Indholdsfortegnelse for July 2019 i SAIL

Stars seem brighter in the sparsely populated South Pacific. With the Milky Way sparkling overhead, the 40ft custom wooden cutter Celeste lies snugly moored to an abandoned wharf in the Tuamotu archipelago of French Polynesia. This is the second voyage that both Celeste and her owners, Ellen and Seth Leonard, have made in this part of the world. While the celestial sphere for which the cutter is named is no longer her crew’s primary method of way-finding, it remains a source of great beauty and wonder, especially in the pristine skies of the southern hemisphere, far away from any light pollution. Ellen and Seth watch the Southern Cross every night on their passages. While it isn’t so obvious in this long-exposure shot, it’s still visible—can you find it?…

THE BIG ONE The Transpac turns 50 this year, and more than 100 crews will be contesting the classic race that starts in Los Angeles and finishes 2,225 miles later in Hawaii. The 100ft Comanche is favored for line honors, but the win could go to any one of a score of hot boats. The first of three starts is on July 10, and if the breeze cooperates the first crews could be donning leis and knocking back champagne by the 17th. transpacyc.com THE SHORT ONE On the opposite coast, the biannual 363-mile Marblehead to Halifax race gets underway on July 7. Scratch boat in the ORR fleet is John Kelly’s Whitbread Maxi, Merit, which will vie with the RP66 Zaraffa for glamor points and line honors. The event was…

The dog days of summer are upon us, and while warm winds and brilliant sunshine are a sailor’s dream, there’s not so much to enjoy when you’re at anchor or on a mooring on a windless day with the sun beating down. The balmy night temperature that was perfect for sleeping can become oven-like as the boat heats up in the afternoon and what’s worse, the heat often lingers down below even after it’s cooled down outside. Short of owning a boat equipped with a generator and air-conditioning, there’s not much you can do about keeping your cool in summer heatwaves—or is there? There are actually a number of ways to keep onboard temperatures if not fridge-like, then within the bounds of comfort. Prime among them are shade and air…

Both of the heads on Britannia, my Downeast 45 schooner, are Raritan Elegance electric models that I installed nearly four years ago. They have performed flawlessly, and one of the reasons for that is that for about 90 percent of the time, they are flushed with clean freshwater. When I bought the Raritans they were raw (sea) water models, but I devised a modification that allows them to be easily interchangeable between freshwater and salt. Raritan also offers a kit that converts an Elegance raw water flush toilet into freshwater flush at the press of a button. It operates in a very similar way to my method, but does not have a second one-way check valve or a shutoff valve. The Raritan kit costs $190. My method cost me $80.…

Back when I first started ocean sailing, the most routinely challenging part of standing a watch was just keeping track of vessel traffic. If you didn’t have radar or couldn’t run it 24/7—as was and still is the case on most modest cruising sailboats—it could be downright nerve-wracking. Working with your eyes only, the time you have between first sighting a large commercial vessel on the horizon and its running you down (assuming a collision course) is normally only about 15 minutes. If you fail to spot the vessel promptly, you have even less time. During that time, back in the bad old days, you first had to figure out the vessel’s orientation with respect to you. Then, if its course was converging with yours, you had to take a…

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 Flying my symmetrical spinnaker on Annabelle on the Columbia River— Adam Snider, Portland, OR I shot this beautiful sunrise in Boot Key Harbor, Florida— Victoria Mason, Conroe, TX This photo was taken recently while sailing the Sea of Cortez. We were bareboat chartering on a Dufour 45. My buddy and first mate was marveling at this astonishing sunset and I grabbed this moment— Brian J. Ochab, Los Angeles, CA I took this photo from the ferry as it left Swartz Bay, British Columbia, heading to the Gulf Islands. After I took it,…

It all started with YouTube. Last year, when my wife, Marjorie, and I began planning to include the Exumas in our upcoming three-month cruise through the Bahamas, I searched the internet for information on what we might find there. As I was doing so I happened across a video of a French group kiteboarding at Moriah Harbor Cay, near Georgetown, Exuma. The thought of being in such a beautiful place and doing such an exciting thing immediately sucked me in. I suddenly found myself doing more research on kiteboarding than on actually cruising. One thing seemed immediately clear: kiteboarding can be a great fit for a cruising sailor, as the required gear packs down well. The only large, rigid item is the board, and with most boards being only a…

If a boat show could be described as intimate, the annual Salon International du Multicoque in La Grande Motte, on France’s Mediterranean coast, is it. Held in the latter part of April, the multihulls-only in-water show is a boon for builders, because the people who attend come with the express aim of shopping for a multi, unlike the fender-kickers at regular shows. Walking the docks, you hear conversations in too many languages to count; indeed, the show attracts more foreigners than locals. Even with around 14,000 visitors over five days, the docks never felt crowded, and you never had to wait too long to check out a boat or talk to a builder. La Grande Motte is the home of performance cat builder Outremer, which in addition to showing off…

Way back in 1610, Henry Hudson, commissioned by the Dutch East India Company to find a northwest passage to China, was the first Western navigator to discover the bay that now bears his name. During his exploratory voyage (1610-1611), Hudson and his crew spent a miserable winter locked in the ice after which his crew mutinied and set him and his son adrift in a rowboat in James Bay, at Hudson Bay’s southern end. It’s a part of history that’s long fascinated me. Today, Hudson Bay is an almost forgotten sea as far as the nautical world is concerned. A handful of merchant ships supply the Cree and Inuit communities along its coasts from July to October. Cree and Inuit fishermen and hunters also occasionally move along the coast aboard…

Even cheap smartphones pack thousands of times more computing power than the machine behind the Apollo 11 moon landing, so it’s hardly surprising that their use has crept into every corner of sailing. Many sailors use smartphones to get weather and tide information afloat, but they are also a gateway to a host of other functions. “I think most boatowners want the same online experience that they have at home and in the office, on their boat,” says Paul Sumpner of Digital Yacht. “It is incredible how dependent we have all become, in such a short space of time, on the internet.” CHARTING + NAVIGATION There are a ton of apps designed to display nautical charts, and many give you all the same planning tools as a top-line multifunction display…

GORDON WEST IS AN ELECTRONICS EXPERT WHO SPECIALIZES IN RADIO COMMUNICATIONS DON CASEY HAS WRITTEN MANY BOOKS AND ARTICLES ON MARINE MAINTENANCE AND REPAIRS NIGEL CALDER IS AN AUTHOR AND EXPERT ON BOAT SYSTEMS AND DIESEL ENGINES BRIAN HANCOCK IS A SAILMAKER WHITBREAD RACE VETERAN AND CREATOR OF GREATCIRCLESAILS.COM ANALOG OR DIGITAL? Q: I am redoing my voltage distribution panel and can’t decide between a needle movement voltmeter or a digital illuminated voltmeter to monitor my house and starting battery voltages. Which way would be best? — J. Henshaw, Tampa FL GORDON WEST REPLIES I would say do both types of voltage monitors! Here’s why. The digital illuminated meter will show as little as 1/10th volt excursions when different switches are flipped on from the panel. This lets you spot…

In its near-50-year history the Ocean Race, the original fully-crewed around-the-world yacht race, has hit the reset button a few times—notably when original sponsor Whitbread pulled the plug in the early ‘90s and auto giant Volvo took it over, and then when Volvo went to one-design racing for the classic event. Now that button has once again been hit, with the most radical shakeup the event has yet seen. Joining the existing Volvo 65 one-design racers on the start line of the 2021-22 event will be a fistful of IMOCA 60s, the powerful foiling monohulls designed and built for shorthanded round-the-world races. Last year, longtime title sponsor Volvo Motor Group announced that it had sold the race, but would remain on as a premium race partner. A Spanish company called…

This new 34ft cruiser from Germany’s Hanse serves as a replacement for a previous model, the Hanse 345, that was built from 2013 to 2017 and proved popular with cost-conscious cruisers. In updating the 345, Hanse has not only carefully preserved all that was good about the 345, but succeeded in improving it. The differences are subtle but significant and include a taller rig, more powerful engine and more sophisticated construction. CONSTRUCTION The old 345 had a solid-laminate hull, but the new 348 features a balsa core sandwich above the waterline set in polyester resin, with an exterior layer of vinylester to improve osmosis resistance. The boat’s cast-iron keel—now a more cruising-friendly L-shape as opposed to the aggressive T-bulb found on the 345—is bolted into a set of large metal…

One of the most wonderful childhood vacations I can remember was back in 1971 when my best friend invited me to his family’s summer home on Nantucket Island. For a 10-year-old kid, this was a thrilling trip for many reasons, not the least of which was the fact it was also my first ride on a jet plane. As you might imagine, Nantucket was relatively quiet and undeveloped back then; my two main activities were riding around the island on a bike I rented from Young’s Bicycle Shop and stopping in at the local candy store each day to buy a Broadway Roll, which is a strip of cherry licorice. Forty-six years managed to slip by before I finally returned to Nantucket, this time via a sailboat I charted from…

While cruising the coast of Portugal last summer, I drove Nada, our Malo 46 sailboat, hard onto a sandspit in 3ft breaking seas. All Malos are exceptionally strongly built, so I was not immediately concerned about the hull. The rudder, however, was taking a beating as it hit the bottom in every wave trough. Nonetheless, we made it into deeper water with the rudder still working. From there we had an easy three-hour motorsail to Baiona, Spain, which had the nearest boatyard with a Travelhoist. We then arranged a haulout to check for damage, which proved to be much worse than we expected. The first task was to find someone to repair the boat. This was theoretically easy in as much as a service and repair company, RoNautica, also operated…

If you’re seeking a dose of culture on your next charter, the Med is your best bet. Not far from one of the cradles of civilization (there are now thought to be six), the Eastern Med is chock full of history, as the old Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Cypriots and Turks all crisscrossed these waters, often building their own civilizations right atop one another. One of the most complex and stunning examples of this annexation of preceding societies is the Dalmatian coast that today is a bustling charter destination. In recent history, the nearby mainland was called Yugoslavia, which in 1991 broke up into several countries, including Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Albania and—hmm, I’ve lost count. If you’re wondering what airport code to use, it’s SPU for Split in Croatia, a port…