Table of contents for April 2020 in SAIL

The “magenta line” was first added to charts in 1913. It was conceived as a means of aiding commercial navigation along the Intracoastal Waterway up and down the Eastern Seaboard and around the Gulf Coast. To help pilots running through the convoluted mix of waterways, a red line was included on charts to indicate which rivers, creeks, sounds and canals they should follow when transiting the inshore route between the Chesapeake Bay and Florida, and over to Brownsville, Texas. It’s important to be aware, though, that the magenta line is much like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs, in that it is drawn only to help you find the right path. Commercial captains in years past still monitored their courses with consummate skill, using hand-bearing compasses and other nav tools to keep…

A few years ago, we published a short article about Aussie Arnold Metcalf, a Laser sailor who was still mixing things up on the racecourse in his 80s. Well, we’re happy to report that Arnold not only celebrated his 90th this past December, but he’s still out there sailing. Not only that, he’s also still winning, recently taking first in a race held by the Lane Cove 12ft Sailing Skiff Club in Longueville New South Wales. According to Arnold’s son, Alastair, Arnold managed a good start, worked the harbor well and finished up by squeezing out the win after just over two hours on the water. Apparently, one difficulty was getting his feet caught in the hiking straps a couple of times. Arnold says he’s also been working on trying…

It was a dark night, utterly black. Any light was blanketed by the fog. My chartplotter was night-blinding me. I looked at the Navionics map on my phone, waited half a second for my eyes to adjust and then looked at the depthsounder. After that I looked ahead to where Laura was on the bow of Starboard Tack, my Pearson 385, searching for the next day mark with her flashlight, then down at my compass. Again and again, I found myself searching this way every five seconds, inevitably steering off course in the process. of local knowledge. That, in addition to the fact we It was a trip that had begun easily enough, but didn’t stay that way for long. Hours earlier, we’d had a nice, light breeze out of…

There are many mantras experienced cruisers like to pass on to those less experienced. First and foremost among these is: “Never sail to a schedule.” After that comes: “Choose your weather window carefully.” Unfortunately, this past spring, my husband, Brian, and I violated both these tenets when decided to set sail from Georgia in early March to head north. Many times in the coming days and weeks, we wished we’d listened to ourselves, but we had jobs in Annapolis to get to by early April, and the time frame was nonnegotiable. Having done several leisurely trips both north and south on the Intracoastal Waterway, we now had to think in terms of a delivery, making as many miles as we could each day and jumping out onto the open Atlantic…

CATASTROPHIC CORROSION Q: I have a 2005 Catalina 350. One day my diver called to say he observed a white coating on my prop, shaft and zinc. He also observed rust coming from the rudder post (which I didn’t connect to the white coating). I suspected a voltage leak from my battery charger and sent it off to Charles Industries for testing. Weeks later (and while waiting for the results of the testing), I took my boat out of the slip for a sail and the rudder snapped off! I retrieved the rudder, hauled the boat and saw that the entire stainless rudder post had completely disintegrated. Now that I am waiting for my new rudder to be built, I am obsessed with finding out what happened. Charles Industries responded…

Are you out there sailing, cruising and living the sailing life? Share your experiences with other readers. Send your photos to sailmail@sailmagazine.com And don’t forget to sign up for our free eNewsletter, Under Sail, via our website sailmagazine.com While in Big Major Cay, Exumas, we befreinded this nurse shark.—Vin Liuzzi, Plymouth, MA My wife, Eileen, and I trailered our MacGregor 26 to visit a cousin at Rapid River. The pictures show Lake Michigan rising on her front lawn in a matter of 20 minutes. We had just returned from a sail to Washington Island, Wisconsin.—Bill Haas, Terrebonne, OR I took this photo when we were off Waikiki, Hawaii, on a Friday-night race. Sometimes there’s just no wind.—Tracy Harrison, Honolulu, HI Here’s a “Boom Cam” action shot from the GBCA Icicle…

Sailors are a superstitious lot, but you don’t have to sacrifice an ox like the ancient Babylonians to carry on the tradition of christening your new boat. Here are some tips to ensure a jinx-free first launch. 1. Out with the old: If you’re renaming a previously owned boat, drop something with the old name on it over the bow (make sure to be responsible and choose a pollution-free item, of course). 2. Don’t say it: Resist the temptation to tell everyone as soon as you come up with the perfect name. Make sure every instance of the old name is removed from the boat (not just painted over) before you say the new name aloud for the first time. 3. Get ready to go: The christening ceremony should be…

A dozen or so years ago, my wife, Julie, and I arrived at the Cedar Point Yacht Club’s parking lot in Westport, Connecticut, with little more than dreams and ambitions. We’d been told the people there, all strangers, sometimes needed help racing their sailboats Wednesday nights. As outsiders we had often walked the docks admiring their beautiful boats and longing to be part of something we’d thus far only been able to watch from on shore. We made some inquiries. Julie was readily accepted. Me, they let tag along. “You wrap the sheet around the winch in this direction,” was the first lesson. And, “No, it’s not a rope.” Our first regular ride was aboard a snarly, high-strung boat, brimming with bluster, chaos and bravado. Strange words like topping lift,…

When you have a successful product, you don’t completely change its design. You tweak it. The Dufour 360 is a well tweaked version of the Dufour 350, and the changes are quite worthwhile. DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION Dufour has always been a step above many standard production boats in fit and finish quality, and the 360 is no exception. The joinery is precise, the wood grains are quite attractive, and little touches like air lifts on lockers abound. On a more basic, structural level, Dufour hulls are made of vacuum-bagged fiberglass, and the decks are laminated with a foam core. I found the plumbing throughout to be neat, bundled and labeled, and all hoses and connections to the metal seacocks double-clamped and secure. Wiring harnesses behind the panel are similarly neat,…

Learning to sail is an organic process. Often we’re introduced to the sport by a family member or good friend who loves sailing and wants to share their passion. As such, one learns in bits and pieces. The problem is you can end up with lots of missing bits, and thus many sailors with decades of experience have huge gaps in their training. As it turned out, I was one of those sailors. It was my grandfather who first taught me how to sail. Later, as an adult, I purchased a C&C 30 and cruised and raced for 10 years on Chesapeake Bay. I’ve also skippered long ocean passages, crewed in numerous races and chartered across the globe. However, it wasn’t until I applied for my United States Coast Guard…

I pretty much took rigs for granted when I first started sailing on other people’s boats. After all, unlike exciting, moving, tweakable things like sails and running rigging, masts and booms were just there—a part of the structure of the boat. I took no part in their maintenance or tuning. So as long as they kept the sails out of the water, all was well. It wasn’t till I got my first sailboat that I started paying more attention to my own spars and standing rigging. And it wasn’t until I had to order a replacement rig for my 1973 Norlin 34 many years ago that I truly began to understand the sparmaker’s and rigger’s jargon. By far the most common configuration these days is the sloop rig with aluminum…

Take a moment to stop and think about this image. What we have here is the maxi-tri Edmond de Rothschild literally airborne as it powers to victory in the 14,000-mile Brest Atlantiques race this past winter. (Yes, that’s daylight you see all the way back to the rudder in the central hull.) It was only seven years ago that the America’s Cup set the sailing world on fire with its full-foiling cats. Now we have 100-plus-foot tris like this one literally flying across oceans with a mere two sailors at the helm (in this case French sailing stars Franck Cammas and Charles Caudrelier). Strange and wonderful days, indeed. We can’t wait to see these giants start going head-to-head around the planet. For the latest on Edmond de Rothschild, visit gitana-team.com.…

The Ocean Cruising Club (OCC) has awarded its Barton Cup, the club’s highest award, to U.S. sailor Randall Reeves. The award comes in recognition of Reeves’ Figure 8 Voyage, in which he circumnavigated not just Antarctica but also North and South America, all in a single year. In a testament to Reeves’ toughness, his record-setting success actually came on his second attempt. As related in an article he wrote for SAIL (Lessons Learned in an Indian Ocean Gale, Nov. 2018) his first attempt ended in June 2018 when his 45ft aluminum sloop Moli suffered a series of knockdowns in the Southern Ocean forcing him to return. Four months later, though, he was back at it, rounding Cape Horn twice and transiting the Northwest Passage before finally returning home. According to…

If there was ever a time for the U.S. Sailing Team, which has been experiencing a serious medal drought of late, to start peaking it would be now, with the Tokyo 2020 Olympics set to begin in July. Luckily, it appears the team, which has won only three Olympic medals since 2004, is doing just that, taking three golds in the Hempel World Cup Series Miami this past winter. Among the winning American sailors was 29-year-old Olympic bronze-medalist Caleb Paine in the Finn class, the sole U.S. medalist at the 2016 Rio Olympics; 24-year-old Erika Reineke in the Laser Radial class; and 18-year-old Pedro Pascual in the RS:X sailboard men’s division. Pascual, who finished 28th in the RS:X class at the Rio Olympics, also received the Golden Torch award as…

For years I’d been hearing about Germany’s boot Düsseldorf, the world’s biggest boat show, which doesn’t’ just feature boats, but includes everything from mermaids swimming in oversized tanks to indoor surfing competitions. Well, I’m here to tell you the rumors are not only true, they failed to do justice to how big this extravaganza, which takes place on the outskirts of Germany’s seventh most populous city, truly is. In fact, so vast is the show, this past January I never even made it out of the three vast “halls” housing the show’s sailboats and sailing gear to see the surfing. There are 17 halls in all. As for the boats themselves, simply put, if you want to see what’s happening in the world of mainstream sailboat production, “boot” is where…

In the few years since the Bali brand appeared as an offshoot of the Catana line of catamarans, it has grown rapidly. The original models are popular bareboat charter vessels in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, and the new Bali 5.4, the largest of the line, moves the company into the crewed-charter business as well. CONSTRUCTION The Bali 5.4 is a cruiser, not a performance voyager like the Catana, so the construction has to meet somewhat different requirements. Its big open living spaces, for example, pose some serious engineering challenges from the torque loads of the hulls and the compression loads of the rig. The solid foredeck with all its furniture must also be kept light to maintain decent sailing performance and seaworthiness. All the necessary husky structural reinforcements are…

Panama is truly the crossroads of the world, bridging the North and South American continents, with the Caribbean and Europe to the east and Asia and the Pacific to the west. We’d already crossed the Pacific aboard Distant Drummer, our Liberty 458 sloop, and after spending three years cruising south from Alaska to Central America, were looking forward to exploring the nearby Pearl Islands before transiting the canal to the Caribbean. Many cruisers westward-bound for the Galapagos and Marquesas make only a brief stop in this cruising ground. However, with a dozen major islands and scores of uninhabited islets, not to mention the uncharted rivers and mangrove swamps of Darien Province on the mainland, several weeks can be spent happily cruising there. In all we spent a full five months…

We are hiding several miles up the Blavet River on the west coast of France, avoiding a developing gale in the Bay of Biscay. The tidal range here is 15ft. At low tide, there’s barely enough water to keep Nada, our Malo 46, afloat. However, we have come up the river on the last of the flood tide and found a relatively deep, narrow pool in one of the bends. It’s a beautiful, unspoiled setting, and we are anchored alongside Le Rocher du Diable (the Rock of the Devil). The chart indicates extensive drying mudflats at low tide immediately upstream of us. We have worked our way up a river like this before to avoid a gale on the west coast of Ireland. On that occasion we motored inland up…