Innehållsförteckning för March 2018 från Cruising World

1. SHURHOLD CAMERA ADAPTER • $13 • SHURHOLD.COM The Shurhold camera adapter fits on the end of any of the company’s multipurpose handles, turning it into a handy “selfie stick.” Unlike typical selfie sticks, though, this one will hold your GoPro and allow you to do an underwater inspection of your boat while you stay dry. 2. HELLA DURALED 50LP • $270 • HELLAMARINE.COM Tired of holding a flashlight in your mouth while precariously positioned over your boat’s engine? The DuraLED 50LP provides a generous 850 lumens in a bright white light with a thin, surface-mount design that’s perfect for tight spaces. 3. MANTUS RAIL CLAMP • $42 (FOR TWO) • MAN TUSMARINE.COM With the Mantus Rail Clamp, you can easily mount and dismount items from the rail in your…

In the British Virgin Islands, the people, boats, roads, houses and cars were not the only things torn asunder and sent into serious disarray by the one-two punch of powerful hurricanes Irma and Maria in fall 2017. § So were the trees. § In the immediate aftermath of the treacherous storms last September, the hills were literally denuded of all foliage, as barren and fallow as could be. Then, about a month later, a tiny miracle started to occur. What was once stripped and stark suddenly began to sprout back to life. When our charter party — my girlfriend, Sasha, my colleague Parker Stair and his wife, Karen — arrived almost three months to the day after the eye of the storm passed over Tortola, carrying reported gusts of 280…

SEAMANSHIP With the almost universal use of GPS and chart plotters, eyeball navigation has largely been forgotten, and in some cases, the result has been disastrous. One can argue endlessly over paper versus e-charts, but one thing’s certain: Over-reliance on electronic navigation supports the local salvagers. Note the case of a Swan 90 hard aground on the western side of Antigua’s Spithead Channel. The grounding occurred because the skipper was looking at his chart plotter rather than using eyeball navigation. The salvage and repair costs ended up in the $800,000 ballpark. If you use common sense — not heading west to enter harbors after 1500 or heading east in reef-encumbered areas before 1100 — you can cruise the Caribbean relying completely on eyeball navigation, as is proved by two stories,…

As a marine-electronics editor and new-boat reviewer, I’m careful to remain vigilantly brand agnostic. However, when it comes to classic plastics, I have an unapologetic favorite, namely Southern Cross, my dad’s modified J/44, which was built in 1990 and which my family has owned since 2001. Sure, she’s not thrilling on sub-6-knot days, but given breeze, she’s a pure joy to sail. While I’ll admit that part of my enchantment stems from the thousands of miles I’ve logged aboard her capable hull, the bulk of my infatuation is due to the fact that her designer, Rod Johnstone, nailed so many small but critical details (we’ll kindly overlook her less-than-ideal traveler placement), including great sight lines, comfortable cockpit ergonomics and easy access to instrument screens, buttons, engine controls and critical winches…

It was overcast, but the threat of rain did nothing to dampen our enthusiasm. My husband, John, and I had pulled into a new anchorage at a new island, and we were eager to explore. The crew performed a clumsy dance as we collected shoes, water, cameras and rain jackets in anticipation, occasionally pausing to take in the dramatic juxtaposition of emerald-blue water, crimson-red rocks and a low-hanging gray sky. Formed by volcanic activity millions of years ago, Isla Espiritu Santo looked haggard and beaten, tucked behind the Baja Peninsula in the Sea of Cortez. The red sandstone strata jutted forward from dark cliff bands like poorly healed scars. Ridges were dotted with intriguing black caves and topped with weathered shrubs that defied all odds of life as they clung…

By opening a base in Antigua in late 2017, not only has The Moorings covered the Caribbean chain from north to south, but it’s also given vacation sailors an island that’s a destination unto itself. With 54 miles of coastline and a reputed 365 beaches to choose among, you can spend from seven to 10 days circumnavigating the island and surrounding cays alone. Of course, most charter sailors at the very least head north the 30-something nautical miles to Barbuda, whose beaches have rebounded in the aftermath of the 2017 hurricane season. That’s just one waypoint on an itinerary that can include Nevis and St. Kitts to the west or Guadeloupe to the southeast. “Antigua’s ripe for expansion,” explained base manager Lovena Bailey during a December 2017 visit at the…

Approaching Haiti’s southwest coast felt a bit like sailing through a time machine: Patched and threadbare gaffed sails dotted the horizon, with small crews handling their largely unballasted vessels with a skill that also belonged to another age — deftly weaving the vessels through the shallows while dodging each other and avoiding a minefield of fish nets. If not for the fact that we were arriving in Haiti and not Tahiti, what greeted Symbiosis at Île à Vache (“Cow Island”) could have been a scene from Mutiny on the Bounty: Small dugouts, sometimes with nothing more than a broken palm frond for a paddle, rushed to meet us as we nosed into the coconut-fringed waters of Baie à Feret. Complicating matters, an engine problem meant that my wife, Noi, and…

After spending three delightful seasons in the Mediterranean on La Mischief, our Lagoon 421 catamaran, I finally convinced my partner, DeAnne, to leave with the promise that we’d be back one day if we just kept going west. So we plotted our escape route from Cyprus through the Strait of Gibraltar and out into the Atlantic. Our planning got a huge boost when I discovered Jimmy Cornell’s Barbados 50 Rally, which started from London and finished in Barbados just as celebrations were kicking off for the island’s 50th anniversary of independence, would be making the crossing at the same time. DeAnne and I signed up to join the rally in the Canary Islands, and we left Algeciras, Spain, with our friends Phil Hearps and Megan Wood on board. Along the…

Once upon a time, Moody Yachts was a very English company building boats in Great Britain (for nearly 200 years) that exemplified what we’d expect from a longtime British boatyard. In other words, their vessels were stout and robust, quite seaworthy and somewhat conservative, with straightforward interior layouts and accouterments. They weren’t necessarily flashy, but they certainly got the job done. Those days are long over. Now, Moodys are built in Germany by Hanse Yachts, which took over the brand a decade ago and has become one of the world’s most prodigious, prolific and sophisticated production boatbuilders. And nowhere is this change more evident than with a model introduced to the United States last fall, the Moody DS54, the initials standing for “deck saloon.” Interestingly, the hull of the Moody,…

FOR A CHANGE OF PACE, HEAD TO THE SAN BLAS San Blas Sailing offers a crewed charter fleet of monohulls and catamarans, as well as book-by-cabin options, in Panama’s renowned San Blas archipelago. With offices in Panama City, convenient transfers to the islands and easy international flight connections to major cities, the company can offer itineraries from three days to a month long. Land-based tours of the Panama Canal, historic districts and other areas of interest are also add-on possibilities. Calm sailing behind an extensive reef system, snorkeling among numerous cays and interaction with local Guna, also known as Kuna, villagers — known for the beautiful mola textiles they make — are highlights of this destination. High-season peak rates run from mid-December through April, with incentives for offseason sailing. The…

As much as I enjoyed the article “Classics Down Under” by Alvah Simon in a recent online edition of Cruising World (cruisingworld.com/art1803; the article also appeared in print as “Art Left Out in the Rain, October 2017), I write to express my disappointment that one of the regular attenders of the Australian Wooden Boat Festival, Enterprize from Melbourne, was not mentioned even though she is prominently shown in the two fleet images used to illustrate the article. The title shot (below, right) features James Craig from Sydney (also not named), and just astern, on her starboard-side, is Enterprize with her course and topsail set. In the other fleet photograph, Enterpize is the ship at left, topsail set, course furled and leading the parade with Windeward Bound. Enterprize is a replica…

As with most of the recipes I use aboard our 60-year-old wooden cutter, Opus, I look at this as a template. Depending on your coordinates, you may or may not be able to find short ribs of beef at a local market, but odds are good that you can find a flavorful, bone-in cut of meat divided into relatively small pieces. We’re not talking steamboat roast here (unless perhaps you’re on a steamboat), just nice, easily portioned browned and braised meat. Almost any cut of beef or pork will give you a similarly tender and succulent dish. The browning takes five to seven minutes over a good heat, so bear with it. You want a nice golden-brown, caramelized sear on all sides of your short ribs. The basic process for…

There’s a place on the Great Bahama Bank, far from land, where wild dolphins come to play with people. I first learned about it from a longhaired marine conservationist in Miami back in 1975, and I sailed over there, eager to check it out. In those days, navigation was by sextant, radio direction finder and a healthy dose of dead reckoning. Still, I was confident in our position when, according to my chart pricks, we arrived at the coordinates I’d been given. This was just as well, since there were no landmarks; we were 50 miles from the nearest land. In fact, surrounded as we were by unbroken horizon, it looked as though we were anchoring midocean. But this was the Bank, and I could clearly see our anchor dig…

LIVING ABOARD In the past year and a half since my wife, Noi, and I began cruising the Caribbean on our Tayana 37, Symbiosis, we have discovered a bevy of inexpensive items that might not seem obvious to the uninitiated but have nonetheless proved very useful to have aboard. Some things we had in our inventory upon leaving the Chesapeake, others we acquired along the way. Here’s a list of 15 must-haves that cost us less than $15 (a few are even free). Self-amalgamating tape: The best-known name brand is Rescue Tape. You can’t beat it when it comes to fixing a ruptured hose or leaking plumbing joint. The tape sticks tenaciously to itself and will withstand enough heat and pressure to be used for repairs on and near the…

After spending more than an hour inspecting the new Dufour 520 during the U.S. Sailboat Show in Annapolis, Maryland, last fall and then sailing the boat in a decent breeze in the days following, our Boat of the Year judges named the queen of the company’s Grand Large line Best Full-Size Cruiser 50 to 54 feet. They might just as easily have named the Umberto Felci-designed French production-built sailboat Best Value Among Peers or Most Versatile, had those categories been an option. It was a boat that quickly rose to the top as our independent team of experts reviewed their notes and picked this year’s fleet of winners. “This one hits it for me in this class,” said Ed Sherman, citing the boat’s sailing performance — 5.5 to 6 knots…

COMING Back Until you actually visit the place, it’s hard to fathom the destruction and havoc wreaked by the terrible tandem of hurricanes Irma and Maria, which plowed through the British Virgin Islands and other Caribbean countries in September 2017. Remarkably, the islands and many of the restaurants and watering holes that make the BVI such an alluring and cherished destination are coming back strong (see “The Way It Was,” page 38). So too are the charter companies themselves, many of which suffered devastating losses during the storms, and which serve as the gateway to the islands for so many visiting sailors each year. Everyone who weathered the historic tempests has a story to tell, and that goes for the charter operators themselves. What they experienced and how they’ve reacted…