Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2015 i Yachting Monthly

Reading these columns, a few of you may have the impression of some leathery old salt, rarely ashore, twinkling across the foredeck with brine in her hair, her mind constantly on yachting life and habits. But think that through, about almost any of us, and it is as much of a dream as any nautical fantasy. I have always worked, and had children and other duties; holidays are limited. Sometimes in recent years Wild Song has been far away, on some stage of Paul’s great voyage to Cape Horn. Our home mooring is a long way from our actual home. Sometimes my annual lust for the sea has had to be slaked by a Tall Ships race instead of a cruising yacht, and topped up with dinghy moments. I write,…

Barrie Neilson runs Sailing Holidays, a leading Greek charter company. He has owned thousands of yachts with in-mast furling since 1990 Furling headsails changed the way we sail, allowing us to remain in the safety of the cockpit. Sailors soon tried doing the same for mainsails and rolling them on the boom, and then in the mast. In theory it is the simplest possible way to handle sails, but many have been put off by these systems’ reputation for jamming and for poor performance. The problems come, says Barrie Neilson, from badly cut sails, poor setup and incorrect use. As boss of Sailing Holidays, which has one of the largest charter fleets in the Mediterranean, he has owned thousands of yachts with furling headsails since 1981 and furling mainsails since…

Furling sails should make life easier, not harder. If you need a winch to furl your genoa, even in a reasonable breeze, all is not well. If you’ve checked your gear, straightened the leads and washed your lines, it’s time to look at your technique. Mainsail technique It takes two to furl a mainsail. One stays on the helm, the other works the lines. Winching shouldn’t even come into it. Most cruisers go head-to-wind to douse their sails. For lowering a slab-reefed sail into lazyjacks, this is the right thing to do. Try it with furling sails, however, and you’re making a rod for your own back. A flogging sail flicks from side to side, catching the wind on both sides with some force. This acts against the furling line…

Duncan Wells is principal of Westview Sailing, author of Stress-free Sailing and creator of LiveSavers (livesavers.co.uk) Have you ever stepped onto a finger pontoon, with mooring line in hand, only to find the finger dipping to the waterline under your weight and shivering beneath your feet as you attempt to balance? Securing the boat comes a poor second to staying dry and the berthing manoeuvre soon goes wrong. You’ll find this sort of skinny, half-length finger pontoon in some British marinas, but they’re very common in France, where they tend to be shorter, narrower and less buoyant than ours. The obvious solution to this problem is to stay on the boat. If there’s a T-cleat on the finger, load one end of a mooring line on a cockpit winch you…

All Aboard! By Rod Shiers, published by Lodestar Books at £12 The author decided sailing around the UK was the perfect way to celebrate retirement. Being dismasted prior to the start ensured careful preparation, which resulted in a successful trip for him, his Westerly Fulmar Shearwater and a changing crew of friends and family. Starting from Portishead and sailing clockwise via Bangor, Stromness and the English Channel, Shearwater covered 2,400 miles. With inevitably mixed weather, progress was not always good, but there were also moments of elation to offset the frustration. The adventure is nicely written and my only regret is the lack of illustration beyond three sketched route maps. Chile North and Chile South By Andrew O’Grady, published by Imray at £12.99 per section Like many pilots today, these…

Bill’s answer from p26 Precariously balanced – how would you react? You have clearly had the misfortune of the yacht being perfectly balanced and drying out bolt upright. You have to keep her that way for a couple of hours until the water returns to re-float her. The danger is that someone else is going to wake up, decide that they need to visit the heads, get out of their bunk and unbalance her. You have just two options. Shout to waken the crew, tell them what the situation is and warn them that they must not move until they are certain that the yacht has re-floated. You do risk that someone will wake up with a start and move before you have explained the situation. Your second option is…

‘I’ll come with you,’ said Rose. ‘On two conditions…’ Jeff Snoxell couldn’t believe his luck. His girlfriend, fresh back from her studies in America, had not only agreed to marry him – she’d also accepted that a yacht, rather than a house, would be their matrimonial home. In Rose’s absence Jeff, 43, a freelance web designer, had got himself seriously hooked on sailing. He’d completed an RYA Day Skipper Theory course, bought himself a 26ft Westerly Centaur and started dreaming about sailing around Britain to look for the perfect place to live aboard. Here was the chance to actually do it. ‘She wanted a trial period of one year,’ he tells me with a smile. ‘And a bigger boat for her shoes.’ It had been a steep learning curve for…

Like New York and Paris, the city of Cork was founded on an island in the middle of its river. Cork has ancient origins and a proud history, and regards itself as the true capital of Ireland, despite the upstart pretensions of Dublin. With a population of 120,000, Cork is the third largest city on the island of Ireland and the second city of the Republic. The River Lee winds its way through the city and opens into one of the world’s largest and best sheltered natural harbours. Home to the world’s oldest yacht club, steeped in history, a hive of modern industry, a naval base and a major port, Cork Harbour also has corners of breathtaking beauty and tranquillity, and makes a perfect miniature cruising ground in itself. The…

The main nautical shortcoming of the Isles of Scilly is the paucity of all-weather havens. Green Bay comes close to fulfilling the need, but only for boats that can take the ground. This idyllic drying bay is tucked safely just off the Tresco Flats between the islands of Bryher and Tresco and enjoys near all-round shelter on firm, drying sand. On our last visit, a neighbouring boat had been there all summer, soaking up the Scillonian sun, safe and secure in the knowledge that both he and his spaniel would be well protected should the weather turn inclement, though the sunny days stretched out during a blazing summer. For those yachts restricted to deep water, the moorings and anchorage of adjacent New Grimsby Sound are the next best bet, albeit…

It’s amazing how much dust gathers on my yacht. I drag my bulky, mainspowered cylinder model down the companionway steps – putting a large dent in the chart table edge trim on the way – vacuum the boat, pack it up and take chunks out of companionway, turn around and there’s a bit I missed. The next week the dust was back again and I stupidly forgot about the leaky stanchion base and sucked up a half-litre or so of rainwater into the machine, which did it no end of good. After that I decided to check out which of the cordless or 12V models might be suitable for boat use. Should I choose wet & dry? There are not many small, portable vacuum cleaners available that can suck up…

In a standard weave all threads are the same denier, but cloth manufacturers produce technical weaves where thicker, stronger threads are added. Fed along the fill and warp orientations, the thicker yarns give the cloth more strength and stability. They act as reinforcing beams, resisting stretch. Another advantage of these stronger threads is they can prevent a tear from running across the sail, giving rip-stop properties. If a sails rips, the tear should stop at the thicker yarn, allowing the owner to resolve the problem before it’s too late. How’s it made In the weave process, either warp and/or fill yards can be of a different thickness to the majority of threads that make up the cloth. The loom is set up to create the desired pattern. Another option is…

If you have a news story to share, contact News Editor Theo Stocker EMAIL theo.stocker@timeinc.com TEL 020 3148 4873 Construction of the Rampion offshore wind farm near Brighton has begun, but plans for a large wind farm in Navitus Bay off the Dorset coast have been rejected. Planning consent for the controversial Navitus Bay Wind Park project has been refused by the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. Energy Minister Lord Bourne announced in September his decision to refuse the application by Navitus Bay Development Limited for both the original, larger proposal and an alternative, smaller wind farm on the same site. In contrast, the Rampion wind farm, to be operated by E.ON, will be the first offshore wind farm anywhere on the south coast. Seabed preparations are…

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 Edible fouling To the untrained eye, a plate of Galician goose barnacles (percebes in Spanish) could look like the sweepings of a hull-cleaning session, but their price, up to €70 per kilo, would soon convince the uninitiated otherwise. While in Riveira fish market, Ria Arousa, we bought a handful along with…

‘The rain it raineth every day.’ So sang Feste, Shakespeare’s wise old clown, probably describing the state of affairs in Illyria some time around 1600. I suspect, though, that he saw the future and was actually thinking about the second half of Summer 2015. What a shocker! Most home-waters sailors seem to have some tale to tell of being storm-bound, asking themselves if the whole carry-on was really worth all the money and commitment. One of my chums capitulated to the downpour in a mud berth in Faversham; another had to concede that South Brittany wasn’t at its best when Metéo France’s precipitation pots were filling at over 30mm a day. As for me, I fetched up on a desolate pontoon in Brixham being stiffed for forty quid a night.…

A effective furling mainsail needs a number of key features. The major difference from a slab-reefed mainsail is on the trailing edge – the leech. Roach (a convex curve on the leech) needs battens and a leech line to control it. A furling sail has an inverse roach – a concave curve – so it stays under tension. Furling sails also have to be cut flat, with no belly, to avoid creases. Shape the sail with outhaul tension instead, as with the genoa sheet and car settings. The clew needs to be cut higher to allow for the outhaul track and blocks above the boom. If the sail is cut with a horizontal foot, the boom will hang below horizontal and the seams on the foot will furl on top…

Furling and unfurling the genoa is an everyday action that should be simple and easy, but all too often it’s a back-breaking task. No wonder many sailors resort to their winches. Even a large genoa, however, should be light enough to be furled reasonably easily by one person from the helm with the sheet in one hand and the furling line in the other. If it’s not, have another look at your setup. Check the lead angles, service the blocks or replace the furling line. Look up to check there isn’t an issue at the masthead. The technique is simpler than with the mainsail, as you don’t need to worry about the sail passing though the mast slot so it makes no difference which tack you’re on. As with the…

I’ve always been driven toward a selfsufficient, off-grid lifestyle so, having spent months reading up on yachts, I bought a second-hand Hunter 19, Zulu Hunter. As a lifelong camper I reckoned a boat would be a floating tent with a solid roof instead of a nylon one. She was lying in Connel, just north of Oban, and I spent a couple of weeks practising sailing before setting out for the River Clyde. I stocked up on supplies, including a canister of CampingGaz to fit a small stove I packed when I left Glasgow. I didn’t know there was already a camping stove onboard, and it had a different connector anyway. I sailed from Dunstaffnage Marina south toward the Atlantic Bridge near Puilladobhrain. The Atlantic Bridge crosses a narrow channel called…

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 A BOTTLE OF TALISKER The question of the month wins a bottle of Talisker 10-year-old single malt Scotch whisky (UK residents only). Talisker is an official supporter of the RNLI and the only single malt made by the sea on the shores of the Isle of Skye. www.malts.com QUESTION OF THE MONTH Which lightweight dinghy? Q I have a Bavaria 30 cruiser and an ageing back, restricting heavy lifting. I am keen to buy a new lightweight dinghy as most inflatables are too heavy for one person to manage. The three possibilities seem to be the 3D inflatable, the O2 Lite and the Highfield…

Born 200 years ago this November, Grace Darling won fame saving survivors from the wreck of the SS Forfarshire. Her story starts at 1800 on Wednesday 5 September 1838 when Captain John Humble took Forfarshire out of Hull on a scheduled voyage to Dundee. Forfarshire, a brigantine-rigged paddle steamship, was an accident in waiting. By 0400 Thursday morning either her ‘starboard boiler had all leaked out and they were obliged to put two fires out,’ or, as the engineer later claimed, ‘a small leak appeared and continued for about six hours, but not to any extent’. He had often seen it as bad and ‘the pumps kept the vessel quite dry,’ according to the inquiry report. The engineer’s repairs, if any, did not last but as they went through the…

We had just taken an almost two-day long trip by plane from Cape Town to Ushuaia in Argentina, the most southerly town in the world. My dad, Skip Novak, my brother Luca and I met our boat Pelagic and Dave and Bertie, who both work on the boat from time to time. My mum, Elena Caputo, would meet us later in the trip because she had to stay behind to work. She is a journalist and Nelson Mandela had died the night before we left. Dave would come with us as crew until she could join us. We spent three days buying supplies in Ushuaia, during which Amy, Daisy, Andrew and Emma arrived. Andrew is a BBC filmmaker and Emma is his wife. Amy is my age and Daisy is…

Roadpro £26.95 RATING 1/10 With a 19cm-wide rectangular nozzle it looks like the bottom end of an oldfashioned upright vacuum cleaner. On top is a rubber bung that you pull away to attach the 1m-long hose with crevice attachment. The Chinese manufacturer appears to have copied a blender as there’s no filter on the incoming side, so dust and debris are sucked in (very feebly) and then minced up in the fan. This process not only sounded horrendous, it also deposited a fine layer of powder everywhere. The roller hardly turned and muesli fell out when switched off. The hose attachment was more powerful. Supplierwww.force4.co.uk AEG Rapido £59.99 RATING 8/10 A compact unit that is light and comfortable to hold. The switch stays on without keeping your finger on it…

Standard polyester sails are often referred to as Dacron – a brand name of a DuPont. Regardless, it has stuck and sailmakers refer to polyester weaves as Dacron for ease of understanding. The material is polyester, but the tenacity, thickness and quality all vary between brands. Compared to cotton, polyester fibres have a lower denier – the weight of a 9,000m fibre in grams. A cotton staple – the length of a standard fibre – is short, so each cotton staple is spun with thousands of others to create a thread. Polyester requires less staples in a single yarn, so they can be thinner without losing strength. The line of yarn running the length the roll of material is known as the warp, and the yarn running across it is…

Dimension-Polyant (DP) produces Hydra Net sailcloth, while Contender makes Fibercon Pro Hybrid. Both are polyester interwoven with Dyneema and designed specifically for cruising yachts. Both cloths use a combination of polyester and a very high percentage of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (Ultra-PE) yarns, which we know as Dyneema. Ultra-PE resists stretch far better than polyester and it’s less susceptible to abrasion. Other high-strength yarns are used, Bainbridge for example is experimenting with Technora, while others use Vectran or Spectra. The cut of the sail, whether radial or cross-cut, will depend on which style of Ultra-PE reinforced cloth you choose. How it’s made It’s woven just like traditional sailcloth, but the Ultra-PE reinforcing yarns are woven extremely tightly to ensure a good bias stability (the change in shape as the sail…

Water repelling fleece Zhik’s new slim fitting Hydrophobic Fleece top is a practical and warm base layer for coastal and offshore sailors. Made from spandex microfleece, with built-in water repellency, its smart enough to wear ashore and stylish enough to be worn on its own in milder conditions. The Hydrophobic Fleece not only repels water, but is quick drying and also provides a wicking action to transport moisture away from the skin. As the weather deteriorates it can then be combined with other layers, such as Zhik’s Titanium top or Z-Fleece, to form part of a multilayer protection system. Available in black only, in sizes XS-XXL for men, or XS-XL for women, the Hydrophobic Fleece quarter zip top can be found in most large chandlers. Price £75.50 Contact Zhik Tel…

Follow us on Twitter twitter.com/yachtingmonthly Like us on Facebook facebook.com/yachtingmonthlymag Portpatrick in Dumfries and Galloway, south-west Scotland, has become the first community-owned harbour in the UK. The Portpatrick Harbour Trust became a Community Benefit Society in July so that it could offer a community share scheme for locals to buy a share in the harbour. Within three weeks, 98 per cent of the shares – worth nearly £75,000 – had been sold. Previously owned by a Jersey-based absentee landlord who was thought to have plans to develop waterside housing, the harbour had suffered from years of neglect. Harbour dues were collected, but no money was invested back into the harbour. Harbourmaster and committee vice-chairman Robert Erskine explained: ‘We don’t want to redevelop, but now we can put the harbour dues…

Why don’t we cut the MOB risk? The RNLI quiz (overboard.rnli.org) crystalised my thoughts. Sailing carries two main risks: falling overboard, and collision. Yachtsmen pay huge attention – and sums of money – avoiding the latter with GPS, radar, AIS and so on, and by keeping a good lookout. As for falling overboard, much is made of lifejackets, which are useful after the event, but what about prevention? Sailors rarely wear safety lines and jackstays are often positioned so a man overboard can be dragged through the water with fatal consequences. On British Antarctic Survey (BAS) ships, lifejackets are not worn during gear deployment but safety lines prevent anyone going overboard. Is it time the yachting world gave more attention to man overboard prevention? Simple solutions would not be rocket…

There are any number of DIY weather forecasting manuals and all of them train us up the same way. There’s the overview: the plan of a weather system with its wobbly isobars, wind arrows and knuckle-dusters of warm, cold and occluded fronts, which you must try to imagine as a whirlpool in the heavens ranging across two and a half thousand miles of ocean, as it twists towards the UK from the USA. There’s the section of a warm front mounting cold air, rising up to produce first of all cirrus, then cirrostratus, altostratus, nimbostratus and stratocumulus cloud: we’ve all held the drawings up in the cockpit and tried matching it to the grey murk we are sailing through. Buys Ballot’s Law, the coriolis effect, secondary fronts, all are carefully…

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 Watch out for the neighbours Years ago I was cruising the Eastern USA and spent a night in the perfect anchorage of the Salt Pond on Block Island. I remember it well for two reasons. One was a lady I met who suffered from insomnia and so kept an anchor watch whether she needed one or not. ‘How do you pass the time?’ I asked. ‘I get bored with the TV,’ she said, ‘so I watch the radar instead.’ The policy had served her well in the small hours when the wind piped up to 40 knots and boats began dragging all around her.…

Bill Anderson is YM’s seamanship guru. He was RYA chief instructor from 1972 to 2000 and created the Yachtmaster scheme Many years ago, when there were fewer marinas, a British yacht arrived at the small Brittany holiday resort of Morgat. They had not intended to stay but it was flat calm so rather than motor on they decided to anchor off the huge, drying sandy beach and enjoy an afternoon of swimming and sunbathing. By evening there was still not a breath of wind so they decided there was still little to be gained by leaving, they would go ashore for dinner. It was now about two hours before High Water so to shorten the dinghy trip they moved closer inshore and re-anchored in a depth of three metres on…

At what sort of age do boats typically undergo refits? There is no typical age. We have a huge variety of yachts come in for refit work here for all sorts of reasons. Some classic yachts demand major overhauls; other newer yachts may just be in for pit stops following extended cruising or with new owners applying their own ideas. What is the most common task you get asked to complete during a refit? Is it to change an interior layout or upgrade old deck gear? It depends on the owner’s requirements. Most refits start with a major job list such as re-painting topsides, replacing teak decks, interior layout alterations or re-rigging. This list often grows, however, to include other less obvious requirements. How can I be sure that my…

It is a strange fact that the moon – pleasant and companionable creature though she be – seldom makes night sailing appreciably simpler, here among the shoals. If one desires to locate an unlighted buoy, for instance, it is practically as hopeless a task to find it by moonlight as in night unmitigated. No buoy was at this moment wanted, but the shape and position of the land, if declared, would have helped. Clear though the moonlight became, the land remained invisible; it was lost in the long grey blur, indifferently the same along every horizon, save the one silvered slip of sea-line eastwards, directly under the moon. ‘It’s a nice little breeze,’ I meditated appreciatively, as the living little flaw reached out from the greyness and fanned one’s cheek,…

Duncan Kent puts a simple-to-install, two-stage battery charger to the test ‘Compact, rugged, waterproof and surprisingly inexpensive’ I’ve lost countless battery chargers over the years but now Mastervolt, a Dutch charger/inverter specialist, reckons its latest range of small, waterproof chargers might be the answer to my dilemma. The EasyCharge is a very compact device, measuring just 180 x 80 x 46mm and comes with two pairs of connecting leads – crocodile clips or ring terminals – that attach to the charger’s lead via a waterproof in-line plug and socket. Our test sample was the 4.3A model (43510400), which is ideal for slow charging a battery of up to 90Ah capacity or maintaining charge on a slightly larger 120Ah battery. While it only has one button on its fascia panel it…

Following my experience with cordless hand tools I was convinced that the higher the voltage the better the device. But then again, six months ago I ditched my tiddly 7.2V drill that had lasted me many years and replaced it with an 18V ‘bee’s knees’ model. The latter is now already a shed doorstop! So, much to our surprise the two-speed 7.2V AEG performed remarkably well, with easily as much suction as the higher voltage models, although not the longevity. Ditto the 12V Waeco PowerVac with its sealed lead-acid battery, although its recharge time is slow. Most use Lithium Ion (Li-Ion) batteries, which can be fast charged and will keep their energy longer when stored for long periods. All have some form of charge indicator to show when they have…

The cheapest way of producing a sail is using the standard weave process, scrimping on quality yarns but doubling-up around the clew and tack to compensate. The weave process is often economised for speed and not compacted tightly. Such a sail will stretch very quickly and may be less efficient by the end of just one season. That doesn’t mean that woven sails can’t be good, though. A well-woven sail using highquality polyester will still stretch eventually, but it will take far longer, performing well for many seasons of sailing. How it’s made Once a large sheet of sailcloth has been woven, it might be cooked, as some polyesters shrink when heated, which makes for an even tighter fabric. Melamine is then added, which adds rigidity to the material, stopping…

An alternative way of stopping woven sailcloth from stretching is to coat it in a plastic film called Mylar. Laid over the woven sail, it is heated and pressed onto the material, with special attention to ensure that there’s no air caught under the film to avoid delamination at a later stage. This works well, but sailmakers soon realised there was no need to weave the cloth so tightly. Instead, they can lay the yarns as a scrim (a very light weave) and, once laminated, it will still be just as strong. As with woven sailcloth, the laminate ‘cloth’ is cut up and sewn back together, to add shape and optimise it for the panel’s load. A taffeta membrane can be added on both sides of the sail, increasing durability.…

Those looking to get the absolute best performance from their boat need a set of single-piece custom-made racing sails with no panel seams on the sail surface. They don’t come cheap and certainly not without compromise – they have the best shape, but longevity suffers. While there is no one best sail on the market (although manufacturers may disagree), there are various high-performance versions from each manufacturer using either its own membrane or a branded one. The best-known sails made using this technique are 3DL and 3DI from North Sails. How’s it made The sail shape is calculated by computer, which moves a mould into an aerofoil shape. The manufacturing process is similar to a laminate sail, but because it is built and heated while on the three-dimensional mould (rather…

You have to hand it to the French boatbuilder RM – it’s a rare company in the conservative yacht-building industry that dares to be genuinely different. Instead of the usual, gently rounded white GRP hulls, RM makes hard-chine, epoxyimpregnated plywood yachts in a variety of colours from off-white to shocking green, pastel blue or bright tangerine! It takes a less reserved type of person to opt for a Kermit the frog green hull, someone who is less traditional in his or her outlook, someone who doesn’t necessarily need all the comforts of home when they sail. If that sounds like you, read on. Performance We were blessed with 16-20 knots from the west as we set out from Lymington. Now, I don’t always look forward to such breezy conditions, but…

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 No salt please, we’re British! CONFESSION OF THE MONTH By Peter Hoggins My wife loves sailing, but she’ll do anything to avoid getting things salty. In a quiet anchorage in Florida, I watched with some interest as a chap on a neighbouring yacht flung a couple of lifejackets into his tiny inflatable dinghy, lifted up a large and obviously heavy battery and took ‘one giant step’ into the tender… Big splash, lifejackets blowing away in the breeze and, for a few seconds,…