Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2015 i Cruising World

Ginny Filiatrault lost her long struggle with cancer in January 2015. A fighter to the end, she battled the hated disease at every turn with every fiber of her being. And yet, with husband, Jacques, at her side, she managed to maintain contact with the cruising friends she had made over more than half a century. Ginny joined the Seven Seas Cruising Association in 1955, and served the SSCA as Commodores’ Bulletin editor, board member, treasurer, office manager, historian and more. To list her myriad contributions to the SSCA would fill a year of bulletins, and luckily, many are recorded in SSCA’s published official history (“Committed to Cruisers” by Dan Spurr, November 2010). Born into a California sailing family on Oct. 3, 1936, Ginny built her first boat at age…

When I was 9 years old, in the early 1960s, my family kept Elizabeth, our 52-foot John G. Alden schooner, in Vinoy Basin, in St. Petersburg, Florida. I was encouraged by my parents to be a wild child, at least within the confines of our conch shell’s reach. If my mother or my sisters blew the conch, I had to come running home at hull speed. This meant the entire harbor was my sandbox, and what a glorious sandbox it was. In the northwest corner was Tommy the Fisherman and his little lean-to shack. He had a gimpy leg, one eye as dead as a grape, and he drank Cuban rum by the barrelful. He scared most lubbers as he ranted to various invisible ghosts, and sometimes spittle would fly…

Unlike most Maine cruising stories, this one begins in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Peru, in early 2010. Aboard the 64-foot cutter Ocean Watch, we were headed north toward the Galapagos Islands — and our ultimate destination of Seattle, where our voyage had originated — on the latest leg of our Around the Americas expedition. By this stage, having negotiated the Northwest Passage and Cape Horn, skipper Mark Schrader, first mate Dave Logan and I had pretty much exhausted most topics of maritime-related conversation; like waterlogged cavemen, we could communicate on nearly any nautical matter, from tying in a reef to heading for the fuel dock, with a wink, nod or shrug. Words were superfluous. Luckily for us, though, on this stretch of the trip we also had…

For most sailors there comes a point each year when the boat gets hauled, perhaps for a quick coat of bottom paint, but more often for more extensive work and for an extended period to wait for the coming sailing season. Time on the hard allows an owner to tackle both basic maintenance and bigger projects that are too disruptive or time consuming to do when the boat’s being actively sailed. Hopefully, the work done during this fitting-out period pays off with trouble-free use when you’re back in the water. Over the years I’ve done a number of refits and fit outs, both for myself and professionally. A look at my tool kit may be helpful for boat owners who prefer to do this type of work themselves. My basic…

In the exact middle of a New England winter of historically cold, snowy, epic proportions — with predictions of hurricane-force winds and over a foot of the white stuff — they took off from Newport, Rhode Island (bound for Oz!), anyway. Duh. Quite predictably, this turned out to be a monumentally poor decision. About a day later, some 150 nautical miles off Nantucket, the hapless Aussies were plucked from the 43-degree water near their foundering yacht, an ex-raceboat called Sedona — which they purchased for 10 grand on eBay — by a U.S. Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter, the crew of which are the heroes of this incredible little tale. In and of itself, this would be a hard-to-fathom story, but as my mother always said, bad news comes in…

Although she’s known as one of the world’s leading yacht-racing photographers, Sharon Green has roots that lie in family cruising. Her father, Don Green, circumnavigated the globe in his teens aboard Irving and Exy Johnson’s legendary brigantine Yankee, and he passed on his passion to his offspring. “My youth was spent day sailing on our Bluenose 25, Yellowbird, on Lake Ontario,” says Green, who was just 7 years old when she first took the tiller. “Much of my passion, knowledge and experience stems from those blissful days of sailing with my family.” One summer while Green was away studying photography at the Banff School of Fine Arts (she envisioned being “the next Ansel Adams”) her father commissioned a custom C&C 41, Evergreen, to challenge for the 1978 Canada’s Cup. Green…

Ted Irwin, a self-made Florida sailor who parlayed his love for and prowess in small-boat sailboat racing into a major force in American production boatbuilding, passed away in early February after a long bout with blood cancer. He was 74. After moving to the Tampa Bay area with his family as a youngster, by 15 Irwin was sailing high-performance Moth-class dinghies — built in his backyard, to his own design — at a world-class level. At 21, he landed a job as a draftsman in the boatyard of another legendary Floridian builder, Charlie Morgan. In 1963, after serving his apprenticeship and undertaking further studies, he rented a small Quonset hut on St. Petersburg Beach and launched Irwin Yachts. TED IRWIN LEFT A LEGACY THAT LIVES ON IN HARBORS AND SEAWAYS…

Over a sunny November weekend in Savannah, Georgia, top fundraisers from the Leukemia Cup Regattas held throughout 2014 gathered to celebrate a successful year of fundraising. The Fantasy Sail with Gary Jobson, which this year included cocktails, dinner and informal PHRF racing on Savannah’s Wilmington River, was created to honor the top fundraising individuals, teams and yacht clubs from throughout North America. The centerpiece of the event was Jobson himself, who came on as the national chairman of the Leukemia Cup in 1994 and has been heavily involved ever since, even through his own diagnosis of, and recovery from, lymphoma in 2003. “We build on the event year after year,” said Jobson. “We offer incentives to fundraisers and take all contributions from small to big. The key is to get…

While my mother, our captain, cleared us out of customs at Clifton Harbor, Union Island, in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, my father and I relaxed aboard Amokura, our Discovery 57, and watched the daily harbor cinema: anchor-dropping in a full and windy anchorage. Boat after boat would slowly motor in looking for a spot. They would weave paths around the anchored boats until they selected a location and then would try their best to execute the drop. Some boats succeeded the first time around but most, like us, failed and needed a second or third go. The harbor was crowded, as usual for January, and the wind was howling 30-plus knots over the reef that provides a safe yet tricky anchorage. Clifton Harbor is nearly surrounded by reef, and…

Reflecting on Aventura’s 10,000-mile maiden voyage — which took her from Europe to the Arctic, then to the Bahamas and South Florida — allows me to make a thorough assessment of whether she has lived up to my expectations of her being equally suited for sailing in high latitudes and cruising in the tropics. Designed, built and equipped with an Arctic voyage in mind, she incorporates a raft of special features based on my experience of sailing in Antarctica and Spitsbergen. Every one of these proved to have been an inspired choice, as without them, this could have been a very different story. The substantial aluminum plate, or tang, welded at the base of the forefoot was initially meant as a point of attachment to drag the boat ashore with…

There are no roads between towns and few airports in Greenland. The best way to see the island is from a boat, and if you want to witness the round of seasons, that boat frozen in makes a good winter camp. Iron Bark is a 35-foot steel gaff cutter built for this sort of thing. I wintered alone on board in Antarctica in 1999-2000 and with Annie Hill in Greenland in 2004-2005. In 2012 I decided to spend another winter in Greenland, this time alone. Preparation was easy because most of the necessary gear was already aboard. I stowed enough food for 16 months, bought new snowshoes and a few other bits, and sailed from Nova Scotia on July 14. My abiding memory of the passage north is of fog.…

In 1976, a skinny young French Olympic sailor with the mane of a werewolf, named Jean-François Fountaine, returned home to La Rochelle after the Montreal Games and launched a boatbuilding concern with some fellow sailing fanatics. It was called Fountaine Pajot. They started with dinghies but soon moved on to a giant racing catamaran, Charente-Maritime. In 1983, cribbing liberally from the lines of that fast, spindly race boat, FP launched its first pioneering cruising cat, the Louisiane 37, which was an instant success. Now, over three decades later — having produced nearly 30 distinct models — it’s safe to say they never looked back. I was reminded of all this last fall at the U.S. Sailboat Show in Annapolis, Maryland, while thumbing through an old FP brochure at the debut…

Chris Bone was en route to the Philippines when his crew had an unexpected change of plans. He found himself alone in a coastal village in Papua New Guinea. With the boat on a hook in the harbor, a local man named Robert started to show Chris around. After a few days, his new friend invited him to visit a village he referred to as his spiritual home. Chris locked up the boat, checked the anchor, and piled into a bus with Robert. Several hours and a banana boat ride later, Chris found himself in the village of Keng. With no itinerary to stick to, he let the days unfold one by one. He explored the village, the garden plots and the reefs. He talked to the villagers about their…

After our year-and-a-half-long honeymoon ended in July 2012, my husband, David, and I decided to upgrade. We traded Ensemble, our Fountaine Pajot 48, for our new boat: Bluewaft, a Lagoon 56 catamaran. When we’d started cruising around the world in our former boat, I’d tried to make risotto on board, but failed miserably — the constant stirring made me seasick within 15 minutes. I needed to find a solution! So on our new boat, I created a new risotto recipe. It solved two problems. First, I had to reduce the amount of stirring time required without burning the rice. Second, most of the ingredients needed to be long-lasting. “Lazy Pantry Risotto” was born! It quickly became our favorite onboard meal. Italian chefs would probably disagree with my “nonstir” technique, and…

The core purpose of sound seamanship is safety. For even the shortest of sea voyages we plan and prepare down to the finest detail. We scour the vessel from stem to stern, from masthead to keel, to predict and prevent every potential mishap and then ensure we have the backup skills and equipment to deal with any contingency. Yet for all the dangers of wind and wave, it’s in the boatyard where we face the greatest potential for illness or injury, for it is here that sparks arc, saw blades whine, toxins waft and ladders lean. Thus we should approach any haulout with a preventive mindset and a well-reasoned plan, for safety is no accident. Forgive me if some of the following seems obvious, but when it comes to boatyard…

We sailors collect many different hats, and every spring it’s time to reach for the one with the Jiffy Lube logo. Often oil, grease and rust-defeating penetrant sprays conjure thoughts of engine woes or a steering-gear overhaul. But these slippery elixirs can also give us more winch power, make sail hoisting easier and provide us with an anchor windlass that behaves according to plan. In short, it makes sense to start the sailing season with a round of deck gear maintenance focused on cleaning and lubrication. Our assault on friction begins with soap and water to clear out the abrasive crud that accumulates in plastic bearing races and to wash away old lubricants that have turned into grit glue. Components to target include furler drum(s), anchor windlass, turnbuckle threads, genoa…

At a time of year when talk often turns to World Series contenders, two longtime American sailboat builders, Morris Yachts and Island Packet, arrived in Annapolis, Maryland, last fall for the U.S. Sailboat Show, not with red-hot rookies but with veteran players tailored to take another swing at the ball. Morris OS 48 GT After a decade of concentrating on its M Series of delightfully elegant daysailers, Morris introduced a revamped version of the 48-foot Ocean Series cruiser, a blue-water-proven Chuck Paine design. Dubbed the OS 48 GT (the GT stands for Grande Touring), the new boat incorporates several alterations from the original model, including a taller rig (with 100 square feet more sail area), and a new performance rudder and keel foils designed by Jim Taylor. The mast has…

The break from the grueling 38,000-mile race for seven teams aboard 65-foot one-design monohulls, which includes 12 days of events and in-port races set around a waterfront festival village, runs May 5-17, 2015. A centerpiece of the company’s presence as the official yacht-charter-company sponsor at historic Fort Adams will be the Global Experience Pavilion, featuring the company’s 26 destinations in cruising grounds around the world. Sunsail has also donated a sailing vacation in the British Virgin Islands to Sail Newport as an auction item to raise funds for the nonprofit sailing center’s community sailing programs. The global marathon leaves Newport for the transatlantic leg to Lisbon, Portugal, on May 17, 2015. For details log on to the race and charter company sites (www.volvooceanrace.com; www.sunsail.com). Moorings Debuts 4000 Catamaran The Moorings…