I subscribe to too many sailing magazines. I have been reading SAIL for 15+ years, Cruising World and Lats and Atts for 5 years and frankly the last thing I needed to do was start subscribing to another magazine, so that’s exactly what I did.
For Christmas I got a subscription to the venerable British sailing magazine Yachting Monthly. Brit readers of this blog will know this but for US readers, let me tell you unequivocally that Yachting Monthly kicks the other magazines ass. You can read the online version at yachtingmonthly.com and YBW.com a more extensive site that incorporates sister magazines.
The writers are better. Tom Cunliffe, Libby Purves and Nigel Calder write engaging, instructive and very keepable articles about all aspects of sailing. OK, they most write about cruising but that’s what appeals to me.
Sadly, with the advertising recession the US magazines have been getting thinner. Yachting Monthly seems to be as fat and as chock-full of goodness as it always has been. Take the latest edition: Nigel Calder on how to mange your batteries; the beauty of sailing in Scotland with first-hand accounts for cruisers; Tom Cunliffe on Braidline eye-splicing, cruising the West country, an broad review of nautical iphone apps; an detailed cruising guide to Burnham and best of all their monthly feature called “Me & My Chart Table” – Take Me Home Mama!
They also do a 100 point test on new boats and rate them in a very easy to compare way.
The only obvious downer is that it’s UK and Euro-centric so the cruising guides are fun to read but not places I will cruising to any time soon. The boat and gear prices are in pounds and euros and just reinforces how bloody expensive everything is the UK.