Indice dei contenuti per July 2016 in SAIL

Veteran off shore solo sailor Vincent Riou, who took second in the recent Transat bakerly, fights through heavy seas off the coast of France aboard the IMOCA 60 PRB. This was Riou’s second attempt at the Transat, which has been held 14 times since 1960, and despite falling short of first place, he remained positive aft erward. “This race is like a film that has been speeded up,” Riou said. “It’s very demanding and tough, and you have to keep asking yourself questions. The weather changes so quickly with fronts going over, ridges of high pressure and new lows. It’s excellent practice.” For more on the Transat bakerly, turn to Racing on page 14.…

WING AND WING The only chance of sailing this boat goosewinged in the chop that’s running is to use a cruising chute. A genoa doesn’t have a hope unless you rig a full-length pole. With a chute, if you keep right off the wind and— here’s the secret—let go a fair bit of slack on the tack line, the luff can drift off and curve well up to windward, away from the backwind off the mainsail. A genoa will only flap and bang until it drives you nuts. So dig deep if you don’t want the trouble of poling out. Buy a decent cruising chute and you’ll fly on a reach, too. It’s a whole new dimension to sailing and, with a snuffer, it’s a breeze to set and drop…

There are any number of rugged patches of water out there—think Cape Horn or the Bass Strait. Now it’s time to add another—Poondulanna Lake in the heart of the forbidding Australian Outback, site of the 2016 Outback Spirit Lake Eyre Yacht Club Regatta. “We only found this lake two weeks ago. We had weather up to 37 degrees Celsius (99F) and not a lot of shade, so you have to come prepared,” said club commodore Bob Backway, whose 220-member club was founded in 2010 but has not held a regatta since 2013 because of lack of water. Lake Eyre is Australia’s biggest and the world’s 13th largest lake when full, which it hasn’t been since 1974. According to three-time regatta veteran Darius Kubilius, Lake Poondulanna— which is located about 500…

Last April, sailors from around the world came together for the 49th running of Antigua Sailing Week in what seems to be the Caribbean’s friendliest regatta. On certain days, the tradewinds gusted over 20 knots, while on others the heavier boats labored in light breezes under acres of sail. Racing rock stars also maneuvered among bareboat charter hopefuls a few minutes before each start. In many cases, they even rubbed shoulders with amateurs on the same boat, making it a world of equals. Tony Langley’s TP52 Gladiator, for example, cleaned up in every race and included Ian Walker, winning skipper of the 2014-15 Volvo Ocean Race as tactician. However, the crew also included 18-year old Antiguan, Rhone Kirby, providing an opportunity of a lifetime thanks to Langley’s interest in developing…

? Got a good story to share? Send it to sailmail@sailmagazine.com The weather forecasts unanimously agreed. The cold front that had just passed through would end with a whimper, the winds veering and dropping from 25 knots to 15. They already were. Perfect. I popped open a cold one to toast another laid-back Exumas sunset. That’s when I spotted the cloud. It seemed to suddenly just be there, stretching across the northwest horizon: long, low and very dark. It came racing down the channel, swept over our mastheads and delivered its first punch, which was followed by a steady shove that kept getting stronger— and stronger. Darkness descended like a hammer and just like that, wham! We were engulfed in a slam dunk Force 11 storm blowing 50- to 70-knots…

I tend to cringe when I hear the term “racer-cruiser.” But I’ve had to eat my words when it comes to the Croatian builder Salona, which now has six models in its line. Salona hulls are light, sleek and slippery, whether in lots of wind or just a hint of a breeze. Even as the boats continue to haul in line honors around the world, they remain comfortable and well outfitted for extended coastal cruising—and the Salona 41 is no exception, as she offers a good turn of speed and a nice finish to boot. CONSTRUCTION I’ve tested a few of the Salona models, and I like them all. However, for whatever reason I found the 41 to be exceptionally attractive. Her low profile shows a plumb bow, no hard…

I confess, when I first learned I would be flying down to Colombia to check in with the World ARC, I couldn’t help wondering whether it was such a good idea, given the area’s history of kidnappings and drug cartels. What I found, though was a different situation entirely. While it still has some security issues—a situation not uncommon to much of he Caribbean—Colombia is a far more stable place than it was in decades past, and it is very much looking to take advantage of this newfound stability by making it as welcoming a place for cruisers as possible. Ground Zero for this effort is Island Global Yachting’s extensive, brand-new marina at Santa Marta (igy-marinasantamarta.com), located at the midpoint of Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Not only does it offer dozens…

The challenge of sailing offshore, and the excitement and camaraderie that goes along with an ocean race, are why I have taken a navigator’s berth in nine Bermuda races. Four of those races have been Newport-Bermuda Races, but navigating the meanders and eddies of the Gulf Stream using celestial navigation keeps me coming back to the Marion-Bermuda Race on alternate years. I first became proficient with celestial navigation while serving in the Coast Guard in the late 1970s, and since then I have used it to deliver yachts back and forth to the Caribbean (pre-GPS), taught dozens of classes ashore and at sea, and found Bermuda many times. Nonetheless, when my cousin Gregg Marston invited me to join a family crew for the 2015 Marion-Bermuda Race onboard his 1967-vintage 36ft…

A new metal sextant will set you back anything from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand; it will be cheaper to buy a good used or refurbished instrument. An entry-level plastic sextant can be found for around $250. Talk to an expert before deciding which one to buy. You’ll also need an accurate digital watch, as well as a nautical almanac, a set of sight reduction tables, a pad of universal plotting sheets, your favorite plotting tools and perhaps a Star Finder. A specialized celestial calculator will allow quick sight reduction. For general reference, “The Sextant Handbook” by Bauer is a classic. An investment of $500 will get you started, more if you opt for a high-quality sextant. For sextants and navigation tools, try Celestaire (celestaire.com), Landfall (landfallnavigation.com),…

Marine insurance, of course, is how the whole concept of insurance first got star ted. Hedging against the potential loss of a vessel and its cargo is a financial game that dates back to the anc ient Greeks and was institutionalized in its modern form in the 17th century in Edward Lloyd’s famous coffee house in London, where skippers and merchants gathered together to mull the perils of the sea w hile getting hopped up on caffeine. As such, marine insurance played an important role in the development of our global economy, but in the con text of bluewater cruising it is another anim al entirely. Aft er all, what is it exactly that an insurance company sells you? The answer, plain and simple, is fear. When you buy a…

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 sailing photos to sailmail@sailmagazine.com for a chance to have your sailing memory featured in these pages. Here are a few pictures from our readers from their latest cruising adventures. For more pictures from the SAIL community, make sure you check out our Summer Sailing special, “America the Beautiful,” on page 34. We enjoy sailing our Catalina 22 Fandango on C.J. Brown reservoir in Ohio. This shot was taken by our friend Rod during a lovely sunset cruise.—William Price This photo was taken right before the sun went down while anchoring off Thong Nai Pan beach, Ko Phagan on a 38 Lagoon we charted for a family…

When you’re talking seafarers of old, the Vikings are right up there with the Phoenicians, the Chinese and the Polynesians. Maritime historians may bicker about which group was the most wideranging, but there’s no disputing who got the most publicity—no one who has ever opened a book could be unaware of the exploits of the Norsemen who plundered and pillaged almost at will from the 8th to the 11th centuries. The Vikings were not only fearsome fighters, they were skilled sailors and boatbuilders who were responsible for the near-perfect blend of form and function that is the Viking longship. These clinker-built craft carried their Danish, Norwegian and Swedish crews to Ireland, Scotland and England, deep into Russia, to the farthest reaches of the Mediterranean, and across the Atlantic to Iceland,…

Aft er a long winter and spring of competition in various different class championships and World Sailing World Cup events around the globe, US Sailing Team Sperry has arrived a final roster of athletes who will compete at the 2016 Olympic Regatta on Rio’s Guanabara Bay. 49er (Men’s Two-Person High Performance Skiff): Thomas Barrows (St. Thomas, U.S.V.I.), Joe Morris (Annapolis, MD) 49erFX (Women’s Two-Person High Performance Skiff): Paris Henken (Coronado, CA), Helena Scutt (Kirkland, WA) Nacra 17 (Mixed Two-Person Multihull): Bora Gulari (Detroit, MI), Louisa Chafee (Warwick, RI) Laser Radial (Women’s One-Person Dinghy): Paige Railey (Clearwater, FL) Laser (Men’s One-Person Dinghy): Charlie Buckingham (Newport Beach, CA) Finn (Men’s One-Person Heavyweight Dinghy): Caleb Paine (San Diego, CA) Women’s RS:X (Women’s Sailboard): Marion Lepert (Belmont, CA) Men’s RS:X (Men’s Sailboard): Pedro Pascual…

Iconic bluewater boatbuilder Hallberg-Rassy’s latest model shows the company is not afraid to keep up with changing trends in boat design. The Hallberg-Rassy 44 retains the virtues that have gained the boats such a dedicated following—excellent build quality, center cockpit, balanced hull form for good seakeeping, an interior layout that works just as well at sea as it does at anchor—and designer German Frers has introduced a number of new features. The most obvious of these is the twin-rudder configuration, a first for the Swedish builder. Also new is the molded bowsprit that holds the anchor and serves as a tack point for downwind sails. The jib furler is recessed under the deck, and all sail control lines run in galleries under the deck back to the cockpit. A self-tacking…

Summer School The summer is all about sailing and having fun, but the journey is only part of the trip. Here are some new toys for you to have aboard your next cruise for when the sailing is over and the party begins. MONTAGUE ALLSTON While carrying a kayak or a SUP onboard is a great way to explore the shores and waterways of a new port-of-call, it’s hard to beat the convenience of having a bike with you when it comes to exploring shore side. But like all things, space onboard is a factor. Enter the Allston folding bike from Montague. The Allston sports many boatfriendly features, like the rust-proof carbon belt drive that replaces the standard metal chain, and a fully sealed Shimano 11-speed internal gear hub with…

• Take a course. Having a teacher available when you have a brain cramp is very helpful. • Celestial navigation doesn’t require a lot of math—just addition and subtraction—unless you want to fully understand the spherical trigonometry. • Brush up on basic piloting skills (DR, tides and currents, compass correction, chart work, etc.). Without that background you will have a tough time with celestial navigation, so put down the GPS and (re)learn traditional piloting and charting. • The ability to identify every star in the sky is not a prerequisite. Truth be told, you’ll probably use less than 10 stars in a typical voyage. • Learn how to do the calculations longhand, but definitely use a celestial calculator like the Celesticomp (my personal favorite). The drudgery of reducing a voyage…

If you take an older boat with a toilet system that has not been thoroughly flushed, close the boat up in a warm climate and leave it for a while, I can pretty much guarantee it will not smell too good when you come back. The odor generator is generally a pocket of standing effluent somewhere in the system that is permeating one of the hoses, although it might also be tiny leaks around the Y-valves (commonly used for an overboard discharge) and hose fittings. Then again the cause may be odors escaping through poorly-seated vented loops, necessary in many systems to prevent back-siphoning of seawater into the toilet and boat. Even many heavy-duty hoses are minutely porous and in time will give off foul odors. To test, rub a…

Water may be essential to life, but it can also be a pain aboard a sailboat. For one thing it weighs a tremendous amount, and tankage can take up a good deal of space, especially aboard a smaller cruising boat. Water tanks can also be a pain to top off, especially in a remote foreign port. Not only do you oft en have to pay for the stuff, but there is the fear of its containing both organic and inorganic contaminants. Fortunately, in recent years sailors have been able to enjoy the benefits of modern watermakers that in many ways do for water stowage what GPS did to navigation: make a whole world of problems go away with the push of a button. That said, like GPS, watermaker technology is…

What does a pair of enthusiastic Texans do when they can’t find anyone to race against aboard their full-foiling Flying Phantom catamaran? Go where people are racing them, in the south of France. This past April, John Tomko and Jonathan Atwood, both of the Lone Star State, made their European debut at the first round of the 2016 Flying Phantom Series, in Cannes. At press time they also planned to compete at the second stop in the series on Lake Geneva in June and at the third stop, being held in conjunction with Foiling Week on Italy’s Lake Garda later this month. Tomko says that when he and team sponsor Judson Holt, CEO of Lupe Tortilla restaurant, bought their first Flying Phantom in the spring of 2015, they’d hoped to…

Everything seems a little more special in New York. The buildings are taller, the crowds are bigger, and the sights and sounds and smells are, for better or worse, more intense. But still, I was unsure how the Louis Vuitton World Series would be received by the Manhattan sailing scene. Sure, it’s a world-class event, bringing topnotch sailing talent and high-intensity racing back to the New York area for the first time in nearly a century. But in a city where there are any number of world-class events going on at any given time, from sporting events to cultural events to whatever else you can think up, would the races bring out the crowds and live up to the hype? Simply put—you bet. The docks at Manhattan’s North Cove Marina…

A TYPICALLY TOUGH TRANSAT Ocean racing, by its very nature, involves a series of ups and downs. And sure enough, it was the best and worst of times from beginning to end for the two dozen solo skippers taking part in the Transat bakerly this past May. The trouble started early on for Maxime Sorel aboard the Class 40 VandB when he collided with a container ship on the second day out from Plymouth while sailing downwind in the Bay of Biscay. After that, Erwan Le Roux sustained major damage to one of the amas aboard his Multi50 trimaran FenêtréA Cardinal, and Sebastien Josse aboard the IMOCA 60 Edmond de Rothschild was also forced to retire after breaking a batten during an uncontrolled gybe. Finally, a deep Atlantic low decided…

Most of us are not keen on sailing, mooring or paying for more boat than we need, or than we can handle. Therefore, the shift to smaller, couple-sized cats is a welcome one as more builders focus on this segment of the market. The newest addition is the Fountaine Pajot Lucia 40, which sews up the amenities found on her bigger sisters into a neat and tidy package that will fit many slips and budgets. It’s probably no accident that the French boat builder launched this 40-footer for its 40th anniversary—a nice birthday present to itself as well as to sailors seeking a manageable cruising platform with two hulls. CONSTRUCTION The design team of Berret-Racoupeau was tasked with bringing big-boat allure to a smaller footprint, and the result is a…

On the one hand, timing is said to be everything. On the other, anyone in real estate will tell you the thing that really matters is location, location, location. When it comes to passagemaking, though, it’s not one or the other, it’s both. Making a passage from, say, Bermuda to the the U.S. Virgin Islands, in February, you’ll likely find yourself loving life, with steady tradewinds scooting you along under “flying fish” conditions, as the old squarerigger sailors used to call them. Do so in October, however, and it will likely be a very different story. Not only will you be constantly looking over your shoulder for tropical depressions spinning your way from far-off Africa, you could very well find yourself caught up in a full-blown hurricane if you’re not…

DIAGRAM 1 Celestial Sphere DIAGRAM 2 Circle of Equal Altitude Celestial navigation solves a huge spherical triangle (the Celestial Triangle) for a specific time, with its points, sides and angles defined by the position of the body, the nearest pole, and the position of the boat. (See Diagram #1.) This triangle can be represented both on the Terrestrial Sphere and on the Celestial Sphere with each point and line having a matching position on each sphere. As with any triangle, being able to define parts of it can help solve for the rest, and that is essentially what we do with celestial when we “reduce” a sight. We’ll use the sun in our simplified description but the same theory holds for all celestial bodies. The navigator takes a sight with…

Marine plastic lumber (MPL), more commonly known by the proprietary name, StarBoard, has replaced wood for many projects on new boats or during a refurbishing project—items such as instrument panel mounts, cup holders, rod holders and cockpit seats can be made with MPL, just to name a few. We have used MPL on our boat for a wide range of projects. MPL is made of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic. It is a very common type of plastic and is used in a range of applications, from making water jugs and plastic bags to computer parts and geo-textiles. The specific material properties mean that it will not rot, is impervious to saltwater and does not require finishing, while additives in the formula make it UV stable and color-fast. It can also…

Thinking of chartering in Europe? There may be more to it than just providing a passport and your VISA card. As more countries around the Mediterranean begin asking for formal certification to charter a bareboat, the waters are becoming murky in terms of what you do and don’t need for chartering across the pond. The International Certificate of Competence (ICC) was created in response to United Nations Resolution 40 and is becoming the accepted standardized qualification for leisure sailors in many European countries that have signed the agreement. The United States and Canada are not signatories, and therefore no American or Canadian school can issue an ICC. Grant Headifen, global director of education for NauticEd Sailing School (nauticed.org) based in Austin, Texas, says his organization is affiliated with the U.K.-based…