Sommaire pour September 2021 de SAIL

Thinking of spending cyclone season in the South Pacific? Plenty of sailors take the chance every year, with the recent travel restrictions imposed by the pandemic making this an especially popular option in 2020. Cyclone season in this part of the world runs from November to April, with the areas most affected stretching from French Polynesia to New Caledonia. To avoid getting in trouble you either need to sail through the entire region in a single season, make a detour to higher latitudes or New Zealand, or be prepared for storms. Yes, staying put is a risk, but doing so can also be very pleasant. The weather is more consistent, the breezes gentler, and there are fewer squalls, which allows you to explore anchorages best avoided the rest of the…

Remember when the Kiwis were the young, underfunded upstarts of the America’s Cup world, with right on their side as they took on the Big Bad Americans? Remember the withering criticism leveled at Larry Ellison when, in the wake of “The Comeback” on San Francisco Bay, arguably the most exciting Cup regatta ever, he staged his 2017 defense in Bermuda? Well, meet the new boss, same as the old boss. This past June, at the end of a three-month period during which the city of Auckland had exclusive rights to try and convince Emirates Team New Zealand to stage its 37th Cup defense on the same waters where it successfully defended this past March, ETNZ announced it would begin shopping out the privilege to the highest bidder. Apparently, the NZ$99…

The saying “Nothing goes to windward like a 747,” is one of my favorites. I actually once took a 747 upwind, retracing my earlier downwind sailing route across the Pacific. I’ve also done a fair bit of ocean sailing to windward. The 747 was a lot more comfortable. But then again, comfort and security aren’t why we sail, are they? This past year my husband, Seth, and I found ourselves making what proved to be a grueling 2,400-mile passage close-hauled. Like most upwind passages, it was fun in retrospect. At the time, not so much. It was a rough three weeks, pounding into head seas with sustained winds of 20 knots or more. Looking back on it, though, it was also one of the richest passages we’ve ever made, thanks…

The hull and deck of Shirley Rose had been repaired, but what kind of sailboat would she be without a sturdy rig? I was told she was ready to sail, and that the owner replaced the standing rigging a few years before. Shirley Rose is a single-spreader masthead rigged sloop, with a 90 percent jib on a roller-furler. The traveler is aft of the tiller, and thankfully the boom is high enough that you would not hit your head even when standing on the lazarette. When I bought her, the halyards were rope to wire, which wasn’t exactly the best. The wire was appropriately nicknamed “meat hooks,” because it would occasionally fray and cut your hands while raising and lowering the sail. There was a little corrosion on the mast…

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) hurricanes (the term most U.S. sailors are familiar with) and typhoons are just two different names for the same weather phenomenon: tropical cyclones, i.e., “a rotating, organized system of clouds and thunderstorms that originates over tropical or subtropical waters and has closed, low-level circulation.” In the words of NOAA’s Ocean Weather service: “The weakest tropical cyclones are called tropical depressions. If a depression intensifies such that its maximum sustained winds reach 39 miles per hour, the tropical cyclone becomes a tropical storm. Once a tropical cyclone reaches maximum sustained winds of 74 miles per hour or higher, it is then classified as a hurricane, typhoon or tropical cyclone, depending upon where the storm originates in the world. “In the North Atlantic,…

This past June a number of fully restored Capt. Nathanael G. Herreshoff designs—including the power launch Corsair (left), the New York 30 Amorita (right), the New York 40 Marilee and the New York 50 Spartan—were on hand at the New York Yacht Club’s Harbour Court station as part of a celebration of the Herreshoff Marine Museum’s 50th anniversary. Founded in 1971, the museum includes a number of the original buildings that were once part of the famed Herreshoff Manufacturing Company in Bristol, Rhode Island, and is also the site of the America’s Cup Hall of Fame. For more on both the museum and its ongoing Golden Jubilee, visit herreshoff.org/50th.…

The fully crewed, round-the-world Ocean Race has experienced tremendous change over the years. From the 1993 transition to a one-design fleet to an ever-shifting route, what began as the amateur Whitbread Round the World Yacht Regatta in 1972 is a very different race today. The latest round of updates include some of the biggest changes ever, and if this summer’s preliminary offshore lap of the Iberian Peninsula is anything to go by, it’s going to be an exciting new era for both sailors and spectators. The Ocean Race Europe, as the race was called, not only provided The Ocean Race sailors a chance to test their mettle, but also provided its European fan base multiple opportunities to see their favorite teams in action. The European offshoot of the former Volvo…

One of the paradoxes of sailing is that water is both one of the best and worst parts of the experience. Plenty of water under the keel? Essential. Fresh spray on a hot afternoon? Heaven. Having damp clothes that never fully dry out on a chilly passage or a phone that drowns after being inadvertently placed in the splash zone? No thanks. Fortunately, today’s sailors have plenty of options when it comes to keeping their belongings dry. Choose the right kit for the job, and you’ll be able to pack safely and efficiently for your next trip onto the deep blue. BACK TO BASICS When it comes to dry bags, the classic style is a cylindrical pouch with a roll top that buckles to create a handle. Typically these don’t…

In 1975, as a senior at Harvard, the question for Chicago-area sailor Mike Jacker became what to do next. The answer, as related in his new book Taken by the Wind, was to make a small-boat voyage to Tahiti with his grade-school friend Louis Gordon and Harvard classmate Clark Pellett, what Jacker fondly refers to as the “Louis and Clark Expedition.” In the following excerpt, Jacker describes what it was like prepping for such a venture well before the advent of the Internet and the many other resources today’s sailors have at their disposal. My dream was now a reality. I would be on the “Louis and Clark Expedition” to the tropical South Pacific. Knowing that I would be the navigator, I felt a bit like an inexperienced reincarnation of…

This past summer, the U.S. SailGP Team began accepting applications from community sailing organizations interested in partnering with it as part of the SailGP “Foiling First” program—an initiative advancing diversity and inclusion in the sport of sailing through a first-ever professional pathway to foiling in the United States. At press time, the U.S. team had also recently formalized its inaugural Foiling First partnership with the Rhode Island-based Bristol Yacht Club/East Bay Sailing Foundation (EBSF—eastbaysailingfoundation.org), which resulted in a two-day “Learn to Foil” camp in late July in cooperation with Wisconsin’s Melges Performance Sailboats (which recently began marketing a new line of full-foiling scows expressly designed to get newbie sailors airborne, the Skeeta and Nikki: see SAIL’s 2022 Best Boats Preview on p. 58). “Since launching Foiling First we’ve been overwhelmed…

There is something almost mystical and more than a little eerie about scuba diving in the deep ocean, hundreds of miles from land and a mile from the bottom. You are surrounded by blue, all shades of blue, vanishing into deep black as you look down. No fish, no coral, just endless blue. Unfortunately, I wasn’t really in a position to appreciate the magnificence of the scene in which I found myself. My focus was mainly on looking out for sharks, only slightly on the task at hand and not at all on the beauty of my Zenlike surroundings. We were on passage from Raratonga, in the Cook Islands, to Neiafu, Tonga, with a possible stop at the island of Nuie. We’d been dealing with the usual ever-changing weather, the…

Turns out it takes more than a pandemic to keep sailors, naval architects and boatbuilders down. It wasn’t fair, but there’s no denying some parts of the global economy fared better than others this past year, and among the lucky ones was the marine industry. Not that it was all smooth sailing. Supply and workplace issues certainly put a crimp in productivity, as was evident in the fewer number of entries in last year’s Best Boat contest. However, the industry has since come roaring back, and the result is a Best Boats class of 2022 that’s as healthy as we seen in years: replete with everything from borderline production megayachts to a fun new batch of daysailers and pocket cruisers and even a pair of high-tech scows for the foiling…