Tabla de contenidos para September 2019 en SAIL

In the annals of shorthanded sailing, Australian Jon Sanders stands with the greatest. His achievements are little short of awe-inspiring, all the more so for being accomplished in modest boats on small budgets. A sheep shearer for many years, Sanders started sailing as a child and took up solo sailing in the 1970s. He made his first solo circumnavigation in 1975-77 on Perie Banou, his S&S 34. In 1981-82 Sanders became the first singlehanded sailor to circumnavigate Antarctica, which he did not once but twice on Perie Banou, covering 48,510 miles in 419 days. He turned left after rounding Cape Horn for the second time and sailed up to Plymouth in England, turned around and sailed back down the Atlantic and around the tip of South Africa to his starting…

Many sailors of a certain age look back fondly on the Whitbread round-the-world races of the 1970s and ‘80s as the pinnacle of ocean racing, the glorious Corinthian days preceding the Volvo Ocean Race era and its glossy multi-million-dollar campaigns. As if to prove the conjuring powers of nostalgia, there’s a new round-the-world race in the works, and it’ll be sailed in the same kinds of boats that created the Whitbread legend. Starting from an as yet unspeci_ ed European port on September 10, 2023—the 50th anniversary of the inaugural Whitbread race start—the Ocean Globe race will replicate the original’s course, with just four stopovers. Instead of the tortuous courses of the Volvo race, which evolved to meet the demands of high-dollar team sponsors, the route will follow the classic…

WHERE TO SEE THEM Newport International Boat Show Sept. 12-15 newportboatshow.com Annapolis Boat Show Oct. 10-14 annapolisboatshows.com On the web Checkout our Facebook page and web site to get the latest on all our Best Boats nominees: facebook.com/sailmag sailmagazine.com Bring on the monohulls! In a world increasingly given over to multihull sailing, SAIL Magazine’s “Best Boats” class of 2020 brings with it a strong new group of keelboats, including everything from luxury cruisers nipping at the heels of their mega-yacht brethren to a number of great-looking new performance boats. There’s even a fun little inflatable from French-based Tiwal, a company that takes a back seat to no one where innovation is concern. Which is not to say multihulls are completely absent—far from it. The Best Boats class of 2020 has…

WHY THE BOMBPROOF MAINS? Q: This past winter I did a bareboat charter aboard a 38ft cruising catamaran. I was once again impressed by how heavy and massively built the mainsail was. Why does this always seem to be the case on multihulls? (The headsails seem to be pretty much the same as those on monohulls.) Also, what is it that makes the mainsails on mulithulls so bombproof-seeming? Heavier-weight fabric? Multiple fabric layers? Some other construction technique? — Ann Connolly, Chicago, IL BRIAN HANCOCK REPLIES Multihull sails are built stronger and therefore heavier than a sail for an equivalent length monohull because of one simple fact: multihulls don’t heel. When a puff of wind hits a monohull, it heels over and some of the load is taken off the sails.…

ANNIVERSARY NARC The North American Rally to the Caribbean (NARC) celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. Participants will start the first leg to Bermuda from either Newport, Rhode Island, or Cobb’s Marina in Little Creek, Virginia, on October 26—or the best weather window after that date, says organizer Hank Schmitt. From Bermuda, the rally heads for St. Maarten. Schmitt says that by going east to Bermuda rather than heading directly for the Caribbean, sailors can avoid having to motor into the southeast trades. Entry in the rally is free and it features discounted dockage, plenty of social activities and shared weather routing. For more information, go to sailopo.com TITLES FOR FLORIDA A recreational boat title bill has recently been signed into law in Florida, aimed at protecting unsuspecting buyers from…

My husband, Neil, and I had left Mexico in March on board Distant Drummer, our Liberty 458 sloop, with a plan to spend the rest of the year on a leisurely cruise down the west coast of Central America. It was in this way that, after enjoying the delights of El Salvador and Nicaragua, we arrived in Costa Rica in mid-May where we were looking forward to exploring the coast and visiting several of the national parks. The west coast of Costa Rica can be split into three parts. Golfo de Papagallo in the north is exposed to the Pacific swell, but the rocky coastline has several sheltered anchorages and some great surf spots. Golfo de Nicoya in Central Costa Rica is an excellent cruising ground with a myriad of…

Having trawled through hundreds of “deals” to get the best price on the most efficient panels you can afford, you need to know how to install them to best fulfil your energy generation needs. Output, even from the highest quality photovoltaic (PV) array, will only be as good as the installation itself. Following these guidelines will ensure you extract every last drop of energy from your solar investment. MOUNTING TIPS Sailboats are not exactly the ideal place to mount a set of wide, That PV panels. So before you go ahead and purchase what looks like the biggest and best, take a few minutes to decide on exactly where you are going to mount them, as this can affect what type of panels you should buy. In most cases the…

Cuba has assumed near mythical properties in the community of sailors around the world. It is almost impossible to utter the name without conjuring up images of rum, sultry latin music and revolution. _ ere is both a bad-boy aura of the forbidden and a seductive call of discovery that make sailors want to visit this island that is unlike any other destination. As the largest island in the Antilles, Cuba has been in_ uenced by maritime tradition throughout its history. From the treasure galleons of Spain to African slave ships and the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor, vessels of all descriptions have helped to mold the island into what it is today. Since 1963, however, when the Cuban Assets Control Regulations were put into place to…

The chart showed 45ft of vertical clearance, and I knew the boat should be able to pass under the bridge. Still, there was that nagging voice in my head that wouldn’t let me be. “What if your air draft calculations were wrong?” it said. “And if you’re just a little too high the mast will come down on you like a telephone pole in a hurricane.” Fortunately First Draft, my friend Richie Levine’s Catalina 25, put her shoulder down and sailed under the low bridge with several feet to spare. I exhaled in relief. Phew! What other challenges lay ahead? Richie and I were partway through a voyage I’d long wanted to make: southbound on Florida’s St. Johns River, setting out from the Ortega River near Jacksonville and heading toward…

Our 1987 Pearson project boat came with an elderly but functioning Raymarine chartplotter, located belowdecks at the nav station. Since I usually sail solo or doublehanded, it was of little use down there—it needed to be near the helm. When I decided to update the plotter along with all the other vintage electronics, I had little choice but to mount it on the steering pedestal. Most modern helm stations have molded pedestals with room for MFDs and instruments, but that wasn’t the case in 1987. The 32-year-old Edson pedestal gave me two options. I could replace the pedestal guard with a much higher one that would allow me to position the new MFD right in front of the wheel, or I could opt to have it mounted lower on one…

Chasing leaks on boats is a time-honored obsession. Rule number one in all galaxies of the nautical universe through all of nautical history has always been the same: keep the water on the outside. When water somehow finds its way inside and you don’t know where it’s coming from, discovering its source so as to staunch the flow becomes a quest for the Holy Grail. One of my first big quests was aboard Crazy Horse, my old Alberg 35 yawl. She had a habit, I found, of taking on large amounts of water whenever she was driven hard on the wind with her rail under for days on end. Though Crazy Horse was otherwise a very dry boat, I spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars trying to find…