Table of contents for May 2022 in SAIL

After the long and tiring 2020 pandemic year, and after many talks about hypothetically sailing away, my partner, Vanessa, and I decided it was time to stop daydreaming and start planning. What makes us different from many cruising couples is the fact we are under the age of 50. This presented a different set of challenges that forced us to get creative in our preparations. What follows are 10 steps we took to become “cruising ready.” Of course, everyone’s situation is unique. You don’t have to follow this word for word. Mix, mold and think of these steps as a guide to help you with your personal goals. The main thing is that you get going on making your dreams come true the same way we did. 1 SAVE MONEY:…

The Coast Guard says that the best life jacket is one you will wear, so comfort and function are important considerations when picking out a life jacket that suits your needs. Here are some things to consider when picking out the right PFD. 1. Getting kids comfortable on the water is a huge task, especially when it comes to gear. Parents of kids attending their first years of sail camp will want to look for an inexpensive option that still meets safety standards, since the lost and found pile grows by the day, and replacing a life jacket adds up. Young sailors also have to be able to put their life jackets on by themselves without needing help to fasten in, so easily accessible buckles are important. A good option…

The Xquisite X5 Plus is a major update of the boat that SAIL awarded Best Large Multihull and Best Systems titles in 2017. The changes were not just cosmetic, but genuine improvements to an already fine boat, making it lighter, faster and less dependent on fuel. The builder’s weight loss program dropped the D/L from 144 on the original boat to 126, while modifying the rig increased the sail area and yielded a significant performance boost in light air. An electrical system redesign means the Xquisite X5 Plus is also capable of supporting a luxurious lifestyle with minimal use of a genset to pump out the electrons. Lighter and greener: what’s not to like? DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION Phoenix Marine, the South African builder, went through a meticulous engineering study of…

Many people hesitate to change their circumstances because they fear a departure from the status quo, or because they’re used to a life of conformity and security. Change could bring a new set of possibilities and problems. However, for me, there is no greater joy than an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to wake up to a different sunrise. Ever since my first sailing trip 29 years ago, I have sought that joy, yearning to cast away the security of my daily life and let my spirit roam freely. This desire to roam inspired me to enter the 2021 Singlehanded TransPac (SHTP) aboard Sea Wisdom, my 1987 Hinckley Sou’wester 42 Competition Sloop. Though I had cruised offshore for over 20 years, this was only the fourth race I had…

There is, of course, nothing new about bowsprits—sailing ships have been using them for centuries. That said, these days they are more popular than ever on cruising boats, thanks to advances in sails, sailhandling technology and boat design in general. With today’s furlers, an asymmetric spinnaker or Code 0 can be set up by a single person before casting off lines and then stay rolled up until it’s ready to be used. When that time comes, it’s a simple a matter of unfurling it, sheeting in, and you have a spinnaker! Taking the sail down is almost as easy—ease the sheet and take in on the furling line. The result is an eminently manageable sail that would have been almost impossible for a single cruising yachtsman to handle in decades…

Although big, multi-million-dollar projects like the Large Hadron Collider and the human genome project with their legions of PHD’s tend to grab headlines, there’s still a part of play for the “citizen scientists” of the world. Amateur birders have long contributed to an understanding of avian population fluctuations. Similarly, amateur astronomers have made substantial contributions over the years discovering comets and asteroids, and even helping identify exoplanets. Now there’s a chance for mariners to show their stuff as part of something called the Weather Rescue at Sea project. According to organizers, scientists trying to determine how the climate of the early industrial era measures up against the climate today currently find themselves having to deal with a dearth of quantifiable data prior to late 1800s. The good news is this…

Where does an old VO70 go to retire? Right back to the racing circuit, apparently. This spring saw a remarkable contingent of Volvo Ocean Race one designs back on the water and duking it out on the Caribbean circuit. While it’s no surprise that some of the VO65 teams intending to compete in The 2023 Ocean Race (formerly the Volvo Ocean Race) would be making the most of their remaining training time by jumping into the Caribbean racing season, the number of VO70s that joined them was quite impressive—especially since it’s been a decade since the boats last competed in the round-the-world race they were built for. Many of them, like the Spanish-flagged HYPR (formerly Camper) are now pay-to-play, offering a high-power racing experience to non-professional sailors, meaning fans of…

Anchored off Liberty State Park, I awoke late in the day to a Manhattan skyline and Hudson River so still and crystalline that I decided the first order of business would be to row my ill-repaired inflatable kayak the three miles to the Liberty Landing Marina. Someone who kept a boat there had left me a key card to the showers and some snacks, and I could very much use both. The kayak was a bottom-shelf inflatable I’d been given up in Maine. It had served me well until I popped a seam on one of the hulls a few weeks earlier. I repaired it with a piece of sail cloth and 5200, which seemed to hold up fine at first. Then it ripped again after catching on an oyster,…

They had sailed nearly 3,000 miles over the worst the Atlantic had to serve up, crossing from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (in Spain’s Canary Islands) to St. Lucia in the Caribbean. All of them were weary but had the glow of accomplishment about them as they finished the 2021 Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC), organized and managed by the World Cruising Club (worldcruising.com). Most of the 143 boats that started took just under three weeks to cross, but some didn’t finish at all, including two that were abandoned and three that turned back. This was by all accounts a fast ARC with rough conditions, but that’s not what made it noticeably different from the 35 previous years that the rally has been run. Instead, the differences clustered around the…

From “cockloons” to “SmartRooms” and innovative nav stations, today’s multihull builders are fine-tuning the layouts of their mid-sized cruisers in increasingly interesting ways. Not only that but as the cruising multihull market continues to mature, the new features are not just gimicks, but genuinely effective ways of making life that much better afloat. FOUNTAINE PAJOT ISLA 40 Although it is officially the smallest boat in the Fountaine Pajot catamaran line, you’d never guess it stepping aboard the new Isla 40. As the successor to the highly popular Lucia 40, the Isla had big shoes to fill, which it successfully does by incorporating a number of the design features found aboard its larger siblings. Among these are a pair of sporty-looking inverted bows that serve to reduce pitching while retaining a…

Dufour, long one of France’s most well respected builders, has been producing sailboats in La Rochelle since the dawn of fiberglass boatbuilding. Having recently merged with another La Rochelle-based builder, Fountaine Pajot, Dufour has now joined other European mass-production yards in producing a large-scale luxury cruising yacht. Its new Dufour 61, winner of SAIL’s 2022 Best Boat Award in the Flagship Monohull category, combines a competitive price point with high-end comfort and some seat-of-the pants performance. DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION Dufour has been working with Italian designer Umberto Felci since the turn of this century, when it bifurcated its models into a Grand Large cruising range and a Performance racing range. Stepping now into the big-boat luxury cruising market, Dufour has again teamed with Felci to create a boat that hews…

When I began preparing Minx, my 1987 Pearson 39-2, for extended Caribbean cruising, I had to balance my champagne wish list against my beer budget. Every buck spent on the boat before leaving would be one less frosty can of Carib down in the islands. On the other hand, I had to ensure the boat was properly prepared for the 2,500-mile journey from Marblehead, Massachusetts, to my first destination: Guatemala’s Rio Dulce. I’ve sailed in the Caribbean plenty of times, so I had a good idea what to expect weather-wise. I’ve also done enough bluewater cruising to have a solid idea of how to prepare my own boat. The mission was to get her equipped for safe, comfortable cruising and be able to spend a week or three off the…

In the following excerpt from Wild Seas to Greenland — A Sailing Adventure with Ocean Racer Ross Field, veteran mariner Rebecca Hayter, recounts how Field prepared the aluminum-hulled Rosemary, which he bought in France, for a try at the Northwest Passage “People often ask: why buy a boat like this? Simple, boats like this are a rarity, like a rare piece of art. Rosemary is not the most beautiful-looking boat, but I like her, she’s different.”—Ross Field When retired offshore racer and Volvo Ocean Race and Whitbread veteran Ross Field planned Rosemary’s refit, he had one word in mind: simplify. A major yacht refit involves a huge amount of problem solving against the criteria of budget, competing sales pitches and advice from the ultimate expert: the hardstand bystander. Keeping it…