Innehållsförteckning för December 2024 från Yachting Monthly

The Yachting Journalists’ Association (YJA) has named Kaia Bint Savage as its 2024 Young Journalist of the Year. The award, which recognises exceptional young talent in the field of yachting and marine journalism, was presented by YJA chair and PBO editor Katy Stickland at the Southampton International Boat Show. Kaia impressed the YJA members with her work as head of digital content of The Maiden Factor team. The former Whitbread race yacht Maiden is a global ambassador for the empowerment of girls through education. The YJA said Kaia’s contributions have set a high standard, and her unique voice continues to raise awareness in the industry. She was awarded a £500 Henri-Lloyd voucher. Second place was a tie between Annie Means and Anne de Kerviller. Each received a £250 Henri-Lloyd voucher.…

For several years I kept my Contessa 32, Minstrel Boy, at Paglesham on the River Roach in Essex and was a member of the Roach Cruising Association (RCA), one of those Corinthian organisations where yachtsmen, who wished to remain independent of the local ‘toff’ clubs, could keep their oars, outboards and welly boots in an ancient tin shed on legs. This arcane lock up was almost as old as the ramshackle, tarred boatshed on the wrong side of the sea wall, which flooded on big tides, and where the late Frank Shuttlewood designed and built sailing barges, smacks and traditional yachts. We kept our dinghies there too and I was astonished to find that members of the RCA included long distance ocean sailors – one a circumnavigator – a real…

Q I’m starting to build a 45ft gaff cutter designed by Paul Spooner. Mr. Spooner undertook to design a boat with modern materials, based on Fife designs (see right for the lines plan). The half-angle of the bow at waterline is 27º. I have recently read Dr. Wolfram’s article, ‘Busting the Hull Speed Myth,’ (YM Dec 2021) which tackles the importance of the bow angle. I have not yet begun laminating the frames for the bow, so if I’m going to change anything, this would be the time to do so. I’d like to get Dr. Wolfram’s opinion on this. In addition, if possible I’d love to retain someone with Dr. Wolfram’s expertise for an overall evaluation of the hull design. A Julian Wolfram, Professor Emeritus BSc PhD CEng FRINA, replies:…

Arkyla’s downwind rig consists of twin genoas set from the twin-groove track of the forestay foil; the sails are stabilised with the spinnaker pole to windward and the boom eased fully out to leeward. Sheets and control lines are led back to the cockpit through a set of strategically placed cam and snatch blocks. The greatest scope for confusion, especially early season or if sailing with new crew on the boat, is when setting the sheets and guys to the pole, then the blocks to the correct strong points on the deck. A crossed line can create a difficult and potentially dangerous situation to rectify once the sails are pulled out. To minimise the risk of incorrectly setting the rig, I have added a reference section to the laminated ‘cockpit…

During the early evening of Sunday 10 October 1822, the revenue cutter Vigilant weighed anchor to evade a heavy sea being driven into Douglas Bay on the Isle of Man. Other ships sheltering in the roads were also preparing to leave. In the process of sailing away, a heavy laden Irish sloop bore off and ran foul of Vigilant, springing her bowsprit. Entangled and prevented from shooting ahead, the Vigilant’s anchors broke free and she drifted astern until she tailed on St Mary’s Rock. Here, the rudder unshipped and the cutter became unmanageable. To prevent her from being forced even harder on to the rocks, the captain ordered the mast to be cut away. Ashore, a crowd was watching this catastrophe unfold. Among them was Sir William Hillary. Hillary had…

Most boats have a bearing at the outboard end of the propeller shaft that supports the propshaft. Generally this ‘cutless’ bearing will be made of rubber which will, over time, wear. Excessive wear will cause shaft vibration that can eventually damage the boat’s gearbox. The cutless bearing is usually seawater-lubricated, designed with flutes that allow the passage of water through the bearing. Make sure the water supply is never obstructed (for instance, by a shaft anode mounted too close to it). Some play between the shaft and the bearing is normal but if you can feel movement then it’s time to replace the cutless bearing. ‘P’ OR ‘A’ BRACKET Where there’s a length of propshaft protruding from the hull, the cutless bearing will be mounted in a bracket fixed to…

DEHLER 38/38SQ Karl Dehler described this performance cruiser in 2013 as ‘a sailor’s boat’, himself comparing it with the Xp38 rather than the Xc38. With keel-stepped-mast stiffness, stability and windward ability, it is much lighter, carrying much less ballast against roughly the same sail area than the Xc38, giving the boat a sportier feel and a lighter ballast-to-displacement ratio of 31.7%. The X-Yacht will carry greater loads for longer, not least because it can ship more fuel and water, though 160L of fuel will still give the Dehler reasonable range for coastal rather than offshore cruising. The 38SQ is an update of the 2013 38, using the same hull and deck. A German builder might not immediately be classed as a Scandinavian boatbuilding outfit, but Dehler’s base in Greifswald is…

A slippery pirate James Kenning CONFESSION OF THE MONTH After a run ashore, I returned to Arkyla which was securely tied up stern-to in Gibraltar’s Queensway Marina. After raising the passerelle off the pontoon, I retired to the aft master cabin to sleep off the night’s beers. At sometime past midnight, my slumber was shattered by a cacophony of noise from the transom – in my drowsy state, I jumped to the irrefutable conclusion that I had an intruder jumping aboard the stern. Still wearing a pair of boxer shorts, I shot out of bed and dashed up to the cockpit to confront my assumed raider. There was, however, no nefarious individual attempting piracy, but there was a somewhat bemused Irishman on the pontoon surprised by a near naked man…

Pioneering the design and construction of the world’s first fleet of net-zero adventure yachts, Expedition Zero seeks visionary investors and ambassadors. The group’s mission is not just about developing innovative, eco-friendly yachts, but about creating a lasting legacy that helps protect our oceans for future generations. Collaborating with renowned partners, the project is set to transform adventures in the marine industry. ‘We are building something far beyond a yacht,’ says Andrew Cowen, founder of Expedition Zero. ‘Our ambassadors will help craft a new era, where adventure sailing takes us to the farthest reaches of the world without harming the planet.’ In collaboration with Innovation Yachts, the net-zero vessels will be built using proven sustainable, recyclable materials and powered entirely by renewable energy. Expedition Zero’s seed funding round aims to raise…

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) has developed a new online tool that will provide easier search and filtering capabilities for seafarers looking to locate approved service stations to maintain lifesaving appliances, ensuring that they are ready for use in an emergency. The MCA search engine provides users with filterable results to identify MCA-approved appliance service stations across the UK, according to the appliance type, manufacturer and location. MCA-approved service stations are annually assessed and certified to carry out servicing work to these devices, which include lifejackets, liferafts, Marine Evacuation Systems (MES) and inflated rescue boats. All SOLAS certificated inflatable Life-Saving Appliances (LSAs) for use on board UK ships must be serviced at UK approved service stations, at intervals not exceeding 12 months (unless otherwise exempted), the MCA said. ‘Servicing…

During a chilly autumn week we had to do a 36-hour round trip to Calais – we were foot passengers on one of the few ferries that still tolerate such car-free lowlifes. The word ‘spooky’ hardly covers the experience: an echoing terminal at Dover with only three other passengers, herded into a minibus and driven round in circles, herded out with passports to satisfy the French immigration authorities. Then back in the van, rolling last into the car-deck behind the lorries, and then up to the lonely spaces of an off-season ferry. For alas, gone are the old days of exciting crew-changes, running off the train along a busy quay and up the gangway just in time, feeling the bustle of a port around you. Aboard the P&O ferry only…

Up until the recent launch of Starlink, screen time and social media weren’t really issues for boat kids. But now, with the possibility of 24/7 broadband connectivity at sea, there’s a real danger you could completely lose your kids to their devices if they aren’t managed carefully. We have already met boat kids that have succumbed to the Starlink effect. It’s important to remember, though, that not all screen time is ‘bad’. While one of our boys will happily spend hours on mindless computer games if we let him, the other creates cool video blogs and animation for his own YouTube channel and has even won awards for his video creations. And like it or not, social media is an indelible part of modern life. Some educators and economists even…

Does steering failure mean a Mayday call? Q Sue is owner of Skua, a 40-year-old 10-metre GRP sloop with tiller steering. Sue has owned Skua for about 20 years and has sailed regularly, usually across the English Channel. She has three crew who sail with her. They know the boat and get along well as friends and crew. They are returning to Falmouth from a voyage to South Brittany. They are currently about 40 miles from Falmouth, just over halfway from the North Brittany coast. The weather is fair and the wind is westerly, between 10 and 15 knots on the beam. The forecast is for the weather to stay fine, but the wind will increase to 15 to 20 knots later. However, there is a problem. As the passage…

REAL LIFE Over the course of two summers, I circumnavigated Britain aboard Goldfinch, our Bénéteau 36cc. It was June 2022, and I was on the penultimate leg with a strong and experienced crew aboard; Bryan, Debbie and Mike were all seasoned sailors who I’ve known and sailed with for many years. Leaving behind Salcombe, surely one of the most beautiful harbours on the south coast, we had before us a 50-mile sail to Weymouth, across Lyme Bay. This is one of those passages where getting the tide right is crucial. Just before Weymouth is the Isle of Portland: not actually an island, but a comma-shaped peninsula that juts out into the Channel. For centuries, the limestone from Portland has been used in monumental buildings, including the Tower of London, St…

Stepping aboard the 74-foot aluminium lifting keel expedition vessel in Bergen, I stroke the rugged pilothouse gently and whisper, ‘Hello, friend.’ I know that skippering Witness is going to be a stretch. More precisely, a 23ft-long stretch beyond the largest sailing yacht I have skippered until then. Witness is a massive little ship and that added length seems like a mile. Witness is the former Pelagic Australis, the brainchild of high-latitude sailing legend Skip Novak. At 74 feet long and weighing in at over 50 tonnes, she is built for 12 people to live in comfortably and be self-sufficient for weeks in the cold, icy climates at the ends of the world. She carries seven tonnes of diesel and three tonnes of water. In her former life, she has sailed…

1824: RNLI founded and the first ever Gold Medal awarded to Charles Freemantle, RN, for swimming out to a stranded yacht off the coast of Dorset 1838: Lighthouse keeper’s daughter Grace Darling became a national heroine for risking her life by rowing out in a storm to help the stranded survivors of the wrecked steamship Forfarshire. It captured the public’s imagination and focussed attention on the need for rescue. 1886: In December that year, 27 crew from the Southport and Lytham, St Anne’s lifeboats died trying to rescue crew from a barque that had run aground on the sandbanks in the Ribble Estuary. It was the worst loss of crew in a single incident in RNLI history. The appeal that followed raised £10,000 in two weeks and inspired the first…

www.yachtingmonthly.com/books The challenge of the Southern Ocean Pip Hare remembers the three months of the 2020 Vendée Globe as ‘the best three months of my life.’ The experience of the Southern Ocean made a crucial difference to her view of herself and her capabilities. Yes, everything in the south became a challenge. The energy around me was different, and it was clear I would need to adapt my style and perspective to make it through and maintain performance. I had already seen the importance of being prepared and holding my nerve ahead of an oncoming depression and I’d been witness to the consequences of backing off too soon, but the change in environmental conditions produced an extra level of mental challenge that would only erode performance if it wasn’t managed…

A stalwart of Exmouth’s Exe Sailing Club, Rick Newcombe has now owned three separate yachts, all of which have borne the name eXehibitionist. The first was a Beneteau First 31.7. Its successor was an X-Yacht from Denmark: an X-34. Newcombe’s latest, the Xc38 featured here, was purchased new in 2018 direct from X-Yachts GB. ‘At this point,’ he explains, ‘I had a good relationship with X-Yachts GB… They were keen, no surprise, to offer me a new yacht and offered [me] a pretty good deal.’ Brand loyalty notwithstanding, Newcombe’s decision to upgrade from X-34 to Xc38 was based on his perception that the Danish manufacturer’s products have a ‘good balance of performance and practicality’. Newcombe pushed the X-34 into challenging races, such as Fastnet 2017, but he wanted more. The…

The Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) has launched a data portal, designed to provide public access to a subset of maritime accident data. The portal gives the public and industry open access to download and analyse MAIB’s data. Where in the past users were required to submit Freedom of Information requests, this service has simplified the process by allowing direct access to a subset of the data most requested. The data is then presented on a user-friendly dashboard and overlaid on a map. As well as the interactive reports, raw data in CSV format is available for the criteria: occurrences, vessels, affected persons. These tables are linked via unique keys and can be used with open-source analysis tools. So far data from January 2023 onwards is available via the portal,…

America’s Cup woe I do not know if we are watching in the America’s Cup, a pantomime, a charade, or a Spanish tragedy. What chance on earth has INEOS Brittania if Ben Ainslie cannot even start a race on terms with the Kiwis? Britannia was supposed to be faster in fresh winds, as in the third race. The boat was slower. Oliver Lee taught me a bit about sailing when he told me that a National Squib was supposed to be sailed upright. Until the horizontal trim of Britannia is corrected, the UK can say ‘Adios’ to the Auld Mug once more. The Kiwis sail their boat on a horizontal plane. Donough McGillycuddy Orca opinion I’m writing with my opinion on the orcas attack report, written by Keith Fuller and…

There are many questions to ask when assessing a boat, whether as a journalist or a potential purchaser, but perhaps the most important question is how well it does what it’s designed to do. If you’re considering buying one, your focus will be on how well it does what you want it to do, which might well be the same thing. If what it was designed to do is not what you want it to do, there’s possibly an argument for looking at a different boat. That might sound obvious, but all too often I have seen people who have bought boats without fully understanding where their emphasis lay. The emphasis with today’s larger mainstream family cruisers from the big builders has been shifting in recent years, leading to greater…

One commodity we can’t do without when sailing is fresh drinking water, and maintaining a sufficient supply can be a problem, especially on ocean passages or in more austere cruising grounds. Purchasing bottled water is inconvenient and environmentally damaging due to the inevitable plastic waste. A logical solution is to install a watermaker, but this can be costly in terms of money, onboard storage space, electricity to run and demands on time to maintain. My solution onboard Arkyla has been to install a simple water filtration system at the galley that guarantees safe and good-tasting water at point of most frequent need. There are many options available, and it is worth doing some homework to select the most appropriate system for your needs. My choice is a Riva ‘Explorer Overland’…

Back in the old days, when coastal pilotage relied heavily on three-point compass fixes to generate cocked hats of varying sizes, it wasn’t an uncommon error to take a fix from the wrong landmark. A town with three churches, or serried ranks of headlands stretching into the distance, all had the ability to throw the unwary navigator off track. The temptation would be to guess which was which, gleaning as much information from the chart as you could. When it came to navigating ships, however, especially naval ships, guesswork simply wasn’t good enough. Every time you took a fix, therefore, you would take at least four bearings; three for your known landmarks and one to ‘shoot up’ your next object. For example, there’s a distinctive spire on the chart, and…

Who goes sailing to spend time in a car park? Yes, marinas are very convenient, but there’s nothing like getting back on your boat after some time away on her home mooring and feeling the weight of the world falling away without even having to sail anywhere. You are away from hectic shoreside life, and begin to ease into the rhythms of tide and weather. Another obvious snag to a marina spot is cost. Once upon a time, the main obstacle to boat ownership was the sum needed to purchase the vessel, but over several decades well-maintained GRP yachts have refused to wear out, while second-hand values have plummeted until a basically-sound cruiser can be acquired for around a tenth of the new-build price. For several of the boats in…

Grab a chance and you won’t be sorry for a might-havebeen’ – that well-known quote from Ransome’s We Didn’t Mean to go to Sea is an excellent piece of advice as long as there’s someone providing the opportunities. Unfortunately, it’s also one of those inverted laws whereby the people who need a lucky break the most, are the least likely to be offered. You need to be in the right place at the right time and possess the confidence to say yes. Which isn’t as easy as it sounds. When Tracy Edwards’ Maiden finally arrived alongside the Cowes Yacht Haven pontoon last April she was carrying young women from all the inhabited continents of the earth. Junella King (Antigua), Maryama Seck (France) and Vuyisile Jaca (South Africa), displayed their home…

The scale of the RNLI’s work today is huge. There are more than 200 lifeboat stations round the coasts of Britain and Ireland, with 400 lifeboats, and in 2023 their crews launched 9,192 times. Last year 20 new boats were built and 280 were refitted or repaired. While lifeboat stations and fundraising volunteers maintain a regional focus, the heart of the organisation is the RNLI College and Support Centre in Poole. This plays a crucial role in training 10,000 volunteer crew and over 1,600 lifeguards. The cost of running the service is enormous, from engineering and supply to finance, planning, fundraising and marketing. The cost ran to £191m in 2023, while donations and investment income produced £236.1m. Since the RNLI’s founding days, it is estimated to have saved more than…

Problems related to ‘diesel bug’ in yachts are becoming increasingly common. This is almost certainly due to the higher percentage of biodiesel in the fuel we now buy – good for the environment but not so good for long-term storage in boats’ tanks. Biodiesel is hygroscopic, which means it attracts and holds water more than other fuels, thereby encouraging the growth of diesel bug – a horrible black gunge lurking in the bottom of most fuel tanks. If this gunge finds its way into your fuel lines, your filters can become gummed up and, eventually, your engine may end up being starved of fuel. Since owning my first diesel-engined yacht, back in 1974, I’ve been fully aware of the necessity to use clean fuel and keep out any water contamination.…

When Rich and I set off from Dartmouth in 2017 to do some long-distance sailing on our Cabo Rico 38 Tequila we hadn’t intended to sail around the world. However, eight years later and now in Malaysia, we are still sailing west after crossing the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The most important consideration when we started was to experience a shared adventure and to enjoy the journey together. We had sailed an Elizabethan 29 on the east coast of England and we were looking for a blue-water boat with character. Rich came across a Cabo Rico 38 for sale – a Crealock design, built in Costa Rica and mostly sailed in America. We fell in love with this beautiful boat and sailed her for a season back home in order…