Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2017 i Yachting World

For those still in any doubt as to whether foiling will filter into mainstream sailing, news that Beneteau is about to begin production of a radical new one-design with foils should put this question to rest. Beneteau unveiled renderings of the Figaro Beneteau 3, the first production-built foil-assisted monohull, at the Paris Boat Show. Van Peteghem-Lauriot-Prévost (VPLP) has designed a contemporary looking race boat, but it is the novel-looking foils that are causing a real stir. Designed to replace the traditional weighty ballast tanks used on past Figaro designs, they work by creating side force and reducing leeway while causing minimal drag – and retract within the boat’s maximum beam. The Figaro class has been a durable one-design that has served as the training and proving platform for aspiring solo…

When the Bavaria 44 Minerva of Kip was dismasted while sailing across the Atlantic in December, aid came from a rather unusual and very comfortable quarter. The British yacht’s forestay had broken 1,200 miles from the finish of the ARC rally in Saint Lucia, bringing down the mast. Skipper John Kennedy and his crew salvaged what they could of the spar and rig and managed to step a jury mast. They recovered enough of the mainsail to use as a square sail. Several other ARC yachts diverted to transfer fuel to the crew (the Bavaria 44 carries 200lt), but in very light winds they were making slow progress and falling to the rear of the fleet. It began to look as if their water rations might run short with no…

The ongoing case relating to the Cheeki Rafiki tragedy saw charter company director Douglas Innes plead not guilty to four counts of causing manslaughter by gross negligence and two charges of failing to operate a vessel in a safe manner at Winchester Crown Court on 5 December. The Beneteau 40.7 capsized in the North Atlantic some 700 miles off Nova Scotia in May 2014 on her return from Antigua Sailing Week to Southampton. The yacht was found without her keel. The four men onboard were lost. Douglas Innes, director of Stormforce Coaching, which owned and operated the yacht, pleaded not guilty to the four manslaughter by gross negligence charges relating to the deaths of Andrew Bridge, 22, from Farnham in Surrey, James Male, 22, from Romsey, Hampshire, Steve Warren, 52,…

Dwarfi ng not only any other yacht that happened to be on the River Eider, but even the buildings along the foreshore, the monolithic Sailing Yacht A made quite an impression when she was launched from the Nobriskrug yard in Hamburg in the autumn of 2016. The 142m, eight-deck behemoth is the archetypal ‘gigayacht’, phenomenal not just in her dimensions but also in her radicalism. The Philippe Starck-designed Sailing Yacht A, with her 20m freeboard, begs the question: is she even a sailing yacht? The last yacht to divide opinion, and attract the shock and awe of the non-sailing public in the same manner was Maltese Falcon, the glossy, experimental megayacht designed for Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tom Perkins. But the Falcon was launched a decade ago, and Sailing Yacht…

Most accounts of grim conditions in the Southern Ocean are written by skippers of race boats or owners of smaller yachts engaged in high adventure. Uphill all the Way by Alan Sears is different. When he signed on Toshiba with the BT Global Challenge for the 1996/7 race he was a music teacher who had been, amongst other things, a cycling champion, a violin maker and a groundsman. One thing he was not was a professional sailor. His take on events in the storm-lashed seas centres around his shipmates being beaten black and blue by the extreme motion of a big yacht racing upwind as hard as she can go. Those of us who have avoided this experience tend not to think about the hammering that bodies take as these…

Extreme Sailing Series, Sydney, December 2016 • Photographer Jesús Renedo Over she goes... Land Rover BAR goes into a capsize during the fi rst day’s racing in Act 8 of the Extreme Sailing Series in Sydney. The Land Rover BAR Academy crew, Neil Hunter, Chris Taylor, Will Alloway, Sam Batten, Oli Greber, Adam Kay and Rob Bunce had got off to a good start in the fi rst two races of the day, but in the third, the boat cartwheeled when a gust rolled over them as they rounded the windward mark. Helmsman Chris Taylor explained: “We went for a bear away and got hit by a big gust and stuck the bows in, pitchpoling the boat. All our safety and operational procedures were followed correctly, all the crew accounted…

PICTURE THIS Photo of the Year T his year’s Mirabaud Yacht Racing Image competition attracted 149 entries. An international jury awarded the prize to French photographer Jean-Marie Liot for this incredible shot of Morgan Lagravière’s foiling IMOCA 60 Safran 2 almost completely immersed while training off Brittany. For more on how the new foils are affecting this year’s Vendée Globe round the world race see page 7. PICTURE THIS Pilgrim’s progress Mallorcan photographer Jesús Renedo has a remarkable talent for taking crisp sailing images that put you on board the moving subject. And there are few finer vessels you could wish to sail at the moment than the new Hoek-designed Wallynano MkII, the first of which is called Pilgrim. Tiller and mainsheet in hand, feet braced as you point her…

A crew celebrating a successful ARC transatlantic crossing to Saint Lucia found themselves fighting a huge blaze on board overnight after fire broke out in the forecabin. The Swedish-registered Swan 76 ketch Pauline af Skanör was gutted through the forward part of the boat. The blaze took hold around 2230 while alongside at Rodney Bay Marina. One crewmember was on board, dozing in the aft cabin, when he smelt smoke. Luckily he was able to get off and raise the alarm before the fire spread. The fire, believed to be from an electrical source, could not be brought under control with the yacht’s fire extinguishers. The crew used the yacht’s ten extinguishers and “seven or eight” from neighbouring boats. The blaze grew so intense that the forecabin was said to…

A programme to help young South Africans from disadvantaged backgrounds to travel overseas and gain experience of the business of racing and cruising large yachts has so impressed members of the superyacht industry in Mallorca that support has expanded. The Marine Inspirations scheme is the brainchild of two South African yacht captains, Phil Wade and Anthony Just, who set it up in 2014. With Lawhill Maritime Centre in Simon’s Town, near Cape Town, they started a unique sea cadet scheme to show students the varied jobs and potential in the superyacht industry. This autumn five teenagers from Durban and Cape Town flew to Mallorca to experience superyacht work first hand. One of those was Smangaliso Dlamini, 17, from KwaZulu-Natal. Dlamini is an orphan who lives with his grandmother. He says:…

People complain ever more frequently that their favourite anchorages are now overcrowded and that in many places, if you don’t book ahead you won’t get a place in the marina. Yet, astonishingly, the number of foreign-fl agged vessels visiting the world’s key cruising hubs is down by at least 20 per cent overall since the start of the Millennium. So what is going on? Where have all the boats gone? Since my last global yacht cruising survey in 2010, politics and climate change have affected offshore cruising both in the short and long term, but in order to understand the changes, we need to know exactly where the 8,000 or so ocean cruising yachts actually went (and where they didn’t), what size the boats typically are and how many people…

FACTS Test Editor TOBY HODGES Wherewe tested: Palma Bay, Mallorca Wind 20-28 knots, later dropping to 10-15 knots Model hull no 1, with carbon spars and 3Di sails Photos by JESÚS RENEDO We were on board Contest’s first new 67CS, a sensational new 67ft semi-custom model, and the first Contest designed by Judel/Vrolijk in the yard’s near 60-year history. We were sailing rapidly away from Palma, Mallorca with full main and asymmetric spinnaker shading the deck from the early sunshine. The wind continued to increase, into the mid-20s, bringing short, sharp waves with it as we headed offshore past the lighthouse. There was little we could now do, other than try and keep her sailing and looking good. It was time to speak to Jesús. Contest wanted brochure photos from…

If there is one yacht that could justifiably be labelled as the most desirable to sail, it has to be the 1934 J Class Endeavour. One of the three original Js still afloat, she is widely considered the most beautiful of all. I am still pinching myself after having the opportunity to sail aboard, in perfect conditions off Cascais, Portugal, says Toby Hodges. A quick tour aboard would have been welcome, a sail even more magical. But to be handed the helm in ideal conditions? It felt like a dream. With her full mainsail, staysail and yankee hoisted, Endeavour was in her element as a Force 4 encouraged her onto her exquisitely long waterline, submerging the leeward rail. It was utterly mesmerising. From the wheel I was struck by how…

Maiden, the yacht that won two legs of the 1989-90 Whitbread Round the World Race crewed by Tracy Edwards’s all female team, is to sail around the world again. The 58ft 1979 Bruce Farr design will first be shipped to the UK for a major restoration, having been abandoned at Eden Island marina in the Seychelles since 2013. Former owner and skipper Edwards has driven the campaign to rescue Maiden, and plans to use the yacht as an ambassador for Maiden Education, a charity supporting global girls’ rights. The list of works required is extensive. “The last time we rescued her we ripped her to pieces and put her back together again and this will be no less a task,” said Edwards, who previously refurbished the yacht before the 1989…

I magine a hot day under sail far out at sea with your friends or family, your yacht inching along very slowly through a calm-painted ocean. Heaven? Or hell? On the catamaran Pearl Bali on a day such as this, Barry Harmer and Irina Yatsenko, their two grown up daughters, Polina and Alyona, and friend Brandy watched the sails draw lazily and decided to have some fun. The family, who bought their Catana 4.3 catamaran after taking up sailing in 2014, put on striped sailor tops and made a video of them all lip-syncing to Harry Nilsson’s song Put the Lime in the Coconut. On Rambler 88, the Juan K-designed fl yer, an elite crew of 18 professionals dealt with light winds by spending the day trimming, focussed entirely on…

Safely aboard in Reykjavik, about to depart for Greenland some 600 cold, grey miles away, I looked at the GRIB files with the skipper and thought: ‘Wow. You call that a weather window?’ I knew when I signed up for this trip – delivering a 48ft Grainger catamaran from Iceland to Newfoundland via Greenland – that the four of us could expect some bumpy weather, but I didn’t know that we’d be deliberately aiming for it. The skipper, 68-year-old New Zealander Geoff Thorpe, had sailed Salanjo nearly 45,000 miles from Australia, where she was built, and wanted to take her across the Atlantic by a less obvious route to continue his circumnavigation. There was nothing gung-ho about him, but he was very confident about our journey. “I think we’ll be…

Beneteau grows foils THE BRAND NEW FIGARO ONE-DESIGN OFFSHORE RACER Feather-light carbon catamarans and matchstick-size Moths that can use hydrofoils to fly are one thing – an affordable, foil-assisted production monohull is really quite another. In fact, with the news that Beneteau is series-building a yacht with foils, you can be sure that monohull foiling is here to stay. The Figaro Beneteau 3 is a contemporary offshore capable yacht for short-handed racing, one with innovative shaped foils that protrude out and down from near deck level. It is the result of an impressive collaborative approach between the Beneteau Group, the Figaro Class, Solitaire du Figaro organisers OC Sport and leading French design office VPLP. Foils bring that added performance dimension that the new IMOCA 60 fleet is already experiencing –…