Sommaire pour August 2018 de SAIL

The 39ft Concordia yawl Phalarope, built by Abeking & Rasmussen in 1952, beats to windward during a feeder race from Camden, Maine to Brooklin for the 2017 Eggemoggin Reach regatta. This year’s regatta starts on August 4 and is the place to go if you want to see the cream of the East Coast classic boat scene strut their stuff. More than 125 boats typically line up for the 15-mile race down Eggemoggin Reach, co-hosted by Rockport Marine and the Brooklin Boatyard and famed for the pre- and post-race parties. Go to erregatta.com for more details.…

On my living room wall I have a print by Canadian maritime artist John Stobart that I inherited from my father. Stobart specializes in the Age of Sail, and the print, “Decks Awash,” is of a square-rigged ship with a full press of sail, heeled over in a hell of a blow. It’s my favorite, and I enjoy it immensely. However, I was also always glad it wasn’t me on that deck, until a short while ago when all that changed. A good friend, Alex, had just finished competing in St. Augustine Race Week where he’d snagged third place on his newly purchased and repaired J/29. Now he needed some extra hands for the trip home to Jacksonville, a run I had made many times through the well-marked inlets and…

Since its inception in 2008, Slovenian builder Seascape, founded by a pair of Mini Transat sailors, has focused solely on creating boats that are both simple and loads of fun to sail. With their 18-footer and then a 27-footer they succeeded in putting out a pair of trailerable performance boats that are well built and easy to rig, with just enough accommodations to lure young speed freaks into some lively adventure cruising. after that came this in-between boat, the Seascape 24, which continues to build on this seductive formula and won a nod as the Best Small Cruiser in SAIL’s 2017 Best Boats Competition. This is an important addition to the lineup, as many may find the 18, which can only sleep a pair of people, a bit too small,…

So you’ve finally decided to splash out on new sailing instruments, and all that remains is the how and where of installing them. That is not necessarily as simple as it seems. There are number of things to be taken into account. ON THE BULKHEAD The best place for speed, depth and wind displays is where the entire crew can see them. In many older boats—my own included—the builders (and, later, owners who retrofitted instruments) saw fit to place the displays where it was most convenient for them to do so. This was (and is) usually where they could be installed with the minimum of fuss and extra work. Hence the vast number of boats with speed/depth and often wind displays on the cockpit bulkhead, right where lounging crew tend…

I’m pretty well used to the reactions I get when I arrive somewhere to captain a charter or flotilla. The base manager usually stretches his hand out to the nearest graybeard and says, “Hello, you must be the captain.” When all eyes turn to me, there’s always surprise, sometimes disbelief and occasionally a chuckle. Misogyny aside, however, whenever I meet a group that expects me as a captain, not a family member, to be taking on the responsibility of getting them around safely for a week, I have a number of advantages: even when the crew’s expectations extend to me cooking, running them ashore, applying Bandaids, fixing their masks and snorkels, saving them from themselves and providing endless entertainment to stave off boredom. In short, there’s a separation that makes…

In the broad spectrum of human sailing endeavors, few confuse the uninitiated more than the desire to sail around the world in a small boat. By “small” I mean really small—like less than 20ft small—and in some cases much tinier than that, like the 5ft 41/2in Vera Hugh, which the redoubtable Tom McNally built from a washing machine and a wardrobe to sail across the Atlantic in 134 days. His record (and possibly his heart) was broken the same year by Hugo Vihlen, who made the journey in 115 days in Father’s Day, just half an inch shorter than his rival’s craft. Such tooth-and-nail competition is not unusual in the micro-world of micro-boats. It dates back to the mid-19th century, when a heated transatlantic rivalry between Americans and Brits involving…

Midway through the final race of the inshore portion of the 2018 Atlantic Cup, the three boats in the lead—Mike Dreese’s Toothface 2, Mike Hennessy’s Dragon and Oakcliff Racing, representing the Long Island Sound-based sailing school of the same name—suddenly broke free from the pack. Next thing we knew we had a dogfight on our hands. Back and forth they went, tacking and gybing, bobbing and weaving round the waters off Portland, Maine, under sunny skies in a building sea breeze. One minute, the Oakcliff team elected to go with its genoa on a tight reach while Dragon and Toothface 2 stuck with their A-sails, and suddenly Oakcliff was surging ahead while the other two struggled to stay on their feet. Moments later, though it was Oakcliff’s turn to grit…

There can’t be many sailing boats inspired by a combination of distance racing in the Pacific Northwest and rowing solo across an ocean, which is one reason I found the Lite XP so intriguing when I came across it at Germany’s Boot Düsseldorf show back in January. Liteboat founder Matthieu Bonnier is a veteran of both the Race to Alaska (R2AK) and various long-distance solo rowing adventures, including an Atlantic crossing and a transit of the Northwest Passage. The 20ft Lite XP is his concept of a small, simple yet versatile expedition cruiser powered only by wind and oar, drawing only a few inches with the ballasted centerboard and rudder raised and able to sneak into places where bigger boats dare not venture. There are berths for two in the…

Aboard many modern yachts, it can be hard to remember exactly what boat you’re on until your eye happens to light upon a logo. However, this is most definitely not the case with the Elan GT5, a performance cruiser with a look all its own and style to burn. DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION From the outside, three things set the Elan GT5 apart from its rivals: the black automotive-like wraparound windows that give the interior light in abundance and a 180 degree view; a pair of black trapezoid windows on either side of the hull; and a distinctive black fairing at the aft end of the coachroof. The GT5 carries her beam well aft, and the hull includes chines in its aft sections. Given the width of these sections, it’s good…

I have rarely had a cruise that wasn’t different from my expectations, and my Nova Scotia travels have borne that out. For my friend and shipmate, Steve White, and me, our 2017 trip to Cape Breton Island and the Bras d’Or Lake on One Timer, my Sabre 362, was a much anticipated return to Nova Scotia. On our previous trip, in 2009, we’d had to take shelter from two hurricanes—Bill and Danny. Both, fortunately tropical storms by the time they found us, followed the same path over Nova Scotia on successive weekends, a level of storm activity without precedent. The result was a lot of port time, tied to a wharf up the LeHave River in Bridgewater for Bill, and alongside the fishing boats in Woods Harbour for Danny. What…

For many sailors, cell phones have become their primary means of both ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship communication. Even the Coast Guard will often ask for a cell number after it receives a distress call. None of this, however, makes a VHF radio any less important—and this goes just as much for a handheld as any fixed-mount model. There are a number of reasons for this: first and foremost, the fact that despite the seeming ubiquity of cell coverage these days, it is still far from total, even for those sailing coastal. Of course, for those going off shore or venturing to remote locals, cell coverage simply isn’t part of the equation. Beyond that, while it may be convenient to call ahead to a marina or make dinner reservations by phone, VHF…

Donna Gallant always planned to live a life of adventure. In school, she told her roommate that she was going to marry a man with a boat so she could sail the world (and she did). Since then, she’s built up an impressive nautical resume, having sailed over 6,000 miles and lived aboard for years. She even sailed from Miami to Los Angeles on a 50ft steel ketch called Bernina with just her husband and two babies (one and three years old). “I was washing diapers in saltwater and hanging them out to dry in the rigging,” she remembers with a laugh. In the late 1950s, she published an article about bringing up children on a sailboat. Eventually she and her sailor husband split up, but Donna’s wanderlust never waned.…

The Sint Maarten Yacht Club, founder of the nearly four-decade-old St. Maarten Heineken Regatta, recently unveiled another new event it is calling the Caribbean Multihull Challenge, a three-day regatta devoted exclusively to multihulls. “This event will welcome every multihull type—Gunboats, trimarans, Lagoons, Leopards, Fontaine Pajots and Spronk boats,” said regatta steering committee chairman Petro Jonker, (“Spronk” boats being those designed by Dutch multihull pioneer Peter Spronk, who called St. Martin home back in the 1960s and whose designs continue to sail to this day). “We’ll even throw in a Pirate Class,” Jonker added, “so local charter boats with fun handicaps can race. The whole idea is to offer creative races that will put a smile on every sailor’s face.” Set to take place next February, the event will also include…

Surfing down a short wave, we’re suddenly doing over 9 knots toward the muddy shallows off La Rochelle in western France. As I gaze down the long, gleaming curves that characterize the lines of the new Tofinou 10, gripping the lifelines for dear life, it’s suddenly plain why people will part with nearly half a million dollars to own her. This boat not only turns heads with her looks, she is also seriously good fun. Designers Joubert-Nivelt have stuck to the refined look found across all seven of the boats in the Tofinou line. Being a dayboat-cum-week-ender, the Tofinou 10 doesn’t need great volume below, and the result is a lithe, fast hull with sleek, classic lines and a large, open cockpit. Her low coachroof sweeps out of the teak…

SILENT RUNNERS Alternative-fuel outboards are gaining ground, thanks to the problems with ethanol-spiked gasoline. An innovative new range of lithium ion battery-powered electric motors from Hong Kong-based Epropulsion has just arrived in the United States. The Lagoon is a clever little motor that can be affixed to a kayak or SUP; its remote-mounted paperback-sized 300wh Li-ion battery provides up to nine hours of low-speed running. The Spirit 1.0 is equivalent to a 3hp gas motor and weighs 40lb, with a detachable 1,018wh battery accounting for half that heft. It’s claimed to produce an hour of running at full throttle, up to five hours at low speed, and to have enough torque to propel an 18ft sailboat. The biggest in the line is the Navy, available in two versions, the biggest…

In 2015, we cruised to Norway’s Lofoten Islands on our Nordic 40, Juanona, which we’d sailed transatlantic from Maine to England. Our 2016 plan was to cruise through the Netherlands to the Kiel Canal, sail into the Baltic as far as Stockholm, then cruise the western coast of Sweden and the southern coast of Norway. We were uncertain where we’d spend the winter of 2016-17, although the United Kingdom and Ireland were our default destinations, because they are much more liberal than the rest of Europe with regard to visas for U.S. visitors. It’s only a hundred miles from Ipswich, on England’s east coast, to IJmuiden, Holland, an easy overnight sail except for the clutter of targets on the AIS. There was also a lot of chatter on the VHF,…

Despite your best efforts, there will inevitably be times when your sail gets damaged while at sea and needs to be repaired. First, no matter what the job, you will need to do a quick damage assessment, a task that requires a flat wooden surface, sharp scissors and a helping hand. If the rip is in a high-load area of the sail, you will repair it differently than if it is in a low-load area. The edges, for example, especially the leech and foot of the sail, will need quick and careful attention, while a rip in the middle of the sail can be slapped closed with a piece of stickyback Dacron or Dacron sail-repair tape and left that way until you have time to do a proper job. For…