There are helpful marine navigation apps that make it easier to get from point A to point B, and there are fishing apps that will boost your catch rate, but another variety of app that all boaters need to know about are marine weather apps.

A personal watercraft, or PWC, delivers an experience that’s a cross between a boat and a motorcycle. Like a motorcycle, a PWC is quick and very agile, and it puts you in closer contact with the water and the environment than any boat.

Whether your home state—or the state you happen to be visiting—has hundreds or thousands of miles of coastline, you have an amazing advantage over landlubbers. You can arrive in style at a dockside restaurant. There’s simply nothing better than pulling up to an eatery in your own boat. Equally advantageous, you rarely, if ever, have an issue “parking.”

Buying a boat is not the same experience it was before the COVID pandemic, which shouldn’t be a surprise—very few things we do today are. But luckily, the internet can help to mitigate the adjustment. You can investigate, research, and yes even shop for boats online. And a big part of the experience is virtual boat shows.

Learning about boat electronics may seem a bit daunting, but the tech at your helm will help make running and navigating your boat easier than ever. Thanks to modern marine electronics and navigational instruments, captaining your boat is far less complex and confusing than it once was.

Center consoles and walkaround boats are two different boat styles with a similar mission but a different execution. Both boat styles are designed to support serious angling, and both are available in a wide range of size, from 18 feet to 30 feet and even longer.

Picking only 10 of the best boating destinations in a country as big as the US is like telling someone to choose only 10 foods to eat for the rest of their lives—however, as difficult as it was, we came up with a list of perennial favorites where sailors, power cruisers, anglers and watersports buffs flock to for seasonal or year-round boating.

Seasickness is an uncomfortable physical reaction to motion and it’s the result of mixed messages between the eyes, ears and sensory nerves. What you see may not match what your inner ear is relating to your brain regarding balance, and what your feet are saying you should do to stay upright. Depending on circumstances, seasickness can strike anyone (even those who aren’t usually susceptible) and when it hits, it takes no prisoners.

There are a lot of different types of boats to choose from, and the nomenclature for distinguishing one from another can get confusing. The way to tell boats apart is partly by appearance and partly by their intended use. One subset is the express cruiser, or express boat, that is quite popular as a fast cruising boat and is part of the motor yacht/power cruiser family.

Dual console boats are incredibly popular, especially among family boaters who want to enjoy saltwater fishing or freshwater fishing one day, and watersports or day cruising the next. But this type of boat has gone through some major evolutional changes in the past decade.