The Coastal Boating Top 10 Lists

February 2006

Top 10 Marine Publications – Print (US but not regional, mainly sail)

1. Cruising World
2. Sailing World
3. Practical Sailor
4. DIY
5. Latitudes & Attitudes
6. Soundings
7. Sailing
8. Sail
9. Seaworthy
10. Blue Water Sailing

This was a difficult month for us. This list is a tough one to create and we will no doubt be rethinking our selections and adding to the choices, if not breaking the list into three for fairness. Okay, let's look as fairness. First, this is a composite list for sail as we are primarily cruising sailors. It does not cover the full selection of power vessel magazines, online magazines, yachting, racing and boatbuilding magazines. Perhaps we bit off too much.

So here is how we thought about it. For our first list, we would concentrate on what we know. In the United States, among magazines that are general interest for sailors but may cover both sail and power, and may cover both cruising and racing, we ranked these as the top selections.

Cruising World has the largest circulation, and in our opinion, the best editorial content of any sailing magazine in the US (that's an important qualifier becasue as time goes on, we will be adding international categories and as far as our opinion goes, their coverage of sailing is far superior and more varied than anything we get here). Sailing World is the premiere racing magazine and although cruisers outnumber racers to a large extent, it is important to recognize an important niche in the coverage.

Practical Sailor is in the number three slot because it is so powerful in shaping opinions about products available to sailors. In our opinion, it's quality has been inconsistent in the past couple of years so we are watching carefully.

DIY follows right behind, because they have the most amazing coverage of the things we all have to deal with onboard: things to fix. And even if we don't do it ourselves, it's worth it to learn what is supposed to be done so we can avoid those hugely frustrating experiences with boat yards.

Lats & Atts is right up, and earning legitimacy every day. When you hear manufacturers sayig things like, "wow, do they have a following" and "how are they keeping their ad pages up when everyone else's are down?", you know there's something a brewin'. And besides, L&A is just pure fun, whether you admit it in public or not!

Sounding being in the 6th slot might be surprising to some, but not to us. The quality and diversity of their editorial is refreshing and has been getting better and better with every issue. We can't wait to read it because we know what we read there we won't see anywhere else. Kudos!

Sailing is beautiful and Sail is a mainstay. Yet both are very similar. Interestingly, Seaworthy, the Boat US magazine, in on the list because it's got educational value that is not available anywhere else. Where else can you learn to prevent all those problems that cause boats to sink?

Blue Water Sailing made the list because they cover cruising destinations that are off the beaten path.

Send us your thoughts! And we promise to rethink them for next year, including perhaps a break down into categories of sail-cruising, sail-racing, power boats-recreational, power boats-racing, and cross category.

Top Ten Online E-Zines

1. Scuttlebutt
2. Sail World USA
3. E-USSailing
4. The Daily Sail
5. Yachting Universe
6. Reed’s Report
7. Ocean Navigator Online
8. T2Productions
9. UK-Halsey Newsletter
10. Virtual Spectator

I don't know. I think we have some work to do here. Scuttlebutt and Sail World were a close 1 and 2, but the rest... Please send suggestions.