Tabla de contenidos para May 2019 en SAIL

We dog owners understand the general expectations of ourselves in public places, like picking up after Fido and keeping him on a leash. There are, however, certain places where additional unspoken rules or expectations may apply—as in harbors or marinas. If you sail with your dog, it’s best to learn some basic rules of etiquette for both you and your pet. The basics: A well-trained and loving dog is much easier to manage in public places. By well-trained we mean responsive to their owners. Tackle the basic commands like sit, stay, down and recall. All dogs respond best to reward-based training and positive reinforcement. They learn through the consequences of their behavior—if they experience a positive consequence, they are more likely to repeat the behavior. Recall is one of the…

Twin sisters Carmen and Emma Cowles were selected as Rolex Yachtswomen of the Year after a terrific 2018 season that included their second straight Youth Sailing World Championship win. Sailing in the Girls’ International 420 Doublehanded Dinghy event, the identical twins won seven of their nine races and helped the U.S. team to win the Nations Trophy. They also took third place overall in the International 420 North American championships in Miami and fourth out of 96 teams in the 420 class at Kiel Week, Europe’s most hotly contested small-boat regatta. Based in Larchmont, New York, the Cowles sisters have set their sights on the 420 class at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.…

France’s Garcia Yachts, which teamed up with bluewater legend Jimmy Cornell in 2013 to create the Exploration 45—a concept that has since been extended to a 52-footer and even a 60-footer—has now launched its first catamaran. The Explocat 52 is to be constructed in aluminum, the same as its monohull cousins, and like Garcia’s other boats is being billed as fit to explore the world’s most remote and demanding bodies of water. (Among other things, Cornell used his 45-footer to transit the Northwest Passage in 2015 in his second attempt.) A collaboration between naval architect Pierre Delion, designer Franck Darnet and Garcia Yachts, the Explocat 52 will be available with either three or four cabins and will feature “optimal crew protection” underway in the form of a sheltered sailhandling area…

Depending on where you are, Puget Sound can look no bigger than a mountainous version of the Intracoastal Waterway. That’s what I thought when I first laid eyes on it from the lighthouse at Mukilteo Park on a sunny day last July. Then I went to the top of the iconic Space Needle in Seattle and nearly got the wind knocked out of me, staring incredulously at the immensity of this vast inland sea. Wow, it’s big! Framed by distant snow-capped peaks, the tendrils of these indigo waters stretch out in all directions, inviting adventurous sailors to come explore them for a summer or a lifetime. My family and I had to settle for a week on a chartered sailboat, and I already regretted this limitation. After a thorough search…

The young racer had been sailing for days without sleep, but he was ahead of the fleet in the Solitaire du Figaro, a grueling, singlehanded race off the coast of France. Sailing into the harbor to the cheers of the crowd, he stepped from his boat onto the wharf to accept their congratulations—then his safety harness jerked him back. There were no crowds, no wharf. He was standing on the gunwale of his boat surrounded by empty ocean. “I’ve heard similar stories from a couple of other sailors,” Damien Davenne, a chronobiologist with STAPS University in Caen, France, told me. “When they are hallucinating, they can’t tell what’s real and what’s not. It is believed that sailors have been lost at sea after stepping off the boat.” Chronobiology is a…

And don’t forget to sign up for our free eNewsletter, Under Sail, via our website sailmagazine.com Who says we can’t sail in February in Michigan? MyDN 12ft hard water vessel keeps me tuned for my 36ft Beneteau.—John Forbes, Granger, IN I love the colors of this view, softened by a little sea smoke, of sunset on the Kennebunk River. The photo was taken across the transom of our Sabre 30 MkIII, Norbeck.—Owen Mathieu, Marblehead, MA Lazy sailing with a friend toward Sitges, Barcelona on a Friday afternoon.—Miguel Diaz-Varela, Barcelona, Spain This picture was taken from the dock in New Harbor on Block Island, RI, while looking out at my 1998 Catalina 380 on a mooring during an off-season visit.—Dave Naismith, Wickford, RI Early morning in Scituate Harbor, taken from my…

The Beneteau sailboat line has long represented a kind of continuum, both in terms of the many models the company is offering at any given moment and over time. This does not, however, in any way diminish the quality of its individual boats. Just the opposite. Case in point: the Beneteau Oceanis 46.1, a performance-cruiser that not only makes lots of sense, but is a joy to sail. DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION The Oceanis 46.1 is vintage Beneteau in terms of basic construction. The hull is molded in polyester, while the deck is comprised of an injected fiberglass/foam-core sandwich, with a molded-in anti-skid; the deck-stepped, double-spreader mast is aluminum; and both the shoal and standard-draft keels are cast iron. The “basics” of this boat, however, represent only the tip of the…

On December 23, 1816, His Majesty’s cutter Mermaid was launched in Calcutta, India. Built of solid teak and sheathed with copper, she was 56ft long and weighed 84 tons, with a beam of 18ft 6in and a 9ft draft. Australian-born Royal Navy captain Philip Parker King commanded the Mermaid on three voyages to explore and survey the Australian coast between 1817 and 1822. As we sailed through the Kimberley region in the northwestern part of Australia on our Herreshoff H28, Sam, we crossed King’s wake several times. Rugged and remote, with many parts still unsurveyed, the Kimberley is well off the beaten track and very few private boats take on the challenge of cruising there. Thirty-foot tides, 8-knot currents, river bar crossings, saltwater crocodiles and a lack of phone coverage…

Your ground tackle is like a relationship—the more you care for it, the longer it will last. So, how do you enhance the relationship? First up, think of the accommodations—a damp, salt-rich, often warm environment, just the kind of thing to encourage corrosion. What can be done? Looking at chain lockers, I marvel at how inappropriate some are. I’ve seen lockers on yachts with drain holes so high it’s inevitable the “bottom” of the locker and its contents—the expensive chain—will constantly be underwater. If you never deploy all your chain you would simply not know that you have the perfect location to ensure its life is minimized. Devoid of attention, the chain at the bottom of such lockers will quickly corrode into one rusty lump. And it’s not only the…

Owning a yacht in charter sounds exotic and enticing, and it may have crossed your mind to give it a try. Maybe you’ve heard stories of good experiences (or bad ones). Maybe you haven’t heard any stories, but you’ve romanticized the idea into the perfect lifestyle. Before you even of speaking to a company, though, about its ownership programs, you may want to see if you fit the mold. Here are 10 sign you may be the ideal owner. 1. You have a flexible schedule and can travel on short notice As an owner, you’ll earn time to sail your boat. Some companies work on a points system, while others offer a combination of high- and low-season weeks. Most also offer last-minute owner bookings where you get extra time, but…

Steve greeted my boyfriend, Phillip, and me as soon as we tied Plaintiff’s Rest, our 1985 Niagara 35, up to his dock on one of the Berry Islands in the Bahamas. He was tall, cheerful and clad in a hodge-podge of clothes one might wear to paint a house: oversized, grungy and old. His shoes were duct-taped together. His hat was dirty and crooked. When his wife, Pat, came out of the house, she looked like the painter’s apprentice, draped in a stained men’s button-down, three sizes too big for her, and sporting blue pants, pink Crocs. I loved them both instantly, even before I heard their life story. I’ll be honest. When SAIL’s editor suggested a “hindsight” article before we left on our first cruise to the Bahamas—“looking back,…

San Francisco was the venue of the biggest come-from-behind victory in the history of the America’s Cup when Oracle Team USA beat Emirates Team New Zealand in 2013, so it seems only fitting that the first American round of Larry Ellison’s new SailGP pro sailing series will be held there. Over the weekend of May 4-5, six modified AC50 foiling cats capable of speeds approaching 50 knots will do battle on the bay. The brainchild of Ellison and Oracle Team USA CEO Russell Coutts, the SailGP format loosely mirrors what the Oracle team had in mind for the Cup had they retained it in Bermuda last year—a regular pro circuit to get the spectacular AC50 foilers in front of crowds around the world. Thwarted by the Kiwis’ victory and subsequent…

Coming fast on the heels of its predecessor, the Bali 4.0, the Bali 4.1 adds a number of improvements, many of them inspired by feedback from owners and charterers. She’s an evolution of a concept that has already proven popular and very much benefits from its builder’s continued willingness to adapt and evolve. DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION As many sailors already know, Bali is a line developed by French builder Catana that targets charter first and private ownership second—or at least that’s the way it has turned out in recent years. The brand has had great success with Dream Yacht Charter, in particular, which has in turn helped enhance various economies of scale for Catana and its build processes. The foam-cored, vacuum-infused hulls have a chine that not only serves to…

To encourage yachts to join in the 2017 America’s Cup festivities, I had been working with Spirit of Bermuda and the replica yacht America in the spring of 2016 to create a race from Antigua to Bermuda. Once the idea was in motion, I also decided to bring Monterey, our 56ft Farr Pilothouse sloop, back from Greece to join the race and take advantage of a Bermuda customs hiatus that would allow us to use the boat in Bermuda to watch the racing. Monterey had left Bermuda following the 2004 Bermuda Race, traveling to Scotland via the Azores and Ireland. After that we’d spent the summers joining the Royal Swedish Yacht Club cruise and exploring such places as Lisbon, Malta, Turkey and Greece. In May 2016, we’d sailed the boat…

DON CASEY HAS WRITTEN MANY BOOKS AND ARTICLES ON MARINE MAINTENANCE AND REPAIRS NIGEL CALDER IS AN AUTHOR AND EXPERT ON BOAT SYSTEMS AND DIESEL ENGINES GORDON WEST IS AN ELECTRONICS EXPERT WHO SPECIALIZES IN RADIO COMMUNICATIONS BRIAN HANCOCK IS A SAILMAKER, WHITBREAD RACE VETERAN AND CREATOR OF GREATCIRCLESAILS.COM DINGHY DILEMMA Q: We are in the throes of choosing a dinghy, and I would like to ask if you would recommend buying a RIB with a double-skinned hull rather than a single-skinned hull. Which provides better handling or stays drier? Also, aside from the heavier weight of a double-skin, are there any disadvantages we should be aware of? —Michelle Bamberger, Ithaca, NY DON CASEY REPLIES All else being equal, the only disadvantage of selecting a double-skinned hull over single-skinned is…