Cruising World September 2021

WHALES Tales If binge-watching marginally entertaining Netflix and Prime originals is getting old, I’d recommend following along with the real-life saga about hardy sailors on a modest boat, pitted not only against the stormy Arctic, but also surrounded by killer whales at sea and stalked by polar bears ashore. The sailboat is Barba, a used Jeanneau 37, and its captain is Norwegian adventurer Andreas B. Heide. Together, they and crew have pulled off some audacious voyages before—a few of which have been chronicled in these pages over the years. But this summer’s expedition, code named Arctic Sense, is shaping up to be the biggest and boldest of them all. I first bumbled across Barba’s wake back in 2015 when a story written by Heide and another author arrived in my…

When my wife, Catherine, and I lived in New York over 14 years ago, we never anchored Dream Time by the Statue of Liberty—not once. We never even considered it. It’s not that we didn’t have the skills, or that the 25-nautical-mile trip from Long Island Sound down to New York Harbor is particularly challenging; it just never really occurred to us that we could. New York City was where we went to work; the harbor was a place where ferries, cargo ships, tugs and tourist boats went about their busy business. I guess when we did have any free time, we wanted to sail in the sound and just relax in a quiet cove somewhere. Taking the boat down the East River, timing tides, dodging traffic, well, maybe it…

Satellite-communications systems are great for accessing the internet and staying connected to family, friends and business while cruising far-flung places. The trouble for most sailors is that very small aperture terminals—the dome antennas needed for satellite access—typically require rack-mounted belowdecks equipment and AC power. Until now. KVH’s new TracPhone V30 ($11,995) draws 10 to 36 volts of DC power and employs a small belowdecks VSAT hub that’s roughly the size of an at-home Wi-Firouter, making it an easy fit aboard a wide range of cruising sailboats. The TracPhone V30’s radome is 15.5 inches wide by 17.6 inches high and weighs a little more than 23 pounds; inside, there’s a stabilized antenna. Once installed and networked, it transmits data at speeds up to 2 Mbps and downloads it at up to…

Buddy Melges is one of the all-time best sailors that the United States has produced in the past 70 years. His resume includes an Olympic gold medal, helming an America’s Cup yacht to victory, being named Rolex Yachtsman of the Year three times, and winning dozens of world and national championships in Stars, Solings, E Scows and many other classes. Melges is a hero to generations of sailors based on his tireless mission of helping other aspiring sailors to improve their sailing skills. A new feature-length film being produced by Mark Honer aims to tell the Melges story, which he describes as “a biography about the life and sailing career of the legendary Buddy Melges.” Over the past year, Honer interviewed sailors from across the United States and throughout the…

After last year’s pandemic-related hiatus, boat shows are making a comeback for fall 2021. Cruising World will be hitting the docks at Rhode Island’s Newport International Boat Show, September 16-19, and the US Sailboat Show in Annapolis, Maryland, October 14-18. Whether you’re heading to a show to check out new boats and gear, learn new skills, or just want to catch up with old friends, from the looks of it, there will be something for everyone. I checked in with Nancy Piffard, NIBS director, and Tara Flanagan, educational coordinator for the Annapolis Boat Shows, to see what visitors can expect when they arrive at the shows and what’s new. “Our entire team is working fervently to make sure our Golden Anniversary Show is an event not to be missed,” Piffard…

In 2011, we spent several months sailing the islands in the Kingdom of Tonga. Every morning, I would listen to the marine weather forecast on the VHF, and most afternoons, with fingers crossed and tongue held just the right way, I would download weather charts broadcast out of New Zealand over the HF radio receiver. Everything got written down in a notebook, including observations about our local conditions. For weeks at a time, this basic system of information gathering and weather predicting was what we used to hide from the constantly shifting winds of our late-season explorations. These days it’s hard to find an anchorage without a cellphone signal, and the amount of weather information available online is seemingly endless. But fancy, high-tech graphics don’t always mean accurate weather forecasting,…