Innehållsförteckning för July 2024 från Yachting Monthly

Sailor Ella Hibbert, 27, will attempt the first solo navigation of the Arctic Circle in her Bruce Roberts 38 Yeva, setting sail in June and spending five to six months at sea alone. The route starts at a point west of Norway, sailing in a clockwise direction to Iceland, Greenland, the North West Passage, Alaska, Russia, and Northern Norway – before heading back home to Gosport. It was her concern about global warming and melting sea ice that inspired Ella to consider this record-breaking attempt. With temperatures 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the Greenland ice sheet is said to be losing an average of 30 million tonnes of ice an hour. ‘This isn’t a record attempt,’ says Ella, ‘it’s a wake-up call. Higher temperatures and loss of ice fields have an…

Ecological protections at sea are being strengthened by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency by updated regulations governing ships’ antifouling systems. The new UK legislation, which comes into force on 10 May, implements an international convention prohibiting the use of cybutryne in marine paints which has been proven harmful to marine flora and fauna, working its way into the food chain. The new regulations apply to all UK-flagged ships, wherever they are sailing, in addition to ships flagged to other countries while they’re in the UK or controlled waters.…

International sailing events should consider the impact of spectator boats and try to reduce the underwater noise they create to avoid impacting marine wildlife, new research from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh suggests. The research, published in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, involved collecting and measuring acoustic recordings during the 36th America’s Cup in the Hauraki Gulf, New Zealand in 2021, which attracted around 300,000 visitors. Scientists at the University’s Institute of Life and Earth Sciences found that noise from large groups of spectator boats was loud and sustained long enough to impact marine mammals and fish who rely on their intricate hearing systems for foraging, communication, reproduction, orientation and avoiding predators. ‘Underwater noise from motorised vessels is particularly problematic, as studies have found it increases stress levels in many marine…

I won’t be in theatres with a notebook as much as usual this month – time for some wider, wetter horizons – but may be musing, as I often do, on how rare it is for theatre to express a convincing reality about the oceans and the trade or pursuit of seafaring. It’s easy for films – all that CGI, great sweeping pans across the waves to bring home the immensity and strangeness, the threat and joy of the element. Plenty of thrills in the cinema, whether you prefer the melancholy loneliness of Crowhurst, the period gung-ho of Napoleonic wars, or that yachting thriller with Nicole Kidman in a very impractical onboard bra-slip fighting off a psychopath. But in stage plays the sea is a metaphor, a bit of language,…

These reports make detailed investigations into the causes of each accident and are well worth reading. Each incident is different, and there are a combination of factors including interactions between crew members, the weather, and unforeseen gear failure which contribute to each one. As well as the individual conclusions drawn in the reports there are some lessons we can draw from looking at the incidents as a whole. 1 MAINSHEET HAZARD It’s a misconception that the boom is the main hazard of downwind sailing. Whilst being struck by the boom during a crash gybe on a yacht would probably be fatal, on most modern cruisers it’s well above head height. It is the metres of slack in the mainsheet which is more likely to injure people. This is not always…

1 GET OUT OF THE DAMN WAY As a new skipper, you are of course acquainted with the rules of the road and collision avoidance. Acquainted, but not quite on intimate terms. Do it early, do it assertively, and sail on to enjoy your day. 2 JUST ASK Glancing at my ‘recent calls’ on my phone last year, it became apparent that I’d called Justin more often than my best friend, wife and mum combined. The poor bloke was on speed dial, but he seemed entirely happy to pass on his wisdom. I think people like being approached for advice, and as a new skipper there are endless questions. 3 IGNORANCE AND JARGON You know nothing. And there’s nothing that exposes how much nothing you know more than jargon. There’s…

Heather Thomas is the first female British skipper to win a round the world race, and her team aboard Maiden, backed by Tracy Edwards MBE, are the first all-female crew to win a global race. What a tremendous inspiration! In winning the Ocean Globe Race, the 27-year-old from Yorkshire has made history. Heather has topped Dame Ellen MacArthur’s second place in the Vendée Globe 2001 and Tracy’s record of second in class in the 1989/90 Whitbread Round the World Race. Thomas is also the first woman skipper to win a fully crewed round the world race. And she didn’t just win, she and the Maiden crew beat the opposition on Tracy Edwards’ winning boat, which had sailed round the world seven times already. This crew returned home to a royal…

HALO/HALO+ LIGHTWEIGHT LIFERAFTS www.liftinggearsafety.co.uk Range of two new compact, ultralight liferafts, designed for vessels that don’t need to comply with MCA (Maritime and Coastguard Agency) regulations. Both are fully vacuum-sealed to guarantee three-year intervals between services thereby reducing maintenance costs. They come complete with insulated floor and large water ballast pockets for increased stability when deployed. The Halo+ has a fully self-erecting canopy to provide immediate shelter and respite from storm conditions. The canopy can be removed and reinstalled, if necessary. Available to buy or rent in two-, four-, six- or eight-person versions. ZOLEO SATELLITE COMMUNICATOR www.zoleo.com Waterproof and rugged Iridium-based accessory that extends smartphone messaging coverage globally. Just link it to its dedicated app on your phone or tablet to immediately send and receive messages from the remotest parts…

Waverley, the last seagoing paddle steamer in the world, has been awarded National Flagship of the Year by National Historic Ships UK. The award recognises the breadth and geographic coverage of Waverley’s sailings as well as an extended 2024 programme visiting a record 70 ports and piers. Waverley was built in Glasgow for the London and North Eastern Railway and launched in October 1946, entering service in 1947. The historic ship, which regularly sails the Firth of Clyde and the west coast of Scotland, was gifted to the Paddle Steamer Preservation Society in 1974 for £1, then needing major repairs. Throughout the season Waverley will fly a special Flagship Pennant to denote her national status. The Flagship of the Year status has been awarded annually by National Historic Ships UK…

Samuel Pepys mentions oysters in his diaries 68 times, but that was when they were as common as winkles along the banks of the Thames and when they were a source of cheap protein for the masses. That was also before the discharge of London’s effluent killed off the spat. With the disgraceful state of our privately owned water supplies – notably Thames Water and its discharge of raw sewage making headlines on a regular basis – it is surprising any of the knobbly bivalves are left. But on any day along the shorelines of the Thames Estuary you can spot hand-pickers collecting oysters, breaking them open and squeezing their innards into plastic bottles for the manufacture of oyster sauce. Personally, I would only swallow an oyster from a reputable…

Two anchors for a better night’s sleep Setting kedge is only easy if you have it accessible and already set up, and this is easy to do. We use it regularly to better enjoy an anchorage where there may be some swell resulting in an uncomfortable roll, ruining a quiet night and spilling our drinks. This is particularly the case in many otherwise-sheltered anchorages in the Scillies and Channel Islands where a swell often creeps in or is created by the strong tides. In the Med we’ve found it works well in very crowded anchorages. Having anchored as close to the head of the bay as the tide will allow, with 25% more scope than needed at high tide, we load everything into the dinghy in reverse order: anchor buoy,…

Q Jenny and Ted are cruising with their two teenage children on board their 10m yacht Oyster Catcher. Forecasters have been warning of wet and windy weather for the next few days. The forecast is for galeforce winds and rain arriving in the evening and continuing through the following day. The wind will freshen from the south then veer to the west as low pressure passes to the north on its way eastwards. It is clearly a forecast for yachts to be moored in a safe harbour. Unsurprisingly, the nearest marina, which is situated conveniently on the sheltered side of the estuary, is full and has a waiting list for finger pontoons. They will, however, permit yachts to raft three deep on the outside pontoon. This is the only option…

Marie Tabarly, the daughter of French sailing legend Eric Tabarly, has stepped out from the shadows of her famous father and rewritten history, becoming the first over the line in the Ocean Globe Race – a feat that had eluded Eric during his three attempts at the 27,000-mile race. ‘We did it…We have won in real time… No one can beat us… This was always our aim,’ Marie Tabarly shouted out while steering her father’s 52-year-old ketch Pen Duick VI across the Royal Yacht Squadron finishing line shortly before midnight, on 11 April. She had built up a tremendous 250-mile lead ahead of former Whitbread race winner L’Esprit d’Equipe in this 50th anniversary rerun of the round-the-world Whitbread. Half Amazonian, half buccaneer, Marie Tabarly cuts a determined stance on land…

www.yachtingmonthly.com/books Shane Granger and Meggie Macoun run a small charity delivering essential medical and educational supplies every year to remote island communities in eastern Indonesia and East Timor. Their 130-year-old sailing ship Vega is crewed by volunteers and carries an Indonesian doctor. Their first visit to a community can be life-changing for its inhabitants. Lela was a traditional midwife living on the island of Serua (population c350) in the Banda Sea. For Lela, change came in the form of a small sailing ship that silently arrived one morning and anchored close to her village. The appearance of a vessel from the outside, the first many of the islanders had ever seen, frightened several people so badly they hid in the forest. Some of the men took up their hunting bows…

With just over 25 weeks to go to the start of the Vendée Globe on 10 November – and a potential world sailing record – Pip Hare is facing the disappointing reality of stopping team preparations unless new funding can be found. Two sponsors announced in April that they were unable to re-sign contracts for the final year of the campaign due to the economic climate. The nine-strong team, based in Poole, races and maintains a 60ft IMOCA racing yacht with foils, which help the boat to fly 2m above the surface of the waves. ‘If we are not able to bring in more funding, all of this activity will have to halt after June and we will just focus on getting to the start line and race – there…

Send us your questions in less than 200 words by email to yachtingmonthly@futurenet.com or by post Yachting Monthly, Future PLC, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London, W2 6JR LETTER OF THE MONTH Collision avoidance in the Channel In response to the editor’s column ‘A pinch of salt’ in the April issue of the magazine, I have crossed the Channel many times, in a variety of conditions, but mostly at night. I used to take a bearing on a VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier) and repeat every five minutes. If the bearing didn’t change, you were on a collision course. Stand on your course, at right angles to the shipping lanes, until you could clearly identify the bow and stern of the VLCC. Aim at his stern and change your course to…

Light winds may not make for the most exciting boat test images, especially when it’s chilly, the sky is grey and it’s threatening to rain, which was the weather we were dealt for our test of the Grand Soleil 42LC. There is still a surprising amount you can tell about a boat in light airs, however. A sluggish, heavy boat won’t go anywhere until there’s a decent Force 4, while a lightweight racer will be up and off in a mere zephyr, before terrifying your nervous crew once the breeze kicks in. The wind speed at which a cruising boats starts sailing is a good indicator of where she sits on that spectrum. Time would tell how this boat fared. The 42LC is not exactly a new boat; the model…

Although we had managed a brief visit to St Kilda, the Scottish weather during 2022 had not been great, so my wife Sarah and I pondered going somewhere warm. I had a longing for a true ocean passage and a friend suggested the Azores; after a little preliminary research we decided to give it a go. I made enquiries about the 2023 AZAB race, but it rapidly became clear that our Mollymawk, a 1984 Pan Oceanic 38, would need to go through an onerous process of certification in order to take part. My confidence lay in Mollymawk’s three previous transatlantic crossings with former owners. In addition, I wanted to do this passage on my own terms, having been much inspired by Christian Williams’ book, Philosophy of Sailing. Mollymawk was designed…

The all-female Maiden crew have again made history, sailing 28,000 miles around the world to win the Ocean Globe Race. Heather Thomas is the first female British skipper to win a round-the-world race and her team aboard Maiden, backed by Tracy Edwards MBE, are the first all-female crew to win a global race. It doesn’t get better than this. Fourteen crews set out from Cowes on 10 September on the adventure of a lifetime, full of expectations for a race around the world. Seven months later, 10 returned, all changed by the experience – some saying they wanted to do it all again. One of those was Heather Thomas, the skipper of the all-female crew aboard Maiden, in which Tracy Edwards and her team made history 34 years earlier by…

Looe Sailing Club’s 90th anniversary Looe Sailing Club will this summer celebrate 90 years of raising sails. Back in 1934, local boatbuilder Arthur Collings swept away the wood shavings on the floor of his quayside boatyard so that a handful of like-minded souls could hold the first of many meetings that led to the 1947 establishment of the Buller Street headquarters, now one of the town’s oldest sporting clubs. Past years are littered with bouquets and plaudits, including being shortlisted for the RYA ‘Sailing Club of the Year.’ Four years after the first spit-and-sawdust encounter on the quayside, founder club president Wilfred Neale conjured up a plan for Looe to have its own sailing dinghy. Neale contacted the eminent boat designer Uffa Fox, and so the Redwing, a 14-ft clinker-built…

Many cruising yacht skippers mark very little on board their boats. They rely on experience and remembering how the sails should be set in various conditions. But it is an advantage to have a good coding system on your boat. The boat’s balance is the most important indicator of correct sail setting. Even if the helm is neutral, it is no guarantee that the sails are set correctly. If the rudder angle required to keep the boat on course is larger than 8 degrees, you can be sure that the sail or rig tuning could be improved. It is therefore important that you know the status of the boat’s balance precisely. MARKING RUDDER STATIONS If your boat has a tiller, you will be able to see the rudder angle at…

Email yachtingmonthly@futurenet.com Post Confessions, Yachting Monthly, Future PLC, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London, W2 6JR Send us your stories in less than 200 words CONFESSION OF THE MONTH Mud larks Philip Cave Myself and my then girlfriend, later wife, decided to sail my father’s fin-keel Moody 36 from Woodbridge to the Snape in Suffolk, intending to anchor in the deep pool under Iken Cliff. We sailed up the Ore and into the Alde, and when the buoyed channel gave way to withies, motored on. Withies are no more than sticks, sometimes with red or green paint on top but often with no marks and often missing, so it’s easy to shoot across mud banks by mistake – which we did just before the pool and got stuck. Unable to ease…