Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2015 i Cruising World

CRUISINGWORLD.COM ON TO PATAGONIA Mike Litzow and his family aboard Galactic (above) have been exploring Chile since December, and after some time spent in Puerto Montt and Isla Chiloe they are ready to press south into Patagonia. Or are they? “We consulted the graphical forecasts that we get via the radio, and thought we probably wouldn’t try to beat the approaching low. And then we saw the Armada forecast and decided we defi-nitely wouldn’t. It was calling for winds up to 50 knots, with gusts of 80 to 100. That made sitting still seem the height of sensibility.” cruisingworld.com/1506galactic THEY’RE OFF! At press time, the crew of Del Viento — Michael, Windy and their daughters, Eleanor and Frances — are en route to the South Pacific. Eight days out of…

We’ve all heard the poem: I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky / And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by. The romance of that vision is part of what inspired us to leave the familiar behind and head out to sea. But once we settled into the cruising life, we realized there was another side of it all that appealed as much as those grander things. It’s simplicity: when a day is spent in pursuit of seashells rather than a paycheck. When time passes in quiet hours instead of hectic minutes. When the glow of the setting sun cues you to slip into your kayak and push off from that virgin beach to head…

Cruising “De Islands,” mon, back in the ’70s was mighty different. For one thing, a bottle of Cruzan Gold rum cost 84 cents when I first arrived on St. Thomas aboard my self-built, 36-foot, Peter Ibold-designed ketch Carlotta. Thus, I always had the vague feeling that if I wasn’t drunk, I was wasting money. Besides, the drinking water in the Virgin Islands was crawling with germs, so slurping down a glass of rum at breakfast made sound medical sense. From a health standpoint, the islands were pretty grim. My doctor told me that if I got run over in the parking lot of the St. Thomas hospital, I should “take two aspirin and a taxi to the airport.” Local West Indian sailors had it even worse. Nobody in the Caribbean…

In the growing North American multihull scene, there are players who have deep roots here, though they build their boats outside the U.S., either to keep costs down or to tap into an experienced workforce at an established yard. Multihull veteran Rob Poirier has one goal for Antares Yachts — to build an offshore-capable cruising catamaran that’s designed for a couple to be able to sail easily and live aboard safely and comfortably. Antares Yachts launched in January 2008, when Poirier and designer Ted Clements bought the Antares catamaran molds from PDQ Yachts after the company decided to focus solely on power cats. Today the company Antares Yachts is based out of South Carolina, with the factory located in Argentina. “When we started Antares Yachts, we knew we wanted to…

OUTREMER 51 French catamaran builder Outremer had a good thing going with its sporty 49-footer. The company built more than 20 of the bluewater cruisers, introduced at the European shows in 2009, and now hopes to get even more good things out of a slightly larger and revamped model styled along the lines of last year’s successful Outremer 5X, which was named Best Full-Size Multihull Over 50 Feet in Cruising World’s 2014 Boat of the Year contest. The new Outremer 51, which I visited on the dock at Strictly Sail Miami last winter, comes from the same molds as the 49, but rounded edges on the hulls have been squared off to match the look of the 59-foot 5X. Also, about a foot’s been added to the sugar-scoop transoms, the…

Perhaps nothing can change the look and feel of a boat quite as profoundly as new cushions or canvas. Whether you’re updating your saloon, installing a new dodger or fitting a new mainsail cover, new canvas work is an investment and not something you want to repeat frequently. So it’s important to pick the right materials for the project the first time. With the abundance of options available, though, how do you know what will be up to the task? To sort through this, and to get ideas for my own boat, I reached out to some experts in the field of marine canvas work — Matt Grant, vice president of Sailrite; Kate Gable Seremeth, yacht interior designer; and Jeff Serrie, owner of Island Marine Canvas in Newport, Rhode Island…

A sailor’s most common complaint in the Falkland Islands is “too much wind!” Certainly when my husband, Thies Matzen, and I first cruised this South Atlantic Ocean archipelago in our 30-foot Wanderer III in 1998, I was convinced it blew a gale every day of the year. That was, of course, an exaggeration: Once in a blue moon it’s flat calm instead. Last summer we were helping out with the sheepshearing at West Point Island, in the very northwest of the island group. When the skipper of the transport boat was suddenly called to his father’s funeral, it fell upon us to get the shearing gang off the island, back to West Falkland. A shearing gang doesn’t travel light. In addition to jumbo-size wheeled suitcases, they had heavy shearing equipment…

CRUISINGWORLD.COM NORTH SAILS RALLY CHICAGO Looking for a fun day on the water? Check out the North Sails Rally, part of the Chicago Helly Hansen NOOD Regatta (above). The rally is a random-leg, PHRF-scored race on Saturday, June 13, and is perfect for new-to-racing sailors, families or custom boats that don’t fit within the one-design concept of the NOODs. After the racing on Saturday, the Rally Class can swap stories and raise a glass with their fellow regatta sailors at the party. Visit cruisingworld.com/1506northrally for more information or to register. GO SAILING! Summer is finally here in the Northern Hemisphere, and it’s time to be out on the water. The 15th annual Summer Sailstice is a sailing celebration that takes place this year on Saturday, June 20. Share your sailing…

Through our circumnavigation aboard Heretic, our Westphal 38, I always enjoyed trying the dishes and ingredients of each port we visited. As an unabashed carnivore, I loved New Zealand for its lamb and South Africa for its barbecues. Unfortunately, a long stretch of ocean lay between us, in Cape Town, and our next BBQ-famous country — the United States. As we headed west, on St. Helena Island I tried English mince pies, but then, during our month-long Atlantic crossing, the small amount of meat I ate was canned or dried, and in the Caribbean, fish prevailed. Once we reached our home port in Maine, I was more than ready for a good American burger! Our area of Downeast Maine is filled with deserted granite islands topped with spruce and firs,…

Having spent nearly two weeks in the Pacific Ocean’s Line Islands, just north of the equator, and with some unsettled weather approaching from the north, my fiancée, Gayle Suhich, and I departed on a less than ideal day bound for the South Pacific. Our initial destination aboard our Flying Dutchman 50, Small World II, was somewhat open-ended. We were of half a mind to stop at Penrhyn Atoll in the Cook Islands, nearly 800 nautical miles southward. But we were equally attracted to the notion of heading straight for American Samoa; we could address some business there and then move on to Tonga while it was still early in the season. Our first night out was full of nasty squalls and heavy rain, and we fell off toward Samoa. However,…

There is nothing new under the sun; it’s just that we forget. By general consensus, the beginning of the great debate over monohulls versus multihulls dates to the cabal of multihull designers in the 1960s, such as Arthur Piver, Dick Newick and Jim Brown. But in fact this debate has raged for centuries, if not millennia. From the day the first log was dug out and set afloat, the question always has been how best to stabilize it, for the very shape that allowed it to glide through the water was what made it so perilously tippy. The physics have not changed, only the vocabulary; then, as now, seaworthiness can only be accomplished by one of two methods: geometric stabilization or placing weight where it’s needed to keep a vessel…

PRIVILÈGE SERIE 5 Privilège Marine introduced its new Privilège Serie model range this past winter at Strictly Sail Miami with a smart-looking 50-foot cruising catamaran that’s an evolutionary upgrade from the older Marc Lombard-designed Privilège 515. (The previous boat was built by the former Alliaura Marine, a yard that fell victim to the global financial crisis.) With slightly longer hulls and an upgraded interior, the Privilège Serie 5 is the first new design since the company reorganized in 2012 under the direction of Gilles Wagner and moved production from Lorient, France, back to Les Sables d’Olonne, where many of the original Privilège boats were launched. The new Serie range will also include a 64-foot Serie 6 and a 74-foot Serie 7, also designed by Lombard. The Privilège Serie 5 in…

Congratulations on your April issue showing boat maintenance work being done using proper safety equipment (“An Ounce of Prevention,” by Alvah Simon). I am driven wild by do-it-yourself articles in the sailing press with photos of folks in shorts, with bare feet and hands, undertaking projects requiring the use of hazardous materials. My husband and I own and maintain a wooden gaff-rigged ketch. We sweat and groan a lot in our respirators and gloves. But our health is more important than our temporary comfort. We plan on sailing in good health as long as we can. (We are both 66.) People must realize that caring for a boat is not a day at the beach. Keep up the good work. Sue Peterson S/V Star of India Dream of Future Past…

When we spent the winter in Panama’s San Blas islands on Osprey, our family’s 45-foot steel sloop, we sailed, walked or swam to where we wanted to go. I loved it, of course. Who wouldn’t love that? But I was getting the itch I always get sooner or later: the itch for a small boat to sail. For me, large sailboats are great. They can go thousands of miles, provide a home and give you an amazing sense of independence. But for all that, they don’t have the feel of a small boat. When you sail a small boat alone, you know that it’s all up to you to make sure you catch the wind correctly, keep the tiller straight and bail any water out, along with a multitude of…

A few years back, on a gusty day with winds over 40 knots, my 34-yearold Cape Dory 28, Nikki — a cruising boat I live aboard — won the coveted Michelob Cup on Florida’s Tampa Bay, topping a fleet of more than 40 other yachts, most of which were hard-core raceboats. Not coincidentally, Nikki’s crew had trained in heavy weather and could reef the mainsail in 40 seconds or less, and shake it out even quicker. Nobody in Tampa Bay racing circles had ever seen or competed against Nikki. She was the oldest and smallest boat to race that day. Though we were later accused of cheating by a disgruntled opponent (and quickly exonerated), Nikki continued her winning ways and was later named Southwest Florida’s Cruising Boat of the Year…

“Very responsive. Tacked easily with main alone,” I wrote and underlined in my notebook after sailing the Bavaria Open 40 catamaran, which made its North American debut at Strictly Sail Miami in February. For the boat, and for the builder, the show was a coming-out party. Last summer, Bavaria Yachts purchased catamaran builder Nautitech, and with the transaction came the recently launched Open 40, a concept developed by Nautitech founder Bruno Voisard and his team in Rochefort, France. The boat was designed by naval architect Marc Lombard. Bavaria, which builds a range of sailboats and powerboats at its yard in Giebelstadt, Germany, had wanted to add multihulls to its lineup and found a fit with Nautitech, the company said in announcing the deal. The Open 40, as well as a…

The 40-foot multihull, designed by architects Simonis and Voogd and constructed by South African builder Robertson and Caine, excels in speed, agility and bluewater performance. Enhancements include an innovative belowdecks layout and increased volume in the hulls, which adds to interior space. The galley is forward to starboard, kitty-corner from the spacious dining area aft to port in the saloon. Oversize sliding glass doors open to the aft cockpit, providing panoramic views from the interior. The 404 also features a raised helm station with a full range of Raymarine electronics, and supplementary power from dual 29-horsepower engines. Offered in a four-cabin layout with two heads, the Sunsail 404 can take charter groups of up to 10. For details contact the company (sunsail.com). Companies Want Boats Southwest Florida Yachts offers incentives…