About Pacific Yachting

Pacific Yachting

Overview

Pacific Yachting is a monthly consumer magazine for recreational boaters on Canada's West Coast, published in Vancouver by OP Media Group Ltd. Written for the powerboat and sailing community of British Columbia and the U.S. Pacific Northwest, it covers the cruising grounds of the Salish Sea, the Gulf and San Juan Islands, the Sunshine Coast, Vancouver Island and the passages north to Desolation Sound and beyond — some of the most celebrated sheltered cruising water in the world.

The magazine appears in print twelve times a year as a glossy, perfect-bound title sold on newsstands and by subscription, and it is supported by a daily website, a twice-monthly email newsletter, digital editions and an annual marine directory, the Boaters Blue Pages & Marina Guide. The publisher dates the magazine's founding to 1968, and describes it as the voice of boating on the West Coast — a claim OP Media Group repeated in 2025 when it noted that Pacific Yachting had served as the voice of boaters in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest for more than 60 years.

History

Pacific Yachting was launched in British Columbia in the 1960s — its publisher's media kits date the founding to 1968 — by Interpress Publishing, according to an account published by its sister magazine Canadian Boating in October 2025. That magazine's retrospective, written for its own 50th anniversary in January 2026, credits Rex Armstead and Gerry Kidd with launching Pacific Yachting a few years before the same team created Canadian Yachting, the national title now published as Canadian Boating, at the end of the 1960s. The West Coast title was an immediate success and grew into the region's dominant boating magazine, written by many of Canada's best-known boating writers and built around first-hand knowledge of British Columbia's coast.

The magazine is today published by OP Media Group Ltd. of Vancouver, which describes itself as a leading force in Canadian niche publishing for over 30 years, under its president, Mark Yelic. In the magazine's January 2025 masthead, Yelic was listed as publisher and president, with Sam Burkhart as editor and Peter Robson — a contributor to West Coast boating journalism for decades — writing the magazine's powerboat reviews.

The group's defining recent move came on September 1, 2025, when OP Media Group acquired three of Canada's best-known marine brands — Canadian Boating, Boating Industry Canada and the PORTS Cruising Guides — bringing four cornerstone marine titles together under one Vancouver publisher. Announcing the deal, Yelic said the brands were deeply rooted in the Canadian recreational boating landscape and that OP intended to elevate their reach and relevance for the next generation of marine enthusiasts and professionals. Both Pacific Yachting and Canadian Boating continue to work with CanBoat / NautiSavoir, formerly the Canadian Power and Sail Squadrons, to promote safe boating education across Canada.

Content and Coverage

Pacific Yachting's editorial formula mixes cruising journalism with practical seamanship. Destination features — the "gunkholes," anchorages and marine parks of the B.C. coast — sit alongside boat reviews under the On Board banner, do-it-yourself and maintenance projects such as its On the Hard series, gear guides and product tests, fishing and provisioning advice, and coverage of the region's sailing scene, from club racing to the Van Isle 360 International Yacht Race. Regular columns and long-form narratives by West Coast writers, among them Marianne Scott and Peter Robson, give the magazine a strongly bylined character, and its reporting extends to community institutions such as the Lieutenant Governor's Awards for Maritime Achievement.

The publisher's 2026 editorial calendar shows how the year is structured: a season preview in January, a boat-show and new-boats issue in February, spring commissioning in March, a marine electronics special and gear guide in April, an eco-boating special for Safe Boating Month in May, a small-boat special in June, summer cruising through July and August, autumn cruising in September, fall maintenance in October, a chartering-the-world issue in November and a holiday gift guide in December. The September 2026 issue was previewed on the magazine's website on September 1, 2026, and new articles were appearing on the site through that month. The magazine also returns regularly to its own archive and community: a January 2026 feature revisited a recreation of Joshua Slocum's Spray that Pacific Yachting had first covered in November 2005, and its sailing coverage in 2026 has included multi-part practical series such as Doug Macleod's strategies for singlehanded sailing.

Around the magazine sit its classified and brokerage pages for used boats, a real-estate section for waterfront property, and the Boaters Blue Pages & Marina Guide, an annual print directory that reached its 30th volume in 2025 and lists some 1,500 marine businesses and 260 marinas, with a searchable online counterpart.

Audience and Reach

Pacific Yachting's readers are boat owners and prospective buyers in British Columbia and the U.S. Pacific Northwest. The audience figures the publisher markets to advertisers are its own: its 2026 media kit reports distribution of 13,000 copies per issue across twelve issues a year, 9,994 website pageviews a month, 4,000 subscribers to its twice-monthly newsletter and 19,323 social-media followers, which it sums as a total brand reach of 46,317 boaters per month. The same media kit bills the magazine as the number-one selling boating magazine on Canadian newsstands and as wholly owned, produced and printed in Canada. These are the publisher's own claims, presented here as such; no independent audit of the magazine's circulation is published.

Digital Presence

Pacificyachting.com operates as the magazine's daily companion, publishing destination stories, racing and community news, boat reviews and sneak previews of upcoming print issues; articles dated through September 2026 — among them a cruising feature on the Harmony Islands Marine Park and news of applications opening for the 2027 Van Isle 360 race — confirm the site is active and current. Independent magazine directories likewise continue to list Pacific Yachting in 2026 as an active print-and-digital title published by OP Media Group. The site links readers to the digital edition of the magazine, hosts an events calendar, classified listings and a boats-for-sale feature, and connects to the online Boaters Blue Pages directory, which the publisher describes as a searchable database of more than 1,800 marine services. The twice-monthly email newsletter and the magazine's Facebook, Instagram and X accounts complete the digital package the publisher sells to advertisers in bundled print-and-online campaigns.

Ownership and Organisation

Pacific Yachting is published by OP Media Group Ltd., an independently owned Canadian publisher based in Vancouver, whose president is Mark Yelic. OP Media Group also publishes Canadian Boating, Boating Industry Canada and the PORTS Cruising Guides, acquired in September 2025, making it the country's largest dedicated marine-media publisher by title count. The Pacific Yachting masthead published in January 2025 listed Yelic as publisher and president, Sam Burkhart as editor, Arran Yates as art director and Tyrone Stelzenmuller as director of sales, with advertising, circulation and digital staff in the same Vancouver office. The magazine carries the ISSN 0030-8986.

Contact and Availability

Pacific Yachting is published monthly and is available by subscription — priced at $48 for one year in Canada and the United States in the magazine's January 2025 rate card — on newsstands, and in digital form. OP Media Group Ltd. is located at 802–1166 Alberni Street, Vancouver, BC V6E 3Z3; the magazine can be reached by telephone at (604) 428-0259, its subscription hotline is 1-800-663-7611, and its website is pacificyachting.com.