Innholdsfortegnelse for May_2016 i Yachting Monthly

Portaferry festival The Portaferry classic boat and music festival is inviting classic boats to Strangford Loch from 17 to 19 June. The festival will include music, classic cars, theatre and a farmers’ market as well as the sailing regatta. Tayport all-tide access Tayport Harbour in Fife has been dredged and can now be accessed by most yachts on all but the lowest spring tides. The entrance channel is now 0.8m below chart datum and the harbour is 0.6m below CD. Contessa 26 anniversary The iconic Contessa 26 is 50 years old this year. 20 boats have signed up for the 50th Anniversary Rally (29-31 July), in Lymington, and it is hoped more yachts from the class will also come. www.contessa26.net Volunteer skippers wanted Team ViSA GB (The Visually Impaired Sailing…

EMAIL yachtingmonthly@timeinc.com POST The Editor, Yachting Monthly, Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark Street, London SE1 0SU Please send us your letters in less than 200 words Most letters are edited for brevity. You can read more correspondence, online, at www.yachtingmonthly.com/letters WIN A BOTTLE OF RUM The letter of the month wins a bottle of Pusser’s Rum, produced to Admiralty specification and served daily to every sailor in the Royal Navy for more than 300 years (UK residents only) www.pussers.com Chain or rope? Regarding Should we trust rope or chain? (Mar 16), there is no right answer as each of us enjoys cruising our own way. In my favourite cruising ground, the west coast of Scotland, there are so many lovely anchorages. I used 40m of 3/8in chain on my Nicholson…

This was my log entry for 25 March 1977: ‘1400 – Horrified to witness the formation of a waterspout about a mile to leeward. Started like a cloud on the water reaching up to heaven. Then, out of a squall above, a dark tornado came fingering down until they joined together. Apparently the wind in the centre can hit 200mph, so it’s best not to hang around. However, it tumbled into the sea, great was the fall of it, and it left us with enough breeze to try for St Croix.’ My wife’s log entry indicates different priorities: ‘1830. Wind falling. Skipper getting the grumps. Bluggoes, Xu-Xu and Irish Stew for supper, followed by lemon curd tart. Beautiful sunset. Silent except for the crackling of sails. Off to bed with…

Practical advice for all sailors Tom Cunliffe has sailed tens of thousands of miles all over the world and has been a Yachtmaster Examiner since 1978 Washed up Mid-stream river pontoons can make an attractive proposition when you’re looking for a berth. There’s only one problem. Unlike a formal marina, whose fingers are (or at least should be) in quiet water, a midstream pontoon has all the river traffic barrelling by, and they don’t all respect your topsides and slow down. The result is that every weekend your poor yacht spends hours bashing against her fenders, which is no good at all. What’s more, any grit in the equation will grind away at the gelcoat. If there’s a choice, the berth on the inside – away from the main waterway…

EMAIL yachtingmonthly@timeinc.com POST Any Questions, Yachting Monthly, Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark Street, London SE1 0SU Please send us your questions in less than 200 words WIN CHILGROVE GIN The question of the month wins a bottle of Chilgrove Gin (UK residents only). This super-premium gin, handcrafted by keen sailors in the Sussex Downs, blends the finest botanicals with a neutral grape spirit. www.chilgrovespirits.com Why is my engine corroding? Q Over the summer last year, one of the cooling pipes on our Volvo Penta engine slipped, rubbed on the flywheel and sprayed salt water onto the engine. We shut the engine down before there was any damage internally, then thoroughly cleaned the engine off and even repainted it, but salt crystals still keep appearing on top of the paint and around…

I was glad to see the back of Cherbourg. As the Napoleonic masonry of its harbour walls dwindled to a dark line on the horizon I felt I was at last away. I had bought a new boat there, Wendy May, a 26ft gaff cutter built in 1936 and designed by a former editor of this magazine, Maurice Griffiths. The sale had been completed in October, but work requirements and inclement weather had kept her in port until the following May. Now it was time to bring her home, so I arrived on the Portsmouth ferry with my crew, Martyn Mackrill, Royal Yacht Squadron artist-in-residence and owner of Nightfall, a beautiful 31ft gaff sloop, not designed, but nevertheless once sailed by Griffiths as well: we’d joked over stale croissants in…

There’s always a good read hidden on a sailor’s shelves. Tell us your favourite. EMAIL theo.stocker@timeinc.com The east, south and west shores of Australia are well protected by large tracts of ocean. Her northern border with New Guinea and Indonesia, however, is guarded only by the Arafura and Timor Seas. These stretches of water are narrow. The distance from Timor, for example, south to Australia is only 300 miles. The consequence of Australian border protection policy in recent years has been the development of an active trade in peoplesmuggling from the north, particularly across the Timor Sea. It is also a busy highway for terrorist traffic and illegal drugs. I set off into these troubled waters on 31 October 2010, with a feeling of trepidation. During the southern summer the…

Holy Island is a special place, whether you get there by boat or causeway. Just a mile and half wide and three miles long, it is a small, low-lying island of sand dunes and fields. Home to a Christian community since St Aidan founded the monastery in 635AD, there are still several retreat houses on the island. 1,400 years of spiritual tradition and the quiet remoteness have imbued the island with a tangible sense of peace that many still come to enjoy. Exploring the island’s headlands, bays, sand flats and grassy dunes is enough to fill a day, let alone attempting the pilgrim’s causeway across the mud if the tides are right. Historical interest The ruined Norman priory, the 16th century castle on its volcanic plug and the 19th century…

Nestled between the northern islands of the Isles of Scilly, St Helen’s Pool enjoys nearly all-round shelter – a rare attribute in these parts. With Tresco to the west, St Martin’s to the east, and the islands of St Helen’s and Tean to the north, only the south is open, though distant St Mary’s still acts as a windbreak and keeps the swell away. This picturesque expanse of water provides several small nooks and crannies to explore as well as a spacious deep-water anchorage. Historically this was one of the best Scillonian havens for large craft seeking a roomy, sheltered refuge when St Mary’s Road became too exposed. With good holding in sand and a depth of 5m in the centre, the islands ringing the anchorage keep it free of…

I felt I had learned a number of things from my year single-handing a yacht. ■ Don’t fall overboard. Getting back on board is very hard and stopping the boat is even harder ■ Always wear a lifejacket with EPIRB or PLB attached and carry a VHF radio ■ Don’t go below while under way unless it’s totally unavoidable ■ Prepare food in advance and make allowances for pitstops ■ Over-dress. It’s easier to cool off than it is to warm up ■ Plan everything and share your plan with someone ashore who is able to confirm your location ■ Practise using a line on a midships cleat (or a genoa track) for springing off and coming alongside singlehanded ■ Be especially conservative when anchoring. Leave plenty of room. Allow…

Thousands of leisure craft already have AIS receivers. Now, however, boat owners are realising the importance of being seen, as well as seeing other vessels, and are fitting or upgrading to an AIS transponder. Technically it should be called a transceiver, but the industry has adopted ‘transponder’ as a fitting description for AIS that transmits and receives, so to avoid confusion from here onwards we’ll refer to them as such. Because it’s so useful to overlay AIS information on electronic charts, we’ve mainly focused on ‘black box’ AIS transponders that don’t have their own screens and are designed to display data on a chartplotter. What is AIS? An AIS receiver or transponder enables you to ‘see’ other vessels on a plotter screen, along with their characteristics (position, SOG, COG and…

The benefits of a collision bulkhead are obvious, but how do you install one in a small yacht without spoiling her forecabin? It’s a question that I’ve pondered and has always niggled me as it’s something I could find no way of achieving until a simple solution came to me. In sailing, as in other activities, securing improvements in safety depends on identifying each likely hazard, assessing the risk that it poses and then finding a way to eliminate or reduce that risk. Semi-waterlogged shipping containers and other heavy objects are scattered around the world’s oceans and occasionally yachts are holed by hitting them. Keeping a good lookout is a conventional solution, but who can spot the corner of a weedcovered steel box that is floating low on the surface,…

Freedom 35 – Performance on test Every yacht needs a mast, but not every mast needs standing rigging to hold it up. It would be easy to dismiss a rig that one feels looks ‘wrong’ as actually being wrong, but when you’ve sailed a Freedom rig you’ll realise how they got their name. Freedom Yachts of Rhode Island, USA, produced the Freedom range of cruising yachts with free-standing rigs from 1976 to 1985. Their stayless rig was originally developed in 1976 by a free-thinking American, Garry Hoyt, and his first yacht to sport this was the fast, but easy to handle Freedom 40. The class won races worldwide and became a regular sight at many regattas. Not to be confused with the later David Pedrickdesigned Freedom 35, which came into…

Legend 31 – Performance on test Boat model sizes confuse me. Bavaria’s new 34 is 32ft, this Legend 31 is 32ft, my father’s old Beneteau First 325 was 34ft and don’t get me started on Elan’s E3. I’m not suggesting this is a way of hoodwinking buyers (or harbourmasters), but it seems the goalposts are forever moving and the only way to know for sure is to look at the hull length. ‘Hull length’, mind, not ‘length overall’ (LOA), for that is a different can of worms. The Legend 31’s 31ft 11in hull length is bigger than her name suggests and her interior is on an even larger scale, as is the width of her cockpit. To get headroom in smaller yacht usually means you end up with a tubby-looking…

What’s she like to sail? Our test boat had twin keels, and unless you were hard on the wind you’d be pushed to tell. She was nimble through the tacks and responded to the helm in a timely fashion. The cockpit layout seems to prevent anything being done quickly, but it does make sailing safe and simple, and the loads are light. The one exception to this is the top guardrails fouling the genoa winches, which makes tacking more of a cumbersome affair. At the helm you do feel rather far back: the bathing platform creates a solid barrier behind you and the space between that and the wheel isn’t generous – it feels high, but not exposed. The cockpit is wide and the canting wheel is a necessity, rather…

Zhik ZK Seaboot Zhik’s ZKboot was developed for extreme weather. Graham Snook tested a pair for a season to see how good they really are Initially I thought the neoprene liner might get hot, sweaty and quite frankly too aromatic in the confines of a small yacht. I’m glad to report I was wrong These ZK Seaboots really are great. The neoprene bootleg is warm and flexible and the outer gaiters keep oilskin trousers in check. They grip the deck really well, whether it’s wet or dry. Two loops at the top of the boot aid putting them on and the ankle areas are loose enough to slip them on easily. They have a soft rubber grip on the sole, which if worn ashore would pick up bits of grit…

If you have a news story to share, contact News Editor Theo Stocker EMAIL theo.stocker@timeinc.com TEL 020 3148 4873 A yacht has been attacked by pirates in the Arabian Sea, despite reduced risk warnings for the area. The yacht was en route from the Maldives to Djibouti in February 2016 when she was surrounded by several skiffs and pirates aboard a dhow attempted to ram and board the yacht. The yacht, a Crealock 50, skippered by her American owner and crewed by Englishman William Pardoe, was able to fend off the threatened attack at the last minute by brandishing two AK47 assault rifles they had on board, although no shots were fired. William Pardoe, 25, explained what happened: ‘On the tenth day of our passage, we had seen a Royal…

Regarding In winds above force 5, catenary disappears (Mar 16) the amount of catenary, and hence shock absorption, increases not only with chain weight (an argument against using lighter high tensile Grade 40 chain), but also with chain length. In shallow water, 4:1 scope does not provide enough chain length to allow sufficient shock absorption. I prefer ‘4:1 or 30m, whichever is greater.’ Vyv doesn’t mention the chain length when catenary was removed by simulating force 6 wind, but with 30m of chain, I suspect he could need force 7 or 8. (Ed: Vyv has observed catenary disappearing with 35m of chain in 2m of water in Cala Volpe, Sardinia, ‘certainly in winds of force 6, perhaps a little less and certainly more’). Either way, you still need rope in…

From my bedroom window I can see a small stone memorial in the corner of an ancient churchyard overlooking the Thames Estuary; on it are the names of four fisherman killed while returning from the beaches of Dunkirk. In May, scores of sailors are heading across the English Channel for the beaches of Malo-les-Bains in the hope that they may be included in a Hollywood epic about the World War II evacuation of 338,226 Belgian, British and French soldiers from the beaches in June 1940. Not many of them will be aware of the memorial in St Clements churchyard as they sail past. 76 years ago, after the German Panzer units swept the British Expeditionary Force into a pocket around the Channel ports, more than 800 ‘little ships’ including Thames…

Bill Anderson is YM’s seamanship guru. He was RYA chief instructor from 1972 to 2000 and created the Yachtmaster scheme It had become a family tradition. On the first neap tide weekend in May, David and Margaret took their grown-up sons for a weekend early season cruise that included dinner at their favourite riverside pub. But this year it proved to be a difficult expedition. The visitor’s mooring they had used for years was no longer there. The residents’ moorings had expanded slightly upriver, leaving just a short space between the moorings and the bridge available for anchoring. They arrived just after high water to find that there was no longer a visitor’s mooring. There wasn’t even an unoccupied resident’s mooring which looked substantial enough for them. There was just…

Offshore sailing is not for everyone. If you’re happy with coastal sailing and being in a safe harbour or marina at night, you may be better off sticking to that. When passage planning, refer to several different forecasts. GRIB files are good up to a point but, being based on computer modelling, lack the human interpretation of a GMDSS forecast. Even using both, sudden changes can happen on ocean passages, so be prepared. Preparing your boat properly for a long passage is a prerequisite but it is worth double-checking everything. Something as simple as an unsecured tender can become a major problem in stormy conditions. It is difficult to sleep on a boat at sea, especially in rough conditions, and fatigue can affect your performance and decisionmaking. Try to rest…

I’ve moored my boats on the West Solent’s Beaulieu River since 1985 when the family and I pitched up from an American voyage in our old pilot cutter. As luck would have it, Sir Francis Chichester had vacated a suitable buoy not many years before, so, not having a house at the time, we made the river our home. The quietness and the wildlife were high on our wish list. One spring morning, my wife watched a stag with full antlers swim across the river past our stern, and when we moved ashore we named our cottage after the migrant geese of the marshlands. The fact that the river isn’t jam-packed with moorings and has only one small marina appealed, but best of all was, and still is, the shelter.…

Load acting on your anchor SOURCE: ABYC When a yacht suffers gear or engine failure off a lee shore, her crew’s last lines of defence are getting a tow or throwing the anchor overboard and hoping it holds. However, even the world’s best anchor and strongest chain count for nothing if your deck fittings are not up to the job. Often overlooked and rarely included in the annual maintenance routine, your cleats and bow roller could be your weakest link that let you down when you need them most. Unless you’ve had the boat from brand new or replaced your bow roller or cleats, it’s impossible to know what forces have been exerted on them before you bought her – or even if they were really up to the job…

What’s she like to sail? If you’ve never sailed a Freedom, it’s a little daunting looking at all the lines running aft, but once you’ve seen someone who knows how it’s done you begin to realise that it’s actually quite straightforward. The first thing you notice is that nothing is straining, creaking or groaning under massive tension or compression. The wishbone booms are light, quiet and act as a mere sail guide, rather than a device to tame the sail. The two-ply, wrap-around sails come down low, below the booms. No kicker is needed as the sail seems to naturally form the ideal aerodynamic shape without being forced. The sails are self-tacking, on long tracks and each has a 3:1 sheet tackle, which is more than enough to allow them…

WIN The confession of the month wins a floating Standard Horizon handheld VHF radio worth £140 PLUS an original Bill Caldwell cartoon STANDARD HORIZON POST Confessions, Yachting Monthly, Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark Street, London SE1 0SU EMAIL yachtingmonthly@timeinc.com Please send us your confessions in less than 200 words Failed at the first step CONFESSION OF THE MONTH By John Holloway After years of sailing UK waters, we wanted to cruise abroad long term. I thought it would be wise to get an International Certificate of Competence (ICC), so I organised a test with my local sailing school. It was quite a daunting prospect, and when the day came I was unsettled. Would he fail me at the first tack? I put on a brave face and, with my regular crew…

Szymon Kuczynski completed a solo circumnavigation in March. The trip took the Polish sailor 15 months in his Maxus 22 Atlantic Puffin. The journey is not a new one, but Szymon’s is remarkable for the fact that his Maxus 22 is only 6.4m long, has no auxiliary engine and was designed and built as a lake-sailing keelboat. His 27,000 mile trade-wind route took him from the Canary Islands, through the Panama Canal, and south of the Cape of Good Hope. He faced several challenges during the circumnavigation. On one leg north of Australia, he lost all communications with his shore team when his satellite phone stopped working. He also encountered a number of storms up to Force 12. In one of these the boat was swamped by a breaking wave,…

North or South, that is the question: whether ’tis nobler in the yachtsman to seek the sleet and icebergs of outrageous Northlands, or to bare arms upon a sea of sunshine and by exposing, tan them? When cruise planning starts for each season, we are all indecisive Hamlets. Or, if not, Montagues and Capulets, forever locked in tribal argument about which way to point. For us whose climatic destiny is mainly in the temperate oceanic islands of Great Britain and Eire, in periods when there is time for more than a mere Channel or North Sea crossing in your life there is always that question: Which way to sail? You can go north – Norway, Orkney, Shetland, Faeroes, Iceland, Greenland, over to Newfoundland where the great whales play. Or you…

REEDS OCEAN HANDBOOK By Bill Johnson, published by Adlard Coles Nautical at £9.99 With a title as allencompassing as this one, you might expect a massive tome, but it is actually labelled ‘a comprehensive pocket guide’ and it is just that; 176 pocket sized pages containing a wealth of practical information. Topics covered include climate, route planning, navigation, astro nav, boat preparation, heavy weather, communications, passage making and emergencies. There is an astonishing amount packed in and that inevitably means that some sections are written in less detail than others, which isn’t a problem, because this will not be the only book you buy before starting a first ocean passage. It still includes a lot of adequate answers, and its main purpose is to provoke thought and discussion. You may…

Research and communication ‘Forward planning and knowledge of marina layouts is key. Download Reeds UK marina guide with your phone and look at the marina’s website. Ensure you have the VHF channel that the Dockmasters use. Understand local tides and note wind speed and direction. Anticipate these things, use them to your advantage, but if in doubt, ask a Dockmaster!’ General safety Your crew must know the plan and what they’re doing, lifejackets should be worn. Communicate clearly and calmly. Never jump onto a pontoon (step down holding onto a guardrail or stanchion instead), or throw ropes – that’s when accidents often occur. Supervise children and don’t let them perform mooring duties unless they really know their role. Your spring lines must be long enough to cover fore and aft…

Lucy Wilson is the seventh generation of Wilson to work at nautical chart and book publisher Imray, Laurie, Norie and Wilson Useful websites You can find Notices to Mariners and corrections at the websites below: ■ UKHO www.ukho.gov.uk/nms ■ Imray www.imray.com/corrections ■ SHOM (France) www.shom.fr/en/services/keep-documents-up-todate/gan/Or use bit.ly/1SVSeEo ■ The Netherlands www.defensie.nl/english/topics/notices-to-mariners Or use bit.ly/1UGtIEY ■ BSH (Germany) www.bsh.de/en/Maritime_shipping/Small_craft/Chart_correction_service/index.jsp Or use bit.ly/1QERcJu CHART CORRECTION SERVICES There are chart correcting services. Most are for commercial shipping, but B Cooke & Sons (www.bcookeandsons.co.uk) of Hull caters for cruisers. Imray (www.imray.com) also offers a hand correction service for its charts and the cost is £5 with a limit of 10 corrections, or £10 for a chart folio. To navigate safely using paper charts, you ought to be using the most up-to-date chart available. You…

‘My British sensibilities had me blushing right down to my toes’ Sailors without clothes. Perhaps it comes from being away from home and its stigmas, or the feeling of perpetual holiday, or simply no longer caring what anyone thinks, but whichever way you look at it, the truth is that cruisers spend a lot of time naked. This is not a lifestyle choice, I hasten to add. We haven’t suddenly become naturists and no self-respecting sailor expects to carry out a conversation with another whilst in their birthday suit. But liveaboard cruisers, by and large, do enjoy a lot of time without clothes on. An awful lot of it comes down to necessity. It’s hot and humid where we are, and it’s considered dressing up to be in anything other…

It can often seem a long day sailing from the Channel Islands to Tréguier. Such was the case this time and it was late afternoon before I passed La Corne tower. I was now motoring up against the ebbing tide and it was slow progress. I had had enough for one day and considered picking up a buoy off the small village of Roche Jaune. However, the breeze, which until then had been non-existent, strengthened to a moderate headwind and the surrounding shoreline looked bleak and unfriendly. Gradually the buoyed channel became narrower and looked more inviting, and I soon reached the bend in the river where the long sand spit of the Ven bank reached out to the port-hand No. 10 buoy. I had anchored here under the high,…

Combined anode and rope cutter Most shaft propellers require anodes, some also need a rope cutter. So why not combine the two? That’s what SALCA anode rope cutter does. The serrated cutter is designed to protect the propeller from getting snarled up, the anode protects it from galvanic corrosion. The body of the cutter is a zinc anode, while the cutting blades are durable, highperformance stainless steel. The cuttercum-anode can fit shaft diameters from 25mm to 50mm and ¾in to 2¼in. Price from £40 Contact Interform Marine Tel 01494 532335 Web www.interform-marine.co.uk Patriotic deck shoes No prizes for guessing the country of origin for Chatham’s Made in Britain collection. The British family business aimed to make a shoe wholly designed, sourced and produced in the UK. They came very close.…