Tabla de contenidos para September 2023 en Yachting Monthly

Australian sailor Tim Shaddock and his dog Bella have been rescued in the South Pacific Ocean after more than two months lost at sea. A storm hit their catamaran a month into the 3,730-mile voyage from La Paz, Mexico, to French Polynesia, crippling the yacht and wiping out all the electronics, leaving the sailor and his dog drifting helplessly in the ocean. Shaddock, from Sydney, and Bella survived by drinking rainwater and eating raw tuna and other fish. They spent the days sheltering from the heat of the sun and waiting – hoping for rescue. Two months later, a helicopter accompanying a tuna trawler spotted the drifting boat. The Mexican trawler rescued Shaddock and Bella and brought them back to Manzanillo, Mexico. When he was found, Shaddock had an impressive…

Penlee RNLI lifeboat crew are to be honoured by the charity for a dramatic five-hour rescue in hurricane conditions on October 31 last year, during which eight people were rescued from a disabled yacht off Porthleven drifting towards a dangerous lee shore. Coxswain Patch Harvey is to be awarded a Silver Medal for Gallantry. Mechanic Marcel Le Breton, navigator James Roberts and crewmembers Will Tremeer, Adrian Thomas, Dan Sell and Trevellyan Worth will be awarded Silver Medal Service Certificates. The crew of the HM Coastguard helicopter based at Newquay will also be presented with a Silver Medal Service Certificate by the RNLI for their outstanding lifesaving actions. The rescue of the eight sailors took place on 31 October, 2022 when the Severn class lifeboat Ivan Ellen was launched at 2030…

Measuring in at 6ft 6ins, Tom Cunliffe is deeper than the draught of most of the boats he’s owned and sailed. But his depth of knowledge is not constrained by his height and anyone who comes across him will either learn something new about sailing, or realise a skill they never realised they had. For me it was the latter when I first met Tom during ‘An Expert on Board’ article I was writing for YM on the south coast. I was a trifle nervous having always been a sailor who kind of jogs along in a muddle, relying on common sense but unable to describe technically what procedure it was I was about to embark upon. It was blowing quite hard when I arrived at the finger pontoon where…

COASTAL CRUISERS There are a host of cruising boats to see at this show, including a few premiers. The Bavaria C46 is making it’s debut as the latest edition to the high-volume, but seakindly and powerful C-line yachts. Of the four Hanses at the show, the 410 is brand new, and the 510 almost as new. The 410 aims to offer unparalleled living space, while being fun and easy to sail. It’s a good opportunity to see the whole line up of the Beneteau Oceanis range, where you can step aboard the 30.1, 34.1, 40.1 and the 46.1, though sadly not the new 37.1. French builder Jeanneau will have most of its new-style Sun Odyssey range on show, including the 380, which I tested and enjoyed sailing recently. These boats…

They say ‘know your boat’. Very sound advice. Just as importantly though, know your crew and understand the responsibility you have for your crew, especially when crossing borders. As a skipper sailing between different countries, if you are lucky, you might have an agent or a rally looking after you, but even so, you are ultimately responsible for your crew, so you need to have confidence in both their ability and their behaviour. Many skippers have ‘tried and tested’ crew that can be relied upon. For those that don’t, websites like oceancrewlink.com or crewseekers.net are very good for meeting crew, but meet your crew in advance. Get to know them. Go out for day sails with them. Have a beer or two with them so that you know if they…

Welcome aboard! Remember to welcome your crew or guests and get the kettle on early. Find out their prior experience, discuss your plans, and give them a thorough safety brief. When leading our own crew we need to remember our best mentors and our worst skipper experiences. Check in with your crew, watch for signs of sea sickness and hyperthermia: tiredness, shivering or losing concentration. Keep your crew consistently warm, happy and well-fed. Your RYA First Aid certificate should be kept in date, as there are frequent updates and changes. Your nearest lifeboat station can give you a free Safety Advisory inspection for peace of mind, ideas and a safety wish list. Let someone ashore know where you intend to sail to and stop along the way, how many crew…

[IN A CHANGING WORLD] Every voyage starts with a dream, and a voyage on my own boat to the remotest parts of the world was my dream as far back as I can remember. That dream became a reality in the early 1970s when I started preparing for a world voyage with my wife, Gwenda, and our two young children, Doina and Ivan. The first step was to join a course on offshore navigation and it instantly turned me into a lifelong addict of that ancient art. This is how I learnt about the importance of pilot charts in voyage planning, and became my most useful source on weather conditions during our six-year-long round the-world voyage. In those days there were no weather forecasts available on offshore passages, and the…

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Studland’s voluntary no-anchor zone, enforced by the Marine Management Organisation (MMO), has been designated to protect the seagrass growing in the southern part of the bay. The new restriction will have an obvious impact on both inshore recreation in the bay, which has traditionally been Poole’s playground, and coastal cruising, for which Studland has always been a valuable refuge in strong westerly winds. Compliance is voluntary but there is a threat of compulsion if boat owners do not cooperate. The MMO has stated that there will be no prohibition on emergency use; it is not clear whether this would include sheltering from a gale, although an exact definition of ‘emergency’ is not critical while the rule remains voluntary. ARE THE BOUNDARIES CLEAR ENOUGH? When we visited Studland in August 2022,…

www.yachtingmonthly.com/books Lieutenant William Ramsey of the anti-slavery brig, Black Joke, had called at the island of Fernando Pó (today Bioko) for supplies, including a new set of sweeps (oars). While there, he heard of an over-confident slaver, Marinerito, about to set sail. He left the island and lay in wait to catch her. The two ships sailed all day until suddenly, at 2100, they both hit a dead calm barely within gun range. Black Joke asked for the Spanish brig’s surrender with a warning shot aimed to cut the ship off in front and Marinerito answered as they said they would, with a three-gun broadside. The fight was on. Stopping for replacement equipment had already been plenty fortuitous, Ramsey was going to need those sweeps. In the bright moonlight on…

On 10 September, over 160 sailors will set off from Southampton on the Ocean Globe Race aboard 14 yachts to complete the four leg, 30,000-mile race around the world via the Southern Ocean and the three great capes: Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, Australia’s Cape Leeuwin, and South America’s notorious Cape Horn. On board the privately-owned, pre-1988 classic sailing boats, the international, mixed-gender crews will have no GPS, no high-tech equipment and no computers. They will navigate using only a sextant, paper charts and the stars with all communications by HF SSB radios. They will return in April 2024. The Ocean Globe Race (OGR) is a fully crewed retro race in the spirit of the 1973 Whitbread Round the World Race to mark the 50th anniversary of the original event.…

This year’s British Classic Week in the Solent saw some close racing in windy conditions, with the Laurent Giles-designed sloop Whooper winning the six-race series overall, one point ahead of Timoa. The week welcomed a fleet of over 40 classic sail and motoryachts from the UK and across Europe with yachts ranging from a 26ft Stella to a recently launched Spirit 72DH. The oldest yacht was the gaff rigged Eilun, built in 1896. There was also a 6mR class competing in an eight race series ahead of the 6mR worlds later in the summer. Class 1 was won by Spirit 52, Happy Forever, which travelled from Spain. Overall regatta winner Whooper won class 2, and class 3 was won by a Kim Holman-designed Stella named Timoa. Whooper also won the…

Never underestimate that for some boat-owners (though not necessarily their crews or partners), it is the maintaining and problem-solving that form half the satisfaction. Especially the latter: a puzzle is always satisfying. I have discovered on several boats over the years that the concept of ‘easy-care’ or trouble-free is not universally popular. My own husband is, to our advantage and safety, master of all the systems on Wild Song, beyond and below the rig. He has a fearful intimacy with every corner, wire, plank, pipe and seacock. Perhaps it’s a long-distance single-hander thing, but I bow to it in awe. I used to be better, but I got de-skilled by motherhood and later by his long, lone voyages and my flirtation with tallships, where hauling, steering watches and peeling potatoes…

There seems to be a consensus that all new cruising yachts look the same, but I would defy anyone to say that about the GT325. That’s because she is different – very different, in all sorts of ways. Like most modern cruisers, she has a broad stern. If you only saw her stern-on, you might imagine she was at least 36ft (11m) long. In fact she’s just 31ft 3in (9.53m) on deck, making her one of the few tough, sporty cruisers in this size range. The broad stern is balanced – properly balanced, in hydrodynamic terms – by an unusually broad bow for a cruising yacht. Stopping short of being even a semi-scow shape, it nonetheless incorporates scow bow thinking, being a fuller version of the flying bow seen…

While ashore at my club last winter my boat, with several others, was broken into. Minimal damage was caused, and nothing was taken except for a few Euros in a jam jar. Since then the club has installed more lighting, strengthened the boundary fence and advised owners to take a few extra precautions such as removing ladders. At home, we always set the intruder alarm when we go out, so I decided to do the same in the boat. For less than £30 I bought a battery-operated motion sensor alarm and installed it in the saloon facing the companionway. It has a small remote control, and makes a high-pitched piercing noise as soon as anyone opens the main hatch. It came with a bright yellow warning sticker which I have…

In principle, the Mediterranean habit of anchoring stern-to the harbourside with a fixed line to the bow, picked up from the wall, works well. One crew picks up with a boathook the line offered by friendly people ashore and moves forward with it to fix on the bow. Another crew throws a stern line ashore, hopefully to someone who knows to take it round a bollard and back to the boat. Job almost done: but what if you’re sailing solo and/or there’s no one ashore? Tricky. If there’s some side wind and there’s a gap upwind of a moored boat you are in luck: bring your boat to a stop a metre from the shore and the other boat, and wait for the wind to gently place you parallel to…

If you prefer to stick to the great circle route the easiest way is to programme the autopilot to sail such a route, which means it will make continuous adjustment without any necessary input from the navigator. This is certainly a possibility on the latest autopilots linked to your chartplotter. If you are doing this manually, you will need to plot a series of waypoints on your chart and join them together – these can be found, among other ways, by first plotting your route on a Gnomic projection chart before transferring it to a Mercator projection chart. While the Great Circle route will look strange, there are some significant distance savings to be had, and they should be weighed up against the weather along the route. Your compass course…

Following an already eventful summer cruise to Brittany, our return Channel crossing suddenly became a lot more challenging. We’ve been sailing our 34ft yacht, Hummingbird for 8 years. We generally only sail as a couple and limit ourselves to day passages, with the Channel crossing being one of the longest we’ve undertaken. We started our cruise heading west from Plymouth to Falmouth, and then we crossed the Channel to Roscoff, in order to clear customs at a French Port of Entry. We then headed west along the Brittany coast round Finisterre, passing through the Chenal du Four and Raz de Sein, with our southernmost point being Concarneau. From there we headed a few miles Falmouth offshore to the Isles de Glénan, which we had been assured were an idyllic, almost…

Distant rain moved across the sky like a silver veil. Behind the rain, the land and sea had become one: just a smudge of grey, with Plymouth somewhere in our wake. I watched the shimmering curtain from my seat at the helm. It was our 23rd day cruising around the coast of Great Britain and, for a novice sailor with just a handful of days’ experience prior to the voyage, I was finally starting to get the hang of things. I was ironically admiring my new-found steering skills when the squall hit: 27 knots straight into the side of the boat. One moment the deck was flat, the next it was heeled. With a scream, I yanked on the tiller, pulling it towards me. It was an amateur move and…

Exhilarating Round the Island Race Thrills and spills were the order of the day for the 1,100 yachts competing in the Round the Island Race on July 1, with two multihulls capsizing, several knockdowns, dismastings and a number of RNLI call-outs. Wild conditions to the south of the Isle of Wight, with significant seas and strong gusts, despite the winds being 20-25 knots, made life difficult for the competing yachtsmen who were clapped loudly as they crossed the line. RNLI lifeboats from Cowes, Portsmouth, Yarmouth, Lymington, Mudeford, Calshot and Bembridge attended multiple incidents and one sailor was airlifted to hospital by a coastguard helicopter. Two multihulls capsized: the 20m Gunboat 66 Coco de Mer, which had 14 crew and a dog on board at the time of rescue, and a…

When Guglielmo Marconi began sending radio messages between coastal radio stations and ships at sea in 1897, there were plenty who predicted the technology would have very limited scope. Yet, just four years later, Marconi succeeded in transmitting a radio signal across the Atlantic Ocean, from Cornwall to Newfoundland, an experiment that required an extraordinary 500fttall antenna held up in a gale by an enormous kite. Today, a better understanding of the physics behind radio waves, along with huge leaps in technology, mean that the equipment now needed for yacht comms has been successfully miniaturised without sacrificing too much performance. A quality radio set with a good antenna setup can send and receive VHF signals over line of sight distances of 50 miles, even further in favourable conditions. And the…

Some 47% of reported man overboard incidents from recreational boats end in a fatality, the latest figures from the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) show, as sailors are urged to practise man overboard drills. On average, crew have under 11 minutes to recover someone who has fallen overboard into cold water before they become unresponsive; this time decreases as the water becomes colder or the sea state rougher. In some cases, crew had just four or five minutes to coordinate a complex recovery under extreme pressure. The MAIB examined 308 man overboard (MOB) incidents from recreational and commercial boats, at sea and inland, which were reported to the branch between 2015-2023. Overall, 40% of MOBs lost their lives. The highest fatality rate was within the fishing industry where, out of…

For the fifth time, skipper, founder, and managing director of Innovation Yachts, Norbert Sedlacek Koch, 61, is attempting to become the first sailor ever to sail around the world single-handed, non-stop, and without assistance through all five oceans. The departure of project Ant-Arctic-Lab is set for 6 August from Les Sables d’Olonne and will cover a distance of at least 32,000 miles. The challenge will take around 200 days. Koch is setting sail in a sustainable, recyclable and power self-sufficient yacht IY Open60AAL. He will sail from Les Sables d’Olonne north-west until west of the British Isles, then straight up north, arriving at the archipelago of Svalbard. He will then go higher in the Arctic, rounding Svalbard on around 80°N, before heading south passing west of Iceland, Azores and Cape…

Aside from just being a fun day out, boat shows offer the opportunity to see more boats, kit and sailing gubbins side by side than you can see anywhere else. The chance to prod, poke and stroke the latest new yachts and gadgets is like being a child in a very large toy shop. For those with pocket money to spare and serious intentions, a show can be the chance to whittle down your shortlist, or to make a final choice and sign on the dotted line. For others, it’s a chance to dream, and content ourselves with bagging a few bargains from the chandlers and book stalls. Of course, there’s also the frisson of excitement that you might just walk away with something absolutely essential that you hadn’t known…

Q I read with interest David Bishop’s article on setting up his own Open Source navigation system on his boat, as this is something I would like to try on my own boat. What I’m not sure about, however, is how to be able to read the boat’s sensors – wind, depth, speed etc? I would also like to be able to ‘listen to’ and send this data to a cloud server, ideally in a low cost way. I would really like to be able to send the boat’s data from the NMEA through a mobile phone network. I would be fascinated to know how David did this, and whether he thinks the additional cloud functionality might be possible. A David Bishop replies:I have played with something similar to what…

Would you cross the Channel or not? Q Kate is skipper of an 11m cruising yacht currently in Braye Harbour on the north coast of Alderney. She sailed from Guernsey, 23 miles away, yesterday in a fair SW Force 4 wind. Braye was calm then, but today the wind is WNW 5–6 and the yachts, which are all on moorings, are rolling, some heavily. Kate would like to sail back to the Solent, which is about 70 miles on a course of 022º True. The forecast is WNW 5-6 becoming 4-5, veering NE 6 later, with good visibility. The wind will then be a fresh northeasterly for several days. To the north-west of Braye is a very disturbed area called the Swinge which has overfalls in the wind-against-tide conditions. The…

Spending more than three months sailing in the Mediterranean, as a UK citizen, and remaining within the confines of the EU visa rules can be challenging. With the addition of Croatia to the Schengen area in January this year (2023), now all EU countries are included except for Ireland. Schengen is an agreement between EU countries that allows their citizens unlimited visa-free travel across all member states. Since Brexit, however, the rules have changed for UK citizens on how much time we can spend in the EU. Put simply, the Brexit agreement allows a visa-free stay for a period of no longer than 90 days in any 180 days. This is a rolling 180 days, so you just can’t stay for 6 months in the summer. This is especially challenging…

1 DIAGNOSING THE PROBLEM We now know what it sounds and feels like when the prop is seriously fouled. To be fair, we had thought the sensation to be a bit similar to that of seaweed fouling when we first run the engine at the beginning of the season. If we are unfortunate enough to have the same issue in future, we won’t need to spend hours figuring out the problem! 2 GOING OVER THE SIDE Should one of us have gone over the side mid-Channel? We still go round and round debating this. We were both safe and warm on board and were in no immediate danger whilst we were sailing, albeit very slowly. Maybe if we were younger, or there had been more people on board, we may…

When I was a young boy, barely having learnt how to swim, I would stand by the sea in my speedos with goggles tightly strapped around my head and I would stare at the ice that was clinging onto the rocks on the shore, willing it to disappear. It would have been late March or early April, which typically signifies the end of winter on the south coast of Finland. While both the air and the sea were barely above freezing, the spring sun would have by now begun working its magic and slowly the ice would let go of its hold. Memories seem to grow warmer with time, because I cannot recall feeling the slightest bit cold. I would wade in between gigantic chunks of ice, pretending they were…

Are we now able to rely on an electric drive as an auxiliary engine for a sailing cruiser? Having mused over this for a few years, my husband Niall and I decided to stop vacillating and we are now the proud owners of a beautiful new Arcona 385 equipped with an Oceanvolt all-electric Servoprop. I had been feeling increasingly uncomfortable about using a diesel engine for a non-essential purpose. The idea of motoring from here to there when the wind or tide is against us just doesn't appeal, not to mention the noise and smell. This sense of unease has crept up over the last few years as we have been trying to become more environmentally responsible. We also have had some experience of adjusting to living with limited range.…

Millions of people across the UK are now spending some of the £190 billion saved during the Covid lockdowns on a wide range of new adventures and projects – including boat ownership. Up to 13 million people plan to change jobs in the next year or two, while 10% of 50-66 year olds want to retire early – up from 4% before Covid. At the same time, we’ve all experienced the freedom of virtual working – which of course is easy afloat. So what of the future? My wife Sheila and I have become hybrid sailors, as a pair of empty nesters with a global business, a large family and lots of commitments back home. After sailing across the Atlantic on our Beneteau Oceanis 473, Moxie, we spent three months…

REVOLVE-TEC A sturdy roll-up emergency antenna that can be quickly and easily extended to 2.5m in just a few seconds if you lose your mast or antenna. Comes with 6m of cable for fitting to your handheld or fixed radio set and can be hoisted up into the rigging to give even greater range, with better-than-nothing 2.1dBi gain. Price: £229.95 www.revolve-tec.com SHAKESPEARE DORSAL Low-profile unit that’s too compact to be highly efficient, but which does offer an impressive range of ten miles at 25W. Easy to fit anywhere, even on a tender or cockpit arch, and fully water sealed, it comes with 8m (26ft) of coaxial cable and a two-year warranty. Available in black or white. Price: £94 www.smgeurope.com GLOMEX RA304 Designed for quick and simple masthead installation, thanks to…