Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2018 i SAIL

After missing out on Legs 5 and 6 following a fatal collision with a commercial fishing boat just short of the Leg 4 finish in Hong Kong, the joint U.S./Danish effort Vestas 11th Hour Racing was back in action for Leg 7—right through the heart of the Southern Ocean from Auckland, New Zealand, to Itajaí, Brazil. Assuming a successful trip around Cape Horn, the team will also be in Newport, Rhode Island, later this month as part of the 2017-18 Volvo Ocean Race stopover between Legs 8 and 9. For details, see page 16.…

It was the evening of May 6, 2015, and the Volvo Ocean Race was coming to town—eventually. As the sun went down over a placid Atlantic, Chinese-flagged Dongfeng and eventual overall race winner Abu Dhabi, were locked in battle, chasing zephyrs literally a stone’s throw away from one another as they fought for the Leg 6 win. Meanwhile, out on Fort Adams, in Newport, Rhode Island, directly across from the finish out on Narragansett Bay, thousands waited. Darkness fell, and still they waited—right up until Dongfeng crossed the line just three minutes ahead of its rival after 5,000 miles of racing from Itajaí, Brazil. Not only that, but many in both the crowd on shore and in the spectator fleet out 0n the bay also stayed up right through until…

Many couples dream of selling up and casting off, but the prospect of downsizing can be daunting. How do you pack your life into some 40ft of LOA after living in a 2,000ft 2 house? Maybe the British-built Gunfleet 43 has the answer. No, you can’t bring your hot tub, but with the capacious stowage both inside and out aboard this bluewater cruiser, you may be able to bring just about everything else. DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION Gunfleet designers teamed up with naval architect Tony Castro to create this modern and sleek, but simultaneously somewhat traditional cruiser. Her hull is laid up by hand in a female mold with bi-directional glass reinforced by Kevlar cloth on the centerline forward of the keel for added strength. Below the waterline, the hull is…

The rain blew sideways as we beat to windward. Rock! A welter of whitewater appeared fine to starboard. Were our charts for the Aleutian Islands off? In the past few years, we’ve become accustomed to the fine charting in Alaska—could there be an uncharted reef off the Kilokak Rocks? The waves, however, didn’t break again. Another burst of white water and—this time I saw it—a black shape in the fading light, coming three-quarters out of the water. Stubby pectoral fins. No dorsal. “Whale! Get up! Get up!” Everyone else was curled up in their warm beds. We’d seen a lot of whales this summer—40 orcas circling, a dozen humpbacks feeding, the surge of a handful of orcas and humpbacks in the tidal swirl of the Aleutian passes. But this was…

Andrew Taylor was working the foredeck of Derry-Londonderry-Doire, a competitor in the 2014 Clipper Round the World Race, on a stormy day in the Pacific when his worst fears became reality. “At some point, the boat moved pretty dramatically,” Taylor said. “The boat went down, and when it came back up, I wasn’t onboard anymore.” Taylor survived in the near-freezing Pacific waters and gale force winds for an hour and a half before he was found by his crew and hoisted back aboard. The key factors in his survival were the seamanship of the 65ft yacht’s skipper and crew, the dry suit that kept hypothermia at bay, and—crucially—his AIS man-overboard beacon. AIS (automatic identification system) is a method of tracking vessels via GPS and sharing this info publicly over certain…

Are you out there sailing, cruising and living the sailing life? Share your experiences with other readers. Send your photos and tips to sailmail@sailmagazine.com And don’t forget to sign up for our free eNewsletter, Under Sail, via our website sailmagazine.com While sailing our 36ft C&C, Destinee V, on Lake Ontario last summer, we got an interesting perspective on one of the world’s tallest structures—the CN Tower in Toronto.—Will and Lesley Ingram, Etobicoke, ON During Oriental, NC’s annual solo race, I singlehanded my Alberg 30 on the Neuse River.—Sheldon Shikoluk, Minnesott Beach, NC This photo was taken from my Beneteau 31, which was anchored nearby. I loved the name of this yacht, Mystic, especially given the setting I photographed it in. Appropriate.—Carl Hughston, Calgary, AB This picture was taken from aboard…

“Tucker!” I snap at my little brother. “You have to be on lookout!” Two years younger than I am, he just looks at me and shrugs. He continues to stare at his computer screen. On watch without the calming experience of my parents, I cannot relax. Saphira seems wild and out of control—I start to breathe more heavily. The darkness of the night seems to seep around the corners, leaking in through the portholes like the rainwater dripping through the companionway door. The red cabin lights deepen the shadows rather than disperse them. A shiver runs down my spine that has little to do with the chill in the air and more to do with the darkness of the night and my overactive imagination. Stepping forward into the cockpit, I…

When news that Hanse Yachts had launched a new form of electric-powered yacht first broke in the winter of 2016, it was widely reported. After all, Hanse is one of the world’s biggest builders of sailing boats, so this had the feeling of a breakthrough to it. After nearly a year, though, just a handful of the “E-Motion” rudder-drive-equipped Hanse 315s have been sold, and by its own admission, Hanse is disappointed. “The problem is that people are still quite skeptical about electric propulsion on water, and we are perhaps a bit ahead of time with this,” says Hanse’s Florian Nierich. It’s not a problem with the boat itself: the 315 is a feisty little sailer that has already sold 140 units, including more than 15 in North America. The…

It had been calm when I went to sleep, a calm that was supposed to have lasted into the next day. But by 0300 it was blowing hard from the northeast and Hope, my Seaward 22, was tugging at her anchor. I was at the western end of Lake Erie, lying uneasily behind a spit of Canadian sand called Pelee Point. It was too precarious a place to stay in a rising breeze. I had two choices: find my way in the dark into an unfamiliar marina about eight miles away or head to my home port, Ohio’s Huron River, 32 miles across the lake. The weather forecast steered my decision toward Huron, with the promise of northeast winds gradually building to 10-20 knots in the afternoon giving me an…

Experience is a fine thing. You may think there is no substitute for it. Every sensible sailor would agree, but when it comes to extreme weather or generally rare events, there aren’t many who can put hand on heart and say that it’s all “old hat.” Luckily, sailing is rich in literature. Of all pastimes, it is probably the most blessed in this respect. This means that even if we haven’t been there ourselves, there’s usually someone else who has and who took the trouble to write about it. The best-prepared sailors are those who understand their options when the time comes. A bit of study upfront pays handsome dividends, but if we haven’t read all we might, a well-stocked saloon bookshelf can still give us an extra chance when…

A 9,000-mile cruise from Hong Kong to Cape Town isn’t a typical shakedown for a new boat, but it convinced Kraken Yachts founder Dick Beaumont that White Dragon, his new Kraken 66, was the boat he hoped it would be. Based in Hong Kong, Beaumont and co-founder Roger Goldsmith started the company two years ago with the intention of building a line of luxury bluewater cruisers to take on the likes of Oyster and Discovery Yachts. I joined them in Cape Town to put the boat through its paces. DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION Although the 66’s styling is contemporary, its hull design, build and systems are conservative. With more than 100,000 miles in his wake, Beaumont knows exactly what he wants in a boat and the three Kraken models reflect his…

It was a bright, sunny and lazy day in the Pacific Intertropical Convergence Zone, some 800 miles from the South American coast. Our Beneteau 423, Shapeshifter, was ambling along in a light, pleasant breeze, and I was contemplating a nap when the radio crackled to life down in the nav station, and a voice called out our boat’s name. Our skipper, Colin, went below to listen. “Shapeshifter, Shapeshifter, Illimite.” It was the sailboat we’d seen on our radar 12 miles ahead of us. Colin answered while I listened from the cockpit. “Illimite, this is Shapeshifter.” “Hey, just wanted to let you guys know that we were just visited by three guys in a panga. They didn’t seem to be threatening. They just asked for a bit of water and food,…

The challenge of establishing healthy performance under power without compromising a boat’s sailing ability seemed unsolvable until the first folding and feathering propellers for leisure sailors appeared on the market. Now, the quest for the ideal low-drag propeller constitutes a highly competitive niche industry. Indeed, if there’s any single area in the marine world as competitive as that of sailmaking, it’s the folding and feathering propeller business. With respect to any of today’s low-drag propellers, however, the benefits in terms of any boat’s sailing characteristics are going to be immediate and readily noticeable. As David Sheppard of the UK’s Bruntons has observed, the “real” competitors out there are fixed propellers. Granted, fixed wheels may be a good deal cheaper, but they seriously compromise the performance of any sailboat on which…

NOT QUITE READY TO REEF Q: I race on a small lake in the Midwest, and most afternoons the wind picks up and is fairly steady, but because of the hills around the lake we oft en get squalls that come through. They don’t last long enough to justify taking a reef, so I was wondering what is the best way to keep from being overpowered. —Joe Tapper, Horicon, WI BRIAN HANCOCK REPLIES It depends on your deck layout. In fact, there are two things that you can do to keep from being overpowered. First, you need to twist off the leech on the headsail, which lets some wind spill out the top of the sail. With the improvement of deck hardware, many sailors have installed a tackle that enables…