Innehållsförteckning för February 2024 från Yachting Monthly

A solo sailor onboard a critically damaged yacht over 600 miles west of Cornwall in the midst of Storm Ciarán was saved as part of a two-day rescue operation led by HM Coastguard. The 14m (46ft) yacht had lost its mast in the midst of the storm and was taking on water in the high seas of the Atlantic Ocean. The Coastguard received an initial beacon alert from the yacht in the mid-Atlantic around 1130 on 2 November and Royal Air Force (RAF) aircraft, along with French aircraft and a merchant ship, began the rescue operation. The first responding vessel, merchant ship Green Azure, estimated its arrival to be around 20 hours later due to the weather and the yacht’s position, but despite this, changed course and proceeded to the…

Admittedly I’m an old duffer, but it still amazes me how communications have developed over my lifetime. The budget for my first single-handed race couldn’t be described as tight; it simply didn’t exist. What wasn’t there was squeezed by a rule that required us to have the ability to pick up a weather forecast. Whilst pondering a solution I spied an old radio in the marina skip. To my eternal shame I fitted it to the bulkhead and hoped that a tuning dial that lit up when it was turned on would scrape me through the pre-race scrutiny. The plan was for an electrical wizard of a friend to tickle it into life before the start. It turned out that he didn’t have the required spells up his sleeve and…

Q I wanted to know the tide time for a Solent trip on 14 February 2023. I started with the pocket tide table with Reeds Almanac. It told me that HW was at Dover at 0401 with a +0020 correction to Portsmouth, so HW Portsmouth would be 0421. Admittedly this is approximate so I looked at other sources. The UKHO easytides website gives a time of HW 0550 and a height of 2.8m, while Tidetime.org gave a time of HW 0448 and a height of 4.02m, and different again was Visitmyharbour with HW at 0501 and 4.05m of tidal height. I guess that times and heights are being quoted for different spots but I cannot find any documentation to support this idea. The times quoted by different sources give a…

Knowing the depth is still an incredibly useful navigational tool. For your depth instrument to be usable you need to know whether it is reading from the surface, the keel or the sensor. It only takes a few minutes to drop a weight over the side on a rope (near the sensor) at slack tide and use a tape measure to measure the length. Compare that to what the depth instrument is telling and you’ll be able to work it out. I prefer to have the depth reading from the surface (to reduce the amount I have to think about when navigating) and by using the keel offset function it is easy to make the two measurements match. Doing it this way does rely on the sea bed underneath the…

My first inclination was to point the boat as high upwind as possible, pin the sails in and go for height. Doing that resulted in a not-terrible boat speed of 5-6 knots and a good pointing angle. Free off by a handful of degrees however, and ease the sails just a smidge, and the speed leapt up to 8-9 knots – over 50% more; a huge increase. So, don’t pinch. If you had a decent chartplotter on board, you could find your optimum speed to angle using velocity made good (VMG). I was also tempted to pinch in the gusts, but it’s better to hold your course and let the speed increase until the main needs easing. If that’s the case, drop the main down the traveller an inch or…

We’ve been able to do a few things over the season that we couldn’t do on the day, and a few that will need more practice. DRYING OUT AND BEACHING The great thing about a draught of 34cm is the ability to go right in to the beach, and dry out if the bottom is suitable. The western Solent makes an ideal playground, whether nosing onto the shingle in Newtown Creek, or drying out on one of the sandy beaches of Totland, Colwell or Alum bays. If you’re going to do this, you need a flat day where swell isn’t going to bounce you on the beach, and you need to be confident of finding a flat bottom devoid of sharp rocks. If you’re going to dry out over a…

When I was planning my first solo offshore sail on my Lagoon 410 Cushla, from Grenada to Bonaire, my biggest concern was not the risk of pirates off the coast of Trinidad, or the night-time squalls that might sneak up unseen in the trade winds. Even the risk of falling overboard and watching the boat sail away as I drifted alone in the current wasn’t giving me restless nights. The concern I was losing sleep over was sleep, and how I could ensure I’d get enough shut-eye when stewarding the boat on the four-night passage. I know I don’t function well when suffering from a lack of sleep. I get irritable and make bad decisions. More specifically, I struggle to distil the relevant factors from everything going on around me…

Five hours into our madcap race, we feared that we weren’t going to make it. We knew the odds were stacked against us, but we had no choice but to motor on, slamming against a five-foot swell that shook High Flight, our Bavria 40, to its 25-year-old core. Our Greek marathon sail began at 2200, but really it all started at 1400 on 3 October 2022. This is when Greek authorities announced on a government website that the Corinth Canal would close at 0700 the following day – for eight months. Never mind that the same office promised us a day earlier that the canal that bisects the mainland and Peloponnese peninsula wouldn’t close for repairs before 15 October. Unaware of the stealth afternoon announcement, we received the first hint…

1 RESPECT THE WEATHER The weather windows are very tight, and you must set aside ample time. On our crossing I considered it a 50/50 chance that we would actually be setting off on a good forecast. And I was prepared to wait on Shetland for the return – so long that I might have needed a new crew. 2 CREW ESSENTIALS Ensure your crew is informed, prepared, and has taken their seasick remedies before casting off. 3 CLOTHES AND GLOVES Everyone on board should have at least two sets of warm (woollen) clothing and a double set of gloves or mittens. Use the heavy duty rubber gloves that the fishermen use, which are affordable and will keep you dry. 4 SETUP AND FOOD Set the boat up for heavy…

The Kimberly Coast of Northern Australia has the largest tidal range in the southern hemisphere. In Derby, to the west of Darwin, the tidal range has registered as much as 11.8 metres. This range is tricky for trailer-sailors like ourselves: you must have a good grasp of how and when to launch in order to retrieve the boats as the tide moves quickly – get it wrong, and you could be stuck out there, floating around for another 12 hours. Sailors must know the weather patterns, check all weather reports and forecasts, be aware that the online radar pictures show the weather as it is currently and, most importantly, never be complacent. The waters are tricky, too. They are home to some of the sea’s most dangerous predators and ‘nasties’,…

www.yachtingmonthly.com/books With a stack on board we needed to tie up the foot of the mainsail so it could pass clear over the deck cargo. We had a fair wind down the Medway, but soon we came out into Sea Reach where it was once again to be tack and tack every inch of the way up the Thames. Having repeatedly to clamber over the stack only added to this wearisome work. The skipper stood up on a box at the wheel when he wanted to see ahead. […] Three high waters passed us before we arrived at Purfleet. Because they were not ready to unload us, we lay here a further day and a night before lowering the topmast and going under the gantry. Paper mills are permeated with…

One of the big assumptions the report seeks to interrogate is that because electric cars, or ‘battery electric vehicles’ (BEV), are thought to be the most environmentally friendly solution for land-based transport, the same will apply on the water. The problem is that there are vast differences between cars and boats, according to the data. For a start, propelling a boat over a set distance takes roughly 10 times more energy than it takes to move a car. Then you’ve got the fact that most cars are used much more regularly and for longer periods than cruising boats, which means that of a car’s total lifetime carbon footprint, less than 20% of it is in its manufacture, with almost 80% in its usage – energy supply, exhaust emissions and maintenance…

South African Kirsten Neuschäfer was named female 2023 Rolex World Sailor of the Year, while Australian Tom Slingsby won the award in the male category for the third time at the World Sailing Awards 2023. The prizes are the highest award a sailor can achieve and recognise outstanding achievements in sailing. The popular choices were decided by both an expert panel and a public vote, with Australian America’s Cup and SailGP skipper Slingsby separated from his nearest fellow nominee by a winning margin of fewer than 20 votes. Kirsten Neuschäfer was the first woman to win a solo or non-stop around the world race when she finished first in the ‘retro’ solo Golden Globe Race in 2023. Neuschäfer famously diverted course to rescue fellow competitor Tapio Lehtinen after his boat…

We all keep a list of jobs we know we need to do on our boats but it is really useful to keep a detailed note of what we did or learned when we finally got around to doing them. It takes a bit of effort to write down what we did when we did it because at the time it seems we could never forget such useful information. Also record what you found or learned about other systems in the boat. Working out and recording your next service hours when you service an item is useful, as you can work out at a glance how close you are to the next service and can schedule accordingly. Do remember to read your log though. Had I done so I wouldn’t…

Would you risk crossing a harbour bar in these conditions? Q Mike has sailed to Salcombe in his 11m long keeled yacht called Boundless with two friends. He took the east-going spring tidal stream yesterday from Plymouth, 22 miles to the west, arriving just before high water. There was a fresh westerly wind, 25 knots occasionally gusting to 30. Salcombe has a harbour bar with a lowest depth of 1m, but Mike had no trouble negotiating his way in and is now looking at taking the west-going tide on the return trip. The tidal Stream flows westward from HW +4 to HW-3 Plymouth, which is about 10 minutes difference to Salcombe. The wind is 35 knots from the southeast. Mike knows the bar can be rough but he is an…

Everyone knows that multihulls don’t tack as well as monohulls. Straight hulls and wide beam don’t lend themselves to turning, especially when coupled with the displacement and fixed keels of big cats. Trimarans are a little easier, with a single central daggerboard to act as a pivot, and one or other of the floats will generally be clear of the water. On the downside, light displacement means that there isn’t much momentum to keep you going through the turn and plenty of windage to stop you. Speed is your friend. Build speed up before the tack to give you as much momentum as possible. The helm needs to steer positively into and through the turn, and if necessary, keep the jib backed on the new windward side to help the…

A 650kg boat with no draught and plenty of windage feels dreadfully skittish when manoeuvring in confined spaces. Straight hulls with no forgiving curves and fragile-looking sharp bows make berthing tricky. You’ve got a couple of advantages on your side, however. In the Astus, the floats are at pontoon height making stepping off easy. Whether you have an engine in each hull of a cat, or one in the central hull of a tri, there’s also a lot more leverage to play with to turn the boat and drive her on or off the pontoon. A steerable outboard gives you even more options. If the boat has a lifting keel or daggerboards, put them down if there’s enough depth to give you a pivot and to resist drifting. Think about…

CAT-NAPPING I do find it easy and beneficial to nap, and on the advice of a friend I downloaded an app called Interval Timer onto the boat’s tablet. It sounds regular alarms throughout the day. I set this to go off every 15, 30 or 45 minutes, depending on the circumstances, but importantly I let it run day and night so whenever I felt I could sleep I would just lie down, knowing I’d be woken within the given timeframe. With clear skies, no traffic and far from land I set it to a longer interval, and shortened it when circumstances changed. I tried to make life easier for myself and simplify processes I’d need to do when I knew I’d be tired by making checklists on post-it notes stuck…

ILES DE LA PETITE TERRE This is one of our favourite spots in the eastern Caribbean. It’s a nature-lover’s dream, and is teeming with seabirds, iguanas, turtles, stingrays and sharks. The anchorage is in the middle of it all – you simply need to flop over the side and enjoy! It’s worth the beat into the wind but don’t go if there is a swell forecast. WHALE-WATCHING AT THE COUSTEAU RESERVE Listen for humpbacks singing underwater from February to May. Head offshore on a calm day for whale watching – we followed the whale-watching tour boat and got lucky. HOT SPRINGS AT BOUILLANTE Anchor here and take your tender to shore. There’s a natural hot spring flowing into the sea via a geothermal plant, which attracts locals, cruisers and tourists…

The research analysed the carbon contribution, or global warming potential (GWP), of each stage in the supply chain and lifecycle of each propulsion system, for each of the vessels being considered. It assumed a like-for-like comparison of energy storage and range, rather than the ‘optimised’ systems referred to later. While these vessels would not be usable in the real world, it made it possible to compare the carbon footprint of equivalent processes within the supply chain. In the figures given, an inflatable dinghy using an electric outboard can eliminate around 40% of its total GWP from its usage emissions (energy, tank to wake) alone, compared to the petrol-driven baseline. However, this has to offset an almost three-fold increase in its raw materials (propulsion) carbon footprint and a manufacturing footprint that…

While ‘battery electric on-road automotive vehicles’ (BEV) reduce CO₂ emissions by between 50% and 70% relative to conventional fossil fuel engines over their lifetime, the initial CO₂ created during the production of an electrical vehicle (EV) can be at least 50% more than a conventional ICE vehicle due to raw materials and the energy intensive process of creating the battery. This means it takes an electric car 100,000 to 150,000km (62,000 to 93,000 miles) to get the break-even point where it is starting to have a positive impact on carbon emissions, which might take 3-5 years of fairly heavy use. This also takes into consideration the fact that drivers’ range expectations have, on average, been reduced, so that one battery charge on your car will take you about 60% of…

Once the use cases and optimised propulsion systems have been taken into account, for many recreational sailing yachts that match the assumed use case, opting for electric propulsion in a new yacht or converting a used boat to hydrogen, hybrid or electric propulsion will be worse for the environment than sticking with a fossil fuel internal combustion engine (ICE). For most vessels and average use cases, the best way of reducing environmental impact for the time being is to retain conventional ICE engines, but switch to sustainable synthetic or biofuels such as hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) or e-petrol, the report claimed. Doing this in a sailing yacht will, over the vessel’s 45-year lifespan with an average annual usage of 24 hours, reduce the vessel’s global warming potential by around 35%,…

The RNLI has praised the courage and quick thinking of 13-year-old Henry Richards who raised the alarm with a Mayday call when his grandfather David fell overboard from a sailing boat, helping save his life. On 23 September, 70-year-old David Richards and his grandson Henry were taking part in an afternoon sailing race in St Austell Bay. During the race, David fell overboard, leaving Henry alone on the 5m keel boat. Henry managed to stay calm and collapsed the yacht’s spinnaker before using the VHF radio to make a Mayday call. Falmouth Coastguard immediately requested both Fowey RNLI lifeboats to be launched, and a Coastguard helicopter was also sent. Henry, who is from Par, was awarded a certificate of thanks from the RNLI’s chief executive Mark Dowie in recognition of…

You don’t have to be a dedicated follower of fashion in the world of offshore racing to have noticed the arrival of the scow-bow. The new generation, scow-bowed IMOCAS, Class 40s and Mini 650s are the ones leading the way. You might also have seen boats like Jeanneau’s Sun Fast 3300, with its semi-scow bow, going rather fast in races closer to home. While all this has been happening on the race course, production cruising yachts have been developing fuller bow sections too. Not so very long ago, it was all about the sporty look of the fine entry – almost a case of the finer the bow, the sportier the boat. So what’s going on? As ever, where racing boats lead, cruising boats follow – at least to some…

Fairleads are designed to give your mooring line a fair lead. This fairlead is at risk of losing control of the stern spring which is trying to rise up out of the jaws. Running a line through a fairlead and then counter to the direction in which it was designed to work is asking for trouble and creates a classic chafe opportunity. Cleats are also designed to take loads fore and aft, not sideways, which can ‘capsize’ them. Fairleads are designed to work in a specific direction. It should be noted that when mounted on the bows they are left and right ‘handed’ and should be fitted to the correct sides.…

Leaving your boat for any length of time is always a cause of concern, particularly if you are going to be located some distance away. Chafe is a major source of worry, particularly if you have teak toe rails. In this instance I’ve inserted a small fender to keep the springs away from the toe rail. The tubing is secured so that it can’t slip, and I’ve deliberately led one line over the top of the tubed section to prevent the forward spring from creeping forward and lying against any toe rail which doesn’t have the protective brass half round deflectors. Springs should be long to avoid snatching, and three-strand cordage is far better at absorbing shock loads. Three-strand cordage has an inherent stretch facility, which multiplait does not.…

Humans tend to gravitate into tribes of like-minded enthusiasts, enjoying the encouragement, support and sense of identity, while often looking askance at others; sailors at motorboaters, cruising sailors at racers, monohull sailors at raft, I mean, multihull sailors, and everyone looks askance at jet-skiers. Large cruising catamarans (40ft now counts as a small one) are a world apart from monohull sailing, but there’s a sub-tribe of sailors dedicated to life on three hulls and builders such as Dragonfly, Corsair, Farrier, and Astus give them plenty of choice. I’ve been sailing a 22ft (7m) Astus 22.5 this season, with just enough space for a family of four and a minimum of creature comforts. Thanks to her VPLP-designed hulls and 650kg all-up weight, we can sail upwind at 7-plus knots and downwind…

Upwind cruising may be fun in a multihull, but bearing away and going with the wind is what it’s all about. Easily-driven hulls, a generous sailplan and light weight mean you can be up and planing, leaving displacement boats wallowing in your wake. The big difference comes from apparent wind. If you’re in a boat that can do 15 knots downwind in 20 knots of true wind, the resulting wind angles can really mess with your head. To get going then, says Brian Thompson, ‘Use those leech tell-tales again when sailing downwind and reaching to set the correct twist through the mainsheet, and use the traveller to set the correct angle of the whole sail to the wind.’ As the wind and your speed builds, bear away and trim the…

While mooring a catamaran is complicated by the lack of a central bow, things should be simpler on a trimaran, and they are, mostly. Picking up a mooring buoy from the main hull bow with a low freeboard and dropping the pick-up line onto a cleat is easier even than a monohull. The bow may be narrow, but for any lines that pass through a ring on the buoy, you still need to take it back to the same cleat to avoid chafe. That should be it, but windage from the two extra bows and the lack of keel mean the boat can dance merrily around the mooring buoy in a breeze. ON THE WATER In practice, we found that a trimaran benefits from a mooring bridle in the same…

As well as keeping your own batteries charged, the boat batteries also need to have reliable charge. As the power drains, the autopilot can become unreliable, disconnecting at low voltage. Cushla, our 1998 Lagoon 410, has 1kW of solar panels and although we can, we’ve never needed to charge the house batteries from the engines or shore power. But overnight passages are the toughest test of the system. The sails can create shading on the panels for several hours of the day, and running the instruments 24/7 is a significant drain, especially the radar which can draw three or four amps when operating, and even draws a couple of amps when in standby mode. The boat has an AIS transponder, and offshore I felt pretty confident that other traffic would…

For generations, Norwegian sailors have crossed over to the Shetland Islands. As Vikings, resistance fighters during the war, businessmen with an eye for fishing and oil profits, and adventurous sailors, we have set sail toward a new coast. Now we no longer do it to save our lives or for income, but for the joy of sailing across an ocean to a friendly land. The islands in the west have their own attraction for me. It’s not just the people, the sheep, the harsh nature, a new coast in the distance, or the whiff of deep-fried food that tugs at my moorings. Nor that Shetland was once a part of Norway. It is the feeling of coming home for a sailor who sees land rising from the grey-blue North Sea…

The French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe is the most southerly of the Leeward Islands. Shaped like a butterfly, it is split into two halves, the wings forming Basse-Terre in the west and Grande-Terre to the east. Its varied coastline provides curiosity for sailors and land explorers alike. In the south-east we cruised over sunlit seagrass meadows roamed by green turtles and stingrays, and out west we dived the deep blue waters and coral gardens of the Cousteau Reserve, serenaded by humpback whales. Squally winds kept us alert on passage and made for adventurous journeys between anchorages, on a leisurely partial circumnavigation that we measured in weeks, then months. Essential boat repairs from our recent Atlantic crossing drew us to Guadeloupe; a broken bobstay chainplate meant we needed a chandlery and…

A white sail on a blue sea. What could be cleaner than that?’ Sailing nerds might recognise this quote from the all-time greatest sailing film, Wind. Or maybe that’s just me. Anway, it’s easy to assume that drifting around with the breeze has little impact on the environment, let alone the global climate. Certainly, the marine industry is tiny compared to other emitters of greenhouse gases, but it still registers on the scale. Recreational boats account for less than 0.1% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, specifically 0.7% of transportation carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions in the United States and 0.4% of transportation CO₂ emissions in Europe. Those numbers sound small, but then consider that there are estimated to be 50 million recreational craft globally, with as many as one million…

The five power systems weighed up were all systems that use existing technologies currently available commercially. These were: conventional petrol or diesel internal combustion engines (ICE) as a baseline; sustainable fuels used as drop-in alternatives for fossil fuels in ICEs; hybrid fuel (fossil/sustainable) and electric systems; battery electric drives, and hydrogen ICE or fuel cells. In order to calculate the life cycle assessment of vessels equipped with the various alternative propulsion systems, it was unrealistic to substitute in systems that provided like-for-like power and range. As Patrick Hemp, ICOMIA technical consultant explained, ‘We get a lot of questions around the bottom-up approach and why H2 ICE and Battery Electric needed to be optimised. The main reason Ricardo had to do this was because the current baseline speed/range is simply not…

One of the most worrying things that can happen to a boat owner is to discover vital and expensive metallic underwater items such as propellers, prop shafts and saildrive legs are actively dissolving or being eaten away for no apparent reason. But there is a reason, of course, and that’s the unwelcome phenomenon of electrochemical corrosion, of which two main types can affect your yacht: galvanic corrosion and stray current. Although similar in their often catastrophic outcomes, the causes of the two are entirely different – as are the cures. Galvanic corrosion Galvanic corrosion (GC) is a reaction between two or more different metals when submersed in a conductive solution (electrolyte), which, in the case of boats, will be salt or fresh water. Some metals are more vulnerable (less noble)…