Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2015 i SAIL

How does a bar become a real sailor’s bar? Obviously, it has to be on or very near the water; it should preferably be at some kind of a sailing crossroads, a place where sailors stop, start or break their journeys; and it must have that indefinable ambience that so many bars lack. (It’s no coincidence that very few sailing bars are festooned with TV screens.) It’s the latter that separates the genuine sailors’ watering holes from the many imposters. It helps if the bar in question is somewhat off the beaten track, in which case the effort involved in merely getting to it helps increase its reputation. The best example of this is the Micalvi Yacht Club, in Puerto Williams, on the Chilean side of the Beagle Channel (seen…

Maureen McKinnon, a Gold medalist at the Beijing 2008 Paralympics in the SKUD-18 class with the late Nick Scandone as skipper, was watching the races at the 2015 International Sailing Federation (ISAF) Sailing World Cup in Miami when she heard the news that sailing had been dropped from the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics. Just the night before, McKinnon had learned that she’d made the 2015 US Sailing Team Sperry Top-Sider after taking a five-year hiatus from competitive sailing. And while her sights are set on making the 2016 Paralympic Team and winning a medal in Rio with teammate Ryan Porteous, 22, McKinnon, 50, is all too aware of the crushing blow the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) decision represents to one of the few Paralympic sports that offers levels of competition similar…

Pioneering French sailor Florence Arthaud, 57, died this past March in a helicopter crash in Argentina along with nine others—two of them Olympic athletes—while on their way to film a reality television show. Arthaud was best known as the only woman to have won the grueling Route du Rhum transatlantic race, a feat she achieved in 1990 aboard the 60ft trimaran Groupe Pierre. Although born just outside of Paris, Arthaud grew up sailing, eventually rubbing shoulders with such sailors as the iconic Eric Tabarly, father of France’s ongoing offshore sailing craze. At one time she was also the holder of the world record for the fastest solo crossing of the Atlantic. “I raced against and partied with Florence. She was a force and a crazy woman who lived 10 lives…

Years ago, I attended a seminar where Olympic gold medalist and America’s Cup winner Buddy Melges was on the panel. He said he could be sitting on his porch looking at a group of boats sailing along on a breezy, puffy day on Lake Geneva (Wisconsin) and tell which one was fastest just by its angle of heel. “The boat that keeps a more consistent angle of heel through all the puffs and lulls will be fastest,” said Melges. To help create the consistency that he’s looking for, Melges said that one of the key things he watches when he’s steering is the angle the headstay makes with the horizon. On a keelboat, the goal is to find that sweet angle of heel and keep it there. I’ve been on…

We have been spoiled by big boats. With their amenities, large sailplans and customizable features, it has been a big-boat world for over a decade. It was therefore refreshing to step aboard a 33-footer that offers choices and can change according to owner needs. The Salona 33, the baby of a six-model lineup, can be ordered to suit a racer or weekend cruiser, and neither side will feel short-changed when the boat is taken out for a different purpose from time to time. CONSTRUCTION The Salona 33’s low profile shows an attractive boat with a plumb bow, no hard chines and a nearly straight, open transom. Despite her diminutive proportions in comparison to the 50-footer in the slip beside her, I noticed she looked serious, even a little aggressive—like she…

It was our first time sailing any distance in the dark. We were taking Renegade, our 37ft Hunter Legend, to Shilshole Bay Marina in Seattle, Washington, in preparation for a race the following morning. Ahead of us there were two bridges and the Ballard Locks to get through. As we neared the Fremont Bridge we saw it was already being raised, yet we hadn’t sounded our horn. “Why is the bridge going up?” I asked. I didn’t see any other sailboats on either side of the bridge. “I don’t know,” Mike said slowly, probably wondering the same thing. Mike and I are fairly new sailors. He had taken a basic keelboat course six years before and had done some racing. I had taken my basic keelboat course just about a…

If you’re one of those sailors who reckons everything should be done by the book, then you’re doomed to go through your boating life constantly enraged by two things—the incorrect use of navigation lights and inane prattle on VHF Channel 16. Just as there’s no excuse for sailing blithely through the night lit up like a Christmas tree, so that no one has a clue what you are or what you’re doing, nor is there one for misusing the international distress frequency, or being ignorant of VHF protocol in general. Both are safety features that should be treated with respect, yet there are widespread misconceptions among sailors not only about the correct way to use a VHF radio, but how to make the best of its potentially life-saving features. Prime…

Got your own tips? Send them to us at sailmail@sailmagazine.com ALL WIRED UP Wire and wire-to-rope halyards were popular a half-century ago because they enabled sailors to lock in a sail’s luff tension when the sail was hoisted. Back then, rope halyards tended to stretch and usually needed to be re-tensioned after a while, either with the halyard winch or a tack downhaul. With today’s low-stretch and no-stretch lines, however, you can hoist a sail quickly by hand, set the halyard tension once with the winch, and forget it. No more sagging luffs, sluggish wire winches or awkward wire-to-rope splices. But consider the modern rollerfurling headsail. You hoist the sail once and up it stays for a season, or a year, or more. Meanwhile, its halyard winch and cleat, or…

2010 FEATURED JEANNEAU SUN ODYSSEY 44I VELA VIA - located in St. Lucia, listed at $129,000 - For passage making, every part contributes to the pleasure of sailing the open waters in complete security. On the Jeanneau 44i, design consideration and quality of build shows on each and every component. For added comfort and convenience, each version of this model can be adapted for an owner’s use or for charter. Whatever the season or sea conditions, the Sun Odyssey 44i can go the distance. You will find comfortable design features in the cockpit, at the helm and in each cabin. Go ahead, take to the sea with a carefree spirit. The Moorings Yacht Brokerage Call: 1-800-850-4081 | e-mail: info@mooringsbrokerage.com www.mooringsbrokerage.com 2010 JEANNEAU SUN ODYSSEY 36I LOZZA 2 - located in…

The expedition yacht Seal lies at anchor in a shallow bay on Isla Navarino, on the Chilean side of the Beagle Channel, while its crew of charter guests explores an isolated homestead. In the background, on the other side of the narrow channel named after HMS Beagle, loom the mountains of Argentina. Captained by Robert Fitzroy, the Beagle charted this remote part of Patagonia in the 1830s before heading up the South American coast to the Galápagos Islands. It was on this voyage that the ship’s naturalist, Charles Darwin, developed his theory of evolution. Fitzroy too made a singular contribution to science, as a pioneering navigator and meteorologist who came up with the term “weather forecasting.” His charts of the South American coastline were so accurate that they were still…

For years, the East Coast offshore-racing scene has been dominated by assorted Bermuda races, the Marblehead to Halifax race and the Pineapple Cup race from Florida to Jamaica. The new East Coast Ocean Series (ECOS) is set to change that. It consists of three events: the recently concluded Fort Lauderdale to Charleston Race; the Ocean Race North (May 22), which brings the fleet 512 miles from Charleston, South Carolina, to Annapolis, Maryland; and the classic Annapolis to Newport Race (June 5). Boats will compete for points—and ultimately, a trophy—while racing from the Sunshine State to the Ocean State. In addition to great racing, the ECOS was tailored to help migrating boats race up the coast from their winter haunts to their summer racecourses while enjoying other events en route. For…

Antigua hosts some of the world’s best regattas, so it’s no surprise that an “unofficial” around-the-island record exists. While practising for this year’s Caribbean 600 distance race, Lloyd Thornburg and his star-studded crew aboard Phaedo3, his new MOD70 trimaran, obliterated the previous record—set in 2009 by the 115ft Farr-designed monohull Sojana—by nearly two hours. Next up, the Phaedo3 team crushed the Caribbean 600’s course record, which was set in 2009 by John Burnie’s ORMA 60, Region Guadeloupe. Thornburg’s mighty green threehulled machine lopped 6 hours, 35 minutes and 35 seconds off Region Guadeloupe’s record to establish a new course reference time of a mere 1 day, 9 hours, 35 minutes and 30 seconds. Gidyap!…

We set off before lunch to cross Chesapeake Bay from our home base in Heathsville, Virginia, where the Potomac River merges with the bay. Point Lookout, Maryland, is north of us, and Smith Point is around the corner to the southeast. Our plan was to head east and then turn east-northeast across the bay, through Kedges Straits, skirting the north shore of Smith Island, then swing south through Tangier Sound to Crisfield on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Crisfield is a historic working port, famous for its blue crabs and oysters. Neither my sailing buddy, Bob, nor I had ever been to Crisfield. We planned to overnight there and return to Virginia the following day. Bob has considerable experience sailing and racing on the Severn River near Annapolis. The ladies had decided…

Although following the Volvo Ocean Race is getting easier and easier with the advent of satellite video feeds and other digital wonders, there’s still nothing like meeting the crews and seeing the boats firsthand. At press time, the fleet was expected to arrive in Newport, Rhode Island, around May 5-7, with the finish line for the 5,010-mile leg from Itajaí, Brazil, to be set off Fort Adams State Park. Fort Adams will also serve as the site of the stopover “village,” which is free to the public, with the entire fleet tying up at the marina there for the duration. The inshore race is scheduled to take place Saturday, May 16, with Leg 7 starting on Sunday, May 17. In both cases, the action will be taking place just off…

“It’s the future of research as we know it.” Maybe that sounds cocky, but Matt Rutherford has a pretty good track record of doing the things he says he’s going to do. Lest we forget, Rutherford became famous in the sailing world in 2012 after he circumnavigated North and South America in a 27ft Albin Vega, St. Brendan—a solo nonstop recordbreaking voyage he completed in 309 days. Not content to rest on his laurels, Rutherford then set out to do something perhaps even more extraordinary. He decided he wanted to save the world (or at least the world’s oceans). “I’m going to sail for the rest of my life,” Rutherford says, describing the realization that came to him during those lonely days at sea aboard St. Brendan. “So I might…

ALL STUFFED UP Stuffing boxes live a hard life. They sit unloved in the bilges and are often overlooked during routine maintenance because they are hard to get at. Traditional stuffing boxes are designed to leak, but only when the engine is running, and then only one small drip every couple of minutes. If I get on a boat and find the stuffing box is leaking at the dock with the engine not running, I know it is going to leak very badly when the shaft is turning. In some cases the stern gland can simply be tightened to correct the fault, but boats often go for years without the packing being replaced or even checked. The packing serves several different but interconnected purposes—it acts as a bearing to hold…

Of all the watering holes frequented by sailors, few approach the legendary status of Peter’s Café Sport in Horta, on the island of Faial in the Azores archipelago. Café Sport has given succour to legions of thirsty sailors for many decades. Few transatlantic voyagers break their journey in Horta without knocking back at least a couple of frosty pints in the company of their peers in this cozy cavern of a bar, its wood-panelled walls and ceiling bedecked with flags, burgees and mementoes left behind by generations of bluewater sailors. I felt something of an imposter when I first walked through the doors—I had arrived in Faial not via sailboat but by plane, having made the journey from Boston not in weeks but in hours, en route to a week…

Paradise lies just west of ICW mile marker 173 on the Neuse River in North Carolina, about a mile up Broad Creek. It’s not hard to find, but you do have to look for it. Once you get there, you’ll agree. River Dunes is paradise. Grace Harbor, River Dunes’s manmade 26-acre basin (8ft depths from shore-to-shore), is an almost perfect hurricane hole. We have docked our catamaran Different Drummer at River Dunes through hurricanes Irene, Sandy and Arthur, and none of the boats in the Grace Harbor slips sustained any damage. Zero. Other, more exposed marinas in nearby Oriental and Beaufort were forcing owners to take their boats and leave during these monster storms, but River Dunes offered safe harbor to all, until all slips were filled. The floating docks…

Ever since the ill-fated 1998 Sydney to Hobart Race, where six sailors and five raceboats were lost, many international regattas have included Duty of Care regulations that put the “if-and-when” decision to start a race in the hands of the Race Committee, rather than the individual skippers, in order to help ensure the fleet’s safety. This year’s WaterTribe Everglades Challenge—a 300-mile, unsupported adventure race for small boats ranging from kayaks to beach catamarans to daysailers and dinghies that runs from Tampa Bay to Key Largo, Florida—started on March 7 from St. Petersburg’s DeSoto Park with approximately 135 vessels and more than 240 people on the starting line. But Mother Nature had other plans. Racers found themselves in 20-knot winds and 4ft seas that quickly started capsizing the small, open boats…

These days the tendency to maximize interior volume in modern production cruising boats is pretty much taken for granted. By elevating topsides and pushing maximum beam well aft, designers have mastered the art of making large boats seem even larger inside. Where this trick is most useful, however, and hardest to pull off without creating a boat that looks ungainly or functionally impaired, is with smaller boats, say 35 feet and shorter. Hanse’s new 345 is an excellent example of how to do it right. Though it seems a bit brick-like on paper, it looks quite sleek sitting in the water and successfully packs a lot of bigboat features into a fairly small package. CONSTRUCTION The boat’s hull is all solid laminate set in polyester resin, with outer layers set…

“I think we dropped the ball when we had a bad night—some clouds, which we didn’t sail too well,” said SCA’s Annie Lush of her crew’s last-place finish in Auckland. “As a result the competition gained some miles, and I think that shows what this race is like. It is relentless, it is tough, you let up for one minute and that’s it.” Clouds. A single bad night. A single bad watch, even, or an otherwise minor breakage. That’s all it takes to send you to the back of the fleet in the 2014-15 Volvo Ocean Race, which will be stopping over in Newport, Rhode Island, this month. (See “Newport Stopover” on page 37.) The competition for the 12th installment of this offshore classic, first held in 1973 as the…

It would be easy to say that President Obama’s move to normalize relations with Cuba is what brought us there in our Island Packet 38. Truth is, six months before our visit we began planning our tour of the western Caribbean. The original route was Key West to Isla Mujeres, off Cancun, and then south from there. We’d entertained thoughts of visiting Cuba, but made no decision until a week before we left, when the president made his announcement. It’s difficult to say no to the president. Reports that Naval patrols had been reduced or eliminated eased our reluctance, and the fact that we usually take the road less traveled meant that we never had any interest in going to Havana. Following our original plan gave us a perfect opportunity…

When Matt Rutherford stopped by the W.D. Schock booth at the 2013 Annapolis Boat Show, I told him, half in jest, that he should use a Harbor 25 daysailer for another record-breaking voyage. “Be careful what you say, I might take you up on it,” he warned me. Over the next few weeks we focused the aims of what eventually became the Trans Pacific Expedition. When it became clear that Nicole was joining Matt, I implored Matt to change to the Harbor 29, if only for Nicole’s comfort. The only minor design issue was that Matt and Nicole would be sailing the H29 prototype nonstop for 7,000 miles. We had been planning a bigger version of our successful Harbor 25 for some time, and Matt’s voyage would be a perfect…