Innholdsfortegnelse for August/September 2023 i SAIL

“What? Are you kidding me? That never happens!” Such was the response from a sailing buddy when I told him I was joining the Rio 100 crew for the 800-mile Newport to Cabo race. His reaction was certainly justified. While I’ve sailed off and on my whole life, my racing experience is limited to some fun times I had on an old 39-foot R-Boat back in the 1970s. So how did I come to be a walk-on to Rio, a 100-foot super maxi and the favored monohull to win? Hold that thought and let me start with three things you must know about racing on a rocket like this. First, there is a world of difference sailing with a professional crew. It’s akin to a high school football player suiting…

Xquisite cataramans are well known as comfortable, well-built long-distance cruising cats, with all of the luxury and accoutrements one would expect—the antithesis, in other words, of minimalism. Which is why Xquisite’s new offering, the 30 Sportcat designed by François Perus, causes a double take of neck-twinging proportions. With a rotating carbon mast, carbon deck beams, displacement of just 1,872 pounds, North 3Di sails, an interior whose greatest luxury is a mattress, and a construction methodology that lets it be dismantled and fit onto a trailer and inside a 40-foot shipping container, this little rocket is just begging to be sailed fast and fun—and that is precisely its purpose, according to Tamas Hamor, Xquisite’s founder and CEO. “That was the goal—the best training boat for people to learn how to sail,…

I was truly living the dream from a perspective I’d never known. It’s not ordinary for a sailor to be captivated by the sight of boulders the size of pianos slipping beneath the keel. In my experience as a lifelong big-boat sailor, visions such as this would have left me gasping rather than breathless (a subtle, yet significant, distinction). But this was different. All afternoon I had sailed the 16-foot Wayfarer dinghy along Lake Huron’s northern shore. The clear water slid by, revealing all manner of wonders beneath—the immense fragments of mountains dropped here by glaciers long ago, grassy forests, sandy flats. Along the coast pines grew thick as a jungle. I tacked behind a sandbar into a secluded bay and anchored in the shallows. Mediterranean style, I ran a…

ARE YOU OUT THERE SAILING, CRUISING AND LIVING THE SAILING LIFE? Share your experiences with other readers. Send your photos to sailmail@sailmagazine.com And don’t forget to sign up for our free eNewsletter, Under Sail, at sailmagazine.com/newsletter Photos (Top to Bottom) Boston Harbor Sailing Club (BHSC) racing at sunset on Dorchester Bay. —Ryan Prentiss, via sailmail@sailmagazine.com Cruising the Mystic River, Connecticut, in April and waiting for warmer weather. —Carol Connor, via sailmail@sailmagazine.com A spectacular sunset last September from outside Boston Harbor, seen through the Graves lighthouse, from our (co-owned) Gozzard 36. You couldn’t take a bad photo that evening. —Lynne Lupien, via sailmail@sailmagazine.com Letters More than the Miles Thanks for Wendy Mitman Clarke’s editorial “Adventure is in the Eye of the Beholder” (May 2023). The desire to measure everything in sailing—longest…

Buddy Melges, the two-time Olympic medalist, two-time Star world champion, three-time 5.5-Meter world champion, three-time Mallory Trophy winner, and America’s Cup winner, passed away on May 18, 2023 at age 93. “Buddy was the Leonardo da Vinci of sailing. Globally,” John Bertrand said in Mark Honer’s film, “The Wizard of Zenda” (see below). “It’s a big statement, but from my perspective, he’s the greatest sailor the United States has ever produced.” As stellar as his racing career was, he’s also remembered by the sailing community for how much he gave back to the sport and how happily he mentored young sailors and inspired other others to greater achievements. “Beyond his own accomplishments, Buddy generously shared his knowledge and served as a mentor to aspiring sailors, leaving an indelible mark on…

When the first gun sounds at the E Scow National Championship regatta this September, more than 100 boats are expected to be on the line on Lake Mendota, Wisconsin. And while competition will be fierce—as always—there will be a bit more on that line than usual, for this year marks the 100th anniversary of this unique and storied class of boats that counts among its fans some of the country’s greatest sailors. Officially launched in 1924, the 28-foot E Scow was an answer to the much harder to manage 38-foot A Scows that began sailing in Minnesota in 1900, and the single-sail, 20-foot C Scow that was usually used for training. Typically sailed with a crew of three or four, the boat’s sail plan has changed over time, but today…

When he competed in the first Golden Globe Race in 1968-69, French sailor Bernard Moitessier achieved legend status not for winning, but rather for precisely the opposite—opting instead to keep on sailing, “because I am happy at sea, and perhaps to save my soul.” It’s a sentiment that Kirsten Neuschäfer understands—“Moitessier just kept going and became more esoteric. I liked that aspect,” she said. Some may have wondered whether the adventurous South African would consider the same, but in the end, her history was made in another way, by becoming the first woman to win a solo round-the-world race when she crossed the 2022-23 Golden Globe Race (GGR) finish line in Les Sables-d’Olonne, France, on April 28. After 30,290 nautical miles and 235 days—a course record—she and her 36-foot Cape…

I had walked through prior iterations of Moody’s deck salon (DS) models and was properly impressed by their unique interior layouts, but I had never actually sailed one. My chance came last October, when I found the new Moody DS41 on my test-sail dance card, and I have to confess the boat performed better than I expected. It is not race-boat fast or super close-winded, but it is plenty fast enough for a dedicated cruising boat (better than 8 knots reaching in 15 knots of true wind), and points higher than your average cruising catamaran (to about 40 degrees apparent, pinching to 30 degrees). The comparison to a cruising cat is important, for this is the turf the DS41 is trying to poach from. The boat’s marquee feature is its…

If the prospect of 1,500 miles of ocean sailing weren’t enough to put nerves on edge, crews aboard 115 boats queued up for the Salty Dawg Sailing Association (SDSA) Caribbean Rally last November were also confronted with on-the-nose tropical winds—winds that eventually strengthened into Hurricane Nicole. Pinned against the Eastern Seaboard for nearly two weeks past the end of the official hurricane season, rally Director Bob Osborn was asked more than once, “Is this normal?” “It’s very easy for us to say global warming is affecting us now,” he said in a call months later from Antigua. “Was this year’s delay a direct result of global warming? Or was it a variation in the weather? I don’t know.” Sailors, like telltales, are sensitive to small changes in the environment. They’re…

With the new HH44-SC, HH Catamarans is pursuing dual purposes: producing a luxury, high-performance cat for cruising families and couples sailing long-distance, and answering what HH CEO Paul Hakes says has been sailors’ frustration at “the slow pace” of the marine industry’s adoption of electric-based technologies. The result is a sleek, thoughtful, and truly interesting boat on a lot of levels. There are two HH44 models, OC (Ocean Cruising) and SC (Sports Cruising); of the 37 hulls sold so far, the SC is proving the more popular, according to the HH team. So we’ll focus on that. Construction is a carbon-reinforced, foam composite sandwich with infused epoxy resin. The boat’s entire skeleton—bulkheads, beams, hulls, deck—is carbon fiber, with external e-glass, also epoxy infused. Extra carbon is added for strength in…

On September 24, 90 singlehanded sailors will take off from Les Sables-d’Olonne, France, racing 21-foot (6.5-meter) Classe Mini boats alone for 4,050 nautical miles to the Canary Islands and then Guadeloupe in the legendary Mini Transat. They sail without chartplotters, laptops, or satellite communications. They race like their lives depend upon it. Renowned for its extreme challenges and the high-performance pocket rockets on which it takes place, the Mini Transat is largely the domain of French singlehanders. This year, though, an American sailor has met the qualifying miles and races necessary to secure a start. Barring unforeseen circumstance, lifelong Annapolis sailor and U.S. Marine Corps veteran Peter Gibbons-Neff will be on the line with his Classe Mini 6.50, Terminal Leave, sailing to meet his own hopes and dreams and to…

“For all his troubles, his skiff was sinless, and her sweetness sweetened him.”—John Casey, Spartina Steve Earley doesn’t sail like you and me. Example: One night, he and his 17-foot open boat, Spartina, were anchored in a cove near Crab Point just off the Chesapeake Bay’s Honga River. Spartina is a John Welsford design that Steve built, and she is, in a word, sweet. Because she can maneuver in knee-deep water with her centerboard up, Steve can sail and anchor her in some pretty amazing places that most of us can only see on a chart. A very zoomed-in chart. Such was this night off the Honga River, when he woke up, feeling the boat moving a little funny. He was sleeping under his boom tent to gain protection from…