Innehållsförteckning för August/September 2019 från Cruising World

“We had the best time,” he said, recalling the early races that have kept him coming back. “We drank a lot of mudslides; we had good racing, good fun.” When I wandered into the infamous sprawling white tent at the end of Payne’s Dock eight years ago after my first afternoon of sailing during Block Island Race Week, I thought, Wow, everyone here knows each other. With 100-something boats, plus their crews, plus their friends, that would be impossible, of course. But the roar of the crowd, all talking and laughing, was deafening, as sailors wandered from group to group, shaking hands, slapping backs—all well-lubricated, courtesy of Mount Gay rum. Talk about a party! And it rages every day, from the opening bash Sunday through the final awards Friday evening.…

Having cruised and raced extensively internationally, up and down the East Coast and in the San Francisco Bay for many years, I believe that it was irresponsible for Cruising World to publish “Small Wonders” in your May 2019 issue. Those who know the bay (and who have rescued their share of unfortunate and/or foolhardy boaters in distress) understand that what the albeit experienced author did alone in his 10-foot wooden open dinghy was foolhardy precisely because of the bay’s “strong winds, tricky currents, chilly water and plenty of commercial traffic [that] make for dangerous sailing, especially when much of it is often shrouded in fog.” Despite citing many of the Golden Gate and Bay’s extreme boating hazards, the article was silent on advising potential copycats about even the most basic…

1. GILL rock softshell • $175 • gillmarine.com This versatile jacket is perfect for both on and off the water. The tough-yet-soft, two-layer stretch outer layer features a water-repellant coating, and the high-loft thermal lining will keep you warm in most conditions. Wear it alone or as a layering piece. 2. TIKI TUNES speaker • $40 • limitless innovations.com Looking for the perfect accompaniment to your evening sundowners? Check out Tiki Tunes! This fun Bluetooth speaker can stream your favorite music as well as offer up some mood lighting. The speaker is water resistant, and the battery provides about six hours of play. 3. DANIAMANT odeo strobe • $tbd • daniamant.com Being visible is critical in emergency situations. The ODEO Strobe is designed for use either on the boat, on…

Innovation Yachts is testing next-generation, environmentally sustainable technologies while attempting a tough new circumnavigation record. When most sailors think of volcanoes, their imaginations spin to cruising the Ring of Fire. Not so for skipper Norbert Sedlacek. Instead, Sedlacek and the team at Innovation Yachts have developed a way to utilize volcanic fiber, fast-growing balsa wood, and a high-end, purportedly benign epoxy to create a 60-foot high-performance yacht. This boat, which was launched in May 2018, has been dubbed the Open 60 AAL. It will be used to test new, environmentally sustainable boatbuilding materials and technologies, and Sedlacek will also use the revolutionary boat to attempt a world record for a new, 34,000-plus-mile singlehanded circumnavigation that will negotiate all the oceans and Arctic and Antarctic waters. The project, known as the…

We have been climbing up a steep slope named Mount Nobel on the Antarctic Peninsula for at least four hours. Skip Novak is attached to the climbing rope to my rear, and the great mountaineer Alex Lowe is leading the way. It is icy, and we are wearing crampons on our boots that have metal spikes that dig into the snow and ice with every step. I am breathing hard; Alex is coasting and Skip is smiling. Two hours later we reach the summit. It’s cold, windy and gray, but the sense of accomplishment is deeply satisfying. We are all happy. As I massage my tired muscles and enjoy a Coca-Cola that Alex surprised me with, we survey the frozen landscape 2,000 feet below. Skip is philosophical and remarks: “I…

The Chesapeake Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Maryland, invited me to speak at its annual Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival, and I agreed. St. Michaels is 600 nautical miles north of Gannet’s slip at Skull Creek Marina on South Carolina’s Hilton Head Island. I wanted to sail up. The problem was that my speaking dates were in early October. I would be sailing at the height of the hurricane season. I prepared Gannet, my Moore 24, in early September, and then I waited. Hurricane Florence was a thousand miles to the southeast heading for the Carolinas. A mandatory evacuation was ordered for the entire South Carolina coast. But was lifted for Hilton Head just before it was due to go into effect. HURRICANE NO. 1 Hurricane Florence came ashore early Friday…

If the weather is bad, and systems keep moving through too often to leave you without a good window to make Bermuda from New England, the best option is to hop down the coast to Beaufort, North Carolina, one of my favorite ports on the East Coast. Typically, from New England, I head west down Long Island Sound to New York City. From Sandy Hook, New Jersey, at the entrance to New York Harbor, it’s a 110-mile hop down the Jersey shore to Cape May. I’ve had easy rides in smooth water half a mile off the beach, though it was blowing 40 knots from the northwest. If conditions become uncomfortable, you can bail out into Manasquan Inlet or Atlantic City, where you’ll find good year-round marinas. From Cape May,…

CHARTER COMPANIES Annapolis Bay Charters 800-991-1776 p. 100 Atlantic Cruising 844-567-3087 p. 29 Catamaran Company 800-262-0308 p. 96-97 Conch Charters 877-521-8939 p. 105 CYOA Yacht Charters 800-944-2962 p. 95 Horizon Yacht Charters 284-494-8787 p. 103 Kiriacoulis 800-714-3411 p. 105 Le Boat 343-881-8811 p. 20 Navigare Yachting 800-807-1562 p. 39 Sail Caribe 866-866-4874 p. 103 Southwest Florida Yachts 800-262-7939 p. 105 Sunsail 800-437-7880 p. 31 The Moorings 343-881-8811 p. 9 Tortola Marine Management Ltd. 800-633-0155 p. 99 Waypoints 443-225-4355 p. 98 BROKERS Ed Hamilton & Co. 800-621-7855 p. 104 SAILING SCHOOLS American Sailing Association 310-822-7171 p. 102 Blue Water Sailing School 800-255-1840 p. 104 Offshore Sailing School 888.454.7015 p. 101 This directory is a list of companies advertising in this section; it is not an endorsement by the editors. Classified advertisers…

Basic potato salad isn’t generally a cause for culinary celebration, but with a few alterations, it can be worthy of serving with a nice meal aboard. This dish was a favorite when I was cooking aboard Chance, a Bristol 40 cruising along southern Portugal’s Algarve coast. The plus is that it’s not mayonnaise-based, so it can withstand a leisurely warm-weather lunch while you laze around in the cockpit, or a picnic ashore in a sunny spot. With some local charcuterie and fresh fruit, it makes for a great casual meal. The salad will keep well for a couple of days in the fridge (bring to room temperature before serving again).§ Baby greens add flavor, as well as an aesthetic and nutritional boost, but if they’re not available in your port…

Cruising the Caribbean as an Australian is somewhat of a novelty because it’s not a region that Aussies typically visit. Flights to the Caribbean are arduously long, and prices are eye-wateringly expensive. However, Grenada is where our new-to-us Moody 47, Roam, was located, so that was where we commenced our journey. Before our family (myself, Dave, my husband, and our three boys) set off from Adelaide and flew to the other side of the world, I had never even heard of most of the countries we have now visited. It wasn’t until we arrived in Grenada and started speaking to cruisers and hearing of their plans that I became familiar with islands such as Bequia, Guadeloupe and Saba. Slowly, as we inched our way north, the once-unusual names became familiar,…

While news of a beached whale dying in the Philippines with 88 pounds of plastic inside its body rightly grabbed international headlines, sadly, the devil in the environmental disaster is often in the tiny details. Microplastics are defined as tiny bits of plastic or fuzz (say, from a fleece or puffy jacket) that are less than 5 millimeters long. Microplastics are turning up everywhere, including highly remote places such as Point Nemo, which is the farthest spot on Earth from land. Unfortunately, one of the ways that microplastics are entering the water (and therefore the food chain) is by washing synthetic garments, including some of the fabrics mentioned in this article. Fortunately, new technologies are available to help lower one’s environmental wake. For example, a Cora Ball can be thrown…

The World-Famous Yachting Photographer (heretofore identified as WFYP), a man whose America’s Cup images back in the day graced the covers of Sports Illustrated and Time magazines, not to mention nearly every sailing publication on the planet, was in a fit of barely controlled anger. In fact, he was hollering at somebody, and in no unequivocal terms. And just who, or what, was the object of his ire and derision? Um, that would be me. Let’s set the scene. It was a windy, sunny midweek race in last summer’s 12 Metre World Championship regatta off Newport, Rhode Island. The “Twelves,” of course, were the yachts in which the America’s Cup was contested in these very same waters right up until the Australians won the trophy in 1983, so this homecoming…

It’s Showtime! Boat-show season is about to kick off with the Newport International Boat Show, located in Newport, Rhode Island. The show, which runs from September 12-15, 2019, is known as the place to see new boats and gear launching in the North American market through its Newport for New Products program. Up next is the U.S. Sailboat Show, in Annapolis, Maryland, October 10-14, 2019. This is North America’s largest in-water sailboat show, and is not to be missed. Heading to a show? Come say hi to team Cruising World! More info at newportboatshow.com and annapolisboatshows.com. Sail South with the Salty Dawgs Looking to sail south in company? Join the Salty Dawg Fall Rally to the Caribbean! Pre-departure events will begin on October 26, 2019, in Hampton, Virginia, and departure…

Jeremy “Mac” McGeary died July 8 at VCU Medical Center in Richmond, Virginia, after a long bout with cancer. I never knew his age because I froze him at 14 going on 32. He was a professional mariner, editor, writer, yacht designer, engineer, carpenter, chef, cricket player, free spirit, shipmate, husband, friend and imp, and he’s left a huge void in many people’s lives. In a phone call 10 days before his death, he suggested he was in the storm of his life, but we laughed till we cried about our maritime high jinks together over the past 43 years. It was a daunting call, but you couldn’t give up on him because Mac always could claw off a literal or figurative lee shore. Professional mariner? He skippered the charter…

Iwoke in the pre-dawn darkness. I stood in my bunk and pulled myself up through the hatch. The lights of New Plymouth, on Green Turtle Cay, Bahamas, glimmered across the water. The steady beat of drums rolled over the water, the sound hard and close, a deep heartbeat rhythm. I crouched on the foredeck, then sat cross-legged and listened. The Sea of Abaco surrounded me, flat calm in the starlight. The drumming grew louder, until finally it felt as though the drums themselves must be afloat. Then I saw shadowed movement, and I watched as a small band of drummers moved along the dark shoreline road, pounding out their annual rhythms. Junkanoo. New Year’s Day. New Plymouth. Green Turtle Cay, Bahamas. Call it a festival with somewhat mysterious origins. Theories…

Martin Prins loves to rock the dock, regardless of whether it’s in Europe, the States or New Zealand. Ditto cockpits, yacht clubs and beaches. He’s a large, easygoing Dutch sailor who lives aboard his Bavaria 46 Acapella with his wife, Ellen Reijndorp, an electric bass guitar and some dog-eared passports. We first met musically last year in Tahiti and have been bumping into each other at various Pacific cruiser parties ever since. Yesterday we jammed together in Whangarei, New Zealand, at the Town Basin, along with a dozen other circumnavigators. Martin enjoys nurturing musical talent almost as much as playing. He manages to encourage his fellow musicians without stressing them out. Some members of our informal scratch band have been playing for, oh, two weeks or so, while others have…

Extended cruisers and weekend adventurers still have plenty of places to drop the hook in America’s waterways. But if you’ve been reading the news of late, it’s clear that an increasing number of states and localities are passing laws and ordinances that restrict where and when boats may anchor. The recent passage of legislation in Georgia has prompted cruisers and marine-industry organizations to take notice that there’s a storm brewing larger than ever over what most of us consider our right to spend time on our boats anchored safely in a quiet cove or gunkhole. Florida has been grappling with the issue of long-term liveaboards and abandoned vessels for many years. The climate and geography contribute to the state’s abundance of boats, marinas and visitors. The patchwork of regulations in…

It’s peaceful paddling on the west coast of Florida’s Pine Island Sound, with only the pelicans for company. Making landfall in southeast Florida can be a shock to a sailor’s system: a barrage of fishing-boat wakes, ceaseless cars and dial-a-lawyer billboards. It feels at times as though someone invited over millions of people, turned up the sound, and left all the lights on. But Florida also has a sweeter, slower-paced side, as the crew of Liberte, our Beneteau 361, discovered in our latest explorations. Over the course of eight leisurely weeks, my wife, Rebecca, and I cruised the heartlands of the Caloosahatchee River and Okeechobee Waterway, poked around Pine Island Sound, sailed Charlotte Harbor and visited Punta Gorda, then went south along the Everglades. This route brought fascinating human and…

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