Table of contents for June 2018 in SAIL

Airborne The Voiles de St. Barth regatta, held each April around the shores of the French island of St. Barthelemy, attracts all kinds of boats, but is best known for the high-end racing machines whose owners take part in the series of regattas held in the Caribbean between February and the end of spring. The sun beats down, the wind blows hard, there’s a party every night and the usually boisterous seas make for some tough but hugely enjoyable racing. Here, Jim Vos’s HH66 catamaran, Nala, flies a hull during one of her battles with her sisterships, R-Six and Flash, and a handful of other Gunboats that all contested a strong multihull class.…

One of the most exciting events on this year’s sailing calendar starts July 1 from Les Sables-d’Olonne, France. The Golden Globe Race 2018 is neither fast nor glamorous. Instead, it’s a throwback to a simpler time when adventure was man-against-the-sea, and the sea usually won. It is a re-creation of the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, an event that took place 50 years ago and remains one of the true watershed moments in offshore racing. The original Golden Globe was the very first around-the-world yacht race, a singlehanded, nonstop lap of the planet at a time when in the minds of many the very idea that you could sail around the planet without stopping was nothing less than preposterous. However, British naval reserve officer Robin Knox-Johnston (now “Sir” Robin Knox-Johnston)…

Heaven knows there hasn’t been much in the way of good news from American boatbuilders for quite some time, so a burst of new-model announcements in the spring was welcome indeed. If you’ve been wondering what Hinckley has been up to, check out the rendering on this page. The new Sou’Wester 53 is a welcome return to big cruising yachts for the iconic brand, and it’s an interesting combination of traditional and up-to-the-minute styling and design. Naval architects Tripp Design have drawn a bluff-bowed hull with its beam carried well aft to a generous stern overhang. Construction is a vacuum-infused epoxy resin/carbon fiber/Kevlar/Corecell foam composite, akin to that used in high-end raceboats. A powerful triple-spreader carbon fiber rig should do justice to the fast-looking hull. The open transom and large…

Our Malo 48, Nada, is anchored for the night in placid water on the edge of a muddy drying shoal between two rocky islets in the Golfe du Morbihan, on the west coast of France. The tidal range here in southern Brittany is around 15ft. The gulf is large—more than 40 square miles in area—with a narrow entrance from the Bay of Quiberon, which itself leads to the Bay of Biscay. At peak flood and ebb, the tidal stream pours in and out of the gulf at 8 knots. Less than a hundred yards behind us, the ebb tide is throwing up 3ft standing waves. Boats exiting the bay are rushing by at speeds they never dreamt of, while an incoming passenger ferry, forced by its schedule to fight the…

Hanse Yachts is currently updating its entire line, and the latest model to get the treatment is its mid-range 388, previously known as the 385. As you might guess, the hull of the new boat is very similar to its predecessor, being built in the same mold. However, the improvements that have gone into creating the 388 are more than just skin-deep. DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION Although Hanse is based in Germany, its hulls are built at a dedicated factory just over the border in Poland. Layup there is much as it has always been—good old-fashioned manual work with a roller in one hand and a laminate plan in the other. That said, Hanse’s extremely efficient production line system has got this process down to a fine art, with boats typically…

Modern satcom devices and network airtime costs have dropped in price recently as more “birds” are launched and more constellations are created. This has resulted in several low-cost voice and data, or data-only, communicators being made available to the budget-conscious sailor. Some systems allow the user to connect a smartphone or tablet to the Internet for both voice and data services; others simply transmit tracking data back to pre-determined contacts back home, via SMS or email. Either way, they are becoming a good deal more user-friendly, both in setting-up and in operation, although you need to study the small print of the service agreements carefully as there are numerous “extras” you can be charged for. Some providers offer a Pay-as-you-Go service, but many monthly airtime contracts involve signing up for…

Ah, Tahiti! Even the sound of the word elicits thoughts of heaven on earth—a Polynesian paradise and a bucket list cruise to talk about for years. Most people are lucky to come here once in a lifetime, so I have to wonder why charterers are always in such a hurry to get their boat in Raiatea and press on to exotic Bora Bora or remote Huahine. You’re here. Stop and smell the tiare flowers before setting sail to elsewhere. Raiatea, the “Sacred Island,” is a 50-minute flight from Papeete and the departure point for all bareboat charters from Sunsail, Tahiti Yacht Charter, The Moorings and Dream Yacht Charter. Raiatea and Taha’a Island share a fringing reef, so it’s easy to stay in protected waters on the first day or two…

For anyone wrestling with the tradeoffs between deep-draft sailing performance and shallow gunkholing cruising capability, the Southerly 540, with its lifting keel, may be the perfect solution. The Ed Dubois-designed 54-footer is now part of the Discovery Yachts Group Line and is built in Southampton, England. We went aboard to see just how this big boat can be managed shorthanded and venture virtually anywhere in the world. DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION The hand-laminated, vacuum-bagged vinylester/foam core sandwich hull (solid glass below the waterline) has a fine entry, which allows the boat to put her shoulder into big head seas and carve a path straight through. Despite her exceptional volume, the 540 has a low profile with a nearly-flush deck and a rounded coachroof. The fixed angled windows swoop back like a…

Some of the best times aboard a cruising boat are in light airs—those quiet, relaxed sunny days with gentle sailing that just wouldn’t be the same if you were motoring. However, many cruising yachts are not set up to truly fullfill their potential in these kinds of conditions. One of the problems, of course, is the sheer weight of many cruising yachts. Displacement is still valued by many thanks to the more comfortable motion at sea (and at anchor) that it can confer, not to mention the reassuring assumption that extra weight is synonymous with additional strength. For many owners it’s also a byproduct of buying an older and therefore more affordable boat. Equally, for those travelling farther afield, a heavier boat is likely to have better load-carrying ability than…

When my wife, Christina, and I set off for fulltime cruising, we sold our house and got rid of a generation’s worth of stuff. It was tough, but we got it done. The hardest part was letting go of the tools I had gathered and used over a lifetime of building and repairing boats. Table saws, a bandsaw, planers and a drill press would not fit in a 40ft boat. As painful as it was, we finally pared the tool collection down to the minimum. It all fits into a five-drawer toolbox and three extraneous tackleboxes. Plus, we have a few odds and ends in critical places—the tools for routine generator service, for example, are in a box near the generator, while tools for routine dinghy service are in a…

This almost happened to me once. I was sailing singlehanded between Bermuda and St. Martin one fall, and one night happened to be on deck looking around at just the right time. The moon was out, the sky was clear and visibility was good. Still, when I thought I saw a large object, mostly submerged, in the water directly in front of my boat, I had no time to react. All I could do was gasp as a dark mass whooshed past within a foot of my starboard side. I remembered that night recently while reading about the Maersk cargo ship that lost 76 containers overboard off the coast of North Carolina during a gale in March. I don’t know whether my Unidentified Floating Object was a container or an…