Indholdsfortegnelse for January 2021 i Sailing Today

The fourth and final AC75 was launched in November in Auckland and it was a moment worth waiting for, as the New Zealander’s America’s Cup race boat has taken a different design path again to that of the rival teams, almost resembling a multihull in its attempt to span the contradictory hydrodynamic and aerodynamic requirements of these foiling machines. “Not a traditional looking hull shape,” said Emirates Team New Zealand head of design Dan Bernasconi, with some understatement. “It points to the clear aerodynamic emphasis given to the design. We’ve been searching for the perfect balance between hydrodynamic and aerodynamic performance.” This is the boat that the New Zealanders will use to defend the 36th America’s Cup presented by Prada in March. The three challenging teams, Ineos Team UK, American…

As the 35th Atlantic Rally for Cruisers fleet cast off from Las Palmas on 22 November, heading for St Lucia, among the sailors was Natasha Lambert, born with quadriplegic athetoid cerebral palsy, which affects her limbs and speech, who will be using her ground-breaking ‘sip and puff’ method to sail the 3,000 miles ahead. Natasha’s father Gary developed the system, which allows Natasha to control a boat using her breath and tongue. She has used it in a series of extraordinary voyages in home waters including across the Channel. Now her biggest challenge lies ahead and her family has spent the last two years adapting a Nautitech N46, named Blown Away, for the transat, which was inspired by a gift from Dame Ellen MacArthur of a pilot book to the…

Solaris 40 Solaris Yachts has spent the last few years moving methodically into the big boat market. It is therefore refreshing to discover that they have a new ‘entry level’ 40 footer on the drawing board. The new 40 fits the template of all the recent launches by the yard, being stylish with a nod towards racing but also an eye kept firmly on the fast cruising market. The 40 has been drawn up by Soto Acebal and has substantial beam to provide internal volume. solarisyachts.com LBV 35 The LBV 35 is the brainchild of Ibiza based La Bella Verde (LBV). The concept to produce the most sustainable yacht ever seen. To this end, the LBV35 is a 100% recyclable composite boat. LBV has also committed to a sustainable ‘loop’…

‘Our spirits are as important as our senses when it comes to having a great cruise’ There’s nothing quite like the words ‘warm sector’ to bring on a depression, in me anyway. As soon as I hear those two apparently innocent words, I’m heading for the dumps. I don’t think we appreciate how much our mood is affected by the weather. We know to reef when it blows, look sharp when the fog comes down, break out the tea and digestives when the sun begins to shine. But those are things that we know we have to do; I’m talking about how the weather makes us feel, and how our spirits are as important as our senses when it comes to having a great cruise. My spirits have been very…

WINDELO 50 The Windelo 50 probably comes closest to matching the Outremer. This is a high quality fast cruising catamaran. The hull features basalt laminates which reduces the carbon footprint while hybrid power gives the boat impressive range. Hull number one due for completion in November. SPIRIT 44E Ok, a different concept in some respects but ultimately this is a 44’ cruising yacht that is fully electric with no generator. Two large solar panels are integrated into the back deck and hydrogeneration further increases the boat’s range under power. VAAN R4 Still more in the prototype stage, the Vaan R4 is a 42’ catamaran that is electrically powered. The hull is made out of 50% recycled aluminium and extensive use is made of circular materials, including recycled aluminium, cork, and…

The words performance cruiser can, to a degree, mean anything to anyone and are often deployed by manufacturers to add a little pizzazz to an otherwise fairly ordinary cruiser – and widen the target market. Is it a cruiser, is it a performance cruiser? Why not both the marketing department cries! The phrase, then, tends to be something of a red flag when you read it in marketing bumph. But as much as the term might lack sufficient definition to easily categorise boats as either cruiser or performance cruiser, there is an element of ‘you’ll know it when you see it’. Stepping onboard the Salona 380, it is easy to see performance is very much baked in. The Croatian marque, though popular in the rest of Europe broadly and the…

Dinghies  What can dinghy owners do now to get ahead? Jon Emmett breaks down some key tasks Boat work can be a little bit like injury: people often don’t think about it until it stops them sailing. Preventative boat work takes far less time (and therefore ensures far more time on the water) than waiting for something to break and then fixing it. That said, winter often brings more time on shore, making this a great time to get your boat in tip top condition so you can enjoy the rewards with confidence once you get back on the race course. The winter months are also a great time to get ahead on jobs that you know will need repeating, are looking for consistency, or where you will need a…

Around these Islands in 12 Ports – Exploring maritime Britain and Ireland by Sail – Jonathan Winter Regular readers of Sailing Today will be familiar with Jonathan Winter as we have featured a serialised taster of his book in the last four issues. For the uninitiated though, Around these Islands is the narrative of Winter’s trip around the UK aboard their 35’ yacht Nova. The book, however, is far more than a simple narrative of the voyage in the ‘and then we went to hull, and then we went to Scarborough’ meaning. Winter instead uses the framework of the voyage to explore the many varied aspects of life around the coastline of Britain. Winter also uses other voices to provide interesting historical insights into the many ports visited along…

Great Britain beat Spain 6-3 to win the inaugural eSailing Nations Cup – effectively the World Cup of virtual sailing. After a month-long competition between 13 national teams, Great Britain, captained by Mike O’Donovan, aka @dejavusailing, convincingly beat Spain across the nine-race series that featured different classes, fleet sizes and racecourses to test the teams’ expertise. The final was streamed across the Olympic Channel and across World Sailing’s channels. Each team of 10 had to include at least one male and one female, two certified sailors and the top four sailors from each country’s national championships. Team captain @dejavusailing said: “It was some really tight racing. There were some high heart beats.”…

Midnight in the middle of the Bristol Channel, a stretch of water renowned for sandbanks, shipping and big tides. Tonight, to make matters worse, thick fog has descended. Skipper Timothy Long, navigating a yacht solo across the channel north to south, can’t see his hand in front of his face. It’s a situation to test the nerve of any yachtsman, however experienced, but Timothy is just 15 years old. He is making the crossing from Milford Haven to Padstow as part of a solo sail around Britain, a personal challenge that somewhat to his surprise, later in the summer, will see him make headlines around the world. Timothy doesn’t know that yet and he certainly doesn’t want to make any headlines now – he is focussed on the shipping movements…

‘THEY HAD TO SELL THEIR CARS AND PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING THEY OWNED TO AFFORD THE TRIP TO FRANCE’ Sailing is a great teacher of hard lessons in life. Our power supply - the wind - is more unreliable than anything else I can think of in any other sport. We try to remember that we can control the controllables; everything else is just needless worry or pointless effort. And if ever there was a reminder that sailing teaches us resilience and self-reliance, it’s the Vendée Globe. As I write two weeks into the race, pre-race favourites Jeremie Beyou and Alex Thomson have been hit hard by boat breakage, while the early dismasting of Corum L’Epargne was a massive blow for Nicolas Troussel. What a cruel sport sailing can be. But…

When we’re cruising my wife Roz often grabs the entry-level SLR camera, waves it in my direction, and says, ‘Come on, let’s make a quick movie.’ We post these on my YouTube channel where they clutter up the internet for free. Our videos don’t get the ‘views’ that youngsters with bronzed bodies achieve as they sail around in sun-drenched bliss, but I still feel humbled when a football stadium-full of hoary sailors tune in to my salty efforts. It’s interesting that you can never tell which topics are going to grab an audience. As you’d expect, storms at sea are a sure-fire winner, yet, inexplicably, a ten-minute session about the benefits of a solid fuel stove in a modern cruising yacht excites almost equal interest. Another offering that cranks up…

Plastic is not in vogue at the moment. As oceans and lakes fill up with our waste, there is a certain irony to the fact that many of the boats that we sail are also broadly made of plastic – whether it be polyester, vinylester or similar. Some have long held wood to be the sustainable alternative to building boats from GRP, but there may now be a third way, thanks to the tireless efforts of German boatbuilder Friedrich Deimann, and for now, it takes the form of the Flax 27. As the name suggests, this is a boat whose chief component is flax fibre, instead of energy intensive glass. After a decade of R&D at his firm Green Boats, Deimann has refined a system for building strong, durable hulls…

Sailing calendars Beken: six classic yachts, each pictured in colour today and in sepia as it was in its heyday. £16.99. nauticalia.com Ingrid Abery: regatta action from around the world, including the English south coast. £20. ingridabery.com Classsic Sail: 12 classic yachts shot in the US, UK and Med by Kathy Mansfield. £12. tide-mark.com Rick Tomlinson: wall and desk calendars, featuring TP52s, Fast 40s and more. Wall £19.95, desk £7.95. rick-tomlinson.com Den Phillips: b&w shots, an international regatta calendar and an English east coast calendar. £18 each. denphillipsphotos.com Calendar of Wooden Boats: photos by US classics specialist Benjamin Mendlowitz and captions by wooden boat historian Maynard Bray. $17.95 woodenboatscalendar.com Nautical Top Trumps Featuring boats ranging from the Cutty Sark to warships to the latest superyachts, with stats to compare including age, size, speed and more.…

The postponement of the Olympic regatta this year means that competitors at next years’ regatta will be sailing to the new rules: fortunately for them, as well as for those of us sailing at home, few changes affect the rules as we apply them in practice. However, there are many rule number changes, and things have moved around a little. In this feature, I’ll take a look at the significant changes to the main body of the rules that apply to dinghies and crewed keelboats in fleet racing situations, and also a general look at the structure to help you to find your way around the latest rule book. The rules are available to view and download from the World Sailing website: www.sailing.org, and the printed version, complete with RYA…

‘This is as good a time as any to address the elephant in the room, or perhaps more of a kraken’ A good sailor quickly learns to accept a certain amount of flexibility in his plans. We are forever at the mercy of the weather, storm seasons, cruising rules and regulations and once you begin cruising you discover that your own agendas will always come second to these larger forces. However, not even the wisest of old salts could have predicted the particular storm that was to befall the worldwide cruising fleet in 2020. All manner of boaters have been affected by the global shutdowns due to Covid-19. Casual day-sailors were unable to get to their boats; liveaboards were forced to stay put in marinas or harbours; and for some…

Frenchman Charlie Dalin’s Apivia takes the start of the 2020 Vendée Globe Race. The 33-strong fleet set sail from Les Sables d’Olonne on 8 November, with British sailors Alex Thomson, Sam Davies, Pip Hare and Miranda Merron among them. This is the ninth edition of the race and could well be the fastest yet, with the newest foiling boats like Apivia capable of average speeds around the world in the high teens at least. As we went to press there had already been one dismasting and the Atlantic threw up plenty more drama besides. See our full report on page 12. Bernard Le Bars / Alea…

The tall ship fleet will be coming to Falmouth, Cornwall, in August 2021. The historic harbour will host the start of a Tall Ships Race commemorating the first circumnavigation of the world 500 years ago by Magellan and his second-in-command Elcano. It will be the sixth time Falmouth has hosted the tall ships since 1966. Organiser Sail Training International and local Falmouth authorities said that given the likely health restrictions, the event would be ‘operationally innovative’. There will be around 40 vessels arriving prior to the 19 August race start date, with the Class A square-rigged vessels anchoring in the Carrick Roads. Further Class A and Class B ships are likely to anchor in Falmouth’s inner harbour, while Class C and D will be berthed at Port Pendennis Marina. The…

Timothy’s father Nick says: “Looking back, I think it’s more worrying now than it was at the time, thinking about the enormity of the passages he was undertaking. Seventeen hours in thick fog is not something anyone would want to do. “He certainly had nothing like as much sailing with his boat as he was hoping to have before setting off. “He and I sailed the boat together from Ipswich to the Solent before he set off, and on that trip I was a silent partner. The only time Timothy had actually sailed her alone was the day before he left, about a mile from Hythe to Hamble Point. “So he set off on a vertical learning curve in terms of getting to know the boat and in terms of…

‘IT IS A MARKETEER’S DREAM WHEN IT WORKS, BUT IT TAKES CONVICTION TO MAKE IT WORK WHEN IT GOES WRONG’ Here I am back on the front line with the Vendée Globe and as I present the regular news shows for the English-speaking side of the race website, I can’t help noticing that some things have changed. For starters, the latest IMOCAs might get round the world in 59 days. Secondly, our access to the onboard experience, as armchair viewers, has skyrocketed. When, on the first edition, the skippers might make a call home once a week, once a fortnight or once during the race, now they have WhatsApp. And as some of you might have seen, often we get a clearer line to the south Atlantic than we do…

Outremer produce, fast, well balanced cruising catamarans, end of story. The 4E is no different in that respect. It’s also strikingly good looking for a multihull and performed admirably during the test sail. The interior is well fitted out and, although relatively moderate compared to cats in the charter market, is still roomy and comfortable. Ultimately, this is a great all rounder. The electric power is a more expensive but alluring option. Will it work? Well, someone is about to find out for us! THE SPEC LWL: 44’ (13.41 m Beam: 23’ (7.01 m) Draft: 2’ (0.61m) daggerboards up, 7’2” (2.19 m) daggerboards down Displacement: 11,000 lb Sail Area: 1,141 sq/ft (106sq/m) Contact: catamaran-outremer.com…

I awoke to that feeling of ‘where am I?’ As my ears adjusted to the environment, the recognisable hum let me know I was at 35,000 feet and I instantly recalled where I was bound. I reached over to the window, my eyes still a blur with sleep as I slowly lifted the blind. The sun was lazily peaking over the horizon, an ethereal red glow so often seen with the African sun, dissolving into the dark blue void above. Down below, a dark mass, devoid of lights loomed out of the sea and I realised I was staring at where my journey would end but where the adventure would start - Madagascar. The last few days were a blur from the moment I picked up the phone to hear…

Green marketing works best when the idea of environmental benefit is matched by performance benefits. And when it comes to renewable power on board, the upsides are obvious. Keep your battery in good shape, stay out of port for longer and reduce your dependence on costly fossil fuels by fitting some renewable charging capacity to your boat. We explore the best of wind, solar and hydro-generation. Wind turbines Wind turbines are still popular because they work even when the boat is stationary (unlike hydro-generation) and in poor weather when solar panels have a poor output. There are many different brands, using slightly different technology, and suiting different installations. There is a whiff of snake oil about some of the marketing in this sector. Siting is critical, as the blades must…

PART THREE Port Preparation One of the most common mistakes that voyaging sailors make is committing themselves to finite departure dates. This imperative is often created by the requirements of crew departure from the intended arrival point and date, but it must be avoided where at all possible, as sailing vessels run to tide tables NOT time tables. I have been coerced into accepting that a crew ‘just has to be back by XYZ date’, but all it will do is tempt Zeus* to throw problems in your way to ruin your carefully calculated passage plan. If you can induce your crew to sail on the basis of ‘I’ll see you when I see you’ so much the better. Crew It’s important that all crew know what is expected…

Perched on the edge of the Cumbrian coast where it provides a safe and welcoming refuge from the rigours of the Irish Sea, Whitehaven has a long and fascinating history as a trading port. The origin of the town’s prosperity is based on the export of local Cumbrian coal from the 1600s, but as the port developed through the 1700s it also profited from trade in tobacco from America, and trade in sugar, wool and cocoa from Barbados, Antigua and St Lucia.Whitehaven was also a key link in the lucrative slave trade, with ships plying routes between Africa and America and greatly adding to the town’s wealth – an historical blot the town council felt obliged to apologise for in 2006. From the 1800s, Whitehaven’s importance began to be overtaken…

X YACHTS | XP44 - KIYA Kiya is a lovingly maintained and beautifully presented example of the award-winning X-Yachts Xp 44 from the Danish yard’s ‘Xperformance’ range. Designed to incorporate the very latest technologies in weight saving, strength, and quality, all in the quest of effortless speed, Kiya is just perfect for those that like to cover ground quickly, easily and in comfort. Her current owners have been thoroughly impressed: “Kiya sails like a dream – upwind, no one beats her and downwind is a lot of fun. She offers spacious cabins for us, our grown up kids, and friends with wide berths throughout and further racing berths in each aft cabin.” This one owner since new X-Yachts Xp 44 has been lightly used for fast, family cruising.…