perfect sail into a dismasting disaster
I learned firsthand the risks of a faulty chainplate. Enjoying a perfect start to our Isles of Scilly adventure, my two friends and I set off aboard my 42ft yacht…
“A Force 8 gale turned the sea off Dover into a ‘cauldron of confusion’ that nearly overwhelmed our Halmatic 30”
Tim Butler had to struggle back to the port he'd just departed when his Helmatic 30 began rolling violently in steep waves and a sudden Force 8
What we learned picking up our first motorboat
Looking back at our disastrous first trip aboard our motorboat Kay, we were under-equipped and complete novices who were convinced we could bring her down the river from Wargrave to…
Making history in an Albin Vega 27 – Jazz Turner’s story
Adventurer and disabled sailor Jazz Turner reflects on her recent record-setting UK and Ireland circumnavigation
Force 10 in the Channel: ‘We took a colossal wave broadside, and the cockpit was suddenly knee-deep in water’
A routine Channel crossing became a nerve-shredding passage when a ferocious storm hit, as Ron Stride recalls
Embracing electronic navigation – one reluctant boater’s tale
Celestial navigation instructor Paul Jones reluctantly got to grips with electronic navigation and is now "out of the fog and into the future"
‘In a flash, I was hanging on the lifelines on the wrong side of the boat’
Solo sailor Tony Purcell discovered how quickly a tricky situation can develop when he fell overboard his 42ft yacht on a busy tidal river
Thames tidal lesson – getting stuck in the mud motorboating in central London
Faith Merrett gets stuck in the mud while cruising from Teddington to St Katharine Docks Marina in Central London aboard her Haines river cruiser
How a rogue water bottle led to a Mayday in a storm
Learning from experience: Steven Copeland reflects on how a rogue water bottle led to a stormy rescue off the coast of Pwllheli, north west Wales.
When your electronic navigation autoroute settings go wrong
Gilbert Park helps a fellow motorboater achieve his first voyage to the Channel Islands and gets a lesson in the perils of relying on electronic navigation
Lessons learned from a first Atlantic crossing
Ben Good, 60, swaps Drascombe pottering in the Suffolk estuaries for a “proper 60ft offshore yacht” to cross the North Atlantic
“I worried the mast might strike the rotor blades” – helicopter rescue from sailing boat
Talan Skeels-Piggins experiences a medical emergency in rough seas while attempting to sail around Britain in his Colvic UFO 34
“The boat was knocked down, our lifejackets inflated, and then we saw Keith in the water!”
A knockdown wave inflated the crew's lifejackets and broke the skipper's leg as they tried to rescue a man overboard in 3-4m waves and 45mph gusts close to shore
“Why changing to an electric motor was a disaster”
Felix Marks attempts to embrace a green future for his Tofinou 7, but his experiment with an electric motor proves costly when damp conditions prevail