Innehållsförteckning för December 2022 från Practical Boat Owner

Sails are the best investment you’ll ever make, I was told when I visited Bainbridge International. The factory was impressive – the cloth-cutter table longer than our yacht Maximus – and the 3D sail design program very slick. You can choose from a dazzling mix of high-tech laminates, but actually what surprised me is that your woven sail, whether polyester, nylon or any other material, employs the same technique that’s been used for centuries. Intrigued, I visited the website of Denmark’s Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde. Sure enough, the Vikings made sails out of wool, essentially by snaking yarns over and under each other, and varying the stretch qualities according to the weave. Sam Llewellyn (page 18) also journeys into the wonders of sails this issue, delving into the Big…

Online sail training company NauticEd and MarineVerse, an Australian-based pioneer of virtual reality (VR) sailing simulation, have teamed up to offer the first virtual reality sailing course. The ‘Self Mastery’ course incorporates VR gaming with sailing training techniques and programs, in a ‘fully immersive, virtual sailing experience’. It puts players at the helm and helps them learn to trim the sails, manage boat speed, and navigate. The boat reacts to wind conditions and player decisions, giving them instant feedback on how their actions impact boat behaviour. More complex modules like docking and manoeuvring within the marina, night sailing, and heavy weather are currently in production. NauticEd instructor trainer Edward O’Conner, a retired US Marine Corps Lt Colonel, said: “Just like a flight simulator, virtual reality activates the same neural pathways…

Living with the sea Marsali Taylor sails an Offshore 8M, Karima S. She’s a dinghy instructor and author of The Shetland Sailing Mysteries starring liveaboard sleuth, Cass Lynch. It was back in July, when the BBC was warning the UK to wear ice cubes under their sunhats. Forgive us here in Shetland for the lack of sympathy; our main greeting up here was ‘Do you think we’re ever going to get a summer?’ We’d had cold through April, grey clouds in May, wind in June and now July seemed settled into gloomy drizzle. My boat still hadn’t had her varnish done, nor her books back in their shelves. All the same, I’d been watching the forecast and this Monday had been looking good all weekend. I headed out as soon…

You know what it’s like. You do all the passage planning, line up your crew, check the weather and tides, and still it all goes wrong. Maybe the Greeks were right: there are gods to appease… For the 2022 season I planned to take my 22ft traditional new build wooden ‘gentleman’s’ harbour launch Morgana down the Thames to London and the tidal estuary, then eastwards to the Medway. I hoped it would be the start of a harbour-hopping adventure up the East Coast to the Essex swatchways, the Suffolk rivers, and maybe even the Norfolk Broads. A fitting sequel to past sojourns on the Severn, the Devon and Cornish coasts, and the Solent. I bought the almanacs, the charts, the guides. I updated my plotter software, prepared the boat, and…

During the survey of our Maxi 84, the PBO Project Boat Maximus, we were warned by a marine surveyor that there was only so much he could tell us about the sails. “To see how good a sail is, you really need to take the boat sailing,” said Ben Sutcliffe-Davies. Maximus had been laid up in a boatyard for two years, and when Ben pulled out the genoa from a locker full of leaves and rainwater, he gave it a good scratch. “It’s got that nice little noise to it when you scrape it with your nails,” he said. “However, the UV strip is completely worn and faded and starting to break down.” Due to very light winds, however, we had little opportunity to test the sails on our shakedown…

Readers’ cruising destinations, near and far We pay for your cruising stories and harbour updates - email pbo@futurenet.com. For more adventures, visit www.pbo.co.uk/cruising Having motored my yacht, Celestine, a Carambola 38, across the width of Europe, by river and canal, in 2019, I left her up on the hard in Mangalia, Romania. I departed for New Zealand certain in the knowledge that I’d be back the next year to step the mast and sail her to Turkey, through the Bosporus Strait, to spend a leisurely season cruising northern Aegean waters. That was over two and a half years ago. My plans had turned to ash, along with the movements of millions of others around the world as the Covid-19 pandemic brought society to a standstill. When the pandemic hit, I’d…

The National Independent Lifeboat Association (NILA) charity has been formed to promote and support independent lifeboat organisations across the United Kingdom. NILA’s mission is to give a voice, assistance and advice to the growing community of independent lifeboats across the United Kingdom, to offer collaborative development and training while allowing members to retain their independence. ■ Nila.org.uk Weymouth Speed Week The 50th anniversary of the oldest and longest-running speed sailing event in the world was due to take place from 15-21 October. Speed sailor Paul Larsen supported Weymouth Speed Week’s golden year by dusting off Sailrocket 2, which retains the 65.45 knot outright world speed sailing record. Since its record-breaking sail over the 500m course in Walvis Bay, Namibia, in November 2012, the asymmetric wingsailed speed vessel had been stored…

Got a news story that would interest a fellow PBO reader? We want to hear from you! Email PBO news editor Laura Hodgetts at pbo@futurenet.com SOUTH COAST AND CHANNEL ISLANDS Visiting boat boost A new water taxi office and new shower facilities are being built at a popular Isle of Wight pub on the River Medina. The Folly Inn’s jetty is also being refurbished, a heated pergola installed, along with an extended waterside patio, and outdoor kitchen and bar which will open next spring. The pub is closed for the revamp, which also includes a new fireplace, furniture, and bi-fold doors along two elevations to provide views over the water. It will reopen on 7 November. Master plan Ports of Jersey is embarking on a once-in-a-generation programme to transform the…

Mad about the boat Dave Selby is the proud owner of a 5.48m (18ft) Sailfish, which he keeps on a swinging mooring on the picturesque Blackwater estuary in Essex Having one Dave on a boat is confusing enough – and I mostly sail my Sailfish solo! – so you can imagine what it’s like with three Daves on one boat out of a total of five people. We three Daves were ‘helping’ Kate deliver her lovely Najad 50 – with washing machine, tumble drier and a toilet that’s not a bucket – to the East Coast from Plymouth. There was Sea-Sick Dave, also known as My Dave by Kate, whose partner he is. Then there was another Dave, otherwise known as Other Dave – I hope you’re following this –…

What inspired you to attempt this world record? I’ve always dreamed of breaking the world record for the smallest vessel to cross the Atlantic. Big C is just over a metre long, and the current record is held by US sailor Hugo Vihlen, whose boat Father’s Day was 5ft 4in. The plan is to do exactly the same route as he did, from St John’s Newfoundland back to the UK. Have you done this before? I took a 21ft Mini Transat up into the Arctic – it was a prototype with a canting keel – around Iceland towards Greenland, through Denmark Strait and back home to the UK. I raised money for my daughter’s school. Now I’ve gone for a bigger project but in a smaller boat. Why microyachting? I…

Meeting Etienne Le Caër by chance on a neighbouring berth in Corsica, resulted in his daughter, Geneviève, visiting us in Australia. She sailed with us in Jervis Bay on Balnagowan, our 25ft Adams. Not long after my business interests took me to Kenilworth in the UK, where I exhibited my agricultural equipment at the Royal Show. With that, came an exciting invitation to sail Briseis, her father’s Jeanneau 33 that was berthed at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat on the Côte d’Azur. I could hardly wait for the exhibition to conclude and hastily rearranged our schedules to fly to Cannes, from where we hired a car to Cap Ferrat. Etienne was the retired maritime pilot of the Port of Dunkirk and a very affable man, but it takes a special person to place his…

What tools did sailmakers use before computers? A sailmaker would always have a set of drawing board tools such as a trusty scale ruler, pencil, protractor, calculator; those sort of items. You’d sit at a drawing board and start pencilling out the sails to a scale of 1:50. The downside of paper and pencil, is you only get a 2D aspect of the sails. They’re flat. With more advanced computer software these days you can describe the sail’s aerofoil shape. Is sail design a lot quicker these days? It’s more about the accuracy. To create the rig, pencil and paper is actually super-fast, especially when you’re as old as me, but to cut the sail and design the sail shape, a computer wins every time. If it’s a standard mould,…

Building your own boat is an absorbing pastime leading, hopefully, to an enjoyable result. Kayaks are about the simplest boats to make, and they give tremendous fun. There are plenty of kits available for amateur building and some result in extremely beautiful boats, or you can buy a set of plans. However, a kit or a set of plans may not give exactly the kayak that you’d like. In our case we dislike carrying heavy kayaks, and that provides a convenient excuse for the enjoyable challenge of making a strong, lightweight boat. These kayaks are suitable for recreational use in calm estuary and coastal waters but at 8-9kg are far lighter than comparable commercially available boats, and are also significantly cheaper than either a kit or a complete kayak. To…

We’re all becoming more aware of the detrimental effects that pollution is having on our environment, and about the undesirable practice of pumping raw sewage from sea toilets into anchorages, rivers and harbours. The recommended solution is to fit a holding tank to your boat, but finding space to fit such a tank – especially in smaller boats – is difficult and sometimes impossible. My solution that finds a way around this is to make use of bags, the type of thing used in commode chairs and bedpans. In our Hunter Pilot sailing yacht my wife and I use Abena Abri-Bag liners: they are supplied in boxes of 20 and work out at just over 50p per bag. The liner fits perfectly around the rim of the toilet bowl and…

The Jubilee Sailing Trust (JST) has confirmed that one of its subsidiaries – Jubilee Sailing Trust Ltd, which owns the sail training ship Lord Nelson – has been placed into administration. STS Lord Nelson was decommissioned in 2019, and since then the charity has been trying to sell the vessel. The Southampton-based Jubilee Sailing Trust, which still runs the Tall Ship Tenacious, has fallen short of its £1.2million Covid Recovery Campaign target but a spokesman praised the “absolutely amazing” £953,195 pledged or donated from individuals, groups and organisations since April 2022. This funding has helped to deliver 16 voyages and daysails, take 507 people of varying ages, abilities and backgrounds to sea, and helped JST through a major restructure in late July; the placing of one of the JST’s two…

Email pbo@futurenet.com or write to us at the address on page 5. Photos are appreciated, letters may be edited. Love for the Landau An article on swapping sails for power (PBO, September 2022) focused on those power craft which appeal to sailors. Among these was the Hunter Landau 20, designed by David Thomas. As the head of Hunter Boats at the time, Peter Poland was responsible for this unusual – indeed perhaps unique – venture of his company into power, and perhaps it is this personal connection which led him as the author of this article to be so diffident about this remarkable boat. I have just returned from two weeks cruising on the Broads in my Landau. Living aboard a 20ft boat soon tests both boat and crew, and…

Flotsam and jetsam Sam Llewellyn writes nautical thrillers, edits The Marine Quarterly, and is perpetually patching up a 30ft ketch: samllewellyn.com Having been engrossed in editing a first-hand account of the Battle of Jutland for The Marine Quarterly, I realised I had been at the desk all morning, thinking about high explosives and huge steel steamships. It was raining, and it had hardly bothered to get light, and it was necessary to get some air and think about sails. So I went out to the Big Shed and started leafing through the collection. This may conjure up snowy racks of neatly-flaked Dacron, exquisitely catalogued by size and weight. Not so. The sails lurk in grubby bags hung from rusty nails on walls of naked stone. Spiders scuttled around as I…

Leading up to the 2022 edition of the Southampton International Boat Show (SIBS), organisers announced that 98% of the exhibitor space had already been filled. This was despite having a larger footprint than ever before. So the signs were good. Lesley Robinson, CEO of organiser British Marine (BM), described the rate of bookings as “phenomenal” and said: “We’re nearly at capacity, even with an enlarged footprint both on land and water.” It was also claimed that SIBS takes place at Europe’s largest purpose-built show marina, covering more than 70,000m2, which this year boasted 685 individual stands and berths, and more than 650 craft on display, including 300 boats berthed within the marina alone. The show welcomed 126 new companies and hosted 167 UK and world debuts. The results of BM’s…

Sharp-edged, shark-like, strongly constructed and with a colourful history, the yacht we would call Alice Fouché caught our interest and captured our imagination from day one. It was enough to make me abandon the steel Tahitiana (a design based on John G Hanna’s famous Tahiti ketch) that I had started building, in favour of owning this unique boat which was ready to go. A little under 38ft, so large enough to accommodate the family, but manageable when it would just be me and my wife, she had an impressive blue water record and an intriguing specification. To the best of our knowledge, she was a one-off and her history was equally fascinating, as we would soon discover. Called a Steelbird 38, she was completed in 1975 in Genoa, Italy, registered…

The evening was warm and pleasant with just enough wind to keep the sails filled; autumn dusk had begun to obscure the distance. Yachts that had ventured up the narrowing Humber river as far as they dared before the tide turned, were hurrying back to the safety of their moorings in a creek off the broad river. At low tide the river outside these moorings became draining mud flats, shifting sand banks, and a much-reduced river that had sometimes been waded. Further upriver, seagulls had revealed a barely hidden hill of mud, by paddling on it! In another 15 minutes or so the bank would be exposed, and there was little time to waste for boats heading downriver. I was the owner of a 23ft sailing cruiser and had been…

Step by step Cutting the cloth Step by step Other sail components…

Maybe I should have listened to the voice telling me to walk away, but I needed a watermaker after my Osmosea unit died and here was a Spectra unit, supposedly the Rolls Royce of watermakers, being advertised at a fair price. Whenever the owner of something that’s not working tells you how easy it is to fix, ask yourself why they haven’t done so themselves. It’d been left in a heap for a few months and who knows how many bits of it had stopped working in the meantime. “You’ll probably find it just needs a bit of a clean” the seller chirped as I handed over the cash against my internal screams to turn and walk away. The thing that sold it though was that I’d read Spectra sell…