Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2015 i Yachting World

When and where to cross the Atlantic from the Caribbean back to Europe is a big decision. In the case of Cheeki Rafiki, the passage was direct from Antigua to the UK after Antigua Sailing Week in April 2014. The crew had to do a good deal of early motoring, and Stormforce Coaching suggested calling in at Bermuda, but the skipper could not find a chart of the island aboard. A stop there would, the MAIB report observes, have allowed more fuel to be taken and some flexibility to avoid adverse weather. The report also notes published guidance to avoid higher latitudes where there is a greater frequency of gales. To avoid calms, Cheeki Rafiki’s crew motored north, where they met a fairly deep low pressure, with 30-50 knots of…

Elfje, the striking-looking new 172ft ketch by Hoek Design, chalked up a joint win in her first regatta, the St Barths Bucket in March. The new yacht, for a woman owner who already has considerable racing experience, was built by Dutch masters Royal Huisman and launched last summer. The yacht is the latest in a number of notable plumb bow superyacht ketches launched in recent years, such as the Dykstra-designed Hetairos and Kamaxitha. Elfje has been built for comfortable ocean cruising, but with performance and energy efficiency at the heart of the design brief. Hoek made CFD analyses of six hull shapes, as well as tank and wind tunnel testing a model. The yacht’s novel features include a lifting T-keel with trim tabs and head stay furlers designed into the…

The announcement in April that a 48ft foiling cat will be used for the 35th America’s Cup in 2017 caused one team to withdraw and another to threaten action against the organisers. The plan to ditch the AC62s, of which none had been built, in favour of the smaller cat was a surprise to many, particularly as this idea had been discussed with teams around a year ago. So why change now? The answer lies with the development of 45ft trial boats for the Cup, to be held in Bermuda. These were test beds for the 62-footers due to be launched at the end of 2016. Based on the AC45s used in the AC World Series events, the trial horses are wider, lighter, with wheel steering, cockpits and more sophisticated…

Imagine a future in which there is never any need to fill up with diesel, buy gas, or top up water tanks and the only constraints are those of needing to stock up with food and maintenance of the boat itself. It’s a scenario that’s much closer than many realise. The past decade has seen an accelerating pace of change, with technologies that appealed only to a minority, or were prohibitively expensive, now firmly entering the mainstream. It’s already more than five years since the first of Gideon Goudsmit’s 44ft African Cat cruising catamarans sailed from South Africa to the Netherlands without using fossil fuel, even for cooking, watermaking and hot water. Although many would baulk at the boat’s 80-mile range under power, this is not a quirky vessel in…

Like Pogo, the roots of the Django line lie in the Mini Transat. The yard started in 2004 with the launch of the Dingo 1, a series-built 6.50 Mini designed by Pierre Rolland. Current clients of its cruising range like to sail off the beaten track. The first new 12.70, for example, will sail to Patagonia, where a Django 7.70 owner already cruises. And another Django owner is sailing to ever French island on the globe over three years. It was the launch of the first Django 7.70 five years ago that put this name on the fast cruising map. I sailed the 6.70, a cruising version of a Mini, and was impressed by her space, speed and simplicity. The strong, lightweight infusion builds, together with shoal draught keel options…

This type of accidental gybe is caused by the boat heeling excessively to windward. The centre of effort of the spinnaker also moves to windward, accentuating the angle of heel. As this happens, the boat starts to turn on her longer windward waterline edge and bear away on her own. As the boat heels, the surface area of the rudder receives less water so steering is less efficient and you lose control, with the boat usually ending up flat on her windward side with the spinnaker pole in the water and the boom in the air. Inevitably, the point arrives when the force of the wind on the mainsail is no longer able to support the weight of the boom – now up in the air – and it comes…

It has been a tight race in a building breeze, but you’ve maintained the lead on this last beat and now just a loose cover on the boats behind should be enough to seal this race. “Make it a good one!” is the helmsman’s plea as the tactician calls the final tack for the pin end. But as the sails fill on the new tack fate has other plans, the jib halyard parts and the No 3 is now wrinkled and fluttering down the forestay. The bowman is rushing forward with the second halyard and now it’s a race within a race to get the sail up again as the following pack closes in for the kill. Just a single oversight can jeopardise a whole weekend’s fun for a keen…

In a cloud of gaff-rigged elegance, the tiny-looking French 42ft Esterel is overhauled by the giant 1936 Alfred Mylne-designed Thendara (foreground) at 118ft and the 1908 77ft Fife Mariska at Les Voiles de Saint Tropez. It will be a good summer for classic yachts this year, with the Panerai Classic regatta and the Royal Yacht Squadron Bicentenary Regatta running back to back between 18 and 31 July, not to mention the Transatlantic Race bringing yachts over the Atlantic for the celebrations.…

email yachtingworldletters@timeinc.com Write to The Editor, Yachting World, The Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark Street, London SE1 0SU Letters may be edited as appropriate Cats four years on I read through your 2011 cruising catamaran test. I wonder if, after four years, your final thoughts on catamarans would be the same? Sue Eduardo Yes, I think my comments would be the same (see our video at tinyurl.com/nkqq3wc). There have been some very interesting developments in modern performance cats, as we remarked at the time, but to achieve these light weights those multihulls are much costlier than the voluminous charter-style cats we tested. Take, for example, the Gunboat 55, which we test on page 60 – Toby Hodges Your lifejacket – ft for purpose? While I agree certain lifejackets look good…

1. Cruising in Northern Europe Despite a reputation for inclement weather, solar power can be a very viable option here, thanks to long daylight hours and relatively cool temperatures. The latter may sound counter-intuitive, but the efficiency of solar panels reduces at higher temperatures. Whether wind power is worthwhile may depend on where you’re planning to sail and the time of year. In mid-summer in the southern half of the UK, for instance, the wind is typically less than ten knots for 50 per cent of the time, so wind generators are of limited use. However, in western Scotland towards the end of the season you could generate plenty of power, which would compensate for the reduced solar output. With the longest passages most yachts will make being 300-400 miles,…

When I skippered a yacht in the first Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) 30 years ago the weather information we had after we left Las Palmas was just about zero. Navigation was chiefly via sextant. But communications and navigation has changed immeasurably since then and with it our choices. During the last Azores and Back race (AZAB) we gybed off the direct route to jump 50 miles north, and took the leg by over seven hours on corrected time. We made that decision purely on weather information received on board via a satellite phone. Today we are used to getting a huge amount of information from the internet, but this quickly drops off as we head offshore. On any ocean or long offshore passage communication choices are limited to satellite…

Walder boom brake • Wichard Gyb’Easy • Sailfuse Ashout, the mainsheet whips through the cockpit and the boom crashes onto the other side of the boat – everyone has had a bad gybing experience at some point. Most of us develop the automatic flinch reaction or dive for the helm as we feel the pressure come off the mainsail just before the boom heads in towards the cockpit. In reality, when we head onto the water either for a daysail or extended cruise we are guarding against those situations, sailing ‘safe’ angles to avoid dead downwind situations and gybe controlling the mainsheet throughout, a planned and practised manoeuvre. But sailing is a live and organic sport, the wind can suddenly change direction or force as a squall creeps up behind…

Receiving Olympic status is not always the blessing you might expect. The rate at which some of the world’s best sailors and teams refine and develop Olympic class boats and the costs that ensue can be a problem in the longer term. You can end up with highly refined boats that often have short competitive shelf lives, taking them out of the normal league for amateur sailors and damaging the grass roots support for a class. So gaining Olympic credentials can prove to be a poisoned chalice. Some classes have even been said to have actively discouraged the attention of the Olympic committee for fear of alienating their mainstream constituents. But not the Dragon. Designed in 1929 by Norwegian Johan Anker, the Dragon was made an Olympic class in 1948…

Would having an MCA Category 0 certificate and meeting the full safety requirements for it have made a difference? The question of why the yacht’s EPIRB had not been activated was a cause for concern during the extensive search for the boat last May. The only position reports were from two of the crew’s personal locator beacons. When the yacht was found there was still no information about why the EPIRB had not been set off. But the report says that it was ‘possibly because it could not be retrieved from inside the vessel following the rapid capsize and consequent inversion’. Under Category 0 EPIRBs are required to be installed in an easily accessible location from which they can float free should the vessel sink. Yet the report points out…

In January the first Gunboat 55, Rainmaker, was abandoned at sea, as we reported in the April issue. The catamaran was dismasted 200 miles south-east of Cape Hatteras during a delivery from North Carolina to the British Virgin Islands. It started a chain of events leading to an aborted attempt at evacuating to a ship and ultimately to her crew being airlifted off. The yacht has not yet been found. After sailing with Gunboat founder Peter Johnstone during our test of Gunboat 55 No 3 (see page 60), we discovered more about the incident and the lessons to be learned from it. Rainmaker left the Gunboat yard at Wanchese, North Carolina, with a tight weather window. After some delayed refit work her owner, Brian Cohen, was keen to get his…

As we threw ourselves against the padded lower guardwire, arms outstretched to windward as if reaching for an imaginary golden carrot on a stick, you could feel the boat come upright. Our TP52, Sorcha, owned by Peter Harrison, flattened out, squatted down and accelerated downwind. As the arc of the bow wave rose to leeward, the low-frequency thundering of thousands of litres of water rushing past was matched by the wailing hum from the rudder and keel, a harmony that increased in intensity and pitch as our speed climbed from 16 to 20 knots. It was impossible not to feel a rush of excitement as the boat’s natural volume was cranked up. I’d forgotten just how much fun TP52s are to sail in a breeze and waves. Wild, powerful, dynamic…

“I was told to take lots of warm clothing, a good camera and to prepare for one hell of an adventure. It sounded fantastic” Sailing in the Arctic is just about as crazy as it sounds. It is bone-chillingly cold and sailing in the snow is commonplace. There is the constant threat of hitting icebergs – especially in the middle of the night when the fog rolls in – and the weather is difficult to predict, with two days being the absolute maximum any reliable forecast can give. There are very few facilities; you moor alongside a local fishing boat or on a harbour wall, careful to get the tightness of your lines right as the tide rises and falls. There are supermarkets, however, in the bigger towns, and you…

FACTS Test Editor: Toby Hodges ▸ Where we tested: St Maarten, Caribbean. One day racing, two days cruising ▸ Wind: 20-30 knots ENE ▸ Model: two double cabins plus one office-cum-convertible double. Deck level galley with utility area below. It was a poignant moment, an epiphany even. As Toccata swung to her anchor off Anse Heureuse, a tranquil cove on St Maarten’s north-west coast, and the evening sun reflected off her silver-gold hull, I knew, in that instant, that the Gunboat 55 was the coolest boat on the planet. And that’s saying something for a catamaran, which can look bulky and awkward to anyone bar diehard multihull converts. But the Gunboat 55 takes cool to a whole new level. Try as I might I can’t think of another boat that…

Today, going like the clappers downwind is easy; anyone can do it. But there are two basic approaches: there is eye-watering, fixed-grin, backsidetwitchingly quick, with the boat balanced on a knife edge, and there’s clocking the same numbers without the jitters. In the latter case the boat knows where to go and encourages you to follow by gradually loading the helm as if starting a friendly arm wrestle. Push her too far and you’ll still end up on your ear, but at least you will have had plenty of warning. Developing a balance between performance and handling has been a tough nut to crack. How do you produce slender, high-lift foils with minimal drag without creating a lifting surface that operates like the flick of a switch? Such binary hydrodynamic…