Indice dei contenuti per November 2018 in SAIL

After a season of club racing, the Skipper (aka Kevin McHugh) and I were on the hunt for a faster boat—who isn’t? The Hudson at Kingston, New York, is a tricky spot to race: sheltered by hills on each side, it is narrow, fluky and tideswept. Watching the winners from the back of the pack, we noticed the 1970s designs with radically sweptback keels had an advantage clawing against the current in light air. We scoured online ads and the local boatyards for 50 miles around. Then the Skipper’s sharp eye landed on a “free” sign posted way back in a boneyard of old craft tucked away at the far end of our very own marina. It was a Pearson 26, a notorious PHRF-beater sporting just the keel-shape we wanted,…

This past summer Australian sailor, Wendy Tuck (inset), became the first woman to win a round-the-world yacht race when she and her crew aboard Sanya Serenity Coast claimed the overall victory in the 2017-18 Clipper Race. “I am just so happy,” Tuck said at the finish in Liverpool, England. “I don’t think it’s about being a woman. It’s just do what I do…. I am very proud and even prouder of my team. They are the ones that did all the work.” For more on the race, visit clipper-ventures.com.…

French catamaran builder Lagoon created an unimaginable following when its launched its 380 nearly two decades ago. With over 800 of the boats built to date, it appealed both in size and price to couples with cruising dreams. No model launched since has been successful in pushing the queen off her pedestal. But that may change with Lagoon’s newest introduction, the Lagoon 40. DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION The Lagoon 40 replaces the previous 39 and 400 models. Designed by VPLP, the new cat adopts the styling of her larger siblings, including more angular transoms, longer rectangular hull ports to let light stream in below and a coachroof that flows into an upward-angled composite hardtop. The wraparound windows are still vertical, but their elongated proportions gives this 40-footer an elegant, albeit still…

When a former winner of the Whitbread Round the World Race invites you to sail the Northwest Passage, there is only one sensible answer. No. More adventurous types might disagree, but they weren’t the ones facing frostbite of the lungs or the possibility of having the yacht’s hull ripped apart by an iceberg, or being part of a polar bear’s picnic. In the course of 40 years of ocean racing, New Zealander Ross Field not only crewed on Peter Blake’s Steinlager 2 when she won the 1989-90 Whitbread, he won the race’s Whitbread 60 class as skipper of Yamaha four years later and helped campaign the Volvo 60 News Corp in the 2001-02 Volvo Ocean Race. He also campaigned any number of maxis in Europe as Ross Field Yachting, his…

The engine-driven reefer in our Pearson 39-2 project boat was state-of-the-art in its day, but that day was long past. The boat had sat on the hard for a number of years before we bought it, and the individual components had corroded and/or seized up. Given the potential cost of repairs, it did not take long to decide to replace it with a 12V system (nor did it make sense to me to have to run the engine to keep the fridge cool) and only a little longer to decide to go with a holding plate system, preferably watercooled. My starting point was the Pearson’s deep and narrow fridge, which I calculated at 5.5ft3 to arrive at the size of the evaporator or holding plate that would replace the existing…

If you own an older boat, you’re likely familiar with the quirks that come with aging rigging and equipment. Many budget sailors like myself make do with these imperfections on their boats by finding workarounds or perhaps living in ignorance of how well their boat could sail if everything was running correctly. Perhaps it’s that squealing masthead sheave that you haven’t yet found the time to replace. Or maybe the outhaul car is stuck, but it never really bothered you anyway. In my case, it was a whisker pole with seized jaws, jammed telescopic tubes and a damaged cast-aluminum car that wouldn’t slide up and down the mast anymore. My boat, Eclipse, a 1984 Tayana Vancouver 42, doesn’t yet have a spinnaker in her arsenal, so for now, sailing downwind…

I learned to sail on the Maine coast as a boy, and one of the things my elders taught me was to respect fishing gear. If you got caught up with a lobster pot, you did everything you could to get clear without cutting the pot warp. It represented a family’s livelihood and thus was sacrosanct. I crossed a Rubicon of sorts in the late 1990s, when the lobster fishery was booming and lobster pots were so thick on the water you felt like a running back when cruising looking desperately for clear lanes to sail in. The crisis point came one summer when I anchored at Burnt Island, taking great care to stay clear of the many pots that littered the harbor there. I woke in the morning to…

Are you out there sailing, cruising and living the sailing life? Share your experiences with other readers. Send your photos to sailmail@sailmagazine.com And don’t forget to sign up for our free eNewsletter, Under Sail, via our website sailmagazine.com We pulled out the drone to take this shot while testing a Tartan 4300 on Biscayne Bay. The wind was around 9 knots and the water very calm. — Jaime Rodriguez, Miami, FL This passenger briefly hitched a ride on our Jeanneau 45 DS, Abraxas, moored in Man o’ War harbor in the Abacos, Bahamas. He departed soon after this shot was taken, fortunately without leaving a calling card. — Jim Edenfield, Ft Worth, TX I took this shot from Cooper Island Beach Club as my wife and I celebrated our marriage…

We’d only been out on Miami’s Biscayne Bay aboard the Corsair 760R a few minutes when Corsair Marine marketing manager Shane Grover and I began bemoaning the fact neither of us had a GPS with which to determine our boatspeed. Moments later, though, we both came to the same conclusion: who the hell cares? At the time we were ripping our way back and forth under jib and full main in about 14 knots of breeze, and the boat was cookin’. Shane was sitting in the cockpit, and I was well outboard on the windward ama, steering with the help of the tiller extension. Spray was shooting up through the tramp, and we were leaving an impressive rooster tail astern as we chewed up the distance between ourselves and the…

By the time we entered the Indian Ocean in February of 2018, Moli, my 43ft aluminum-hulled expedition sloop, and I had seen plenty of high-latitude action. The previous December, we had entered the Southern Ocean from the Pacific for a nonstop loop in the Roaring 40s as part of my long-planned Figure 8 Voyage, an attempt to solo circumnavigate both the Americas and Antarctica in one year. There, and while on our final approach to Cape Horn, Mo was overtaken by an intense low packing steady winds to 50 knots with gusts to 70. A knockdown late in that gale gushed just enough water into the pilothouse to find and short-out the autopilot junction box. Three days later we were 400 miles off shore and sailing hard in fresh westerlies…

“The ‘Explorer’ chartbooks. All three.” “An unlocked phone. But good luck with BTC.” “Spam. It’s ‘spensive there!” These were just a few suggestions we received from fellow sailors who had cruised the Bahamas when we asked how to best prepare for the trip. In fact, several reported, independently, sticker-shock over the price of Spam there. So, what did my partner, Phillip, and I do? Stowed Spam everywhere! In cans. In pouches. Under the couches. (Or settees, rather.) But here’s the thing… WE DON’T EVEN LIKE SPAM. We never eat it. But other cruisers do. For them, it is a coveted staple, and what they were trying to do was help Phillip and me—soon to set off from Pensacola, Florida, on Plaintiff’s Rest, our 1985 Niagara 35, bound for the Bahamas—not…

When we decided to refit our 38ft sailboat for full-time cruising, my wife, Tara, insisted that we add pressurized hot water, a cabin heater and a refrigeration/freezer system. The first two I felt comfortable installing, but I had no experience with marine refrigeration and had read enough articles on the subject to know that there is no single right way to go about installing such a system on a boat. Refrigeration is one of the top energy draws on a small boat, and I did not want to get this wrong. The first thing we had to decide was whether to install a self-contained pre-made unit or build our own refrigerator/freezer box. After taking measurements where we wanted the system to go, we decided building our own box would make…

There are basically two kinds of off shore sailboat races out there: those that take place annually, like the Fastnet and Chicago-to-Mackinac races; and those that take place every other year, like the Transpac and Newport-Bermuda race, in part so the competitors have sufficient time to recover before the next running. (The Rolex Sydney-Hobart is a notable exception, being both incredibly brutal and taking place every year: must be all the beer those Aussies drink.) Then there’s the Seventstar Round Britain and Ireland Race, which takes place every four years, the same as the epic Vendée Globe. Organized by the Royal Ocean Racing Club, the event is not especially well known in the States, but is renowned in the UK and Europe as being one of the toughest events around.…

Allures is not a name on the tip of many American sailors’ tongues, but it should be. After the debut of its 39-footer last year, the French company has made another significant entry into the U.S. midrange market with the Allures 45.9, an aluminum-hulled cruiser-voyager with some surprising qualities. DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION The boat’s long waterline, plumb bow and flat sheerline follow the current design trends for performance cruisers, while the deckhouse has a clean, smooth line that melds into a wide, functional cockpit. Our test boat was in its natural aluminum finish, but paint is an option. Overall, this is a handsome vessel. That said, the hidden parts of this boat are as interesting, if not more so, than its looks. For example, the Allures 45.9 is a centerboard…

After crossing the Atlantic in 2011 and spending two leisurely years crossing the Med, I found a homeport for my Crealock 34, Panope, in Cyprus. In 2000, we had completed a villa in Tala and the little pleasure/fishing port in Latsi was a scenic 40-minute drive away. The Chrysochou Bay was an immediate attraction, and a dozen anchorages and swimming spots dotted the coast to Cape Arnaoutis. Around that headland, however, was the western coast of the Akamai peninsula, a totally undeveloped national park that offered exploration. I recruited for my passage there a Greek Cypriot—George Georgiades—a traditional potter in nearby Lemba, who’d expressed an interest in learning to sail. George, a fisherman, knew the Akamas from the land, and I prized local knowledge of a coast only roughly charted…

Fresh food must be kept at a refrigerated temperature of 40 degrees F to stay edible for a week, whereas a freezer needs to be able to retain a constant 0 degrees F. The successful operation of any refrigerator is almost entirely dependent on the efficiency of the insulation surrounding the icebox. Insulation that is too thin or of the wrong material can double its operating time and hence its power consumption. If you are planning a new installation and calculating the physical dimensions of the box, you must allow for the thickness of insulation required to construct a thermally efficient unit. If you already have an unrefrigerated icebox that you plan to convert, check the thickness and type of insulation first, as it will almost always require upgrading. The…

One way or another we now have batteries in the marketplace that can absorb very high levels of charging current, enabling us to optimize electrical systems in ways not previously possible. However, this high charge acceptance rate has the effect of forcing charging devices (alternators and battery chargers) to maximum rated output for extended periods of time. It also subjects the cables in the system to high continuous currents, creating some installation challenges. No charging device is 100 percent efficient, nor is any cable 100 percent efficient at conducting charging currents. Inefficiencies translate into heat, which in turn translates into damage to sensitive electronics and a potential fire risk for windings, cables and connections. Conventional alternators are the worst, because the average alternator is, at best, only 60 percent efficient…

Like Goldilocks, charterers look for a bareboat that’s not too big, not too small, not too expensive, not too complicated and generally “just right.” Just right, though, means different things to different people, and each charter has its own circumstances, so what’s a sailor to do? Here are some guidelines to help you choose the best boat for you on your next trip. NUMBER OF GUESTS There’s a huge difference between chartering as a couple and chartering as a group. Two people need less space and less water, but they also may not be able to manage a larger rig, or the relatively large main of a catamaran in a blow. Similarly, a 34ft monohull may be just the ticket for four or less. However, larger groups will need room…