Table of contents for September 2016 in SAIL

In many waterside towns around the nation, nothing quite rings in the start of summer like the kickoff of Wednesday night races—where scenes like this one here of the fleet in Annapolis are all too common. The Annapolis Yacht Club modeled its Wednesday Night Racing program after a similar series hosted by the East Greenwich Yacht Club in Rhode Island. Midweek racing was started in 1959 by past Commodore Gaither Scott, when there was no race committee, no results and no prizes: just a picnic supper for participants.…

Although the 2016 Olympics may be done and dusted by the time you read this, there’s still a lot of racing to be done on Rio’s Guanabara Bay, thanks to the Paralympic Games, scheduled for September 7-18. The United States is sending six sailors to this year’s games who will be competing in three classes: the SKUD-18, the 2.4mR and the Sonar. As with the Olympic squad, this year’s Paralympic team was selected on the basis of how the sailors performed in a pair of international qualifying regattas, including the World Cup Miami regatta this past winter. According to Josh Adams, director of U.S. Olympic Sailing, the thinking behind this process was the same as with the Olympic team: to both see how the sailors perform and give them as…

There are a lot of reasons why a boatbuilder will reintroduce an existing model. Most of them have to do with cost savings. Reusing hull molds and adding a few cosmetic changes is a good way to launch a “new” model, the newness of which is sometimes for marketing purposes only. That said, there are other reasons to refresh a classic: namely when the original design served its purpose so effectively that large changes were unnecessary. Such is the case with the Xc 45 “Next Generation,” a classic cruiser from Danish builder X-Yachts. Approximately 200 of the original model were sold in Europe, so it only made sense to update what was also a strong design to appeal to today’s sailors, while retaining the boat’s performance and ocean-crossing capabilities. DESIGN…

“You should not have to choose between difficult and fun, it has to be both.” — Jake Beattie (race organizer) The Bermuda Race, the Fastnet, the Sydney-Hobart, the Transpac and the Transat, the Route du Rhum and the Vendée Globe—these are the classics of bluewater racing, wiThepic destinations, famous waypoints and treacherous bodies of water that have to be traversed. Now there is a new kid on the block: humble, weird, a bit awkward, but spunky as hell and proud of it. It’s not yet a classic, but it’s an epic just the same. It’s the Race to Alaska, aka the R2AK, which was inaugurated in 2015 after the idea was hatched during a long night in the beer tent at Washington’s Port Townsend Wooden Boat festival. Barstool fantasies typically…

Looking for more navigational gear and equipment? Go to sailbuyersguide.com In the 15 years since the marine AIS (Automatic Identification System) was introduced, many thousands of AIS receivers and transceivers have been sold for yacht installations. AIS is a method of tracking other vessels using a receiver or transceiver operating on the dedicated marine VHF Channels 87B (161.975MHz) and 88B (162.025MHz). Because of the considerable safety benefits offered by this technology, Class A AIS is mandatory for all SOLAS vessels over 300 tons. Class A or less powerful and less expensive Class B AIS is also mandatory on many smaller and/or more local commercial vessels, and either can be used by recreational vessels. RECEIVER OR TRANSCEIVER? For around $150 you can purchase a budget AIS receiver that will track AIS…

The Sailing Scene Are you out there sailing, cruising, and living the sailing life? If you are, we’d love to see it. Send your photos to sailmail@sailmagazine.com for a chance to have your sailing memory featured in these pages. Here ia a picture from one reader’s latest cruising adventure. After a challenging sail from Fairport Harbor this August, this sunset was captured aboard our Hunter 340, Alti Mare, while docked at Edgewater Yacht Club, just west of downtown Cleveland. —Rich Bedell, via sailmail@sailmagazine.com Pets ON BOARD RESCUED AND READY Here’s our 8-year-old rescue cat Empress, sneaking her first peek at Lake Champlain from the cockpit of our 1984 Beneteau First 32.5. They don’t sell cat life vests here, so a small doggie version tests her resolve. —Bob Robinson Charlotte, VT…

Back in 1992, when I was working at a British sailing magazine, I volunteered for some tough duty—covering the first International Festival of Sail in Brest, France. Someone had to do it, and as a wooden-boat owner I was the magazine’s de facto classic boat expert. I was no stranger to boat shows, regattas and classic-boat festivals. I was not, however, prepared for what I found in this famous Breton port. The French navy’s docks in the Penfeld River were opened up to public use for the first time ever, and they were crammed with hundreds of traditional boats whose variety defied description. They had come from all corners of the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean, from all the Scandinavian countries, from Canada and the United States, from South America…

“Don’t let anyone know how easy this is,” North Sails president Ken Read said. “Sure, no problem,” I said, far more concerned with how long he’d let me keep steering. At the moment I was at the helm of Jim and Kristy Hinze-Clark’s 100ftsuper-Maxi Comanche, steering the boat on a close reach in around 18 knots of breeze, and the boat was going around 22 knots. Yes, 22 knots. And, yes, it really was that easy. I’d been invited aboard to see what it was like as Read and the rest of the crew prepared for last June’s Newport-Bermuda Race (the same race in which they would smash the line honors record by completing the 635-mile course in an incredible 34 hours, 42 minutes). The boat also holds the current…

I stopped counting the number of times the Lagoon 42 marketing materials mentioned the word “curvy” at six. Then I saw the boat and understood the emphasis. Lagoon’s newest cruising cat is, indeed, both curvaceous and sleek, not to mention fun to move (or lounge) about. The freshly designed 42, which replaces the 420/421 of which over 270 hulls were built, also makes tracks, whether on short island hops or a bit farther afield. DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION Exterior designer Patrick Le Quement teamed up with the naval architects of France’s VPLP Design, renowned for their racing hulls, to create the Lagoon 42’s swoopy lines. The underside of the gullwing bridgedeck was configured to minimize pounding in rough seas; the glazed vertical windows that bend around corners cut down on heat…

Cuba is huge—it spans more than 600 miles from east to west. We saw abundant signs of civilization as we sailed along the coast and closed in on Havana after a six-and-a-half day passage from Fajardo, Puerto Rico. We dodged fish pots, usually laid out in strings of eight to 10; freighters came and went from the old port of Havana; an old military launch that looked definitively Soviet-era steamed past us to the north. But there was no sign of the marine police, the USCG or other authority figures. I was almost sure we’d be boarded once officially in Cuban waters, but it didn’t happen. We docked at Marina Hemingway, which is like no other “marina” we’ve ever been to. It’s huge, and is laid out in four large…

For more than 30 years the Cospas-Sarsat system has been the mainstay of modern search and rescue, with many thousands of people rescued thanks to the orbiting satellites that monitor distress signals broadcast on the 406MHz band from EPIRBs and personal locator beacons. The problem with the Cospas-Sarsat combination of low-earth-orbit (LEO) and geostationary (GEO) satellites is that while the latter’s wide view of the earth can detect a signal almost instantly, it cannot locate it precisely (unless the beacon has its own GPS), and it can take an hour or more for an LEO satellite to get a fix on the beacon’s location and transmit it to a land station so searchand-rescue can be implemented. Even then, position errors of half a mile or more are not unusual. Enter…

GARMIN QUATIX 3 Smart watches seem to be all the rage these days, monitoring how many steps you take (or don’t), allowing you to watch cat videos on the go, all kinds of useful things. But when it comes to marine smart watches, most of them are actually pretty damn handy, and the Garmin quatix 3 is certainly one of those. The quatix 3 is essentially a physical extension of your onboard electronics, with the ability to stream NMEA 2000 data from all of compatible onboard Garmin marine electronics, allowing the wearer to see depth, water temperature, speed, GPS heading, wind direction and more, all on your wrist. And if that’s not enough, the watch lets you control a Garmin VIRB camera and change tunes on a Fusion stereo system.…

After racing ahead for some time at breakneck speed, the boatbuilding industry seems to have entered a period of refinement— which is probably a good thing. In recent years the sailing public has been witness to everything from lounging areas springing up in places never before heard of to twin helms on 30-footers and full-foiling performance aboard everything from beach cats to “cruising” multihulls. However, keeping up that kind of pace can just as easily lead to gimmicks as it can to real innovation. At the same time, “refinement” is hardly a dirty word. Whether it’s turbocharging a classic or extending a tried and true concept to a different LOA, the boatbuilding industry knows that neither the sea nor SAIL’s Best Boats judges suffers fools gladly. Here is a look…

It’s time for a charter sailing vacation, so what’s the best way to go? You can go it alone with a bareboat, get a captain for a crewed experience or tag along with a group of sailboats in a flotilla. Here’s how each stacks up. BAREBOAT The most common way to get your sailing fix and explore a new destination is to charter a boat that you will provision, navigate, dock and be responsible for on your own. This is called a bareboat charter, because there will be minimal assistance in how you plan and execute your vacation. You will need to find the appropriate vessel, load it with food and drinks, decide on an itinerary, and then sail, anchor and care for it yourself. Bareboat doesn’t mean bare service.…