Trawler Lifestyle | PassageMaker Magazine & Events

Here's a useful tip: you can learn a great deal about a cruising yacht by seeing how she rides on the hook. Spending a day or, even better, a night at anchor can reveal many things that are linked directly to her qualities of seaworthiness. It's not a usual ingredient of most sea trials, but it can be illuminating.

It was 2 p.m. on a brilliant blue September day in the Pacific Northwest as I made the turn out of Saratoga Passage, heading for the big, bending curve that would lead us around the easternmost coast of Whidbey Island and into Skagit Bay. I was at the helm of a new North Pacific 28-hull number one, in fact-bound for the buoys that would lead us into Swinomish Channel.