Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2021 i Practical Boat Owner

The founder of the Scaramouche Sailing Trust, Jon Holt, has been named the YJA MS Amlin International Sailor of the Decade. The head of outdoor education at the Greig City Academy in Hornsey, London, Holt started a sailing programme at the school in 2014. His aim was to break down barriers and provide opportunities for young people from all backgrounds to sail and race successfully. In 2017, Greig City became the first state school to compete in a Fastnet Race on their own boat, the German Frers 45, Scaramouche, coming 144th out of 362 starters. Money to renovate the yacht was raised by the students. Following their Fastnet success, Scaramouche sailor, Montel Fagan-Jordan, won the YJA Young Sailor of the Year Award in 2017. Since then, the Scaramouche Sailing Trust…

Over 300 crew in 60 boats left Les Palmas, Gran Canaria, at the end of November to take part in the 35th Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC). The fleet was expected to take 18-21 days to make the 2,700 mile crossing to Rodney Bay Marina, St Lucia. The event was a quarter of the size of last year’s due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with many entrants postponing until 2021 due to uncertainty over freedom of movement through the Caribbean. All entrants had to ‘bubble’ seven days before the start and have a COVID-19 test to meet the entry requirements for St Lucia. The ARC seminars were also held online and there was no parade of sail before the start, although ARC safety teams did manage to carry out boat and…

Nominations for the MS Amlin Seamanship Award 2020 have been extended until 31 August 2021. The decision was made due to the late start to the 2020 boating season because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The accolade recognises people within the boating community who go above and beyond to help others or challenge themselves. All nominations already submitted will be included in the 2021 judging process. The winner will be notified by 2 September 2021. The 2019 award was presented to Roy P Disney for his selfless action rescuing the nine man crew of John Sangmeister’s OEX, after damage to the rudder post caused her to sink during the 50th Transpacific Race. Further details at: pbo.co.uk/seamanshipaward…

ANGLESEY’S 500-BERTH MARINA Plans for a 500-berth marina at Newry Beach in Holyhead are expected to be submitted for planning consent in early 2021. A harbour revision order will also be submitted. Conygar Investment Company, which is behind the £100 million Holyhead Waterfront scheme, already has outline permission in place. The development will also include 326 homes, retail, leisure, restaurants, hotel and office space. The project is separate from Holyhead Marina, whose owners have submitted their own plans to rebuild the site and a new harbour wall after the marina was severely damaged by Storm Emma in March 2018. WIN FOR ALYSIA Alysia Rea (right) from Belfast, who has benefited from sailing trips with the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust, has been named the winner of the national Musto competition to…

Marsali Taylor sails an Offshore 8M, Karima S. She’s a dinghy instructor and author of The Shetland Sailing Mysteries starring liveaboard sleuth, Cass Lynch. Excellent expeditions Do you enjoy the art of record keeping? I’ve been keeping a log almost as long as I’ve had Karima. The first entry was on 27 July 2005, heading out with Philip, my generally non-sailing spouse, for afternoon tea in Vementry. The log records ‘Excellent expedition’. There’s a serious purpose to record keeping, of course. Every time we leave the berth (that’s Karima and I, not necessarily Philip too, or it would be a very slim volume) I note hours out, distance and engine hours; I log refuelling, so that at any time I can check exactly how many hours fuel I have –…

With four British sailors taking on the Vendée Globe – a solo, non-stop race around the world – I’ve been thinking about how ocean racing began, and how it’s all changed. As a sailor of 14ft dinghies, who likes an enjoyable but not too stressful sail, I choose my conditions carefully: Force 4 for an exciting sail; Force 5 and I know it will be wet with the chance of a capsize. So I have great admiration for the men and women who choose to sail our planet’s oceans solo or with a crew, trying to be the oldest, youngest or fastest, travelling with the winds or against them but always rushing towards the low pressure systems to go ever quicker. Nowadays they sail expensive high tech boats with satellite…

Lightning never strikes twice – a turn of phrase often used to reassure someone who’s had a bad experience, implying that it won’t happen to them again. However, as unlikely as it statistically may be that lightning will strike a specific object, the odds are exactly the same for it to strike the same object at some other time; both events being unconnected. This same principle applies to a lottery. The odds of a specific number coming up are always the same, irrespective of whether it has come up before. So, it is just as likely that lightning will strike an object a second time as it was in the first instance. What is lightning? In simple terms, lightning is an electrostatic discharge between two atmospheric parts or the atmosphere…

Sailing without an engine is not unusual. After all it takes place almost every weekend during the summer months at sailing clubs throughout the rivers and creeks of the East Coast. And at a guess, by thousands of very skilled sailors who will likely be able to turn a boat on a sixpence. However, there are generally a set of operating procedures in place and rescue boats standing by in case of emergency. Now, to take a small dinghy or yacht away from this environment, to go cruising around the estuary, is another matter. Things change dramatically for the cruising sailor who sets off alone, as the danger level is automatically raised. No matter how many times you annoy the coastguard for radio checks and the sound of a human…

Sailing is full of compromises and boats with swing keels are one of them. They will never be as fast or agile as their fin-keeled cousins, but how gratifying it is when you are running out of water to have the ability to reduce your draught by a couple of feet! Here, on the Essex coast, amid the Thames estuary sandbanks, it feels less of a compromise and more of a godsend. However, I have learned – after an alarming experience where the keel fell off – that there are a couple of things I need to keep an eye on. If you have bought or owned a sailing boat of a ‘certain vintage’ in the last 20 years, you will almost certainly have spent hours scouring the internet for…

Great ideas and tips from PBO readers Email your projects and tips to pbo@futurenet.com or write to us at the address at the top of page 5. We pay at least £30 for each one published While we carry plenty of fresh water in our tanks for most domestic use, tea making is not one of them. For that we carry a freshwater canister. But where to stow it? The surprising answer: beneath the chart table. The navigator’s foot well is handy for the galley, and as I do most of my passage navigation standing up I could live without the ability to sit at the chart table comfortably, as long as I could move the container if required. The only issue was to make the canister secure at sea.…

French solo skipper Kevin Escoffier has said he had no doubt that he’d be rescued after his IMOCA 60 PRB broke in two during the Vendée Globe. The 40-year-old, who’d been in third place in the round the world yacht race, had just minutes to put on his survival suit and abandon ship before PRB sank around 840 miles south-west of Cape Town. “It’s surreal what happened. The boat pulled back on itself in a wave at 27 knots. I heard a crack… I looked at the bow, it was at 90°. “Within seconds, there was water everywhere. The stern of the boat was underwater and the bow pointed skyward. The boat broke in two forward of the mast bulkhead… I’m not exaggerating… there was a 90° angle between the…

From 1 January second-hand boat buyers, surveyors and brokers will be able to search online, free of charge, for the Manufacturers Identity Code (MIC) of a vessel to confirm its provenance. A requirement of the Recreational Craft Directive (RCD), an MIC forms part of a unique serial number that every CE-marked boat must have and enables manufacturers and regulators to identify each particular vessel. After 1 January 2021 all global boatbuilders, including EU-based manufacturers, will have to register their MIC on the UK register to place a vessel on the British market. Previous MIC data will also be transferred to the database, which is run by British Marine. The CEO of the Yacht Brokers, Designers and Surveyors’ Association, Bas Edmonds, said the new database would ‘greatly benefit’ surveyors and brokers…

Falmouth will host the start of the Tall Ships Race, Magellan Elcano 500 Series this summer. Around 40 vessels will be taking part in the event, which starts on 19 August 2021. Class A square-rigged vessels will be anchored in the Carrick Roads. A further number of Class A and Class B ships will anchor in Falmouth’s inner harbour, while Class C and D vessels will be berthed at Port Pendennis Marina. Due to uncertainty over the COVID-19 pandemic and possible restrictions, the 2021 event will see the introduction of water-based inner harbour tours to view the tall ships, as there will be no public access onto the ships themselves. A parade of sail will be held ahead of the start before the crews begin racing to A Coruña in…

Sailing and windsurfing have been officially reinstated for GCSE, AS and A-level physical education (PE). The two watersports were removed in 2014, but last September the Department for Education announced sailing and windsurfing would be reinstated. They can now be taught and will be assessed in 2021 for AS-level and 2022 for GCSE and A-level. Students wishing to take PE and to have sailing or windsurfing assessed as one of the activities should speak directly to their school to determine which awarding body they use. The RYA’s sailing and windsurfing training schemes chief instructor, Amanda Van Santen, said outdoor activities like sailing and windsurfing were “hugely beneficial for both our physical and mental health, but have also been shown to help young people develop self-confidence, independence and other positive character…

CANALS DREDGING PROGRAMME Dredging work costing £1 million is to take place this winter on Highlands canals. The money from the Scottish Government will be spent on the Caledonian and Crinan. Some 20,000 tonnes of material is expected to be removed. Dredging will be carried out between Laggan Spout and Kytra on the Caledonian throughout February and March. Works will begin at Ardrishaig Harbour on the Crinan in January and will take place at locations along the length of the canal until March 2021. £3.7m will also be spent replacing lock gates one to four on the Crinan and bridge improvement works at Cairnbaan, Oakfield and Crinan Ferry Bridge. CASH AWARDS FOR PROJECTS Cromarty Harbour Trust has been awarded £20,000 to improve safety and access to the Smeaton Mole, the…

Dave Selby is the proud owner of a 5.48m (18ft) Sailfish, which he keeps on a swinging mooring on the picturesque Blackwater estuary in Essex Bruise cruise Only hardened cruisers know how little effort actually goes into yacht racing Cruising, the very pinnacle of human sporting endeavour, is often dismissed by racing sailors who think all it involves is reading a Sunday paper while laying hove-to on the start line of a race. As if that’s not challenging enough, variations include doing the same at anchor, on someone else’s mooring, or, at its most adventurous, in a marina. But there’s more to it than that. In fact I’ve completed crosswords in all of those situations, and that is real pressure, particularly if someone wants their mooring back and it’s a…

A hundred years ago, the winner of the America’s Cup was a Herreshoff-designed 106ft gaffer weighing in at around 100 tons. Both the British challenger and the American defender – state of the art racers in their day – were powered by gaff rigs. The next America’s Cup is to be contested in 2021 in New Zealand aboard keel-less 75ft monohulls with deck-hugging sails, flying on huge hydrofoils that can hit 50 knots! Which left me wondering why so many popular modern smaller cruisers have ignored progress, preferring gaff rigs to the Bermudan rigs that succeeded them. “The gaff still has a lot going for it,” says Andrew Wolstenholme, a leading designer of modern gaffers. “And with exotic new materials now available, it can be even better and offer even…

Despite the improvements in weather forecasting over the past few decades, it can still be enormously beneficial to compare your own observations with predictions. Forecasting is pretty good at telling you what’s going to happen, but predicting the exact timing, or location of events can still be a challenge. There are a couple of reasons for this – firstly forecasts often cover a huge geographical area, which means there’s little scope for detail. Secondly a weather feature may move a little faster or slower than predicted. Alternatively cloud cover might be slightly heavier than forecast, which prevents the sun from breaking through, or even creates a little light rain. A further problem for forecasters is that it’s very difficult to pin down exactly what the wind strength will be –…

When I bought my Down East 45 schooner, Britannia, it didn’t have any engine room ventilation, either through natural aeration with cowls, or electric blowers. The term ‘engine room’ is a bit of a misnomer on this boat because the area is 26ft long from the forward saloon bulkhead to the aft cabin. It is also 3ft 6in wide at saloon floor level, tapering 4ft 6in down to the bottom of the bilge. That is a very cavernous area and doesn’t just contain the large Perkins 4-236 main engine, but all the other machinery that runs the ship including a 6.5kw diesel generator, a five-gallon water heater, nine batteries, a large battery charger and five electric pumps. All these form what I call the ‘equipment bay.’ When everything is humming,…

My 1990 Hunter Horizon 27TK had no curtains when I bought her so, for the smaller windows, I recycled some old blackout roller blinds and fixed them to the cabin interior with Velcro. These proved to be a great success as they are not only waterproof but don’t fray. They are unobtrusive, black out the cabin sufficiently for a good night’s sleep and are easily opened when required. The blind shown here I made for a 300mm Lewmar window in the heads. I cut the fabric to 400mm x 350mm which allows 30mm for the batten pockets top and bottom, meaning the finished size was 400mm wide x 290mm deep. But before sewing the batten pockets, I sewed on five rectangles of Velcro (three at the top and two at…

Readers’ cruising destinations, near and far We pay for your published cruising stories and harbour updates. Email pbo@futurenet.com or write to the address at the top of page 5 Direction Island is a spit of coral and sand set on a reef. It’s part of the Cocos Keeling Islands in the Indian Ocean around 1,500 miles north-west of Perth, Western Australia. We sailed there as part of the World ARC fleet from the island of Lombok, Indonesia, stopping at Christmas Island, before running downwind for another five days. We rounded the western end of Direction Island and anchored in the lee just off the beach. The beach itself is breathtaking: the whitest sandy crescent, the most perfect palms and turquoise water gently lapping the shore. Stingrays cruise the shallows, we…

The sailing world is adapting to the restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and many events for 2021 are expected to go ahead. The 76th Sydney Hobart Yacht Race fleet will cross the start line on Boxing Day, although there will only be one international crew taking part. A record 100 boats will be racing the 628-mile race. Teams will be briefed online and the race village will be closed to the public; fans are being encouraged to watch the race online. Organisers of the 36th America’s Cup are making final preparations ahead of the start of the Prada Cup on 15 January, which will determine which team will compete against the Defender, Emirates Team New Zealand in March’s America’s Cup final. International fans will have to watch online, as…

Grants of up to £10,000 are being given out to RYA Sailability and OnBoard centres throughout England towards projects that tackle inequality in sport and the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The £150,000 of National Lottery Funding was awarded to the RYA from the Sport England Tackling Inequalities Fund. Crosby Lakeside Adventure Centre in Liverpool will be using funding to offer highly subsidised windsurfing and Sailability sessions to a wider audience. Young adults will also be offered the chance to train as instructors in exchange for voluntary work once qualified. Croydon SC is working with Croydon Youth and Schools Sailing Association to provide sailing opportunities through Scout groups for local youngsters living in deprived areas. Other centres to receive grants are: Hengistbury Head Outdoor Education Centre, Lincoln & District…

A campaign has been launched to restore the Dunkirk Little Ship, Vanguard and to find the soldiers the vessel helped to rescue during the 1940 evacuations from Northern France. The 1936 oyster dredger was one of 850 private boats which took part in Operation Dynamo, sailing from Burnham-on-Crouch in Essex. Vanguard’s crew helped rescue 600 men. After the war the dredger was sold and then abandoned on Canvey Island, where she was set alight, and left to rot. Vanguard has now been rescued by the Vanguard Restoration Foundation, which hopes to raise £500,000 (pbo.co.uk/vanguard) to completely restore the vessel. Students at Lowestoft’s International Boatbuilding Training College will use the boat’s original plans to carry out the work. It is hoped Vanguard can be restored by June 2025, in time to…

EAST COWES MARINE PARK PLANS Plans for a marine park have been unveiled for Kingston Wharf in East Cowes. The 10-acre waterfront site, which has all-tide deep-water access and wharfage, is owned by Cowes Harbour Commission (CHC) and was formerly the base for Isle of Wight Aggregates and Isle of Wight Fuels. CHC hopes their plans will attract new commercial marine tenants. CHC continues to run a boatyard storage facility at Kingston and this will remain and be extended to accommodate larger vessels. There are also proposals to invest in an additional hoist for smaller vessels and increase the size of the current hoist. The project will require grant funding support. 50 YEARS SERVICE RNLI Swanage volunteer, Dave Corben has retired after 50 years. He served as crew on the…

GOODWIN SANDS DREDGING ROW Kent conservationists are lobbying the UK Government to demand greater protection for Goodwin Sands to try and prevent dredging of the site going ahead. The Marine Management Organisation (MMO) granted a licence to the Dover Harbour Board in 2018 to dredge three million tonnes of sand and gravel from South Goodwin Sands. The aggregate will be used as fill material for the Dover Western Docks Revival project, which includes a new marina pier and cargo terminal. Last year, Goodwin Sands was awarded Marine Protected Area (MPA) status by the Government due to its biodiversity and unique habitats. The sandbank is also the site of several wrecks. A legal bid to stop the dredging failed last year. The MMO said that it ‘remains satisfied’ that its decision…

Sam Llewellyn writes nautical thrillers and edits The Marine Quarterly. He is currently patching up a 30ft ketch Toolbox review You know a useless tool when you see one In the bleak midwinter the boat is far to the north of here, dripping icicles. The toolbox, a crafty arrangement that fits into a drawer under the bottom step of the companionway, is in the shed and under review. According to the Centre Nautique des Glénans it is folly to take stuff off the boat in the winter, as you will infallibly forget to put it back on again in the spring. This year, however, we have decided to make an exception. The tools have been with us these 30 years or so, and it seemed like a good idea to…

Back in 2012, I went for a spin on the Hunter Channel 245 – a robust and chunky little cruiser that punched above her weight in lots of ways. Here was a boat with a hull length of just 23ft (7m) that offered up to six berths, an enclosed heads, a separate aft cabin, a chart table (often not found on much larger boats these days), full standing headroom for a six-footer, a respectable galley, an inboard engine, a choice of fin or twin keels and, despite so much accommodation, a remarkably good sailing performance. What’s more, she met the requirements for Category B under the RCD (Recreational Craft Directive). While it might be debatable just what a boat’s RCD classification actually means in practical terms, Category B signifies that…

Ailsa Craig, or Paddy’s Milestone, is a spectacular volcanic plug situated in the Firth of Clyde, roughly half-way between Belfast and Glasgow, hence its Irish name, and the Gaelic is translated as Fairy Rock. It tempted me many years ago in my kayak, before I was wealthy enough to own a ‘big boat’. In 2005 I set off from Girvan in a racing kayak, on a personal and unrecorded challenge, to paddle the 8.3 miles to the island, climb to the top, 1,000ft up, and then return. The trip took me four hours one morning, in glorious sunshine and calm seas – a pocket adventure. The only error I made was not looking back on the way there to pick landmarks. So, when I set off on my return to…

Out-of-season sailing attracts us. Winter here in Scotland, and early spring, when days are lengthening and the colours returning, are the best times to be outside. In those glorious few weeks when the glens are warming but there’s snow on the summits, we want to sail to remote mountain areas and go ashore. We also dream of going further afield: Orkney, Shetland or ‘properly north’ to Iceland and Greenland. The Arctic Circle is less than 550 nautical miles from here. To do this, we need the perfect boat. We agreed that if we were going to take on such a project we’d do it only once. We wanted a boat that could take us across oceans too, if we ever decide to do that. That’s why we bought Aurora, our…

At 91 years of age my sailing career is over, but I cannot grumble as I have some wonderful memories. Recently a friend, knowing my continued interest, gave me two copies of Practical Boat Owner. I was reading about the latest navigation aids when I was reminded of how it used to be before all these amazing devices became available. In particular I remembered a frightening occasion when we encountered thick fog during a passage from St Peter Port to Cherbourg. My boat at the time was a Colvic 26 Sailer that I had purchased as a bare hull from Cobra Yachts at Chichester in 1974. We named her Soubrette and she proved to be very comfortable to live in, spacious for her size, and an adequate sailer, though she…

On our Jaguar 25, Capella, we’ve been using bunting to persuade birds to go elsewhere with some success. The problem is that off-the-shelf bunting twists in the wind and eventually breaks (even with swivels on the ends). We’ve come up with a design that solves the problem: each individual pennant can rotate freely around the cord. Our bunting has done three seasons in the middle of the River Orwell and still looks OK except for the lettering. We used a piece of flexible tubing and a couple of nylon penny washers for each pennant – don’t bother with the coloured washers they fade back to white in a season. The pennants are held in place on the cord with an overhand knot outside either washer. For car number plate-sized 80mm…