Venturing the Great Loop as a family creates an everlasting bond dry land never could. It was a journey filled with teamwork, home schooling, and helping hands along the way. We talk to the intrepid boaters for the inside scoop on their adventure. Listen in the player below ..read more

Grady-White totally overhauled the 376 model to create a capable fishing boat with luxurious appointments. In the boating world, you sometimes come across an “updated” model that offers little more than a new hull color or some other insignificant changes. The Grady-White Canyon 386 definitely does not fall into that category. While it’s built upon the company’s existing 376 hull form, it is a very different boat. Grady-White Canyon 386 Grady-White plugged numerous design elements from its flagship Canyon 456 into the 386 to give the boat a luxurious feel. The most notable change, however, is ..read more

Former physics teacher David Borton has always taken an interest in two things: science and the water. Growing up, he spent a lot of his time on the lakes of New York’s Adirondacks and began earning his freshwater sea legs around the same time he learned to walk. As life moved forward, he became obsessed with his second love, fundamental science. So, when the oil crisis hit in 1974, Borton’s research-driven mind sought solutions. He set his eyes on alternative energy, namely the thermonuclear reactor 93 million miles away from Planet Earth we call the Sun. Solaris and Borton’s latest fiberglas ..read more

As a backyard boatbuilder, Kevin Fitzke tips his cap to the Golden Era with a model called Miss Moonshine. In a small, half-moon Quonset hut built on an old farm in Winsted, Minnesota is a man who builds wooden boats, one at a time, twice a year. The Quonset dweller’s name is Kevin Fitzke and his current creation goes by the name Miss Moonshine. Fitzke and Miss Moonshine have something in common: they don’t quite belong to the present. While they enjoy many of the comforts that exist in the 21st century, like modern tools and design programs, their hearts (if a boat had one, and some might arg ..read more

What does it really take to get your captain’s license? And is it worth the effort? Chris Dixon takes the classes, marks the charts and breaks it all down. This story’s been a long time coming. It started on a freezing California morning back in February of 1999. I had flown from my home in San Clemente up to an infamous Bay Area surf spot called Mavericks to cover the Quiksilver Men Who Ride Mountains surf contest. Climbing aboard a commercial fishing vessel, I nervously joined a wisecracking crew of journalists and big wave surfers. As we nudged to the edge of the thundering surf zone, I mar ..read more

The first power cat from a legacy builder lures monohull devotees seeking more space. I’ve had some great cruising experiences on power catamarans. Those trips introduced me to beautiful islands and were always aboard chartered boats—vessels that averaged 45 to 50 feet in length and stretched as wide as 21 feet. The beam felt tremendous to me, so much that I was relieved to give the helm over to my husband when we got into a sticky docking situation. He had the better boat-handling skills in the relationship, so the decision made sense. The truth is, those twin-hulled cruisers were intimidatin ..read more

This article originally appeared in the April 2024 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine ..read more

The modern fashion for plumb bows is the bane of boat show crews on a choppy day. However careful the helmsman might be, at some point in even the shortest demo ride, those bluff forward sections are going to raise a cloud of salty spray, and the boat will need a complete wash down before the next customer can be welcomed on board. Speeding along in the new Apreamare, I sympathized. The yard takes its styling cues from the indigenous ‘gozzo’ fishing boats of the Bay of Naples, so its craft are not only extraordinarily beamy but also impressively dry, thanks to those traditional virtues, a rake ..read more

The English are a hardy sort, and they have to be to enjoy boating on the English Channel. That can be one seriously nasty piece of water—I know, I’ve sailed there. The Channel has also kept a long list of generals from invading across it, from Medina-Sidoña to Napoleon onward. But here’s my take on this new Sunseeker: if Mr. Bonaparte had a fleet of Sunseeker Ocean 182s, they would be speaking French in London today. Sunseeker Ocean 182 I don’t normally start with a sea trial but, in the case of my outing on this U.K. builder’s latest model, the Gulf Stream was doing its best to imitate the E ..read more

Get Moving When your boat sits still for too long, algae, grass and barnacles take up residence on the bottom, hurting performance and efficiency. Help prevent this by going boating often. Hull and prop fouling is not only an eyesore; slime and barnacles put a serious damper on your boat’s performance. Like almost everything, including people, boats stay in good working order when they get used frequently, and they fall into disrepair when they don’t. Metal parts corrode, hoses and V-belts get dry and brittle, fluids leak and wiring mysteriously breaks, usually in a place that’s very hard to r ..read more