Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2016 i Yachting World

These were the final moments of a Beneteau Oceanis 48 charter yacht that sank to the north-west of Guadeloupe in January. The yacht Joule, which was being chartered by a crew of five people, began taking in water believed to be from the rudder stock. Another boat, Liliz, tried to take the stricken yacht in tow, but the tow line broke. A rescue boat from SNSM Pointe-à-Pitre went to the crew’s aid and two divers were airlifted to the scene by MRCC Fort-de-France. They were too late to help and the yacht sank leaving divers swimming in the water. All the crew were safely transferred across by tender before the yacht sank in 600m of water near the island of Kahouanne. Loic Bonnet, managing director of yacht charter company Dream…

Yachting World has been on the judging panel of the European Yacht of the Year since its inception and I can say that it is the world’s most thorough competition for production yachts. All the nominated yachts, from €20,000 sportsboats to €1m semi-custom designs, are given a thorough workout by a panel of testers from Europe’s top yachting magazines. Last year’s trials were held in La Rochelle in September and Santa Margherita near Genoa in October and I have to say I returned from these two weeks buoyed by the exciting state of yacht design. In all I tested 22 new yachts and there were far more good points to take home than bad. The awards were announced at the Düsseldorf Boat Show in January and we reported on the…

Graham Greene is not noted for being a great sailor. The author of Brighton Rock, The End of the Affair and other popular novels from the 1930s onwards is better known for his difficult relationships with booze, religion and women. His most legendary sailing exploits were swanning around on his publisher’s yacht in the South of France and enjoying an aperitif or three at the Yacht bar beneath his apartment in Antibes. Which is why, when I stumbled across a ‘Graham Greene’ listed as the owner of a yacht I was researching, I assumed it must be someone else with the same name. The boat in question was a 32ft double-ended cutter called Nausikaa, which I had photographed on a bright, breezy day off the Old Harry Rocks near Poole,…

“WHEN YOU GET A 35-KNOT BREEZE, BOATS WILL BE ON THEIR SIDES PRETTY QUICKLY” ‘It was a normal day of racing in September in the Swan Europeans, and it was also the Swan 45 Worlds. But towards the end of the day the breeze increased and eventually built into quite a squall. As they do, it came with a vengeance,’ photographer Kurt Arrigo remembers. ‘A lot of boats had started going back inshore. But this Swan 45 was still out racing. ‘You anticipate these things happening after so many years on the water. And when you get a 35-knot breeze you know boats are going to be on their sides pretty quickly. There was mayhem. Spray was being whipped up, and although I was on a decent RIB I also…

The Bucket is a standout event in an A-list French Caribbean venue and the fleet here regularly runs to 40 or so superyachts 2016 ST BARTHS BUCKET SCHEDULE OF EVENTS WEDNESDAY, 16 March 1700-1830 SuperYacht Racing Association (SYRA) AGM (le Brigantin) THURSDAY, 17 March 0900-10.00 Racing Rules & Appendix SY Review (le Brigantin) 0900-1700 Race Office Open/Registration at the Bucket Marquee (BMQ) 1200 J Class Race (J Captains’ Briefing 0930 at BMQ) 1700-1730 Captain’s Briefing (BMQ) Mandatory for Captain, RRS-Safety Afterguard Member and Racing Tactician. Max 4. 1730 Bucket Bar Open (BMQ) 1900-2100 Fleet Welcoming Party (BMQ) 1900-2100 Owners’ Reception (Invitation Only) FRIDAY, 18 March 0800-1800 Race Office Open (BMQ) 0830-0900 Daily Pre-Race Briefing (BMQ stage) 1100 First Signal Race 1 1830-2030 Post-Race Social (BMQ) 1900-1910 Daily Awards Presentation SATURDAY,…

This 35m/115ft carbon bullet launched from Baltic Yachts in Finland in the autumn. She sailed down to the Canaries, swiftly, where one day was made available to get some of these spectacular shots, before her crew made the 3,000-mile crossing to Antigua in December. During an exhilarating transat she clocked 28.8 knots. “We were getting on for 400-mile days,” her skipper reports. She then went straight into her first regatta, the Superyacht Challenge, in January as a means of gearing up for the RORC Caribbean 600. THE 100-120FT CLUB If you think of cruiser-racers, generally more modest-sized yachts such as the Xs and Swans of recent decades come to mind. What we are now seeing in this latest breed of performance superyachts is the larger equivalent – a real trend…

A world in which everyday objects can be mass produced or custom-made by 3D printing is being built. Objects such as prosthetics and joint replacements are already widespread medical applications, but there are a multitude of other, more everyday ones. AMG is working on serial production of automotive spare parts at low cost, for example, and Maersk on 3D printing of spares for containers. In the near future you could be going afloat in a 3D printed tender, riding a 3D printed bike, wearing 3D printed jewellery, snacking on a 3D printed sandwich or eating a 3D printed cake. You might even live in a 3D printed house – these are already being made in China. The technology – more exactly known as Additive Layer Manufacturing (ALM) – is in…

Swing time A video of a crew amusing themselves with some acrobatic swinging from a halyard of the First 40 Sailplane while racing at Dartmouth Regatta was postponed was one of our most viewed videos in February. The clip posted on Yachting World’s Facebook page went viral, reaching over 1.2 million people. It looks like great fun. Not that we are advocating risky stunts of course – but exactly how did they do that? Find out on page 13. Storm rider Much of western Europe has been battered this winter by a relentless string of named storms. While this has put paid to off-season cruising and club racing plans for most, it has created opportunities for the hell-men who live for the big swells generated by low pressure systems. Nazaré,…

Winners of the Ocean Cruising Club’s (OCC) annual awards have marked some fascinating cruises by the club’s many members. The OCC was founded in 1945 by the late Humphrey Barton and is open to anyone who has done a non-stop cruise of more than 1,000 miles in a yacht of less than 70ft, and its members sail all over the world. The club’s leading award, the Barton Cup, went to Michael Johnson, who sailed his yacht Gitana on a two-year transit of the North West Passage from the Chesapeake to Nome, Alaska. Johnson won the same award 26 years ago for an engineless east-west rounding of Cape Horn in 85 days. The club’s Award of Merit went to six crews and the club’s port officer in Vanuatu for the efforts…

It’s the last sail of the season. The harbours are empty save for a few stragglers in denial of a season that never was, hoping to catch a final magical day out. The days are short and the chill instant as the sun dips below the horizon. The wild Atlantic coast of Ireland is about as challenging a place to sail as you could conjure up. But in the autumn, on occasion, the weather surprises, the shoreline is vivid, the light takes on a moody, silvery quality, nature delivers spectacular displays that we are actually awake to see, and the wildlife takes over. We needed to haul Aleria this year for several maintenance chores and a bottom paint. The best option was to sail north to Killybegs in Donegal, one…

When yacht instrumentation consisted of an array of circular dials set into a housing across the top of the companionway, life was simple. The more dials you had, the cooler you looked. Analogue displays for boat speed, wind direction and wind speed were the norm. To have an amplified wind direction meter set you apart as a racer and was considered very sophisticated. Back in the day, depth might be displayed on a Seafarer echo sounder with a large circular display and an orange LED blinking around the rim. No buttons to press, no pages to scroll through, no infuriating menus and, if you couldn’t read the displays because they were too far away, tough. Clearly, today the situation is very different with a huge choice of multi-purpose displays and…

Raymarine Quantum Radar £1,495 What is it? A revolutionary new radar that uses Chirp technology for a lighter, simpler radar with better range. www.raymarine.com Raymarine claims its new Quantum Chirp radome is the lightest and most efficient radar in its class. Chirp technology is used increasingly by marine manufacturers in echo sounders to increase target resolution when fishfinding. The same benefits are applied to marine radar with this, the industry’s first compact recreational radome with Chirp pulse compression technology. This produces sharper, more defined images by sending out variable frequencies simultaneously. Raymarine’s development is arguably of more interest to sailors for its weight-saving though. The 18in Quantum weighs around 50 per cent less than traditional magnetron radars. It is also a market leader in terms of power consumption and ease…

THIS MONTH REINVENTING BARBADOS • MACIF • SHORT-HANDED: NAVIGATION • WEATHER: WIND/TEMPERATURE Barbados is one of the most popular tropical islands on the planet, especially with Britons, who flock to its pristine sandy beaches to relax and enjoy the hot Caribbean sun. This year is the 50th anniversary of its independence from British rule, but the island is sometimes still called Little England. Prosperous, with low crime, it’s a gentle introduction to the West Indies. For sailors the living is easy. Fresh fruit and veg cost very little in the colourful markets and the street food loved by locals is fresh and filling. There are 1,200 ‘rum shops’ (small bars) and the people are famously friendly. Lying 98 miles east of the Caribbean chain, this is the nearest landfall for…

Alexa of London (ex-White Eagle/Bella Criolla) Sloop 37.5m/123ft Design: Strawinski. Build: YBM – 1992 (2013) She’s as pretty as a picture and it’s said that Alexa’s graceful lines were inspired by the royal yacht Britannia of 1893. she launched as White Eagle 24 years ago in Gdansk, Poland. With her big class genes, she sported the world’s tallest classic gaff rig at the time. in 2013 she completed an extensive refit and, now race-ready again, she’ll attract attention for her looks, if not pace. Axia Ketch 38m/124ft Design Sparkman & Stephens. Build: Palmer Johnson – 1990 (2007) This pilothouse ketch from sparkman & stephens sails with a good track record at the bucket. in recent years she has taken 3rd twice in the Grand Dames class, and last year she…

Whether you have spent millions on commissioning one or thousands on chartering one it is likely that your first contact with a superyacht will be the tender. As the mothership bobs majestically off the hook in a glittering cove the tender is dispatched to collect guests and so sets the tone for what they can expect of the main event. It must be luxurious, comfortable, exquisitely finished and – it almost goes with out saying – a thrill to set eyes on. The superyacht tender is also a workboat, a watersports platform and a toy for the owner and guests to enjoy. Here we run through the sexiest, coolest and most innovative of tenders. Wallytender The boat that changed the way we think about superyacht tenders forever. The Wallytender proved…

The upturned hull of a Sunsail catamaran that went missing with its three delivery crew on 18 January 2015 was sighted exactly one year later, giving a clue as to what happened to the men believed to have perished. Sunsail RC044-978, belonging to sailing holiday specialist Tui Marine, went missing while on delivery to Thailand following a refit at Cape Town builder Robertson and Caine. It departed Cape Town on 14 December 2014 bound for Phuket with a crew of three, but there were no further communications from the crew after 18 January 2015. In January 2016 it was found capsized at sea, 40 miles off Cape Agulhas at the southern tip of South Africa. The delivery crew were skipper Anthony Murray, 58, who had over 30 years and 500,000…

A devastating fire that broke out in Medina Village, Cowes on 25 January destroyed over 30 boats, including a number of irreplaceable classic yachts. The Medina Village site where the blaze occurred comprises several industrial units. The main unit affected, originally a machine shop, was used for storage by David Heritage Yacht Racing. The fire, which the fire service confirmed was accidental, is believed to have broken out in a car workshop attached to the end of this building and spread rapidly to a building where the majority of boats lost were stored, before engulfing Moreton Marine and two classic yacht restorations in that area. “Our shed is totally gone,” Patrick Moreton of Moreton Marine confirmed. Its losses included the 58ft Mylne-designed ketch Fedoa of Bute, nearing completion at the…

Thirty-three yachts are in the early stages of a 26,000-mile circumnavigation with the sixth World ARC. It’s a 15-month cruise in company from Saint Lucia and the first stop was in Colombia. This is the event’s second largest fleet to date and it left Saint Lucia in January for a four-day tradewind romp to Santa Marta, 815 miles downwind. In most cases this leg, the first of almost 30, helped settle crews who were embarking on one of the biggest adventures of their lives. It’s the World ARC’s second visit to this historic city of 455,000 people where authorities were keen to make the international yachtsmen, women and children from 17 nations feel welcome and safe, and to emphasise that one of South America’s oldest existing cities is a destination…

HUBi Solar Hub 10k £179.99 Who’s it for? Those venturing longer distances who want a back-up power supply. www.solartechnology.co.uk On the face of it this is a great back-up system – a 10ah lithium battery pack/connection hub with ‘intelligent charge electronics’, plus a 20W solar panel and two bright LED lanterns. The hub has outputs for the two lights, a pair of high-power 2amp USB sockets and a 3amp 12V cigar-type power outlet. As such it has the potential to be an extremely useful back-up power supply for yachts undertaking long passages. Although there’s no chance of it powering the fridge, watermaker or TV screens, it has sufficient capacity to charge essential equipment, including a handheld satellite phone, VHF and GPS, along with a tablet with a chart plotter app…

KOMOREBI 282 This 86m/282ft hybrid trimaran is one of the most awesome-looking concepts of recent years. Part yacht, part multihull, part motor yacht, part passenger ship, part floating luxury villa, she is a real fusion of inspirations, and utterly intriguing. She promotes space and stability on a scale never before seen and provides an efficient means to traverse oceans yet also access shallow ports. Her two 380m2/4,090ft2 wings will propel her at 15 knots with 20 knots of wind, says designer VPLP. ‘Komorebi’ is a Japanese concept representing “the time when nature is enhanced by the sun’s rays”. This refers to the copious natural light in the vast open layout of the main decks. “Each area is designed to suit a special moment of the day,” says the French multihull…

Pacific blue skies, pacific blue ocean, scattered white clouds. The seas are calm, the breeze light and warm. In the distance, the underside of the clouds have taken on a subtle turquoise colour. The low-lying atolls to which we are headed are not visible on the horizon, but are showing as reflections on the clouds – the bright waters beneath reflecting to the skies above. No matter how much offshore ocean sailing we do, it always comes as a relief to fix the boat’s position visually. Of course, with all our modern navigation technology, we have an easy time of it compared with navigators of the past. I can’t imagine how those sailors would have felt when they got it right. We are in the Tuamotus, French Polynesia, and sailing…

As competition at superyacht regattas has progressively become more and more intense, so any scope for compromise at the front of the fleet has been eliminated and a new breed of performance yacht has come to the fore. The most recent designs are all-carbon 30-35m/98-115ft yachts that can easily hit speeds of 28 knots. Yet these are not stripped-out raceboats; they also offer the comfort, amenities and style below decks equal to those of any other superyacht. Crucially, they also need to be easily managed without a big race crew when in cruising mode. So how are these apparently conflicting requirements reconciled on the latest boats? “Until very recently, there were some fairly big differences between a performance cruising rig and a proper racing rig,” says Nigel Ingram of project…