Indholdsfortegnelse for September 2021 i Cruising World

WHALES Tales If binge-watching marginally entertaining Netflix and Prime originals is getting old, I’d recommend following along with the real-life saga about hardy sailors on a modest boat, pitted not only against the stormy Arctic, but also surrounded by killer whales at sea and stalked by polar bears ashore. The sailboat is Barba, a used Jeanneau 37, and its captain is Norwegian adventurer Andreas B. Heide. Together, they and crew have pulled off some audacious voyages before—a few of which have been chronicled in these pages over the years. But this summer’s expedition, code named Arctic Sense, is shaping up to be the biggest and boldest of them all. I first bumbled across Barba’s wake back in 2015 when a story written by Heide and another author arrived in my…

Buddy Melges is one of the all-time best sailors that the United States has produced in the past 70 years. His resume includes an Olympic gold medal, helming an America’s Cup yacht to victory, being named Rolex Yachtsman of the Year three times, and winning dozens of world and national championships in Stars, Solings, E Scows and many other classes. Melges is a hero to generations of sailors based on his tireless mission of helping other aspiring sailors to improve their sailing skills. A new feature-length film being produced by Mark Honer aims to tell the Melges story, which he describes as “a biography about the life and sailing career of the legendary Buddy Melges.” Over the past year, Honer interviewed sailors from across the United States and throughout the…

1. GILL COASTAL JACKET • $240 • GILLMARINE.COM This updated jacket from Gill has all the features you need, with none of the bulk. It’s constructed out of the company’s waterproof and breathable Xplore two-layer fabric with an additional water-repellent finish that is also stain and odor-resistant. The high-visibility hood and pockets are fully lined for warmth and comfort. The coastal jacket is also available in women’s sizes. 2. JL AUDIO MARINE PERFORMANCE AUDIO KIT: STAGE 1 • $630 • WESTMARINE.COM Up your cockpit sundowners game! This starter marine audio kit is ideal for both upgrade projects and for those adding an audio system to their boat for the first time. It contains an MM50 Marine Source Unit, which can stream music over Bluetooth, USB or an auxiliary connection, as…

After last year’s pandemic-related hiatus, boat shows are making a comeback for fall 2021. Cruising World will be hitting the docks at Rhode Island’s Newport International Boat Show, September 16-19, and the US Sailboat Show in Annapolis, Maryland, October 14-18. Whether you’re heading to a show to check out new boats and gear, learn new skills, or just want to catch up with old friends, from the looks of it, there will be something for everyone. I checked in with Nancy Piffard, NIBS director, and Tara Flanagan, educational coordinator for the Annapolis Boat Shows, to see what visitors can expect when they arrive at the shows and what’s new. “Our entire team is working fervently to make sure our Golden Anniversary Show is an event not to be missed,” Piffard…

We like to think of ourselves as logical, rational human beings who act with calm efficiency to accomplish our goals, but sometimes nothing could be further from the truth. In this particular case, I was impatiently singlehanding my new, freshly reincarnated, just-from-the-shipyard, S&Sdesigned Hughes 38 Wild Card to Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgins. I was excited, perhaps overly, no, exuberantly so. For one thing, my wife and child awaited me at Foxy’s in Great Harbour. For another, I was suddenly driving a sports car—my “new” sleek sailboat—instead of a family station wagon: our beloved heavy-displacement ferro-cement Carlotta, which had sunk recently during Hurricane Hugo. The storm had made us homeless through Category Four bad luck, but now, with Wild Card, we were merely penniless—a “good ting, mon” as…

Ted Turner was lit, again, in more ways than one, and he was letting people have it. Oh, boy. There was a time and place for everything, and for heaven’s sakes, not to mention simple common decency, this was neither one. Cocktail in hand, Turner was holding court in a noisy hotel pub in Plymouth, England, on the fateful 15th day of August in 1979, and he certainly had cause for celebration. But he was also, certainly, pushing all the boundaries. Off to the side, nursing her own drink and with plenty to occupy her already worried mind, Doris Colgate—to whom Turner, the well-known media mogul who was also a champion, world-class sailor, was clearly addressing his comments—could only shake her head. She’d seen this movie before. Late the previous…

SEAMANSHIP When I was new to sailing many years ago, it didn’t take long for me to realize that it was much better to anchor securely the first time rather than to be stumbling on deck at 0300 on a blustery, rainy, pitch-black night, trying to haul-in and then reset a dragging anchor. Anchoring is a vital part of seamanship. It’s just as important to be able to stop a boat as it is to make it move, and while different boats react differently when anchored, there are still some common tenets that apply to all anchoring situations. The main worry is always that the anchor will uproot, for whatever reason, and the boat will drag, sometimes with catastrophic results. The best assurance to avoid dragging is to lay a…

Given that this is 2021 and one’s Tesla can chauffeur them to the marina or yacht club in autopilot mode, it should come as little surprise that some of today’s navigation software can formulate a route between a home mooring and a far-flung anchorage, even in another country. Navionics, now owned by Garmin, pioneered this technology, dubbed Dock-to-Dock Autorouting, in late 2015. As with several of the weather-routing products discussed, to take advantage of Dock-to-Dock, a boat owner will need to enter their vessel’s parameters into their Navionics Boating app ahead of time, and they are highly encouraged to manually review the auto-calculated route before committing to it. “When planning longer bluewater passages, auto-routing might not offer much more than ETA over a given distance,” Garmin’s Dave Dunn says. “However,…

Satellite-communications systems are great for accessing the internet and staying connected to family, friends and business while cruising far-flung places. The trouble for most sailors is that very small aperture terminals—the dome antennas needed for satellite access—typically require rack-mounted belowdecks equipment and AC power. Until now. KVH’s new TracPhone V30 ($11,995) draws 10 to 36 volts of DC power and employs a small belowdecks VSAT hub that’s roughly the size of an at-home Wi-Firouter, making it an easy fit aboard a wide range of cruising sailboats. The TracPhone V30’s radome is 15.5 inches wide by 17.6 inches high and weighs a little more than 23 pounds; inside, there’s a stabilized antenna. Once installed and networked, it transmits data at speeds up to 2 Mbps and downloads it at up to…

In 2011, we spent several months sailing the islands in the Kingdom of Tonga. Every morning, I would listen to the marine weather forecast on the VHF, and most afternoons, with fingers crossed and tongue held just the right way, I would download weather charts broadcast out of New Zealand over the HF radio receiver. Everything got written down in a notebook, including observations about our local conditions. For weeks at a time, this basic system of information gathering and weather predicting was what we used to hide from the constantly shifting winds of our late-season explorations. These days it’s hard to find an anchorage without a cellphone signal, and the amount of weather information available online is seemingly endless. But fancy, high-tech graphics don’t always mean accurate weather forecasting,…

Just keep watching the sky for falling, flaming boulders,” the tour guide warned. As we stood on the edge of an active volcanic crater in Tanna, Vanuatu, and watched the glowing magma bubble and boil, our boat-school learning came to life all around us. Suddenly, the crater exploded so powerfully that we could feel the supersonic rumble radiate throughout our entire bodies. The intense forces of the blast seemed to reset the very rhythm of our heartbeats, stopping them momentarily. Fear and awe gripped us. The kids rushed to my side, now keenly aware of the power of the earth’s extreme forces. The movements and shifts that formed this volcano on which we stood, and the many islands we’ve sailed past as we’ve cruised across the Pacific, could be felt…

Let’s face it—there are a thousand great reasons to own a sailboat. Many of them are obvious. What other vehicle can set you free on the open water, propelled only by the wind, such a joyous and pure feeling? What’s more pleasurable than kicking back in a cockpit in a quiet harbor at the end of a fine day, with something cold to drink and something hot on the grill, in the company of friends and family (or even by yourself)? I could go on and on here, of course, but what I’d prefer to address is one of the hidden benefits of boat ownership, something you might forget (as I had) when pondering what exactly makes the experience so worthwhile. Simply put, it’s the unexpected: the places you see…