About Us

Classic Sailor: A website for sailors, by sailors

Classic Sailor is a website about seamanship in seaworthy boats: GRP, wood and other materials. Ours is a broad approach aimed at sailors who enjoy some of the traditions of sailing and we cover a wide range of boating activities, from rowing to Tall Ships, yachts and workboats, events, news and maritime culture.
We welcome new writing especially if it inspires us and our readers to make the best of our boats! So your cruising stories are very welcome! We also welcome news of the many brilliant events and festivals or features passing on the skills and experience that characterise and differentiate the classic sailor. So we love good practical stories or how-to features as well.
We began as a magazine in 2015, but we were still a start-up company when our founder David Walker died in the summer of 2017 and from December 2017 we have been publishing news and features online.

How to use this site:

The News is carried on our front page; keep scrolling down to see more news. Go-to-News is from our friends in industry and can be found on the front page and in our Go-to Guide directory. The directory is divided in categories and by area and is specialised for yachtsmen, boaters, boat restorers and marine art.

We run a range of features – Our Stories which can also be found using the Our stories button on the navigation bar, or clicking the porthole on the front page.

Events are also found on the navigation bar and we try to keep up with a lot of Events so we welcome submissions – be it a boat jumble or a regatta. Please write to editor@classicsailor.com.

All 18 of our print issues are now online; click: HERE. Also please see our archive using the navigate button or pasting this url into your browser: https://classicsailor.com/magazine-archive/

You can also see a synopsis of all the magazines in our archive on this link: CS ARCHIVE

You can still buy single paper copies of many of our past issues from this website. Just click on the SHOP button – which is also on our homepage.

Fair winds! Dan Houston – Editor

Some of Classic Sailor’s contributors

Dan Houston

A experienced print journalist on newspapers and magazines since 1986, Dan is a lifelong sailor who taught night school navigation for 12 years and has instructed on practical courses. He edited Classic Boat for 15 years and likes talking about old boats.

Peter Willis

An experienced print journalist and sub editor Peter is known for all his work with the Nancy Blackett Trust, and now lives in Woodbridge in walking distance of the Deben.

Guy Venables

Guy Venables has had a varied career. He was a reporter and cartoonist for Classic Boat and has also worked for Private Eye, The Spectator and Punch for 25 years. He spent ten years as a stand up comedian and is now writing comedy for Radio 4 and TV. He has a passion for cocktails and other peoples’ wine cellars and is the only CS contributor who has had death threats from ISIS. He has been pronounced dead twice.

Andrew Bray

Andrew Bray sails his 26ft (8m) fusion classic gaff yawl Maggie May out of Chichester and has become a firm fan of the gaff rig. A lifetime sailor, he is well known as the ex-editor of both Yachting Monthly and Yachting World.

Nick Beck

Ex IT consultant Nick Beck packed up life in the City to commission and skipper the new Pilot Cutter Amelie Rose, which he has run as a successful charter vessel since 2009.

Sam Llewellyn

Sam Llewellyn is a maritime author of 17 novels and 14 children’s books whose style has been described as Patrick O’Brian meets Daphne Du Maurier!
His writing is informed by his own sailing experiences, especially in small gaffers like his Cornish Shrimper which he has cruised to several out-of-the-way places.
He also edits and runs the Marine Quarterly – a digest on maritime affairs

Contributors

Get in touch

If you’d like to contribute to Classic Sailor then please get in touch by emailing editor@classicsailor.com