Innehållsförteckning för August - September 2016 från Cruising World

Each fall, right after the close of the U.S. Sailboat Show in Annapolis, Maryland, I join our Boat of the Year team for newboat sea trials and spend four “fun-filled” days sailing many, many miles, all within the relatively tight confines of the U.S. Naval Academy to the west, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to the north, and Kent Island to the east. Unlike most sailors, who enjoy ever-changing vistas up and down the bay aboard the same boat, my BOTY mates and I watch the same shorelines pass by year in and year out, only we see them from many different cockpits. And then, this past spring, I found a whole new way to enjoy that very same patch of water: My wife, Sue, and I flew into town to…

Fun Times in Boats, Blocks & Business by Olaf Harken (2015; harken.com; $24.95) “We don’t like to go slow,” writes Olaf Harken at one point in his highly entertaining memoir, Fun Times in Boats, Blocks & Business, as he explains how he and his brother, Peter, found themselves aboard some of the more outrageous boats ever built, including Slingshot, Procyon and Team Adventure. And then, of course, there are the iceboats, A-Scows and countless raceboats — from dinghies to the America’s Cup — that the brothers have tinkered on over the years as they built up their company, block by block, in Pewaukee, Wisconsin. In a sport with its fair share of larger-than-life characters, the Harkens loom large, thanks in part to their company’s engineering acumen and to the hijinks…

HULL LINES The project of a new flagship for the Dufour range presents a challenge to exceed our previous achievements. The new hull design must uphold our standard to maintain an excellent balance between high hull form stability and reduced drag, two factors that are often in opposition to each other. To attain this critical balance, we call on the powerful tool of our CFD software, which is constantly refined with the latest data from our real world experience. The result is a hull platform with stability and speed qualities well appreciated by offshore cruisers. KEEL AND RUDDER The keel is comprised of a cast iron fin and lead bulb. This is the best solution to lower the center of gravity and maximize the righting moment while decreasing drag. The…

To say that this past summer’s 2016 Newport Bermuda Race was an unusual, historic event would be to traffic in understatement. Several days before the June 17 start, a forecast of extreme gales in the Gulf Stream persuaded the crews of more than 50 boats, out of an original entry list of 185 yachts, to sit this one out. Surprisingly, many of them were the largest vessels in the fleet, crewed by all-star professional sailors. Once a few of those pros made their intention to bail clear, there was a mad rush to the exits. It was a bit of a head-scratcher. After all, the event is an ocean race. What did everyone think they’d signed up for? The biggest entry, the 100-foot Comanche, skippered by the renowned off shore…

Sailing is a great way to reduce your carbon footprint; however, that doesn’t necessarily mean that being a cruiser is living green. It’s important to consider our impact on the environment and how to make smart choices to help preserve the very places we love to sail. Here are 10 easy ways to be a greener cruiser: 1. Clean a Beach: There is nothing more beautiful than a pristine beach and nothing more depressing than a shoreline littered with garbage. Next time you dinghy ashore, take a few minutes to pick up and properly dispose of refuse that has washed up where you land. Another great way to give back to the beautiful places you get to visit is to organize a beach cleanup day in your favorite anchorage. After…

Cabbage and tuna. Cabbage and onions. Cabbage plain. Cabbage thrown overboard. § As we approached our night’s anchorage and the sun set over Isla Isabela, off the coast of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, I cringed at the thought of another night of the ubiquitous brassica. We’re used to living simply — previously we’d sailed 6,000 miles aboard our Kendall 32, Gitane, with a pressure cooker as our oven — but I was dreading yet another cabbage dinner. § I dropped our Bruce anchor into the dark blue, paid out 100 feet of chain, and waited. We bumped back, stretching out the chain, and kept bumping back, dragging. I hauled up the ¾-inch chain hand over hand, and when we were repositioned, I tried again. No luck. On the third try, with…

Sailing into the cruisers haven of Boot Key Harbor, near the city of Marathon in the Florida Keys, I was stunned by the number of boats moored and anchored cheek to jowl. My first instinct was to turn and run. Why would anybody want to be packed into a harbor like airline passengers in the economy section? We initially thought we’d be here for one or two days. That was before I wrapped the dinghy’s so-called floating painter around Mary T’s propeller while backing down on the anchor. Diving under the boat to cut off the line, my husband, Ken, discovered the propeller was bent. That led to closer examination of our engine, where we uncovered more problems. We’d been sucked into the Marathon Vortex, and we begrudgingly settled in.…

The PACIFIC COAST OF MEXICO HAS ONE OF THE WORLD’S BEST CRUISING GROUNDS: THE SEA OF CORTEZ. WITHIN ITS 2,500 MILES OF COASTLINE, THE GULF OF CALIFORNIA IS PROTECTED FROM BIG PACIFIC SWELLS BY THE BAJA CALIFORNIA PENINSULA. IT OFFERS HUNDREDS OF GORGEOUS ISLANDS AND ANCHORAGES — AND IS A GREAT PLACE TO BUY A SAILBOAT. I was in the market for a new boat and was keen on the idea of buying one in an area where I wanted to cruise. The Pacific coast of Mexico fit the bill perfectly. My search began in Mazatlán, on the Pacific coast south of the Baja Peninsula, where I looked at a number of boats, including a wonderful Rafiki 37, a doubleender designed by Stan Huntingford. I was impressed by both the…

SAILS Top-down furlers, designed to tame large, billowing downwind sails, have greatly reduced the sailhandling headaches faced by shorthanded crews, but they open the door to a prodigious array of sails that can be designed to fit your boat and sailing plans. (For more on top-down furlers, see “All Rolled Down,” page 71.) Modern downwind sails designed to be set and snuffed using socks or some type of flexible furler basically fall into two camps: fullbodied asymmetric cruising spinnakers, for very broad reaching and running, and slightly flatter jib-spinnaker hybrids that excel in light wind and at tighter angles, meaning they can be flown anywhere from a close reach to well off the breeze. Any of these sails will be able to sail closer reaches in lighter wind and farther…

Share Your Photos on Facebook Check out this gorgeous sunset off Lochranza, on Scotland’s Isle of Arran. What’s the view like from your boat? Share your cruising photos and join the discussion at facebook.com/cruisingworld. Considering Buying a Boat? Looking for a new or used boat can be daunting. Find resources on everything from picking the right sailboat for your sailing plans to finding a marine surveyor at Cruising World’s new Boat Buying 1o1 page (cruisingworld.com/boatbuying101). Knot Guide Cruising World’s new knot-tying guide, featuring step-by-step videos, will have you whipping and tying like a pro. Check out all the videos at cruisingworld.com/1609knots. National Sailing Hall of Fame The National Sailing Hall of Fame will induct nine sailors in 2016: America’s Cup-winning helmsman Ed Baird, of St. Petersburg, Florida; legendary sailing champion…

NET CONTROLLER: “Go ahead, Carried Away.” CARRIED AWAY (in a Pensacola drawl): “Thank you, net controller, and good morning, net. This is Stan on Carried Away. I’d like to invite you to the Mount Airy Young Readers program taking place this Saturday morning and every Saturday morning during the school year. Come and read with these youngsters and give something back to this wonderful island of Grenada. For more information, call me on channel 68 after the net. Carried Away clear.” After enjoying an offshore passage from Norfolk, Virginia, and magnificent sailing in the Eastern Caribbean for the past five months, my wife, Christine, and I arrived on Grenada’s south coast feeling a need for community. After we heard this announcement from a neighboring boat on the Grenada cruisers net,…

I love ocean sailing. There is nothing I like better than an empty sea before me and an exotic port 6,000 miles away. Our 53-day passage across the Atlantic, from Cape Town to St. Barts in 2004, was picture-perfect. It almost seemed as if my wife, Carolyn, and I weren’t sailing so much as allowing the earth to rotate under us. And in 2013, when a five-day passage to Ecuador seemed like it would end in the arms of too-greedy shore officials, we merely turned the helm westward for a lovely 48-day jaunt to Tahiti. And why not? The trade winds were free and our calendar was clear. Eventually that decision brought us to the tiny isle of Lazarus, located, literally, in the shadow of Singapore’s financial district. Isolated it…

Getting There You likely can fly to Mexico directly from an airport near your home; however, the cheapest way is often to fly to Los Angeles and change there to a local flight to La Paz or Cabo San Lucas. There is also a bus from San Diego to La Paz, which is much more comfortable than you would imagine, and no one seems too bothered by how much luggage you throw on it. Visas U.S. residents can have up to 180 days upon entry, but you need to ask for it, as immigration officials will often just stamp vacationers in for a couple of weeks. The visa is easily extendable for another six months. If you want to stay longer, you can become a temporary resident. We did, and…

MONTHLY MAINTENANCE Here’s a question I often get: “How long can I expect bedding to last?” Unfortunately, there’s no hard and fast answer. In most cases the query comes after a leak has manifested itself, often in deck hardware. Regrettably, there are simply too many variables to provide one fixed response, including the quality of the sealant (and whether it’s the correct choice for the job); the size of the gaps to be filled and their relative movement; temperature changes; and perhaps most importantly, the level of effort expended on surface preparation and the technique employed to install the sealant. Marine adhesives and/or sealants fall primarily into two categories, polyurethane and polysulfide, with each embodying its own strengths. Polyurethane is the most popular, thanks to the early success of 3M’s…