Indholdsfortegnelse for October 2023 i SAIL

It’s fall, and in my neck of the woods (the East Coast and, specifically, the Chesapeake Bay), that brings several rites of seasonal passage. After a long, hot summer, the sailing is perfect with cool, breezy days, crystal clear nights, and quieter anchorages. Overhead, Canada geese are flying in to take the place of the ospreys, most already gone. And as they migrate, so do the snowbirds, a steady stream of sailors southbound for the approaching winter, many of whom come to rest, recharge, and reunite in one place: the U.S. Sailboat Show in Annapolis. I think I was about 11 years old the first time I came to the sailors’ mecca that is the boat show in Annapolis in October. At that time, my dad was still trying to…

Tomorrow, we sail for Greenland. Falken is parked in St. John’s, Newfoundland, along the bulkhead of the enormous fishing and commercial harbor, tucked as far into the southwest corner as you can get. It’s an industrial place—black, gravelly street grit covers the deck, with no dockside water to wash it off. A couple boat lengths away, a large container loading terminal is bustling with cranes and ships and trucks zooming around at all hours of the day and night. A French steel boat is rafted next to us; in front, a big Oyster is tied onto the wall, two smaller boats rafted onto it. And forward of them is a very large sailing yacht, I’d say 90 to 120 feet, with (conspicuously) nobody rafted to it (that’s another story altogether—suffice…

It’s really not fair. That’s what I was thinking perched on the weather rail of the Italia Yachts 14.98 Artemis while beating up Eastern Bay on a sunny, 10- to 12-knot day in sparkling flat water. As perfect sailing days go, it was a top three, easy. I’d been invited along for the annual Annapolis to Miles River Race, a 20-plus-nautical-mile jaunt down the Chesapeake Bay, up Eastern Bay, and into the Miles River. And it really wasn’t fair, I was thinking, because most boat review sails amount to a couple of hours of somewhat perfunctory sailing, and rarely is the boat pushed for any length of time in the way an owner racing or even cruising on passage might do. But here was Artemis and her crew, short tacking…

A dark cloud has been hanging over Starlink antennas lately. Sailors around the world have been bypassing the $5,000 per month maritime version of Elon Musk’s new satellite internet system and instead have been enjoying great success with the $150 per month RV version of the system. The inexpensive service with its smaller antenna wasn’t supposed to work on boats, especially offshore, and these boatowners were operating their equipment in violation of their contract. Sooner or later, the smart people at Starlink surely were going to notice this pattern and force these sailors into the dramatically more expensive maritime equipment and contract. Well, Starlink did notice these boats, and the company’s recent action has been met with great relief. For a moderate uptick in subscription fees, sailors can continue to…

“You have to give it everything,” Cole Brauer says. It’s 9:45 p.m. on a Tuesday, and she’s calling from the van she’s living in while finishing a refit. “That’s the thing I tell the young women I mentor. They ask, ‘How do you make this happen?’ And I say, ‘Well, you sacrifice a lot and you say yes to everything, but you also have to have boundaries.’” “Give it everything” almost doesn’t cover Brauer’s dedication to and meteoric rise in the world of offshore sailing. At 5 feet 2 inches and just shy of 100 pounds at the time, Brauer, now 29, recalls securing a spot on the University of Hawai’i sailing team’s roster purely because of her size and gender. It certainly wasn’t because of her experience level—she’d never…

For those of us on smaller boats, it’s always a challenge to figure out how and where to place enough solar panels to power our electrical needs. The past several years have brought lots of innovations, and now comes an Italian company that has created a foldable solar panel inspired by science (NASA satellites), art (origami), and fun (Legos). Unlike a single panel that you hang on your stern pulpit or stanchions, propping it up when convenient, or a flexible panel you drape over the boom at anchor, the Levante Origami solar panel unfolds from a 75-watt, compact, closed position to a flat, 330- or 500-watt, fully expanded position. With bifacial solar cells, it can gather energy from either side and multiple positions. “The panel’s modular design also means that…

You can take the sailor out of racing, but you can’t take racing out of the sailor. So, when Nicolas Berenger, product and commercial director of Dufour Yachts, tells me that we might have to tuck in a reef as we head out for the afternoon on the new Dufour 41 on the Bahia de Palma in Mallorca, I’m not holding my breath. Berenger’s résumé includes seven Figaros and multiple French national championship titles. And all morning, as we enjoyed a shifty breeze around 12-14 knots, I had watched how he kept asking hull No. 1 of Dufour’s new model to do little more. Making 7.6 knots of boat speed in 13 knots of wind with the full main and the 108% genoa, he looked at the true wind angle…

Next to sailing on a lovely beam reach or watching a sunset across an anchorage at happy hour, stories are the best things about time onboard. Tall tales are usually screwups that live large and get better with the retelling. To protect the (somewhat) innocent, some shouldn’t be told at all. A while back, we were anchored on the back side of Bora Bora in French Polynesia, swinging to the hook in the fabulous trade winds. The batteries on our cat were shot, and they weren’t getting a break on this trip since we had a man aboard with a CPAP machine that ran all night. Every morning, I had to connect the battery banks and pray I could get at least one engine started. Our windlass had no intention…

Sahula rests at anchor just offshore of a deserted sandy islet and a comfortable swimming distance inshore of a fish-laden coral reef. Not another soul in sight, not one sail on the horizon. It is hard to believe we are just a few hours’ sailing away from Noumea, the capital of New Caledonia. The perfect place to do absolutely nothing for a few days, a few weeks. Just the antidote both of us need after the push to get here. It had been almost three years since my partner, David, and I sailed Sahula, a 40-foot Van de Stadt cutter, across an ocean. A year after we finished that voyage from Tasmania to New Zealand, we began what grew to become a major refit. Over a third of the boat’s…

When Needs Must We all know that we approach an anchoring place head-up to breeze or current and let go when we are stationary over the bottom. Once in a while, especially when the roadstead is crowded, this just isn’t accurate enough, because as the boat loses way, she will blow off sideways in a manner that can be tricky to control. If it looks like one of these situations, especially if you are under sail, try coming in downwind under bare poles or with just a bit of jib unrolled. You need strong nerves for this, and it’s unwise to try it with rope rode if you’re under power, but if you steer straight over where you want the hook to be and let go where you want the…

One thing you can say for sure about sailboat designers and builders, they are always up for a challenge—whether that’s finding new ways to provide comfort and glamour to a sailboat’s living spaces while delivering improved performance; seeking more environmentally sustainable propulsion systems, charging methods, or building processes; improving what’s tried and true; or stretching into new thinking about some aspect of sailing. All of this and more is reflected in the designs that are nominees for SAIL’s Top 10 Best Boats for 2024. From comfort and performance to size range and customizable options, we’re seeing production boats deliver more than ever before. It’s heartening to see solidly traditional bluewater designs that look like they could take us anywhere for a long time in even the toughest conditions, as well…

You might think that watching invasive surgery on a dated fiberglass sailboat week in and week out would be just about the last thing to draw people’s devoted attention. But Matt Steverson, 38, and Janneke Petersen, 36, who are rebuilding the Open 60 Duracell, are proving that assumption wrong. Their YouTube channel, The Duracell Project, has attracted more than 75,000 subscribers since the first episode aired in September of 2021. Viewers tune in every week to watch the couple discuss cockpit ergonomics, deckhouse dimensions, and interior design ideas, or to witness how Matt, kitted out in Tyvek suit and face mask, cuts out ballast tanks or infuses fiberglass sandwich bulkheads with epoxy resin. Converting a spartan racing yacht into a livable, comfortable, and fleet-footed ocean cruiser means there’s no shortage…

I’ve had a few different relationships with Brian Harris over the years. The first time I encountered him, back in the 1990s, he was running Rumery’s Boat Yard in Biddeford, Maine. A mutual friend had refit an engineless Vineyard Vixen 29 there, and Brian towed us out the Saco River and launched us on a delivery down to Newport. Since then I’ve crewed for Brian on his boat, and he’s crewed for me on mine, but mostly I’ve been his customer. Since he took over as general manager of Maine Yacht Center in Portland in 2005, I’ve kept two boats there, and Brian and his team have been my go-to guys for maintenance and upgrade projects. I’ve also written a bit about Brian, as in between his two seemingly ho-hum…