Sommaire pour August/September 2024 de SAIL

Our 1979 Cheoy Lee 41, Avocet, was anchored in Morro Bay during the worst storm system the state of California had seen in two decades. It had been two weeks of what seemed to be nonstop rain and high winds while we patiently waited for some sort of weather window to safely get around Point Conception—the Cape Horn of the West Coast. My husband, Chris, and I had done our best to make use of our time on the hook, but the cabin fever had set in, and morale was at an all-time low. And what did mother nature do? Kick us, hard, when we were already down. It was another gray morning with the now-normal sound of rain pitter-pattering on the deck. We lay in our berth, tucked away…

Sometimes you draw the long straw with a boat test and get the chance for a multi-day delivery to really put the boat through its paces and see it in a variety of conditions. I was excited to hop on Elan’s brand new Impression 43 for the trip from Annapolis up to Connecticut and get a chance to see her in action. Unfortunately it’s practically a rule that when you’re on a timeline, the weather is not, and somehow we were skunked for nearly the entirety of the passage. There was sketchy wind for about the first half hour out of Back Creek in Annapolis, but that was it. The good news is that in that short, gusty moment, I was able to make a few first impressions about how…

It’s sometimes hard to wrap your head around all that’s evolved since 1851, when a syndicate of owners from the newly minted New York Yacht Club brought their schooner America to the UK for a summer of racing and returned with the trophy that would become the America’s Cup. It helps to remember that no matter the era, the Cup has always been as much a contest of cutting-edge yacht design as it is of high-level sailing skills. Seen through that lens, the foiling monohulls that are racing in this year’s 37th America’s Cup, reaching—and likely exceeding—50 knots and resembling fighter jets more than sailing yachts, make sense. It also helps to look back. When the Americans returned with their new prize, a syndicate member authored the Deed of Gift…

The first edition of Stikky Night Skies, published in 2003, was among the books we carried when we went cruising full-time in 2008. I thought it might be a fun way to teach our kids, then 8 and 12, more about the joys of stargazing. It did all that, and then some. To this day, it remains one of our favorite books—and now the clever folks at Stikky have updated it with a new edition that’s even better. Here’s the thing about the night sky: There is just so much. I’ve tried learning with apps and star charts, but Stikky’s way of teaching actually, well, sticks. The book’s subtitle is, “Learn six constellations, four stars, a planet, a galaxy, and how to navigate at night—in just one hour.” They aren’t…

I was aboard Joule, the latest version of the Windelo 50, twice before I ever sailed her—the first time at the Cannes Yachting Festival in France last fall, and the second at the Miami International Boat Show in February. She had sailed transatlantic with the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers, reportedly reaching up to 15 knots of boatspeed, and by the time she arrived in Miami, owners Jay Bibb and Barry Vial were excited to finally have their new home on this side of the Atlantic. When I met them to go sailing, they had moved aboard and were preparing to cruise the East Coast and Bahamas. Our test day was spicy but comfortable, especially for this bluewater cat with a layout and design philosophy meant to bolster confidence in offshore…

It would be easy, observing the sea change in fiberglass production boatbuilding in the U.S. over the last several decades, to feel a little blue about how many builders have not survived the industry’s ups and downs. But seen through the lens of smaller boats, this story can be not only heartening, but inspiring. Whether the endurance of a design like the Catalina 22—still in production in Florida after 55 years—or the upstart innovation of the Salish 17 Voyager, built at Washington’s Gig Harbor Boat Works, a wide range of American boatbuilders continue to turn out smaller boats that make it easier and more fun for all of us to go sailing. The range in design, purpose, and price is wide, so we chose eight builders of fiberglass boats and…

You might say I learned to sail on my family’s 32-foot Pearson Vanguard. But my most memorable lessons came after we dropped anchor, when my father taught me in our Dyer Dhow sailing dinghy. Half a century later, I still remember his precise instructions for an eggshell landing: Aim for the stern of the mothership, and then head up into the wind and come to a stop amidships. Once I’d mastered that and a few other basics, I was allowed—oh, the thrill!—to go sailing by myself. It was only in my teens, when I was first teaching adults to sail, that I realized how much I’d absorbed from aimlessly tootling around harbors in that little dinghy. Unlike the bigger boat, actions had immediate consequences. Not overhauling a mainsheet in a…

Own a sailboat? Pete Van Hamersveld didn’t even know how to sail. Plus, who’d be crazy enough to pay slip fees? The year was 1988. Pete was 29, newly married, and looking for a hobby to replace hang gliding. Something safer, he thought. Something he could do with others. One day while walking the marina in Long Beach, California, a sailor introduced himself, took Pete out on the water, and pointed out a boat named Zest, a Cal 24. “Now there’s a sailboat that’s small, trailerable, and seaworthy,” he said. Jensen Marine had built just 187 Cal 24s down the beach in Costa Mesa. A Bill Lapworth design, the boats were well loved by their owners, and therefore relatively rare on the used market. Pete filed it away in his…

Jamie Brown had always nurtured a dream of sailing a transatlantic. He thought he’d have to wait until he retired, and then he’d spend ages preparing whatever boat he had chosen before actually doing the thing. But it all happened a lot sooner than that, and in a manner he’d never expected, when he bought his second boat, a Beneteau 523, with Horizon Yacht Charters—having the new boat delivered from the factory in France to Gran Canaria, and then sailing it across to Sint Maarten. “I had no intention of doing it when I was thinking of buying the boat. At some point I said, ‘I’ve always had a bit of a dream to sail across the Atlantic.’ And it was Andrew [Thompson, Horizon’s co-founder] who said, ‘Well, we’ll just…

The new Xquisite 30 Sportcat looked like a drag racer, tugging at her dock lines at the Annapolis sailboat show. At 30 feet, she was by far one of the smallest boats in the water, but this carbon speedster looked like she’d give the big boats a run for their money. She was, in a word, enticing. With a rotating carbon mast, carbon deck beams, displacement of just 1,872 pounds, an interior whose greatest luxury is a mattress, and a construction methodology that lets it be dismantled and fit onto a trailer and inside a 40-foot shipping container, this little rocket is just begging to be sailed fast and fun—and that is precisely its purpose, according to Tamas Hamor, Xquisite’s founder and CEO. A cruising sailor himself, Hamor launched Xquisite…

Ora Kali had pushed hard to get through New York Harbor and the East River to Long Island Sound, and our nerves were jangling after eight hours of listening to the three-cylinder Westerbeke 13 engine pound away. We picked up a municipal mooring in Port Washington, turned the engine off, and in the silence rejoiced that on our first full day of travel we’d escaped New Jersey. Rejoiced, that is, until I went below and found black swatches on the white liner in the galley. More stains marred the quarter berth and inside surfaces of a food locker. Boat air after motoring often has a tang of diesel to it, but this time the air smelled of soot. When Tom and I bought Ora Kali, an almost 40-year-old Sabre 30,…