SAILの April 2021 の目次

Four years ago, my husband, Paul, and I sold our five-bedroom Victorian home in Baltimore, Maryland, with the intention of buying a sailboat to live aboard in the future. From there we moved into a rental apartment in Washington, D.C., across the street from Paul’s office. Shortly after we’d unpacked the last box, the hunt began for a sailboat, and after looking at several in the Chesapeake area, we found the perfect one—a 2002 Beneteau Oceanis 473. When she was officially ours we renamed her Bumpy Night, after the famous line by Bette Davis from All About Eve. Over the next three years, we would spend weekends on Bumpy Night, as we were not quite ready to live aboard and several projects needed to be completed before this was a…

One of the most fascinating things about sailboats is the different ways that sailors, naval architects and builders will approach a single design problem. The result has been a bewildering array of rigs and hull forms over the years, and in the case of the two boats we’ll be looking at here, a couple of very different cruisers. X-YACHTS X56 First, let’s look at the newly unveiled X56 from Denmark’s X-Yachts, the latest installment in the company’s “X” performance-cruising line. When the “X” concept was first announced a few years ago, we at SAIL wondered whether it wouldn’t somehow get all mixed up between X-Yachts’ already existing “P” performance and “C” cruising line. However, it has clearly done just fine, spawning a number of great yachts, including the X40, winner…

The boatbuilding scene in La Rochelle, France, was significantly transformed in 2018 when the town’s largest catamaran builder, Fountaine Pajot, acquired the town’s largest monohull builder, Dufour Yachts. Soon afterward a revised design brief for Dufour’s popular Grand Large line of cruisers was introduced, the vanguard of which was the new Dufour 390. The redesign by Umberto Felci features a sexier cabinhouse, more beam aft and pronounced hull chines running two-thirds the length of the boat. All of which makes the Grand Large concept even larger than before. DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION The hull is solid hand-laid fiberglass set in polyester resin, with neopentyl glycol (NPG) resin in the gelcoat and the first exterior laminate layer to increase osmosis resistance. The deck is a polyester resin-infused sandwich cored with polyurethane foam.…

As is the case with so much of the Mediterranean, to sail in Croatia is to take a journey though time. Centuries before the birth of Christ, Greeks traded amphoras of oil, wine and grain across these waters. During the first millennium, the Romans built lavish palaces and fortresses here. More recently, the islands of the Adriatic have been home to secret WWII airbases and Cold War military installations. Eager to explore these ancient mysteries and bask in the region’s cerulean blue waters, quaint stone villages and lush green groves of olive and pomegranate, my partner, Michaela, and I set sail one fall to tour the many islands that lie off the coast of Split. We chartered with Sail Croatia (sail-croatia.com) in the ACI Marina in Split, which provided us…

And don’t forget to sign up for our free Newsletter, Under Sail, via our website sailmagazine.com In Boston at India Wharf Marina on our way to Bruce & Johnsons Safe Harbor Marina, in Branford, Connecticut, with our new Bennet Brosbuilt 1991 Sparkman & Stephens 48 sailboat, Red Sky.— Brian Winthrop, Roxbury, CT Welcoming the world since 1886, Lady Liberty shared a perfect July sunset with Islander, our Beneteau Oceanis 35.1.— Michael Fortinberry, via sailmail@aimmedia.com Here is a picture taken in late August 2020. We are moored along the Hanlan’s Point Wall on Toronto Island, across the inner harbor from downtown Toronto.— Will Ingram, via sailmail@aimmedia.com Montgomery 17 Anna Bee on Lake California while 900,000 acres burn on all sides.— Steve & Vicki Fitch, Lake California, CA Heading out for a…

A few months ago we took a look at the development and attraction of doublehanded racing (Two to Tango, June/July 2020—sailmagazine.com/racing/racing-doublehanded). Hopefully, that served to whet your appetite. If so, the question becomes: “How do I get started? The good news, as we explained in Part 1, is that if you are the owner of pretty much any kind of sailboat from around 25 to 55 to even 60ft in length, there are more than likely already a number of regattas in your area that would love to have you join them. Again, you don’t need to sail a high-octane Class40 racer to have fun or even bring home a brag flag or two. More good news: prepping for doublehanded racing is anything but a single-use project. Pretty much anything…

FLEXLITE VAPOUR 1.0 This new top from Musto is part of the company’s Flexlite Vapour collection, which brings the latest technology to Musto’s foulweather gear in order to make it more suitable for multi-season wear. Though neoprene has long been the material of choice for harsher weather, the Flexlite Vapour top has been made with Ventiprene, an upgrade from neoprene that is four times more breathable and channels away sweat, allowing this waterproof, insulated material to be wearable on warmer days. Ventiprene is also lightweight to facilitate unrestricted movement, making it a great option for high-mobility mariners, like dinghy sailors. As an added bonus, the tops are made with a water-based adhesive, eliminating the harmful chemicals that result from using solvent-based glues. Notably, Musto is the first sailing brand to…

Granted, to call the new Excess 11 catamaran “small” is nuts. At 37ft long and nearly 22ft wide, she’s anything but petite. Nonetheless, as the entry point into Beneteau’s new Excess (or XCS) line, which also includes the Excess 12 and 15, she’s the baby of a bunch. More to the point, this “baby” proved to be truly exceptional during our test sail on the Chesapeake Bay. DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION VPLP is the naval architect behind the Excess line. Patrick Le Quement has also contributed exterior flair, while Nauta Design has focused on the interiors. The hull for the XCS 11 is all-new, as opposed to being comprised of repurposed Lagoon sections, as was the case with the 12 and 15. Carefully sculpted chines lead aft, creating additional volume within…

I didn’t come up with the title to this story on my own. I actually saw it on a T-shirt in downtown Bayfield, Wisconsin. At the time as we were roaming around town after returning our boat to the Superior Yacht Charters base (superiorcharters.com) there following five days exploring the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. It seemed so appropriate I couldn’t resist. It summed up our recent experience so well. My wife, Gail, and I are from Miami, Florida, so it may mean more to us than some. Except for a couple of weeks in the Rio Dulce, Guatemala, we have not sailed freshwater since moving to the Sunshine State from Dallas in the early 2000s. The freshwater in the Apostle Islands is also nothing like the lakes and rivers of…

HANDLING THE SWELL Q: I have a boathandling question. I recently chartered a 36ft sailboat from a well-known maker. While sailing in Vancouver Harbor, I confronted a very large tanker swell, which I took head on. The boat slammed down after peaking, knocking us about and doing minor damage to the boat. What is the correct way to cross this hazard? Is there a book or website I can refer to? — Nick Weir, via sailmail@sailmagazine.com DON CASEY REPLIES As a general rule, attacking any large wave perpendicular is rarely a good idea. The usual advice is to approach diagonally, so you ramp up and over. Too straight on, and you get hammered or engulfed; to shallow, and you get rolled. The recommended angle is usually 30 to 45 degrees,…

I am 90 years old, dwindling in mind and body and fear living too long. Twenty years have passed since I last weighed anchor. Still, when a Carolina blue sky is polka-dotted with billowing cumulus clouds and the wind blows fair, I sorely miss raising sail and setting forth. I remember more than any other part of my life the adventures of sailing a small boat down “The Waterway” and across The Gulf Stream to the Bahamas. I remember so clearly, because the events of those years were more than a dream come true. They were lifechanging. For this to happen as it did, the essentials had to be in place and properly aligned, and by the end of summer of 1990, ours were. To start, you must have a…

11/7 Due to pandemic restrictions, the skippers undergo strict quarantining and testing before the race starts. The race village is closed early and sendoff festivities are limited. 11/8 The fleet leaves Les Sables d’Olonne. Fabrice Amedeo (Newrest—Art & Fenêtres) returns to port immediately after the start to make repairs to a headsail hook. 11/11 800 miles in, Jérémie Beyou (Charal), a race favorite who’d already had a taste of leading the fleet, returns to Les Sables d’Olonne to make repairs. Though the rules allow for returning and restarting, he will be six days and 2,500 miles behind the fleet by the time his boat is ready to go. 11/16 Nicolas Troussel (CORUM L’Epargne) is dismasted near Cape Verde after which he is the first to retire. He is in 12th…

When a winter norther blows through the Bahamas, the northeast trades can reach gale force as they funnel through the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti. After waiting for a lull, though, we had a fabulous beam reach aboard our Liberty 458, Distant Drummer, from Santiago de Cuba across to Point Tiburon at the west end of Haiti. In the lee of the island, the wind veered, and we picked up a west-setting counter-current. Our second night out was spent motorsailing slowly into a headwind. The following morning we entered the channel between Haiti and Ile-a-Vache, a small island on the south coast popular with cruisers waiting for fair winds to sail east to the Dominican Republic. The passage meanders between shoal reefs and is peppered with buoys and plastic…

Just 24 hours before our scheduled charter in the Bahamas, the government clamped down again on visitors from the United States. Having endured two Covid-19 brain swabs in preparation, I looked at my packed bag on the floor and reached for the rum. I could, at least, pretend I was in the islands. The next morning, realizing rum alone had solved exactly nothing, I decided to pivot. “Where do I want to go that’s open?” Why Mexico, of course. One of my favorite land destinations, it was now calling with enticing sailing, good food and vibrant culture, and I wasn’t about to let it go to voicemail. Dream Yacht Charter (DYC—dreamyachtcharter.com), which offers a combination of power and sailboats for hire in Mexico, is ideally situated in La Paz at…

How you approach off shore sailing is key to the success of each passage. In addition, some of the most valuable, even crucial attitudes and skills may not be either learned or valued in everyday life on shore and may even fly in the face of talents that are greatly admired and sought after. The following is what I’ve learned over my years of sailing off shore. After 15 years of coastal cruising, I decided to take my LeComte Northeast 38, Early Riser, on my first off shore passage, a round trip from New York to Bermuda, to see if bluewater sailing was for me. We prepared endlessly, expecting a five- to six-day passage south. The trip did not go as planned. On day one, we bumped our overloaded boat…