Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2017 i Yachting World

In America’s Cup circles, they are known as ‘turtle strikes’. Ocean racers often refer to them as collisions with ‘UFOs’ – unidentified floating objects – lurking in the ocean. The number of these collisions, especially this winter in the Vendée Globe, where foils and keel mechanisms broke and one boat’s hull was cracked, has led many observers to decry the amount of debris in the oceans and the risk it poses. We noted a spike of interest in the dangers of lost shipping containers. In this edition, Helen Fretter conducts an investigation into the scale of the problem. Seldom does a worrying subject lend itself to a happy conclusion, but it seems that reports from high profile events could be exaggerating the risks – we tell you why on page…

Nicola ‘Nikki’ Henderson, 23, from Guildford will lead a team in this year’s Clipper Round the World Race, making her the youngest ever professional skipper to lead a team in the 40,000-mile round the world event. Henderson will have just turned 24 when the race starts from London, making her two years younger than Alex Thomson, who famously skippered the winning entry in 1997-98 aged just 26. Nikki Henderson has previously skippered three ARC entries, twice winning the rally’s Youngest Skipper Award, as well as a Caribbean 600 and multiple offshore deliveries. “Your position as a skipper is to help people get what they want out of it, but it’s also to help people develop their expectations,” comments Henderson. “Generally what comes out is that people are looking for a…

It used to be considered the height of treason for a challenger to train with the defender during the preliminaries of the America’s Cup. Yet in the build-up to Bermuda it seems the only challenger that definitely won’t be practice racing against Oracle Team USA is the band of upstarts from down under, Emirates Team New Zealand. While sailing fans from the other four nations mounting a challenge for the 35th America’s Cup will be enthusiastically cheering for their home teams – Sweden, Japan, France and Great Britain – the Kiwis have surely become the default option for any neutral supporters to cheer on this summer. ‘THE KIWIS HAVE BECOME THE DEFAULT OPTION FOR ANY NEUTRAL SUPPORTERS’ Being the only team that refused to sign up to the framework agreement…

The 42-inch Undaunted is bidding to become the smallest boat ever to cross the Atlantic. Skipper Matt Kent was working on a 200ft tall ship when he pondered what the smallest boat ever to sail around the world had been. On discovering that a 5ft 4in yacht had crossed the Atlantic, a seed was sown which resulted in the custom-designed Undaunted. In 1965 Robert Manry sailed his 13ft 6in Tinkerbelle from Massachusetts to England, and the modern ‘microyacht’ trend was born. Tinkerbelle was followed by the 12ft Nonoalca and 8ft Bathtub across the Atlantic. By 1968 Hugo Vilhen had made the smallest ocean crossing yet, sailing his 6ft April Fool from Casablanca to Miami. Vilhen went on to cross the Atlantic in his 5ft 4in Father’s Day, while in 2002,…

Ah, what would the America’s Cup be without fiery controversy and bitter disagreements? No fear of a sanitised and flavourless Cup with the new framework agreement: there has been a recent ding-dong between Russell Coutts, Jimmy Spithill and Emirates Team New Zealand and, in the modern way, is out there for all to enjoy on Facebook. One of the most unusual sailing races ever begins in June. Organisers of The Bridge have chartered the 157,000hp Queen Mary 2 cruise ship to challenge a fleet of ‘Ultime’ trimarans such as Spindrift and Sodebo to a transatlantic speed race. Our money is on the yachts… Spare a thought for Australian Lisa Blair, 32, tackling the Southern Ocean, trying to become the first woman to circumnavigate Antarctica in her Open 50, Climate Action…

Twenty-four years ago when the 92ft catamaran ENZA New Zealand and her crew set off on an attempt to establish a new record time for a non-stop circumnavigation, I had serious concerns for the safety of the crew. As I watched them leave the River Hamble for the first of what would be two attempts, I couldn’t imagine how the crew had rationalised the risk. As an inveterate monohull sailor, it was difficult to imagine that multihulls, with their reputation for capsizing, were right for a trip of that kind. Sure, Bruno Peyron had skippered Commodore Explorer the previous year around the world in 79 days take the Jules Verne Trophy for the first time, thereby proving it could be done. But there was still a feeling that Peyron and…

Containers can be stacked in blocks of nine or more units high, and are secured together using a twist-lock system, with the lower units lashed to the deck or lashing bridge. The main causes of containers toppling overboard are when the twist-locks or lashings fail, the stack is unbalanced, the ship is hit by storm conditions, or a combination of these factors. Loading a container ship is a fine art: it must not be overly loaded at either end (which can cause ships to buckle in large waves), and with any potentially dangerous cargo stowed away from other hazards or accommodation. It’s rare an entire ship is unloaded in a single stop so the right containers need to be accessible at each port. The logistics and ground crews can only…

The independent territory of St Maarten (formerly part of the Netherlands Antilles) is less than half of a busy, hilly, colourful island surrounded by deep water on all sides. It’s a race officer’s dream venue, especially when the wind behaves as perfectly as it did for the 2017 event. Piping hot 18-20 knot Trades from the north-east saw small jibs set across all of the maxi, multihull and ocean racing fleets and ‘safety-first’ white sail downwind tactics for many of the cruising and charter classes. The days preceding the event saw steady winds over 25 knots and plenty of squalls causing the cancellation of the beach cat classes. The windward, larger half of the island is the French département of St Martin, which is part of the EU, albeit some…

When I was a student in Liverpool in the mid-1960s, sailing the university’s Firefly dinghies when I ought to have been studying, the local hero was a young man called Bill Brockbank. His sister attended the same lectures as me. Bill had sailed to Norway from Scotland with the great Frank Dye in his 16ft unballasted, open Wayfarer dinghy, Wanderer. I only learned the details of this remarkable voyage when I discovered Ocean Crossing Wayfarer, a second edition of which is published by Adlard Coles. This extract soars beyond a story of indomitable spirit and survival against the odds: it represents the summit of great seamanship. The skill with which Dye and Brockbank coax their cockleshell craft through a northerly storm is officially logged as Force 9, but clearly a…

For any sailor heading offshore it is important to ensure the mainsail is easy to manage in a building breeze. As the average size of a couple’s cruising boat has grown over time, so sails have become larger and heavier, with booms higher off the deck, so nipping up to the mast to hook down a slab is not always that easy to achieve. If it is hard to reef then the mainsail often gets left tied to the boom but that doesn’t have to be the case. I have taken a look at some of the systems that make reefing easier. Slab reefing This is the starting point for most reefing systems: it allows you to take horizontal chunks out of the sail while maintaining a good shape and…

MIKE GOLDING, one of the world’s most accomplished offshore sailors, explains what’s happening in the featured image taken during the 2015-16 Volvo Ocean Race aboard VOR65 Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing. If this photo of the VOR65 Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing (ADOR) crossing close alongside a large China Shipping freighter had been taken in the confines of Southampton Water, the situation would not really be notable, but out in the open ocean such close passes are rare. At the moment when the photo was taken, there is no real danger; any incident, so to speak, will have taken place during the previous ten minutes when both vessels will probably have seen the red and green lights of the other approaching, and that will have looked like a head on collision course.…

Eye of the needle A view of the yacht Kahea, a Beneteau 473, sailing past the famous sea arch at Piercy Island at the northern tip of Rakaumangamanga, or Cape Brett, off the north coast of New Zealand. Better known as The Hole in the Rock, this is a famous tourist attraction. The island was given the name Piercy by Captain Cook in honour of one of the Lords of the Admiralty, but its Maori name is Kokako. The picture was set up and taken by photographer and sailor Tor Johnson and is of his own yacht. Johnson, a lifelong surfer based in Hawaii, and his wife, Kyoko, have sailed across the Pacific in Kahea and from Alaska to Hawaii, and his beautiful photos of cruising under sail regularly feature…

www.twitter.com/yachtingworld www.facebook.com/ yachtingworldmagazine email yachting.world@timeinc.com Write to The Editor, Yachting World, Pinehurst II, Pinehurst Rd, Farnborough Business Park GU14 7BF Letters may be edited as appropriate Whale of a tale Following our article online about whales we had many messages... We came across a whale while crossing the Tasman Sea. We came over the crest of a long swell and there was a whale motionless in the trough. We broke to port and, with a shake, it broke to starboard. We slipped past each other with 2-3m to spare. We eyeballed each other as we passed. The whale was the same length as my boat, 12m. We were 3 tons and I reckon it was about seven. It took action by both of us to avoid a collision. John Wylie We…

Going to the first spreaders up the steps, or to the top of the mast in a bosun’s chair to scout a route through shallow water, through coral or, in our case, through ice in the Antarctic is commonplace. A lookout is a yo-yo, up and down at short notice. The alternative is to just leave the poor sod up there and tie off the halyard. That is pleasant enough in the tropics, but could be a desperate business in high latitudes. And in our case on Pelagic Australis, the masthead only gets you 28m off the waterline – good for what’s immediately off the bow and bit further. Skipper Dave Roberts has had his drone for the second season on Pelagic Australis and during our Antarctic expedition cruise in…

Whether it’s a container, log, fishing gear or other detritus, hitting a floating object mid-ocean can quickly escalate into a critical situation. John Jennings was sailing his Catalina 41 Coolabah with his wife and sons from Samoa to Suva, Fiji in 2008, when the boat impacted something – he believes a container – sharp enough to puncture the hull. “Ten or 15 minutes after that, the floorboards started floating,” Jennings recalls. “I told my son Harry to check the integrity of the through-hulls and seacocks in the aft of the vessel while I checked forward. I opened all cupboards and compartments to try to find the source of water ingress. I started removing as much material as I could to gain further access but the water level was rising uncomfortably…

CHRIS TIBBS is a meteorologist and weather router, as well as a professional sailor and navigator, forecasting for Olympic teams and the ARC rally Warm fronts separate the advancing warm air mass within a depression from a colder air mass ahead of it. This transition at the surface is termed the warm front. As cold fronts are usually – but not always – the most active part of a depression they generally get more attention, especially if they arrive with thunder and lightning. Classic depression theory tells us of a lowering cloud base ahead of the front, a southerly wind and falling barometer. As the cloud base continues to lower, rain starts to fall and the wind will steadily increase. As the front passes through we get the expected veer…