Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2024 i Yachting World

What are you looking forward to most about 2024? Because it’s shaping up to be an absolute belter for sailing fans. As you read this, no doubt growing weary of winter weather, six hardy souls will be plunging south on giant foiling trimarans in the Arkea Ultim Challenge Brest – one of the most audacious races ever conceived. Racing these 100ft machines head-to-head, solo, requires superhuman skill levels. We’ll be glued to the trackers all the way to the finish. But that’s just the opening act because 2024 is an Olympiad year with the Paris Games this summer, and there are few host nations that take sailing more seriously than France. Then there’s the America’s Cup. The oldest sporting contest in the world returns to Europe this autumn. Love it…

The world’s largest indoor boat show, boot Düsseldorf, returns for 2024 from 20-28 January. While there are an incredible 17 halls to get through, featuring everything from diving and wingfoiling exhibitions to superyachts and charter firms, Hall 16 will once again be the place for yachting enthusiasts to head for. Here are some of the most notable new models making their premieres at the show: HALLBERG-RASSY 69 Swedish yard Hallberg-Rassy, arguably the most established name in cruising, has launched what is by far its largest volume model to date. The HR69 broke the ice, literally, off the Ellos yard’s marina in early December for first trials before it was due to be transported to Germany for the indoor show in January. The Frers design is a handsome cruising yacht, very…

Around this time of year many cruisers start planning their upcoming season. The depths of winter can be tough, so it’s no wonder our minds start wandering to future adventures. When planning a cruising calendar, it’s easy to get over-ambitious. “We could go here for half a day, pop there for lunch, then just a short night sail to get to that stunning secluded anchorage, circumnavigate the island, and then back to where we started in time for our flight home. Exciting!” Packing the schedule tight is the biggest mistake people make. Why do we want to go cruising? For almost everyone, there’s an element of ‘freedom’ to their answer. On land we’re limited by schedules, traffic, office hours, school timetables. At sea we can – theoretically – point our…

One year before the 2024 Vendée Globe, two back to back transatlantic races – the classic double-handed Transat Jacques Vabre Normandie Le Havre race to Martinique, closely followed by the new solo Retour à La Base – set a demanding schedule for IMOCA skippers who are seeking to be on the start line of the round the world race in November. The inaugural 3,500-mile solo race back from Fort-de-France in Martinique to Lorient La Base, France’s de facto epicentre of IMOCA activity, was a stark contrast to the outbound transatlantic, with its tradewind miles and Caribbean finish. The eastbound passage gave skippers a chance to really push their boats hard downhill, riding the early winter train of Atlantic low pressure systems which are generated off Newfoundland. The wind and sea…

RUPERT HOLMES Where: Port Ginesta, near Barcelona. Conditions: 3-12 knots flat water and onshore swell. Test boat: Pre-production hull No3 with main options including furling mainsail, self tacking jib, shoal draught keel, solid sprayhood and hard top, aircon, diesel generator. Boatbuilders rarely have the courage to launch a model that represents a radically different way of thinking. Instead, most new yachts are simply variations on established themes with incremental improvements that represent important evolutions over time. And when testing boats it’s easy to gloss over what it’s like to spend time relaxing on board, whether in harbour or underway in lovely weather. Yet this is a critical factor in the enjoyment owners derive from their boats. Even with the best natural ventilation, in tropical sun or when the outside temperature rises…

‘They are incredible machines, capable of more than 20 knots’ YOANN RICHOMME NOMINATES THE CLASS 40 LIFT 2 The highly competitive Class 40 fleet has long been a proving ground for talent, both for designers and sailors, with many going on to the IMOCA class. “I’ve had the chance of sailing the best part of a decade on Class 40s – from the 2011 Transat Jacques Vabre with Damien Seguin, to my second Route du Rhum victory in 2022,” says Richomme. “The Class 40s to me represent the best sailing potential of any glassfibre-built boats: they are now incredible machines capable of 10 knots upwind and sometimes more than 20 reaching and downwind. I’ve had the thrill of crossing the Altantic in less than 14 days beating some IMOCAs across…

The second America’s Cup Preliminary Regatta in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, was easily won by Emirates Team New Zealand, racing in the one-design AC40s. The Defenders won the match race final against Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli after the Italians nose-dived on the final leg, flooding both cockpits of the AC40 and coming to a grinding halt. It was a disappointing end for the Italian team, who had hugely impressed after opting to swap their usual helming duo of Jimmy Spithill and Francesco Bruni for the much younger pairing of Ruggero Tita and Marco Gradoni (see story, right). The Italian team took three wins over the eight race series, sharing the honours with Emirates Team New Zealand, who took five. ETNZ Helmsman Nathan Outteridge said after: “It feels great, a lot of…

Best Yachts of the Year Toby Hodges and a team of international jurors tested a whopping 21 different new designs for the European Yacht of the Year trials. He reveals the winners and picks out his favourite features from the nominees. Transatlantic together This year’s ARC and ARC+ saw numbers bounce back to pre-lockdown levels, with more than 1,300 people crossing the Atlantic this season in a World Cruising Club rally. Elaine Bunting meets recent finishers in Grenada to find out how they fared. On test: Bavaria C46 Bavaria’s first second-generation C-Line model, from designer Maurizio Cossutti, is a beamy, powerful yacht designed for maximum interior volume and comfort – Rupert Holmes put it through its paces. Peace in the Pacific Northwest Tor Johnson braves chilly conditions on a solo…

If you sail far enough from home, you’ll eventually reach a place that looks wonderfully unfamiliar and is almost entirely your own. A place where there’s no jostling for space in busy anchorages, but where you slow down and experience a slice of the simple life. For many adventurous sailors, this kind of escapism ends on a balmy, empty, coral-fringed beach drinking green coconuts, swimming until sunset, and grilling the day’s catch over hot coals. But your coveted backdrop could equally be an icy shoreline studded with seals, or a wild, dusty African coastline where the surf breaks are all yours. Those of us lured to tackle long passages to faraway places often do so to find ourselves where others are not. But the reality of this ideal is that…

A fast, fun catamaran that is safe and comfortable may once have been a pipe dream, but is now perhaps the biggest growth market in yachting. However, creating a performance catamaran at or below 45ft is no easy task. It’s an elusive sweet spot because many buyers think they want what the 50ft+ catamarans offer but in a more manageable and, crucially, affordable package. Meanwhile from the designers’ and yards’ point of view, that’s not so easily achieved – in particular the challenge of keeping a boat light enough to perform, yet offer all the amenities expected of multihull living. Then try building something on which you can still turn a profit? That focusses the mind. It could be argued that those meeting this challenge most creatively and effectively at…

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Reefing offshore while racing short-handed is a skill worth honing, as Deb Fish explains to Andy Rice The double-handed team of Deb Fish and Rob Craigie have got mainsail reefing down to a fine art. “Even when we’re really familiar with each other and we know our processes, we still talk everything through before we start. Good planning and communication are the most important ingredients for making sure things go well and avoiding the big mistakes,” Fish explains. On a double-handed boat like their Bellino it’s also about sharing out the workload as evenly as possible. Whatever works for a two-man team should work when sailing fully crewed where more hands make lighter work of the job. Deb says the overriding goal is to get from no reef to reefed…

Few people in offshore racing can match either the passion for the sport Deb Fish OBE exudes, or the diversity of her experience and level of success on the racecourse. Yet she didn’t take up sailing until the age of 30, while working in Reading University’s meteorology department. “I found out they had a weather and sailing field course, enjoyed that, then did it again,” she recalls. Fish then went on a longer cruise, finishing with an overnight two-handed Channel crossing. A Day Skipper course and Rolex Fastnet Race campaign followed soon afterwards. “I started via pay-to-play sailing, got hooked and then did as much sailing as I possibly could. “Offshore racing is a wonderful sport, with massive variety – no two races are the same. The physical and mental…

Another AC40 streaked past the sea wall at 40 knots and I felt rather foolish. I’ve been following the development of these one design flying machines and reporting on their progress step by step since the concept was first announced. I’ve sat in the cockpit of the Kiwi boat and been talked through the controls and shown how to get airborne, tack and gybe. I’ve even had a go in a couple of very realistic simulators to put theory into practice. And I’ve spent hours looking at the boats on the dock and even longer looking at footage of them in great detail when they’ve been training and racing. Yet it’s not until you see one fly past for real that the penny really drops. These are insanely fast boats…

Heavy, heavy fog blanketed the boat. We had a rotating watch standing on the bow looking for growlers. Everything, and everyone, was soaked. Falken was charging fast through the horizon-less sea. We would slow down the second we saw our first radar target. Ten knots among icebergs was not my idea of excitement. In the words of Led Zeppelin: We come from the land of the ice and snow From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow. Will drive our ships to new lands To fight the horde, sing and cry Valhalla, I am coming. We downshifted. With three reefs in the mainsail and a scrap of staysail we maintained our windward position and picked our way through the 60-mile ice belt that guarded the west coast of Greenland…

Nautitech 48 Open LOA 14.60m 47ft 9in • Beam 7.97m 26ft 2in • Draught 1.55m 5ft 1in • Displacement 13,500kg 29,768lb • Mainsail 85m2 915ft2 • Self tacking jib 42.5m2 455ft2 • Base price €898,000 ex VAT nautitech.com The latest and largest model in Nautitech’s line up, which hit the water for initial sea trials in late 2023, is the last design legendary naval architect Marc Lombard worked on before his premature death in September. It’s also a boat with which he had a special connection, since his own yacht was a Nautitech 40 Open that he sailed across the Atlantic with his family, before basing it in Martinique. Many of his ideas to update and improve that design are embodied in the 48 Open. Indeed Lombard was a key…

“If you have a happy boat, you can have disasters happen to you, and it’ll be fine. On an unhappy boat the smallest things can become an issue.” “A happy boat is my biggest ambition for this trip,” said John Kirchhoff before setting out on his transatlantic crossing with the ARC last November, on his Southerly 42 Easter Snow. So, how can you set your boat up for crew happiness? Between social media and crew-match websites, it’s easier than ever to connect skipper-seeking-crew with potential crew-seeking-yacht and, hopefully, find a good match. But there are no guarantees: whether strangers or close family, living in the confined space of a yacht, and potentially adding stress, restricted sleep or seasickness to the mix, can reveal people’s true personalities like few other scenarios.…

Since 2020 and the pandemic the yacht market has been busier than ever before, but has the madness finally come to an end? For anyone who’s been holding off buying, or selling, things have shifted. “The reality is that the market is not how it was this time last year. We’ve reached a level of relative normality now. Today we are seeing a slower moving market, with more carefully thought-through sales and purchases,” explains broker Alex Grabau. “Clients are expressing what they are looking for with a view to it coming on the market in the future, while sellers are taking their time – either holding off selling or coming to the market with a higher price and being prepared to wait a little longer to sell. Those holding onto…