Innehållsförteckning för November/December 2023 från SAIL

“Pole up!” our skipper shouted from the foredeck as the helmsman eased off the main. We had just rounded the windward mark, and another crewmember and I scrambled for our positions at the spinnaker sheets and launched the chute from the bag. What a beautiful sight. It was a brisk and sunny Saturday afternoon with 10-knot winds gusting to 18, and this was the last of our three races for the day. As we flew down the lake, I could hardly believe how far I’d come. If this had been two short years ago, panic would have overwhelmed me when we heeled at 25 degrees in the gusts. A knockdown years ago had ruined my enthusiasm for sailing. I grew up in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.…

Tanks in sailboats are a pain. Frequently they must take on weird shapes to fit the odd spaces where they live, they’re often hard to access, and even harder to monitor. When you think about all that internal tank sensors are up against—from solid waste to fuel—it’s not surprising that they fail or don’t provide accurate information. Gobius Pro, nominated for a DAME Design Award in 2022, has developed an external sensor that gets around these problems and can be used on fiberglass, metal, or plastic tanks holding everything from water to waste. The unit “emits vibrations into the tank that its integrated accelerometer reads, then transmits this data via Bluetooth to the companion mobile app,” Albin Group Marine, who distributes the product in the U.S., says in a press…

“Have you ever sailed on Lake Erie before?” Fred Hunger asks as he maneuvers his new Tartan 455 deckhouse sloop from the slip at the Cleveland Yacht Club on the Rocky River. It’s maybe a quarter mile from the docks to the river entrance onto the lake’s southwest corner, denoted by a stone jetty geysering with spray. The boisterous northwest breeze on this early August day has the flags even in this protected boat basin snapping. “Nope,” I say. “I’ve always wanted to, though.” “Nice,” Fred says, positively bouncing with anticipation. “Oh ho ho, you’re gonna get a Great Lakes sail today! There’s some nice waves left out there. Last night, this lake was angry.” Fred is excited because it’s only the third time out in hull No. 1 of…

The call for all sailors to attend a special weather briefing felt ominous. Soulemate and more than 100 other boats and their crews were gathered at Bluewater Yachting Center in Hampton, Virginia, to start the Salty Dawg Sailing Association (SDSA) rally to the Caribbean and Bahamas. We were scheduled to leave in two days, on November 1, 2022, and everyone had been anxiously watching the unsettled weather in the North Atlantic. Chris Parker, founder of Marine Weather Center and the rally’s weather router, started using words like “anomalous” and “unprecedented” in his daily forecast to describe the situation. We all knew the start date was tentative and were prepared to wait a few days—one previous rally had been delayed a week. How late could it get? We would soon find…

High in the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming lies Yellowstone Lake, an inland sea surrounded by evergreen forests. Frozen most of the year, the water temperature rarely reaches 60°F, even with the dozens of hot springs flowing into its depths. At 7,733 feet above sea level, the weather changes quickly. Chilly summer mornings ease into warm, wispy afternoons that can erupt into sail-dousing dashes. Squalls boom down like swirls from the jet stream with lightning, blinding rain, and crashing waves. Being windbound all day isn’t unusual. Evenings generally calm down with brilliant sunsets and starry nights. There may be 100,000 people in Yellowstone National Park, but on the lake there is little sign of them, and nature is in charge. This story begins in 1954 with my dad and his brothers…

Few world class racing boats have had such improbable beginnings as Windward Passage—conceived by a somewhat renegade logger-entrepreneur-sailor, drawn by an untested young designer, built by a scrum of footloose “sailorboys” out of cold-molded spruce on the edge of a Bahamian harbor under not much more than a tent. And few world class racing boats have had the equally improbable life that followed—sailing hundreds of thousands of ocean miles chasing regattas around the world, setting a multitude of records, furiously vexing younger, fancier competitors even after nearly 20 years of hard racing, and going on to gain a new lease on life as a luxurious, fast, world-traveling cruising yacht that still drops jaws wherever she goes. Conceived by “Big” Bob Johnson and designed by Alan Gurney, this 73-footer seemed bound…

There’s no question that sailboats require a lot of kit, and that reality often makes gift giving for the sailors in our lives as easy as a trip through the latest gear catalogue or a clean sweep of the specials at the fall shows. But the best gifts are about doing stuff, rather than getting stuff, about experiences rather than material goodies. Giving someone the opportunity to become a better sailor or spending time on the water with people we love are two of the best gifts you can give or get, and we’ve focused on short-term chartering and sailing education as two great ways to make those things happen during this gift-giving season. Often, the two go hand in hand, as many charter operations are linked to sailing schools…

There are some places we sail where just one look at the sky, or the way the air feels, lets us know that we’re probably going to be in for a thunderstorm shellacking sometime that day—the summertime Chesapeake Bay comes to mind. But if we’re looking for a more precise way of determining the potential for convention, as well as how severe the wind it produces might be, there are several tools available to sailors that bear exploring and many environmental factors to consider. Sailors and weather forecasters rely on weather models to help them predict what’s coming, but computer models have difficulty predicting weather events that occur on small scales of time or distance (see “Weather Window: Forecast Models,” May 2023). Convective storms and the wind they generate are…

Pulling together 700 strangers of all ages and sailing abilities from 40 countries and in one month teaching them to race 11 big sailboats around the world seems like a spectacularly crazy idea. But this is the core mission of the Clipper Round the World Race. In September, the fleet of 11 identical 70-footers departed Portsmouth, England, each with a professional skipper and mate and a crew of 20 amateur sailors, for a 40,000-mile journey around the world. This event, now in its 13th edition, is unlike any other ocean race. The longest and most grueling semi-professional yacht race in the world, it’s sailed in eight legs on a cumulative point system, and it’s a logistical puzzle of personalities, physical abilities, and sailing skills. Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, who in 1969…

Winter can be an overlooked season for the mid-latitude boat. Even if you don’t snowbird south for the tropics, good times aboard can still be had. Put on your hat and head on down to the boat, because winter is a fine string of months for boat projects. Whisker Pole Most sailboats would benefit from the addition of a whisker pole. Stabilizing the headsail while sailing off the wind will add speed and reduce roll. The classic image of trade wind sailing dead downwind with sails set wing on wing is easy to envision. I’ve also learned to use my pole on a broad reach with the genoa poled out on the same side as the double-reefed main. The pole stabilizes the headsail and gives it excellent shape. The reef…

There were two things I disliked about my 1987 Pearson 39-2 from the outset—the anchor locker and the forecabin. The former was a shallow tray, long enough to accommodate the 25-pound Danforth that came with the boat, its 20 feet of chain, and 200 feet of nylon rope, but at 14 inches it wasn’t deep enough for an efficient drop from the old Simpson Lawrence windlass, which worked but would be underpowered for my planned upgrades. The forecabin had its own small en-suite head with a vanity, toilet, and a little overhead stowage, but I found the V-berth annoyingly short and cramped and too narrow at its foot. To fit the en suite in, designer Bill Shaw had to push the bunk forward so that its foot ended up under…