Table of contents for March 2022 in SAIL

The U.S. Coast Guard Merchant Mariner Credential (MMC), or captain’s license, is your ticket to becoming the legal master of a vessel. Commonly known as a “six pack license,” it allows the holder to take as many as six passengers up to 100 miles offshore in U.S. waters and charge a fee for doing so. It’s an absolute requirement, not just a formality, and strictly enforced. Almost every day the Coast Guard sends out e-mails detailing how it halted an illegal charter and levied heavy fines against an unlicensed “captain.” In the Coast Guard’s own words: “Recreational vessels may not carry passengers for hire without having a properly licensed captain and crew, along with other safety requirements in accordance with federal regulation.” When I first decided to obtain an MMC…

After a few uncertain years waiting to see how the Volvo Ocean Race would be reincarnated as The Ocean Race, the pieces are starting to fall into place. Early decisions, like the addition of IMOCA 60s as the race’s main fleet, surprised many, but by and large, spectators are cautiously optimistic about the new direction for the event. With the announcement of the stopover cities and schedule, we have a better idea how exactly things are going to look. But once again, it’s raised some eyebrows. The good news is a number of the recent regular stopovers are back on the roster, including favorites like Cape Town, South Africa and Itajaí, Brazil. Newport, Rhode Island, will once again be host to the American stopover. Additionally, this race will include a…

With an increasing number of truly massive yachts on the docks at boat shows these days, it would be easy to assume that the boatbuilding industry is going all in on the “bigger is better” approach. However, nothing could be farther from the truth. As demonstrated in these three new performance-oriented designs, the craftsmanship and innovation expected in a megayacht are also showing up in the more proletarian, shall we say, sized boats of many manufacturers’ ranges. DUFOUR 32 Like the rest of its siblings in the Dufour range, the Dufour 32 is a sporty yet easy to handle boat with comfortable accommodations. This is achieved in part by creating a number of multi-use spaces both on deck and below. Case in point: the boat’s foldable tiller, which allows the…

Jeanneau representatives Catherine Guiader and Paul Fenn joined us for our sail trial aboard the new Sun Odyssey 380, and so began a pleasant and informative day of sailing on a boat that ticks a broad array of boxes. Per the reps, during the 2021 Annapolis boat show just days prior, three SO 380’s had been sold to three very different pairs of sailors: one couple was upsizing, another was downsizing, while a third was purchasing their first boat. This kind of diversity speaks volumes to the boat’s versatility and appeal. The fact that the SO 380 scored a win as the top monohull cruising boat under 40ft in SAIL’s 2022 Best Boats contest should come as no surprise to anyone. CONSTRUCTION & DESIGN For the 380, Jeanneau continued its…

“Keep it simple, sailor,” was always our mantra. Aboard our 1985 Niagara 35, Plaintiff’s Rest, my partner, Phillip, and I didn’t have heat, AC, a hot-water heater, generator, watermaker or bow thruster, which meant we also didn’t have to absorb the costs and time required to maintain these kinds of complicated systems. Over the course of seven years, Plaintiff’s Rest’s simplicity also allowed us to learn her every nut, bolt and quirk, until we could fix pretty much any problem ourselves. Sounds perfect, right? Well, we recently sold her and bought a newer, more costly, harder-tohandle and far more complex boat. In short, we ditched our previous simplicity and went for broke. Go on, ask me: Why would we change tacks this way? The answer: we found ourselves in a…

The autopilot on my 35ft sloop, Second Wind, had been both commissioned and sea-trialed. I had also completed all of the other upgrades I’d had planned in preparation for perhaps a year-long cruise through the Caribbean. Working with various local technicians, I’d added solar panels, a new water-cooled refrigeration system, a new chartplotter, air conditioning, an EPIRB, an AIS transponder, a new dinghy and outboard, and a set of Eastern Caribbean courtesy flags. I’d also added new winches at the wheel for single-handed sailing and hired a professional rigger to check my standing rigging. Now it was time for my first solo sail, an experience that would put both Second Wind and my skills to the test. Granted, I had solo-sailed my previous boat, a 25ft C&C, on any number…

An ex-Vendée Globe racer is an unusual choice as a world cruiser, so why was it ours? Although we already both owned a pair of production boats, my partner, Timo, and I were searching for something to spice up our cruising life. We toyed with the idea of a classic schooner, but weren’t sure we could handle all the varnishing. Another option was to maybe find some kind of an old raceboat. That would certainly make for some exciting sailing! In the end location—or was it destiny?—played as big a role in our final destination as anything else, as we found ourselves anchored just a few boats away from just such a vessel, the Open 60 NV, in Opua, New Zealand. After doing a little digging, we were fascinated and…

The 52 Super Series is widely considered one of the top circuits in the world for monohulls, and in this era of rapid change, the TP52—or TransPacific 52—has managed to stay the series’ boat of choice for 10 years. Not only that, but as the class marks its 20th anniversary the boats it has produced remain as relevant today as the year they first came out. The Super Series was born in 2012 when class sponsorship from Audi and the MedCup circuit ended, leaving owners in Europe without racing opportunities. Veteran U.S. sailor Doug DeVos, the Roemmers family and Niklas Zennström all conspired to keep the class alive, because for them, the boats were the perfect combination of technology, speed, power and reasonably sized crews—not to mention they’re great to…

As a classic-boat sailor, I’ve long held that simpler is the better. I still think this is true: a simpler boat is cheaper, she has less gadgets to break down and there’s a certain satisfaction in knowing you’re able to handle a bit of discomfort. Thus, for a long time, I sailed boats most cruising sailors today would consider downright primitive. My current boat, Celeste, a coldmolded wooden sloop with a waterline of only 28ft, would probably also be considered fairly rudimentary by modern standards. And yet she has a key piece of kit that has made life aboard significantly more luxurious. A watermaker. Desalinators appeared in my life when I was planning a voyage to the Arctic. The Alaskan North Slope might have plenty of oil, but it doesn’t…

French kiteboarder Alex Caizergues loves going fast. He is a four-time Kite Speed World Champion and holds the Kitespeed World Record at 57.94 knots. Recently, however, he’s set his sights on a different form of locomotion, leading the innovation lab Syroco’s effort to break the sailing speed record with a new kind of craft: a hyper-aerodynamic vessel that borrows design ideas from both sailing and kiteboarding, with an anchoring T-foil and a kite sail balancing each other out to keep the boat hovering well above the water with as little friction as possible. It’s still early days, but the team projects that its craft, named Moonshot #1, will reach upwards of 80 knots. If achievable, this will easily beat the current record of 65.45 knots over 500 meters set by…

I’m sure many readers have heard of the dinghy test, in which it’s considered important you be able to admire your own boat as you’re dinghying ashore. Taking things up a notch, I’d say there’s also a kind of waterborne vanity test underway, whereby it ain’t half bad finding yourself sailing around on a boat so cool you can’t help thinking you’re pretty cool yourself. Case in point: the new South African-built Balance 482 catamaran, winner in the 40-50ft multihull cruiser category in SAIL’s 2022 Best Boats contest. DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION A collaboration between Balance president Phillip Berman and naval architect Anton du Toit, the Balance 482 features a pair of narrow, slippery hulls that include either high-performance fixed keels or dual dagger-boards (the latter far and away the more…

My first job ever on a boat was picking weevils out of bags of sugar in preparation for a 1,200-mile delivery from the South Pacific island of Tonga to Opua, New Zealand, aboard a 43ft catamaran. Up to that point in my life, the sum total of all my sailing experience had been a single daysail. Getting on that initial delivery was pure chance. After graduating college, I’d made various attempts at fulfilling what I called the “metropolitan dream” of getting a job and moving to New York City. In the end, though, I ended up moving back in with my parents toward the East End of Long Island and began working seasonal jobs in the wine industry. This in turn led me to New Zealand where I met the…

DO WITHOUT A BOLT ROPE? Q: In one of your recent Ask Sail responses, you wrote about loose-footed mainsails. I have an S2 7.9 that has a rope-footed main. Since I’m just cruising and not racing, could I just leave the rope out of the track and sail it as though it were loose-footed, or am I asking for trouble?—Marc Marschark, via sailmail@sailmagazine.com BRIAN HANCOCK REPLIES You have a boltrope on the foot of your main that threads into a groove on your boom. There are a couple of things to think about. You can definitely fly it loose-footed, and as you probably read in the other article, there are quite a few advantages to doing so, including more control over sail shape. However, there needs to be a fairly…