Innehållsförteckning för March 2021 från Cruising World

I woke up with the sun and climbed into the cockpit with a blanket and a hot mug of coffee, breath steaming in the crisp morning air. The shoreline was luminous in the soft light, the empty beach alluring. The boat rocked gently in the breeze as an eagle called out from high above. I had to pinch myself; I was not in the San Juan Islands near Seattle or in the Gulf Islands of Canada. I was on Lake Superior in Wisconsin, a lake that both looked and acted very much like an ocean. I am an ocean sailor. I learned to sail in the Pacific Northwest and left to go cruising from there, my sights pointed south and west. I had never been sailing on fresh water. When…

VOYAGING Ever since I was 7 years old, I’ve wanted to circumnavigate, and to do so in the Southern Hemisphere, following the routes of the great clipper ships. No canals, just the great capes! In 2006, I built a wooden schooner in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, and took her on her maiden voyage: around the world via the Southern Ocean. It took two years and two months to sail the 38,400 nautical miles back to Lunenburg, sailing together with many different friends for the various passages. My boat, Maggie B, was designed by eminent nautical architect Nigel Irens to be “fast, safe and comfortable” in the deep south. Most boats that circumnavigate in those waters are race boats that are just designed to be fast. Others are designed more for coastal…

Rebecca Castellano knew that something was fishy when Frank, her then partner and now husband, insisted that she join him and his crewmates for a new-crew orientation the day before the 2012 Fort Lauderdale to Key West Race. Castellano is an experienced sailor and a registered nurse, but she wasn’t part of the Oyster 48’s race crew. Nevertheless, she agreed to go, so long as she didn’t have to do any heavy lifting. Several hours later, when the team was two hours from shore, her partner started experiencing extreme shortness of breath. Realizing that the situation was serious, Castellano made him lie down in a prone resting position and gave him an aspirin to chew. The boat high-tailed it for shore, and Castellano got him to the hospital for treatment.…

Verdant mountains plunging into a blue sea, dark basalt spires piercing the clouds, jungle vines growing over stone ruins: the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia have an almost mystical aura about them. At the far eastern end of the South Pacific islands, only 9 to 10 degrees south of the equator, they are remote, hot and humid. They are high islands, volcanoes that have eroded into deep valleys and vertiginous ridges. In some ways, they are the ultimate South Seas idyll: secluded, tropical and ruggedly beautiful. But in other ways, they are far from the postcard picture. Because of their geological newness and because they are on the outer edges of the cold Humboldt Current, the islands have not developed extensive barrier reefs. So they don’t have the lagoons and…

O Canada, our home and native land,” opens Canada’s national anthem. But this past year, for American sailors at least, the first line might just have well been, “O Canada, when will you let us back in, eh?” Canada closed its borders to all nonessential traffic in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and “nonessential traffic” included those of us who treasure our summers sailing the country’s amazing waters. In our case, my wife, Jennifer, and I sail our Caliber 38, Catamount, out of Cheboygan, Michigan, within sight of the Mackinac Bridge, but for 15 straight summers we had headed north to Canada as soon as the dock lines were cast off. Our goal was either northern Lake Huron with its stunning North Channel and Georgian Bay, or our…

I had a small adventure of the grandest kind in November 2019. I arrived by air in San Carlos, Mexico, where I launched my Beneteau 361, Liberte, into the northern Golfo de California, better known, perhaps, as the Sea of Cortez. For the next 10 days I sailed alone through one of my favorite cruising grounds on the planet. § The sailing began, like many good trips, with a pre-dawn start. I woke at 0344, just before my alarm. The tools of the trade lay where I’d placed them: headlamp, life jacket, personal locator beacon and harness. By the headlamp’s red light, I started the Yanmar engine, readied the North main and hauled the Manson anchor, all familiar allies I’d been away from for too long. I paused for a…

MONTHLY MAINTENANCE Last month I reviewed some of the reasons an engine or genset might not start. This month I’ll delve into reasons an engine might crank but not actually start. When an inboard diesel cranks, several things happen. Air is drawn into the cylinder or combustion chamber via the air-intake manifold/filter, passing through intake valves as the piston is drawn down the cylinder, creating a vacuum. As the piston returns, the intake valve closes, pressurizing the air. On a common gas engine, the compression ratio is roughly 10-to-1, and the compressed air is mixed with fuel vapor. On a diesel engine, the compression ratio is much higher, roughly 20-to-1, and the fuel is not mixed with the air until after compression has occurred. While a higher compression increases the…

SAIL A NEEL TRIMARAN Trimaran Yacht Charter, launched by racer and boatbuilder Eric Bruneel, offers crewed and bareboat trips as well as fleet management aboard award-winning Neel multihull models from 43 to 65 feet. The charter business is an outgrowth of Bruneel’s foray into the production of cruising trimarans with naval architects Michel Joubert, Bernard Nivelt and Marc Lombard. The Neel 45 is the winner of a Cruising World Boat of the Year award in 2013; the Neel 47 is a winner of a Cruising World Boat of the Year award in 2020. Neel trimarans available for charter include the 43, 45, 47 and 51 models. Mediterranean destinations include the French Riviera, Corsica and Croatia. The company can also connect vacation sailors with global locations of Neel trimarans available for…

Fiji set a glowing example for other Pacific countries this past sailing season by successfully opening its borders to cruisers. The country consequently welcomed over 90 foreign boats, over 300 crew and an estimated $10 million to its shores. The Blue Lane initiative, launched in June, set strict guidelines for pleasure craft to follow in order to enter Fiji. This protocol involved sailors having to activate their AIS for their entire trip so that the Fijian navy could confirm uninterrupted sailing, along with quarantining crew on board their vessels for a total of 14 days, including passage time. Additionally, all crew had to take a COVID-19 test and obtain a negative result within 72 hours of leaving their original country and again two days before their 14-day quarantine was up.…

OUR FIRST WARNING was the stillness. You might find it cliche that, as sailors, a calm morning would spell ominous weather on the horizon. But we were at the bottom of the world—Puerto Williams, Chile—and we were about to make a run for Cape Horn. We’d arrived in Puerto Williams on Christmas Eve, having sailed a year and a half to get there. Our 36-foot sloop was warped, weary and falling to bits after battling a barrage of storms along the coast of Patagonia. We ourselves were beaten and fatigued. But we had a window, and we didn’t know if another would come for weeks, or even months. Cape Horn, South Africa, is where the Pacific and Atlantic oceans collide. Waves have been recorded at over 100 feet high—the size…

WINTER PROJECTS If you’ve been attending boat shows for the past 10 or 20 years like I have, you have surely noticed significant design evolutions from the major sailboat builders. Wide beam carried all the way aft to a plumb transom—which often articulates into a sweet boarding deck, sometimes even opening up a garage for a tender and motor—are becoming the norm. Dual helms and twin rudders are commonplace, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a boat without installed air conditioning and sophisticated refrigeration systems. Boats 30 feet and longer often have a bow thruster as an option, and shore power is standard equipment. Recently I had the opportunity to turn on the not-so-way-back machine and take a trip to the 1980s to remind me what life on board back…

The executives, design team, and craftsmen at the sailing division of Groupe Beneteau have made some interesting, innovative, and even surprising decisions ever since a regime change took place in the marine conglomerate’s upper-management ranks a couple of years back. This was clear from last year’s launching of Beneteau’s First Yacht 53, a sleek and powerful performance cruiser with the contemporary lines evident in the latest offerings from the top European naval architects. Now the company is continuing its ongoing design evolution with its latest dedicated cruising boat, the Oceanis Yacht 54. We tested the boat this past fall on a gorgeous day on Chesapeake Bay with a Beneteau team that couldn’t have been more excited about its potential, and deservedly so. It’s a rangy, clever, impressive yacht. Over the…