Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2023 i Yachting Monthly

The Broads Authority is encouraging boat owners to consider switching to cleaner forms of propulsion, rather than petrol and diesel, as part of efforts to cut carbon emissions. It said that while a ban on fossil fuel-powered boats is not currently envisaged, it wants to support people making the transition to electric, especially as components for petrol- and diesel-powered vessels are expected to become harder to source in the future. The plan is part of The Broads Authority’s pledge to make its operations carbon neutral by 2030 and carbon zero by 2040. The majority of boat traffic along the Broads is from charter, and the authority has started looking at increasing the number of charging points along the waterway network to help the Broads boating industry transition to electric, and…

Plans for a new £90 million marina in St Peter Port in Guernsey have been announced. Guernsey Ports has unveiled an initial outline design for the facility, which would be outside the existing Albert and Victoria Marinas in an area known as the Pool. Currently local marina berths holders have restricted access at low tide. The Pool is deep enough in some places that vessels remain afloat at low tide, and surveys confirm the depth of critical areas can be increased by dredging. The new marina would have walk-ashore access, and would offer more than 200 berths for medium to larger-sized yachts, which are in short supply on the island. A new outer breakwater would also be built, which would provide protection for Victoria Marina, between the Albert and Crown…

Lifejacket firm Crewsaver has announced changes to the way it designs and manufactures some of its products to reduce their impact on the environment. Its new EXO lifejacket, which will be launched in 2023, will have a replaceable cover, allowing owners to change the cover if it gets damaged without the need to purchase a brand new lifejacket. Crewsaver is also eliminating all plastic packaging by switching to a fully biodegradable alternative to plastic bags, which should reduce plastic packaging by 16,400m2 a year – the equivalent surface area of 13 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The company has already committed to removing 94,000 plastic hangers per year from its entire portfolio of products. It has also updated its supply chain, moving away from producing large stocks of finished goods to an…

Thanks to a warm sunny day our terminal passage down the Tamar River towards Voyager Boat Yard for the winter lift out felt frustratingly inappropriate. Soft winds and a blue sky beckoned a final liberating reach across the Channel. Later that night as I lay in bed, however, any lingering regret was crudely buried as 50-knot gusts rumbled up the valley and wrestled the trees with their familiar winter violence. We had missed earlier opportunities to lift Oddity due to working abroad, and suffered the anxiety of lying in bed as the barn shook and our tin roof kept us awake as it was machine-gunned with rain, so we were glad to have made it out before this storm hit. Thanks to Cargreen Yacht Club we have a safe mooring…

SPECIFICATIONS MAKE Nordship MODEL 420 DS PRICE FROM €646,318 (approx. £566,325 inc VAT) DESIGNER Lars Buchwald/Arne Borghegn BUILDER Nordship Yachts Boats like the Nordship 420 DS are rare. On paper, centre cockpit, deck saloon yachts, with full-beam aft cabins have everything; a vast full-beam owner’s aft cabin that can be ensuite, a raised saloon with 360º views out, and a well-protected centre cockpit. On top of that, you get everything else you expect to find on a 40-45ft yacht (second heads, large galley and a vee berth forwards). So why aren’t there more on the water? OK, they are not cheap. You can find many aft cockpit deck saloon yachts lacking a full-beam aft cabin, and centre cockpit yachts with full-beam aft cabins but no deck saloon. By combining all three…

James Stevens, author of the Yachtmaster Handbook, spent 10 of his 23 years at the RYA as chief examiner Q Jim is the skipper of an 11m chartered yacht, Zenith, which he has booked for a week. He has three crew, John, Rick and Nick. On the day they arrive the weather is foul; a full gale complete with horizontal rain. Jim, who as an instructor knows that morale is higher if they move every day, has decided to motor to a marina up the river, set in farmland with a few houses and a café. On arrival they are allocated a hammerhead berth with a yacht in front and the wind blowing diagonally off the pontoon. Jim realises he has to moor with the wind on the port bow…

Sleeping in my bunk, on the morning of Friday 18 November 2022, I was woken by a loud bang. We were roughly 450 miles south east of South Africa, and it had been a nice Force 3 ENE wind when I’d gone to bed, with a relatively smooth, long swell. I am very well used to Asteria’s movements and despite sleeping like a baby in my bunk, I normally wake up when the movement or heel of the boat changes. Wild bangs against waves also tend to get me out of my deepest sleep. This bang was just a loud noise, not connected to slamming against a wave or any other impact. My bunk is 55cm wide with a high leeboard and I had already rigged the safety net on…

It was exhilarating to be sailing again and I was delighted to be free of land and back at sea There’s a storm coming. Better stay in harbour until it’s gone through.’ That was the warning from fellow yachties the day before we left Port St Louis, in the south of France, and headed towards Corsica. And it was true. The online forecasts showed strong northwesterlies funnelling down the Rhône valley and blasting across the Golfe de Lion, with gusts of up to 60 knots. Trouble was, not only had we already spent two nights being bitten by mosquitoes in Port St Louis, but we were also running late. Three more days’ delay would almost certainly destroy any chance we had of reaching Greece in the two weeks I’d allocated.…

Send your sailing gossip, diary dates, cruising news and club or owners’ association updates to Katy Stickland katy.stickland@futurenet.com Sailing therapy for positive mental health A pilot project to bring together marine conservation and social outreach has been launched in Cornwall. The not-for-profit organisation, Clean Ocean Sailing worked with Cornish charities A Band of Brothers, Thera Sea and Simons House, along with the NHS, to run the Ocean Well Being Project, offering sailing trips to help people look after their mental health as well as learn about plastic pollution. Over three days, participants carried out environmental projects like beach cleaning, alongside self-development workshops with mental health professionals. The three-day cruise took place on the 66ft gaff rigged schooner, The Annette. The project was funded by the charity Sea-Changers, which delivers grants…

Orca interactions with boats off the coast of Spain and Portugal are expected to stop as the mammals mature, according to a marine scientist studying the cetaceans’ behaviour. Alfredo Lopez says the orca are displaying learnt behaviour but ‘it is a behaviour that should tend to become extinct as orcas assume different roles than they currently do, given that most of them are juveniles.’ Lopez is part of Groupo Trabajo Orca Atlantica (GTOA), a group of Portuguese and Spanish marine scientists studying the orca interactions since they began in 2020. He said there are at least 16 orcas belonging to various groups of the same sub-population, which are interacting with boats, many of them young, and it was ‘unlikely’ that their behaviour could spread to other groups of orca, but…

This year an old shed on the Essex marshes will be decked in bunting celebrating its centenary as the HQ of the North Fambridge Yacht Club, the meeting place of many old hands from Yachting Monthly. They include Maurice Griffiths, editor for more than 40 years; Mike Peyton, the world-famous yachting cartoonist; and, almost forgotten in the mists of time, prolific contributor F. B. Cooke. Francis Bernard Cooke, or FBC as he signed himself, was the original ‘man-in-the-creek’: an observer of small boat sailing, building, and owning in pre-Great War Britain. He actually founded the club in 1898 as the Fambridge Yacht Club in the days when a ferryman rowed people across the River Crouch from one half of the disembodied village to the other. But following the First World…

www.yachtingmonthly.com/books Following his self-imposed challenge to build a clinker dinghy for his young daughter, Phoebe, Jonathan Gornall has set himself up with tools, a shed, wood and plenty of good advice. Now he must make a start. 10 FEBRUARY 2017 So this is it. Day Zero. Crunch time – the point to which all the fine talk and day-dreaming about building a traditional wooden boat has been leading, the money-where-mouth-is moment, when romantic notion must strap on its spikes and prepare to leap the hurdle of reality. In my hands I am finally holding a heavy chunk of rough-sawn oak about 800mm long, 150mm wide and 80mm thick. The very weight of it, the texture, the smell – even the taste of it, somehow, borne on the air – signal…

FOLLOW THE SERIES HERE… www.yachtingmonthly.com/howitworks Depending on the size of the engine, a yacht’s alternator will usually have a maximum output of between 35A and 60A as standard – although it’s possible to fit one with a higher output. Modern alternators (as opposed to straightforward DC dynamos) generate alternating current (AC) and convert it into direct current (DC) to charge the battery. The voltage is regulated at a nominal 12v (or 24v) to charge the battery and supply the electrical loads. When the alternator is charging, the output tends to be around 14v, and when the battery is resting it tends to be around 12.5v. Inside an AC generator, there is a magnet rotating inside coils of wire. This rotating magnet cuts the lines of flux between the coils, making electricity.…

The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) is taking legal action against the UK Government for failing to protect the majority of England’s coastline from sewage spills. The legal case seeks to compel the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to rewrite its Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan 2022, impose tighter deadlines on water companies and redevelop the plan to apply to all coastal waters. Currently the plan to limit the release of untreated sewage only covers bathing areas in England’s seas. Some Marine Protected Areas and shellfish waters are totally excluded from the plan. MCS data shows raw sewage was discharged within 1km of marine protected areas in England for more than 260,000 hours in 2021. According to DEFRA’s own figures, less than half of England’s coastal waters achieved…

There are warnings that skippers who visit Portugal after sailing from outside the EU could face a demand to pay VAT on their boats, even if EU VAT has been paid on their vessel. David Varley, who has been a Portuguese tax resident since March 2020, has been presented with a €155,000 IVA bill and a €10,000 fine by Portuguese Customs for his Oyster 62, Dalliance. IVA is the Portuguese equivalent to VAT. The boat is owned by a New Zealand limited company; Varley and his partner, Peter McLean, who is a New Zealand resident, are equal company shareholders. Dalliance was purchased by the company EU VAT paid in Malta in 2019; she has been kept in the EU ever since. Varley said in the summer of 2021, he sailed…

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) says it will not be amending its Marine Guidance Notice (MGN) 349 for recreational boat owners, following concerns from a radar reflector manufacturer. Marine Guidance Notice (MGN) 349 states that a radar reflector or radar target enhancer should be permanently installed on boats less than 15m/49.2ft and under 150 gross tonnage, and offer the largest radar cross section (RCS) as practical for the vessel. Commercial ships use radar equipment that operates in the ‘X’ band (9GHz) and the ‘S’ band (3GHz). A radar reflector on a recreational boat should have an RCS of at least 7.5m² at X-Band and 0.5m² at S-band when mounted at a minimum height of 4m above sea level. Radar reflectors should also comply with ISO 8729-1:2010. If the radar…

I thoroughly enjoyed Rachael Sprot’s excellent Cruising Clinic article on mooring astern (January 2022). The objective was to brush up on mooring astern so Dave could handle his boat solo. What advice might Rachael offer Dave on handling the lines solo? During the final manoeuvre described in the article I would think the bow could have been blown onto the neighbouring yacht very quickly. I deliberately sought out a home berth with a very scruffy neighbour to minimise damage to my wallet during the same manoeuvre described. Unfortunately this strategy did not mitigate the risk to my pride! Rachael Sprot responds: Solo parking in a finger berth is a tricky manoeuvre when being blown off, especially in reverse. Assuming that the finger is as long as the boat, I would…

Frugality has been a national theme ever since autumn. The hot dry summer meant it was mid-November before Thames Water ended hosepipe bans, and some reservoirs were still too low at Christmas. But water is the least of it: rocketing energy costs hit everyone six months ago, and after a lot of fretting the UK government followed European countries in exhorting us to be a lot more careful about the way we use heating and appliances. In Germany apparently it was all about ‘patriotism’, with office buildings competing to be colder and turn their lights out overnight. Here, it was a blandishment about cost saving, aimed hard at private households. Meanwhile, and not before time, fashionable thinking in all classes has trended towards recycling, upcycling and making do. For weeks…

Q I was recently doing some tidal diamond revision with friends and there was some disagreement as to the correct method. The area in question is Happisburgh in North Norfolk, but the tidal diamonds there refer to the primary port of Immingham, further up the coast. I said that we didn’t need to apply any corrections to the time of high water (HW) to get local HW (other than the hour for BST, if relevant) as the table refers to Immingham, but some disagreed and said we needed to add the difference, plus 55 minutes, to any calculations. If that’s the case, it seems irrelevant referring to Immingham as you’re correcting for local time and you could get that information from any source with no reference to Immingham. You wouldn’t…

SUBSCRIBER BENEFITS ☑ Best price guarantee☑ Only £1 an issue☑ Save up to 79%☑ Free home delivery☑ Secure online payment☑ Expert advice, skills, new boats and inspiring cruising destinations CHOOSE YOUR PACKAGE PRINT ONLY 3 ISSUES FOR £3 and then £11.75 every 3 months PRINT AND DIGITAL 3 ISSUES FOR £3 and then £15.50 every 3 months SUBSCRIBE TODAY To order online visit www.magazinesdirect.com/B23Dor call 0330 3331113 AND QUOTE CODE B23D TERMS AND CONDITIONS Offer closes 2nd February 2023. Offer open to new subscribers only. * After your first 3 issues, your subscription will continue at £ 11.75 (print only), £ 15.50 (print + digital) every 3 months by Direct Debit. Please allow up to six weeks for delivery of your first subscription issue. The full subscription rate is for…

ELECTRONICS SIMRAD NSX SMART CHARTPLOTTER £2,649 www.simrad-yachting.com Featuring integrated sonar, radar and autopilot compatibility, this impressive new device incorporates a handy setup wizard that uses simple step-by-step instructions to help you get all of its many features and functions up and running quickly and very easily. Displays highly detailed chart information via an intuitive touchscreen which also benefits from drag-and-drop customisation and enhanced day and night modes. Compatible with C-MAP X charts. YACHTSENSE LINK 4G MARINE ROUTER £1,250 www.raymarine.com The Link 4G router is able to switch from SIM 4G to WiFi to provide constant internet access while also allowing you to connect your mobile and NMEA2000 data devices into one unified network. Featuring a high-gain antenna and dual SIM card sockets to accommodate two mobile carriers, it will provide a GeoFence…