Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2024 i SAIL

We were sailing from Atlantic City to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, on a breezy summer day, and I’ll admit we were kind of a hot mess. The boat—a 45-foot Solent-rigged sloop—was new to us, and we’d just embarked on a monthlong shakedown cruise to New England. Or someplace. It was hard to say, really. This was the boat we dreamed would be taking us cruising full-time sometime soon, much bigger, heavier, and more complex than our 34-foot IOR racer-turned-cruiser that we and our two kids had sailed for seven years on the Chesapeake. But how hard could it be? Johnny and I had sailed and raced thousands of miles together, offshore and elsewhere. We’d sailed our whole lives. So it was unnerving to feel like Osprey, the big new boat,…

Few sailors can write about passage-making with more authority than Lin Pardey. And true to her life as a writer and sailor, her new book is a lively accounting of some remarkable passages, including rounding Cape Horn against the prevailing winds with her late husband, Larry, in their 29-foot cutter, Taleisin. So, in that sense, this latest book will more than satisfy readers who have for decades lived vicariously and learned so much through the Pardeys’ voracious appetite for sailing the world in a small boat and living a life of freedom, creativity, and joy that has inspired so many cruising sailors to make the leap. But it is navigating the unknown, deeper life passages that this book is truly about, most significantly the gradual loss of Larry to Parkinson’s…

As one of this year’s Magenta Project mentees, I had the opportunity to try out a new bit of kit in the form of Mustang Survival’s EP 38 Ocean Racing Life Jacket. It immediately became my go-to. This life jacket sits on my shoulders differently than my previous offshore life jacket. The bulk of the jacket is centered more on the chest and less over the shoulders, making it a significantly lower profile and more comfortable fit. It doesn’t feel constricting, and when you’re wearing it for days on end offshore, that’s important. I took my Safety at Sea course this summer and used the EP 38 for the in-water portion, giving me an opportunity to get the full experience. Anecdotally, I seemed to have more freeboard than pretty much…

I first saw the new Hanse 410 at the Annapolis spring boat show in April. Like her big sister the 510, which I had sailed the previous fall (a SAIL Top 10 Best Boats winner for 2024), she looked sharky even trussed and fendered to the dock. Her reverse, wave-piercing bow, flat sheer, and gradually sloping, lean cabintop combined for a profile that was rakish and speedy. A week or so later, we took her for a spin on a sterling spring day on the Chesapeake Bay with a 12- to 15-knot southerly, and I was happy to find that this boat is even handier and just as quick as her big sister. To my way of thinking, this is a huge positive, because no matter how you slice those…

When Safe Harbor purchased the storied Newport Ship-yard in 2019, the company principles knew that they were acquiring a piece of yacht racing history. The same year they also purchased New England Boatworks, and then the Jamestown Boat Yard in early 2020. They realized they were embedding themselves in the very fabric of one of America’s yachting capitals, and to acknowledge that heritage, they set about organizing the first Safe Harbor Race Weekend. “We initially talked about it being a small regatta, but as discussions continued, the excitement and the vision grew and grew. If we were going to do it, we wanted it to be the best of the best,” says Rebecca LeBlanc, senior vice president of Partnerships and Experiences. They brought in local expertise from other notable races,…

I stepped aboard the new NEEL 52 after the Miami Boat Show and met owner Oliver Liddell in the galley as he was making a chardonnay and orange juice cocktail. It had been a long day for both of us. He was ready to relax, and I was ready to beg for one more test ride. I put on my most plaintive expression and he relented, setting aside his drink and pressing the young team from Miami’s Performance Yacht Sales into action. This latest Marc Lombard design replaces the popular NEEL 51 of which around 40 hulls were built, so it has much to live up to. It also comes on the heels of SAIL’s 2023 Top Ten Best Boats winner, the NEEL 43. The 52 is sleeker than her…

There’s a scene in the movie “Moana” when Tala, the grandmother figure of Motunui, a fictional South Pacific island, is lying on her deathbed, speaking her last words of wisdom to the titular character, who must go to sea to save her village and the world. “There’s nowhere you can go that I won’t be with you,” Grandmother Tala whispers to Moana, who by those words musters the courage to sail out beyond the reef and off to her destiny. Grandmother Tala always reminded me of Pam Wall. In fact, many people referred to Pam as “Grandma Ocean,” especially later in her life. Pam died on August 2, 2024, at 80 years old. She is survived by her son, Jamie, and by her granddaughter, Andinah Jean Power, her late daughter…

Cheeks and Bolsters These tips are supposed to be of general relevance, but last week in the boatyard bar I met a guy who wanted to know more about how a traditional rig differed from his production boat. I explained what happens at the hounds, and he was astonished, so just for fun I’m sharing it with everyone today. The hounds of a gaff mast make a bold contrast with the tangs and toggles of a modern yacht spar. The leathered shrouds are looped over the masthead to rest on hardwood bolsters. These sit on top of cheeks let into the face of the spar. The system is pretty much foolproof, and it’s so easy to build that a competent amateur can manage it. Relieving the Load In an ideal…

The class of 2025 is shaping up to be an intriguing mix, and while the push continues toward greater interior volume, maximum comfort, and easy sailhandling, there’s encouraging emphasis on performance characteristics making it easier for sailors to do more sailing and less motoring, especially in lighter air. This year’s nominees also reveal a steady trend offering electric propulsion options, although most stick with traditional diesel as the standard for now. We also appreciate how, even in what can at first glance seem like a somewhat homogenous set of choices when walking the docks, there’s always much more than meets the eye if you care to expand your view. Whether a design is an energizing combination of traditional lines and leading-edge composite build, is pushing the performance and energy autonomy…

It was during my eighth and most recent transatlantic, this one a classic trade wind route from Mindelo, Cape Verde, to Barbados in the Eastern Caribbean, that the beauty of rigging a down-wind pole really shone through. “The bonkers tradewind sailing continues, faster and steadier than ever,” I wrote in the log during the middle of that passage. “Each time I check the log for the previous 24-hour distance run, the numbers get bigger. From 10pm yesterday until 10pm today we’ve covered 213 miles. That’s an average pace of almost 9 knots, and just with the white sails. We haven’t laid a finger on the mainsheet since jibing the rig around back on Day 1! Lying in my bunk down below I can just feel the boat accelerate down each…

“Do we have any milk?” she asked, standing in the galley, a blue plastic cup in her hand. How could I have been surprised, since this was her third morning in a row making that request? We were on a training run to California’s Channel Islands with a crew of nine students on a chartered 65-footer. We had left San Diego days earlier and hadn’t stopped as we clawed our way north on an indirect path to San Nicholas, a weatherbeaten island near Point Conception. There was no milk onboard when we departed, and the situation hadn’t changed. Yet, every morning came the question. It was as if she thought we had made a quick but secret dash to a 7-Eleven in the middle of the Pacific or maybe had…

Picture this: We’re anchored Swedish-style, bow up against the rocks, stern anchor pulled tight on the starboard quarter, pine trees gently rustling in the light summer breeze, parked up in the outer Stockholm archipelago. Our 4-year-old son, Axel, is climbing up and down the bow ladder, onto and off of the rocks, on repeat. Mia is in her wetsuit and goggles, swimming laps behind the boat in the 62-degree water, training for an open water swim later in the summer. I’m relaxing in the cockpit, taking it all in, one eye on Mia and the other on Axel, daydreaming about the beautiful downwind sail we had earlier that day to get here, Mia and me taking turns driving the boat while Axel “made coffee” on the companionway steps. Now picture…