Innehållsförteckning för January 2024 från Yachting Monthly

And they are off! Spectacular is one of the few words able to describe the magnificent panorama of the ARC 2023 yachts sailing towards the horizon at the start of the 2,700-mile journey to St. Lucia. Days and often years of preparation are over. The ARC 2023 saw 156 yachts cross the start line at Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, in light 8-10 knot winds, hot sunshine and blue skies. The Spanish Navy offshore patrol vessel Rayo fired the starting gun. ‘It is a tremendous sight to see close to 160 yachts heading for the horizon,’ said World Cruising Club Managing Director Paul Tetlow. ‘The weather conditions are light. The stronger trade winds will kick in a couple of days. We wish them all safe passage.’ The ARC 2023 is back…

SAFFIER SE 24 LITE Dutch yard Saffier really knows how to make fun, fast boats that are a doddle to sail solo or shorthanded. The hull is wide with flat aft sections and a long waterline, coupled with a meagre 1,200kg displacement and decent 450kg ballast (37.5%) on a deep L-keel of lead. The upwind sail area isn’t huge, but stick up the 41m2 Code Zero or 48m2 gennaker, set from the end of the carbon bowsprit, and you’ll easily be planing and hitting some serious speeds downwind. There are three depth options for the keel between 1.00m and 1.44m for sailing in shoal areas. Though it’s a fixed keel, the boat is trailable and can be launched from a single lifting point. Tiller steering controls a deep single balanced…

There’s no denying that this is a beast of a boat. Bluff bowed, big and powerful, the Bavaria C46 has more volume than almost any boat her size. In some ways, it’s no surprise as this is the direction boat design has been going for years, underlined by Bavaria’s motto of ‘Further and more’. In the C46, then, we’ve certainly got the ‘more’, but the question I was keen to answer when I headed down to Hamble one beautifully blustery autumn day was whether this boat also has the ‘further’. Has she sacrificed sailing ability for her size, or have Bavaria pulled off the trick of also making her a better sailing boat? Alongside the continuing move to ever greater volume, there has been a more recent and more subtle…

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Floris is on the lookout at the bow, as we are sailing in uncharted waters. Some of the coral heads rise almost to the surface but, thanks to the high sun and clear water, Floris can easily see them. We keep them at a safe distance, and sail on until we find a patch of sandy bottom to anchor near the edge of the ring of coral reefs that encircle the Gambier archipelago in French Polynesia. The water in the lagoon is flat, crystal clear and azure blue. Trees and bushes grow on several small islands. Puaumu, the picturesque island in front of us, is one of them. ‘This whole island is made of coral!’ Ivar observes when we go ashore. In the distance, large ocean rollers pound violently on…

Send your sailing gossip, diary dates, cruising news and club association updates to Heather Prentice at heather.prentice@futurenet.com DSA wins King’s Award for Voluntary Service The Disabled Sailing Association, based in Torquay, has been awarded the prestigious King’s Award for Voluntary Service (KAVS). This is the highest award a local voluntary group can receive in the UK and is equivalent to an MBE. The DSA was created in 2002, the year of Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee, to provide safe and affordable sailing opportunities to disabled adults and children, their families and carers. King Charles III has emphasised his desire to continue the award, which aims to recognise outstanding work by local volunteer groups to benefit their communities. Recipients are announced annually on 14 November, the King’s birthday. ‘As Chair I…

www.yachtingmonthly.com/books Monday December 25th (Christmas Day) Turning in last night was the work of a very few minutes, and this morning I awoke perfectly refreshed and ready to appreciate anew the wonders of the prospect that met my eyes. The pillar of fire was still distinctly visible when I looked out from my window, though it was not so bright as when I had last seen it; but even as I looked it began to fade and gradually disappeared. At the same moment a river of glowing lava issued from the side of the bank which we had climbed with so much difficulty yesterday and slowly but surely overflowed the ground we had walked over. I woke Tom, and you may imagine the feelings with which we gazed on this…

1 STANDING RIGGING Check sheaves, swages, split-pins, masthead lights and spreader mounts, looking out for any cracks, wear and tear or signs of corrosion, then sluice all moving parts (sheaves, furling drums, bottlescrews) with fresh water. 2 RUNNING RIGGING Inspect all running rigging for chafe, and wash halyards by filling your tender with fresh water to soak and then hand wash them with a generous squirt of liquid detergent. 3 SAILS Remove the sails to give them a thorough inspection, and, if necessary, send away for cleaning, or to a sailmaker for servicing and carrying out any repairs. 4 NAVIGATION LIGHTS Check that all the lights are working and look out for any water ingress. Remove bulbs to lubricate the terminals with a petroleum jelly, such as Vaseline. 5 PROPULSION…

HRH The Princess Royal, President of the RYA, was present at the 2023 Royal Volunteer Awards ceremony in central London to recognise the outstanding commitment and dedication of 81 volunteers from across Britain’s sailing communities. The awards were divided into five categories: RYA Community Awards; Francis Elkin Award; Honor Preston Award; RYA Awards; and Honorary Life Membership. Some 46 Lifetime Commitment Awards were celebrated at the ceremony and a further 25 volunteers were honoured with Outstanding Contribution Awards. Six individuals received a Young Volunteer Award. The Francis Elkin Award recognises individuals who have helped people with disabilities to become involved in sailing. This year it was awarded to Brian Stanley, who founded Wealden Sailability in 2008. The RYA Regional Award went to Peter Hadfield of the RYA North West Region…

Hundreds of laid-up yachts were holed, crushed or simply dashed to kindling in the Great Tide which flooded both sides of the North Sea 70 years ago this year, drowning 2,401 people in the Netherlands, Belgium, Scotland and England. The death toll included seamen aboard small coasters, fishermen and passengers aboard a capsized ferry. The worst hit place in the UK was Canvey Island in Essex, the low-lying Dutch-reclaimed marshland in the Thames Estuary, where today a towering concrete sea wall dwarfs the houses below and shuts out the creeks on the seaward side where my gaffer Betty II is moored. Here 58 either drowned or died from hypothermia as they huddled on the roofs of their pre-fab bungalows. Yachtsmen from clubs including Thurrock YC; Colne YC; The Royal Burnham…

Navigation light obscured – can I proceed? Q Sue is cruising around the small ports of north Brittany singlehanded on board a 9m cruising yacht. She is intending to enter a small harbour with a visitor’s buoy for an overnight stay. The harbour has leading marks which are lit at night to guide yachts between the drying rocks which extend either side of the channel for N about half a mile. The sea conditions are flat calm and the forecast is for light offshore winds overnight. The tidal height is 6m. Light winds and strong tides have delayed Sue and it is now dark. Visibility is good but there is no moon and there is a two-knot cross tide. Sue can see the lights of the village behind the harbour…

Under reefed mainsail and engine we were heading westwards, close to the rocky cliffs off the French south coast, east of Marseille. In the distance I saw something in the water – some colours, I wasn’t sure what, exactly. I was skippering and helming our charter boat, Naima, a 45ft Dufour, as we made our way back to the charter base at Marseille. Also on board were my wife Diane, our friends Rob and Madeline, my son Cliff and his partner Ash. WEATHER BREAKS It was September 2018 and we were reaching the end of a marvelous week of sunshine sailing. Now, on the final day of our charter, the weather had broken and a strong Force 6 from the west slowed our progress, picking up uncomfortable seas as it…

From a distance the Skellig Islands look like two shards of rock sticking out of the Atlantic. Skellig or Sceilg means ‘splinter of stone’. It was a calm, hot and sunny day and we had motored from Dingle, County Kerry, to get close to Little Skellig. It has the largest colony of gannets in Ireland and I wanted to sketch them. The sheer, jagged cliffs soared above us, every ledge packed with birds and whitewashed with guano. The gannets grow to be huge, with a wingspan of two metres. One of the joys of cruising is watching the gannets flying gracefully in a row of two or three, far out at sea, close to the surface of the water. The largest seabird in the North Atlantic, they are white with…

CLASS 1 La Promesse (Open 40) Jankees Lampe – 13d.22h.14m.27s CLASS 2 Asgard (Jeanneau Sunfast 3300) Corson Connor – 12d.23h.22m.50s. The fastest ever outright winner on handicap. THE DESERVING CLASS 3 AND 4 WINNERS Amigos (Archimbault A35) Jon Myers – 13d.18h.58m.40s and Haven KJ Enigma (MG346) Ian Braham – 13d.16h.47m.11s. Both had the most gruelling races. MULTIHULLS Bare Necessities Bruce Sutherland – 15d.09h.51m.22s Superbigou (custom IMOCA 60) Will Claxton – set a new single-leg record for Line Honours of 4d.21h.17m.48s. In a first for sustainable sailing, zero emission Southerly 47 Doris, completed an ocean race with wind and solar power alone.…

The quarantine officer wished us a hearty, ‘Welcome to ‘Straya!’ Clearance into Mackay on Australia’s Queensland Coast was straightforward except for the fiscal shock we received when he informed us that we owed the Aussie government $550 for the privilege of a biosecurity clearance. Let’s just say that it was a bit more expensive than what we had been expecting! We departed Aotearoa in May 2023, setting off on a circumnavigation. The first stop was Noumea, then a very pleasant and uneventful six-day passage to Mackay. Mackay is the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands, the sparkling gems set inside the Great Barrier Reef. It’s a spectacular cruising ground, with strong, constant southeasterly trade winds and smooth seas in the lee of the Great Barrier Reef. We ate up the miles,…

For some monohull sailors, multihulls are still from a different planet, or perhaps even a different galaxy. Despite the increasing popularity and acceptance of catamarans as charter boats, many of the old preconceptions persist: multihulls don’t go to windward, they pitch and slam uncomfortably and, if you load them up for offshore sailing, they lose any speed advantage they might have had. One man who has done more than most to prove that these notions are fallacies is Richard Woods. Involved with multihulls since the 1960s, he has designed dozens of catamarans (and a few trimarans) up to 69ft (21m). He has built and owned around 20 of them himself, and sailed tens of thousands of ocean and coastal miles in both his own designs and those of others. Unlike…

New VDES (VHF Data Exchange System) regulations come into force in 2024 in European waters covered by the RAINWAT agreement, notably the inland waterways of Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. The regulations are designed to allow various VHF channels to be reassigned from voice to data for ship-to-shore information exchange. In Belgium, Netherlands and Germany the following channels may no longer be used for voice communication: 24, 25, 26, 84, 85 and 86. ‘They should be blocked, removed, or simply not used,’ says Robert Sansom, member of the Cruising Association’s Regulatory & Technical Services group (RATS). ‘In addition, within Belgian and German waters, Channels 27 and 28 must be split into analogue and data channels or blocked. If this is not possible, a new VHF radio must be purchased as…

Wisely, this issue addresses the practicalities of making your boat child-friendly: indeed many sensible adjustments are good for all, since adult humans too get clumsy and accident-prone when tired or sick. A morbid imagination is an excellent thing when installing any gear or system. But it is exhilarating to reflect that boats are by nature definitely child-friendly. Not necessarily safe, but appealing: it runs from the first bathtime discovery of buoyancy, on through the fascination of pirates, explorers and victories. Any toddler drags its parents towards a boating lake. Some, like the late great editor of this magazine, Des Sleightholme, began their career in short trousers trying to navigate an old door across a duckpond. So once you have done useful things with netting, lifelines and the like, the trick…

The life of a radar on board a cruising yacht is an easy one. Aside from a few hours of action when it’s misty or foggy, its younger sibling, AIS, does the heavy lifting of collision avoidance for most yachts. Once the preserve of large yachts and commercial vessels, however, radar is increasingly found on yachts under 40ft. It’s become more affordable, easier to install and more intuitive to use, but how about its operators? Have we advanced with it and are we using it to its full potential? I suspect not. Like many cruising boats, the Challenge 72 that I co-skipper, CatZero, constantly receives and transmits AIS data. Since it runs in the background the volunteer watch leaders soon become familiar with it. The all-new B&G Halo 24 radar…

Five archipelagos make up French Polynesia: the Marquesas, Tuamotus, Gambier, Austral Islands, and Society Islands. Spread out over an area as large as the EU, they provide fantastic cruising opportunities. The country is part of France but has extensive independence, such as its own currency. On most islands, there are few facilities for sailors, aside from the Society Islands, which are the main charter hub. A peculiarity about this area are the rings of coral that surround entire archipelagos (Gambier) or individual islands (Society Islands). In some archipelagos they are absent (Austral Island, Marquesas) or all that is left of sunken volcanic islands, resulting in atolls (Tuamotus). While some rings of coral are impassable, others have a few openings through which boats can carefully enter. ANCHORS AND CORAL DON’T MIX…

Not long ago, having any form of mains AC (alternating current) on board a small to medium sized leisure boat was rare. Today, a 240V facility seems to be a prerequisite of any marina berth, supplying enough power to run heaters, kettles, water heaters, microwaves and more. In fact, it’s becoming increasingly rare to find any boat relying on its own power resources whilst marina-based, even when they’re paying for it on a meter. However, this new abundance of AC power comes with the problem of how to safely handle and manage it aboard a yacht. It’s important to remember that AC can be a killer, particularly when you’re floating on a highly efficient conductor such as salt water. It’s vital, therefore, that great care should be taken over an…

IROQUOIS British builders have been responsible for a good number of 30ft catamarans over the years, including the 9m Catalac, Bill O’Brien’s Oceanic 30 and the Wharram Tiki 30. None of these could be described as performance boats, however, even though one Tiki was clocked averaging 14 knots for two hours and, on another occasion, at 17 knots. If you’re after something less unconventional and with better upwind performance than can be achieved by the Tiki with its gaff rig, wooden spars, no boom and no keels, the Iroquois is a more likely bet. Designed by Rod McAlpine Downie and built by Reg White’s SailCraft in Brightlingsea, it was launched in 1965 and immediately gained a reputation as a spirited performer. Michael Ellison owned one of the early boats and…