Not all of us devour every local sailing magazine from cover to cover. So I thought I would occasionally post here about items of cruising interest both in paper magazines as well as from online news and information sources.
Cruising Helmsman
This is by far my favourite cruising magazine. It manages to have a good mix of practical and travel articles. Caroline Strainig does a stirling job producing such an excellent magazine, particularly considering the difficult economics of magazine publishing in Australia.
I just received the August Issue in the mail today and one of the gems this month is the "Someone Overboard" article which provides a comprehensive overview of safety devices in time for Fathers Day. Well... let's face it, you'd be in trouble giving them for Mothers Day, no matter how 'politically correct' the article's title. And one day, web sites will be this interesting and relevant...
Speaking of web sites, Sail-world is a regular destination for many of us. And since Nancy became its cruising editor, we've seen an improved "signal to noise ratio" there. Having said that, I dislike many things about the Sail-world site, its flashing ads, the idiosyncratic site navigation and the indistinguishable mix of PR fluff and real articles. There must be a better way to extract money from advertisers than to annoy their customers! And I wish Nancy kept her log at the Blackwattle site rather than write about its progress on the Sail-world site. Still, it is a comprehensive Australian sailing site and they're in there having a go... By the way, Sail-world's Australian Cruising headlines automatically appear in the right hand column of the Cruising News page.
A sentimental favourite is Afloat, the "priceless" boating magazine. It's a consistently interesting read with a good mix of historical and topical articles. Importantly, there is an online version with all the same articles, so you can read it even though you missed picking it up at the Club. July's article on Newcastle Harbour is well worth a read.
Enjoy,
Marius
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