Cruising World January 2016

When they go to work each fall at the U.S. Sailboat Show in Annapolis, Cruising World’s Boat of the Year judges have at their disposal a great deal of detail about the boats they’ll visit and sail. It goes without saying that before you pass judgment on a boat and give it an award, you ought to take it for a spin to see if all the parts come together. But still, numbers like length, beam, displacement and sail area can be massaged to get an idea of how a particular model should perform, and of how it might stack up against the competition — on paper, at least. One number that BOTY judge Tim Murphy often cites, and which we editors find useful as we try to avoid too…

News and notes from the cruising community Sometimes during a passage, when conditions are right, I dream of pulling over and taking a break from watch schedules and weather routing without sacrificing the solitude of open-ocean sailing. So imagine my delight when that dream became a reality. It materialized in Beveridge Reef, a barely submerged coral atoll 150 nautical miles from the nearest island. Beveridge can be a convenient stopover on passage from French Polynesia to the island nation of Niue. The reef appears as a string of breaking waves amid deep offshore blue, and encircles the brightest turquoise you’ll ever encounter that far from land. My boyfriend, Matt, and I had just completed a quick six-day passage from the island of Maupihaa, and our arrival coincided perfectly with slackening…

Laurie and I were spending our last night of the 2015 sailing season in Hadley Harbor, on Buzzards Bay, before returning to our home port of New Bedford, Massachusetts. We sail a 50-year-old Concordia yawl, Captiva, and had enjoyed a beautiful fall sail down the Elizabeth Islands from Cuttyhunk with a typical Buzzards Bay 25-knot southwesterly. As we settled in for cocktails and dinner, we were joined in the harbor by Terrapin and noticed they hailed from Homer, Alaska. “You’re a long way from Homer,” I said in greeting before realizing they had probably heard that 1,000 times or more. Well, I guess the secret of Hadley, if there ever was one, is out. I shot the picture as the sun rose on a gorgeous Columbus Day. John Bullard Westport,…

CRUISINGWORLD.COM BARBA CREW FINISHES AN EPIC ARCTIC ADVENTURE Six polar bears, 3,500 nautical miles , and countless icebergs and memories later, Barba is back in her home port. In the sixth and final installment of the expedition blog, Terry Ward writes, “Autumn is berry-picking season in Norway. At our first anchorage in a hidden Finnmark fjord, still feeling vitamin-Cdeprived from a lack of fresh produce during our last few weeks in Svalbard, we greedily filled Nalgene bottles with wild blueberries and cloudberries. After the barren mountains of the high Arctic, mainland Norway felt so in-your-face alive. And the ocean here was downright balmy by comparison, at 44 degrees F.” Read the full story of the expedition and see incredible photos at cruisingworld.com/barba. JUVENILE OFFENDERS SELECTED TO SAIL ACROSS THE ATLANTIC…

Green Wakes If you’re exploring tropical waters aboard a decent-size boat, then a group of top shark biologists and marine ecologists needs your help. The Global FinPrint Project, an international coalition of scientists that began conducting a three-year survey of sharks, rays and sawfish on coral reefs in summer 2015, wants sailors and other adventurers in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific and Indian oceans to welcome researchers and their gear as guest crew. “The main thing that sailors can do is host one of our researchers over a oneweek period to sample a reef using baited remote underwater videos,” says scientist Demian Chapman of Stony Brook University. “It doesn’t involve diving; it only involves putting the equipment over the side of the vessel.” The cameras — called BRUVs for short…

A gentle late-May sun shone down on the Hunter 37 Hypatia as she rolled and pitched with all her canvas, leaping toward a distant waypoint near Block Island on her maiden voyage. True to the forecast, there was nary a cloud in the cerulean sky, the temperature was unseasonably warm, and the visibility was excellent. And then, suddenly, it wasn’t. My friends Craig Zievis and Dana Singer had sailed with me on Florida’s St. Johns River and became enamored with my many stories of life aboard a sailboat: the thrills, the challenges, the exotic destinations. Without thinking, I had told them that if they joined the fraternity of sailors, I would come and give them a hand. A year later they wrote saying they had decided to quit their jobs,…