Sommaire pour February 2018 de SAIL

AkzoNobel crewman Brad Farrand goes aloft midway through Leg 2 of the 2017-18 Volvo Ocean Race, from Lisbon, Portugal, to Cape Town, South Africa, to inspect the boat’s gear in anticipation of entering the Southern Ocean. Like every other crew—whether it be aboard a couple’s cruiser or a square-rigged windjammer—the sailors competing in the VOR know they have to remain ever-vigilant for chafe and wear if they want to keep their boats in one piece all the way to the finish. For the latest on this year’s race, go to sailmagazine.com/racing/volvo-ocean-race.…

Jeanneau’s line of Sun Odyssey family cruising boats has been at the core of its identity as a mass-production boatbuilder for several decades now. In introducing this latest iteration of the SO brand, which at 44ft is right in the strike zone of many buyers, Jeanneau has reimagined what a contemporary cruising boat can be and established a new template with which it will remake the entire SO line. The boat has already been quite successful. Sales are booming, and the new SO 440 was certainly the most visited production boat in its size range at the 2017 U.S. Sailboat Show in Annapolis. It also a scored a nod from SAIL’s Best Boats judges as Best Cruising Monohull from 40 to 50_ DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION There’s nothing particularly revolutionary going…

TEAMO AUTOLOCK TETHER Few accidents offshore are more viscerally disturbing than the thought of going overboard, especially when sailing alone. Which is perhaps why the new TeamO Autolock tether struck such a chord. In use, this clever and much-needed product solves two very real problems that are inherent in the design of standard tethers—the way they can get underfoot, and the way they can leave you dangling a overboard at a fair distance even after successfully catching you. Better still, because of the way it locks in at any length—similar to the seatbelt in your car—in many cases the Autolock will keep you well short of ever going over the side in the first place: something West Marine’s Tom Burden found especially appealing, being a veteran of the Singlehanded Transpac.…

This past fall, for the first time in more than 20 years, I took a boat down the “Ditch,” following the Intracoastal Waterway from Norfolk, Virginia, to Beaufort, North Carolina. In a sense it was my very first time, as I was the skipper instead of crew, so I was more aware of the challenges involved. Most of these involve draft, but I wasn’t too worried about that, as Lunacy, my Boréal 47, can float in just 3ft of water with her centerboard up. What did have me worried was vertical clearance, as Lunacy’s air draft is 64ft 11in, just 1in under the standard 65ft clearance for fixed bridges on the ICW. One thing I had forgotten is how much fun driving the Ditch can be. In the objective sense,…

Ever read those Patrick O’Brian books with Jack Aubrey and his doctor companion, Stephen Maturin? I have, and I think they’re great. My day job is as a professor with a PhD in literature, so I am supposed to dismiss such words as Master and Commander or Desolation Island as light entertainment. But I am also a sailor, and the depictions of nature, the portraits of characters afloat and the excitement of choices made under pressure never fail to gather my applause. Sure, there’s naval warfare and swordfighting. But mostly there’s the steady pull of sails, and the entertaining collision of personalities. Now I am no Jack Aubrey, nor was I meant to be. Aubrey is a nautical prodigy, seaborne from childhood and with a head for both heights and…

For a week or two after Hurricane Irma ravaged the Leeward Islands in early September, no one on the French island of St. Barthélemy thought the 10th annual Cata-Cup—scheduled for mid-November, just 10 weeks later—had a snowball’s chance in Hades of being staged. Most of the hotels and resorts on the island had been so badly damaged by the combination of extreme winds, torrential rain and storm surge that it will take many months, in some cases a year or more, to repair or rebuild. The beachfronts had been ravaged, their trademark palm trees toppled or stripped of their fronds, the roofs had blown clean off many houses. And yet, on the advertised start date, 47 crews from 16 countries pushed their carbon fiber Formula 18 cats off the beach…

French boatbuilder, Groupe Beneteau, never introduces just one new idea. Instead, it likes to package concepts together and give them different names, so that when a new model is launched, owners can choose the combination that works best for them. With the introduction of the Oceanis 51.1 (the fifth model in the “.1” line that will replace the Oceanis 48) Beneteau once again brings three different flavors to market for the racer (First), cruiser (Comfort) and daysailer (Easy). This targets three kinds of buyers with one hull design and adds flexibility that makes everyone feel catered to and special. No wonder Beneteau’s catchphrase is, “There’s an option for that.” DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION The three iterations share the same hull, but come with different interiors and rigging. The “Easy” daysailer comes…

A circumnavigation of Vancouver Island? That sounded like a great idea, so after a few months of planning, my friends Bridget, Jelski, Jonty and I quit our jobs in Auckland, New Zealand, and flew to Canada, where we joined Harry Miller and Sarah White aboard their 1983 Canadian Sailcraft 36, Mamaku. We were fired up about the 800-mile voyage and ready for some adventure. The first day out from Oak Bay marina in Victoria, British Columbia, saw us covering a lot of ocean, flying through the beautiful Gulf Islands on a mighty spinnaker run. The day was also a great opportunity for us to get used to each other and the boat. To that end, the sleeping quarters in the quarterberth were improved significantly with the removal of a protruding…

I see him now at the bow, standing all Captain Morgan-like, one leg up on the pulpit, wet hair on his face, an outstretched arm pointing to shore. He’s sailed all the way across the Gulf of Mexico, as many of us have, to get here. Except he’s on a 16th century Spanish square-rigger, the leader of a fleet of 11, with 1,500 new settlers to provide for. It’s Tristán De Luna coming into Pensacola Bay five centuries ago, and he’s hoping to find what we all look for after we’ve come in from a rough passage. As cruisers, we are all, in our hearts, voyagers, explorers, settlers of a certain sort. We often brave new, unfamiliar inlets to drop anchor and stake our claim on new ground, and we…

Whether your plan is to go off sailing for a season, cruise for a couple of years or liveaboard indefinitely, working out how to get your finances in order can be daunting. Few people are wealthy enough to do these things without an income. In fact, there is a broad range of strategies for how individuals, couples and families are making it work to ful-fill their boating dreams: from the gamble of selling off everything to the ideal of sustaining a business while sailing the world. None of these leaps out as a particularly easy option, as controlling your financial stability while out on the sea requires time, effort and considerable common sense to be feasible. Get it wrong and your time spent in an island paradise could come screeching…

Every sailor, regardless of experience, feels some trepidation when meeting a new captain or crew for the first time. How well will their personalities fit? How do the others handle stressful situations? Will you live up to your own hype? These anxious thoughts were all racing through my mind as I approached my new captain. Then I found myself contemplating a somewhat unusual question: Do I bow or shake hands? I was in Japan. The serendipitous story of how I got there is a tale for another time, but suffice it to say that my jitters were exacerbated by being about as far from Kansas (ahem, Toronto) as I could get—so I hedged my bets and both bowed and shook hands at the same time. While the captain didn’t look…

Our Panama Canal transit from the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean went smoothly until the second day. On board our Norseman 447, Third Wish, were my husband, Jeff, our two crew Tom and Nick—both good sailors—Omar, our Panamanian line handler, and me. Omar told us he had been working in this position for seven years, doing around three trips per week. Line handlers are paid by the trip, not by the time spent transiting the canal, so they want to get into port as quickly as possible— which explains how we came to grief later. On a canal transit, boats must engage a canal agent who supplies the line handler(s) and a compulsory canal advisor, or pilot, who unlike the line handlers, will not stay on the boat if a…

My friends George and Ann have a lovely 50-year-old 44ft Hood/Maas steel sloop called Allez. When she was launched last spring, the old Perkins engine would not start, but they needed to get her to their marina on the other side of the harbor. That afternoon, I met Ann on the dock. She explained the predicament and asked if I would launch my dinghy and give Allez a tow. George is a wily old man: Ann is a refined, courteous, Southern Belle whose request would be hard to refuse. He needed a tow and knew how to get one. Somehow, I had to move their 18-ton boat, with my 10ft 6in dinghy and its 9.9hp outboard. If you’ve ever tried to tow a big boat behind a dinghy, you probably…

Ducking out of the pouring rain in Trinidad, Cuba, we ran smack into a thin man with a few missing teeth and a woven basket. He made room for us under the shelter and started suggesting in Spanish that we buy some food or beer from the bar upstairs. When we politely declined, he pulled a rooster out of his basket and posed for pictures. Our conversation was a mixture of pantomime and Spanglish when he suddenly and inexplicably broke into mangled Czech. I’m Czech. And the next thing I knew, I was having a conversation in Czech with a Cuban and translating into English for my friend. These are the kinds of things that happen in Cuba, and if you’re a fan of all things random, quirky and unexpected,…