Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2017 + SuperSail World i Yachting World

B y the time this issue comes out the 35th America’s Cup will be imminent. The challenger playoff finals will run from 10-12 June to decide who will race against Oracle Team USA in the America’s Cup match. The match itself starts on the weekend of 17 and 18 June and continues again the following weekend, 24 and 25 June, with 26 and 27 June set aside as extra days of racing, should they be needed for the first to seven series. In between, on 16, 19 and 20 June, the J Class will be contending for their own America’s Cup regatta. Many of those who have followed previous Cups believe this could be the closest challenger and match series yet. In practice racing, most teams were close and continuing to…

A 57ft catamaran that capsized more than five months ago and hasn’t been seen since her crew were safely evacuated, was found and recovered drifting off the North Carolina coast in early May. Fishermen spotted the upturned hulls of the Atlantic 57 Catamaran, Leopard, 25 miles off Cape Lookout and alerted authorities. The Carteret County News reported that the owner’s insurance company was contacted and that a salvage company had been hired to recover the vessel and tow it into Beaufort. Leopard capsized about 400 miles north of the Dominican Republic on her way south from the Chesapeake Bay to St Maarten on 21 November last year. A US Coast Guard aircraft located the boat via its EPIRB signal and the merchant vessel M/V Aloe diverted to rescue all three…

F our fleets at Antigua Sailing Week this year were devoted to bareboats with 46 yachts entered. Mike Cannon and Neil Harvey were top bareboat overall, scoring six wins on their chartered Jeanneau SO 44i KHS&S Contractors in Bareboat 4, adding a back-to-back win to their recent victory at St Maarten Heineken regatta. US-based Harvey and Cannon have, like many of the fleet, plenty of serious racing miles on serious boats behind them. However, they choose to sail in the white-sail bareboat fleet, where the emphasis lies on skill. Harvey and Cannon are experts at bringing charter yachts up to racing spec. They begin regatta preparation early, checking every block and shackle. Harvey, who works for Harken, even brings new like-for-like cruising blocks with him to replace any split or damaged…

S urreal. Not a breath of wind tonight. The sea’s surface is flat and unbroken. The sky is utterly cloudless and filled with stars. A half moon lights up the entire picture. It’s so still it’s unbelievable. We are six miles north of the Equator and on the cusp of leaving the northern hemisphere. Nichola and the children are excited. This is their first crossing of The Line. Given we will cross around 2330, King Neptune in all his finery is on ice until the morning. The crossing of the Equator ceremony presided over by King Neptune (in this case me, as I have crossed several times before) will try each of the crewmembers for crimes in court. Inevitably, they will be found guilty and buckets of cold water will be…

T hroughout the day, a slab of slate-grey cloud brooded ominously over the tiled roofs of Split. It was threatening something, but that something was devoid of wind, and the new Bavaria C57 could only inch across this huge patch of gloomy anticipation. Croatia just before the tourist season feels as if it’s also brooding, waiting for the real business of summer to break out. In high season, the Dalmatian coast is a perfect yachtsman’s playground, blessed with over a thousand varied islands – endless scope for sailing to a new place for lunch, another for dinner. The new Bavaria C57 we were sailing will be based here, as will many more once sold. Croatia is one of the most popular sailing charter areas in the world. Bavaria estimates that some…

£2,999 What is it? A processor that aims fundamentally to change the way we interact with a yacht’s instrument data. Who is it for? High performance crew S ailmon has a long-standing reputation in the superyacht world for its outstanding displays. The Dutch marine electronics company has now launched a processor, the E4, which enables instrument data to be shared and displayed in new ways. From the outset, the company, run since 2014 by three-time Olympic 470 sailor Kalle Coster and serial entrepreneur Peter Houtzagers, has challenged the status quo in marine electronics. The duo believe the industry to be outdated and that it too frequently fails to live up to users’ expectations. In its original ownership the company developed displays that have long been coveted in the superyacht world, thanks…

Land Rover BAR crew aiming high Dwarfed by the scale of the huge wingsail of the AC50 Land Rover BAR, boat captain Jo Lees goes aloft. The boat’s soft sail jib is hoisted and secured on a lock, so before sailing, one of the crew has to go aloft and put it on the lock before coming back down. Lees is typical of the level of experience to be found in every aspect of America’s Cup teams. He has worked as boatbuilder and sailing crew in teams ranging from the Admiral’s Cup, Volvo Race entry Team Sanya to two previous Cup teams, GBR Challenge and Shosholoza, as well as MOD 70s. yachtingworldmagazine #ywbackfire…

McKeon has exploited a revolution in glass manufacturing A fter more than 30 years working alongside the late Ed Dubois in what was arguably the world’s most successful design partnership in large sailing yachts, Malcolm McKeon has established himself as a mould-breaking naval architect in his own right since going it alone in 2012. Just when large sailing yacht style was showing signs of fatigue and the market was slowing, 58-year-old McKeon injected genuinely fresh thinking, combining thought-provoking hull lines with design offering much more than an aesthetic novelty. Conventional superstructures replaced by low profile, curved glass canopies, fold-out topsides that form ‘beach clubs’, reverse stem angles, multitasking hull chines and deck design which removes almost every piece of equipment from sight are all defining characteristics of his work. Some…

PICTURE THIS Kicking back T he Melges 32 Kick Em Jenny 2 powering downwind at Antigua Sailing Week in May. Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, the regatta has evolved from an event originally dreamt up by hoteliers to extend the tourist season and raced in locally built workboats, to a lynchpin on the Caribbean regatta circuit. Everything from the 115ft Farr-designed ketch Sojana to TP52s, 1720s and Melges 24s, Gunboats, ex-Volvo Ocean Race boats, chartered bareboats, white sail fleets, and all in between enjoyed eight races in solid tropical breezes with surfing wave conditions. See page 26. PICTURE THIS A classic sight C ommissioned in 1896 for a wealthy French yachtsman, the elegant 23.3m gaff-rigged cutter Avel took just four months to build at Camper & Nicholson in Gosport. Designed by…

Hanse Yachts’ parent company Aurelius has acquired the French catamaran builder Privile?ge, clearly indicating that the catamaran production market looks set to be a key area of growth. The news follows nearly three years after Bavaria bought French cat builder Nautitech. Both Bavaria and Hanse have their eyes on the market enjoyed by Groupe Beneteau and its Lagoon brand, but have not been able to accommodate the building of catamarans in their own facilities due to the extra beam. Privile?ge will continue to exist as an independent brand and its shipyard in Les Sables d’Olonne is to be maintained and expanded. The statement issued from Aurelius says that it aims ‘to combine the expertise of HanseYachts in the series production of yachts with the catamaran-building experience of Privile?ge in order…

Y ou cannot presume to be able to sail across an ocean without experiencing some problems or breakages with your equipment. We issued the 290 yachts sailing in the 2016 ARC and ARC+, transatlantic rallies with a survey to detail their breakages and solutions. The first thing you notice from the results is that there were few empty columns for yachts without problems. In total, 167 yachts, or nearly 60 per cent of the fleet, had a breakage. Problems are of course to be expected, but breakages can spoil voyages. One of the best ways to avoid them is to learn from others’ mistakes. We collected all the data and questioned the skippers that had relevant issues to understand how they fixed them and the lessons they learnt. The most common…

I t is rare to leave the Antarctic Peninsula earlier than need be. No matter how much time you allow for a cruise in that splendid and awe-inspiring environment it is never enough time and the return across the Drake is done with regret, if not outright trepidation. This February my Swiss Italian charter guests, on their sixth cruise with Pelagic Australis, were somewhat disappointed with the weather conditions. We had planned an eight-day ski mountaineering trip on Anvers Island but due to miserable drizzly weather with continuous low cloud the enthusiasm for what would be a major undertaking had ebbed. The bad weather continued unabated, so we sailed far south searching for the edge of the polar high with no luck, other than one blue sky day on our return…

Neel 51 T his was the most talked-about multihull of the show and of the year so far. The Joubert-Nivelt design incorporates the best assets of Neel’s previous 45 and 65 models – that of performance and comfort in a bluewater family yacht – and adds even more space for its size. Neel has found a clever niche offering the performance benefits of a trimaran with the type of accommodation offered in a cruising catamaran. The La Rochelle company argues its trimarans are more stable than cruising catamarans. Cats, it says, reach their peak righting moment at 12º heel, beyond which sail needs to be reduced. That peak for a tri, however, is not until 27º heel – an unusually steep angle for cruising. Neel also argues that trimarans are faster,…

THIS MONTH The 6fT skiff • how To seT a sTorm jib • heavy weaTher sailing • Tropical squalls When routeing for the Blue Pearl, Stephanie Ball was monitoring an area from Suez across the Indian Ocean to the Maldives of around 2,999,020sq miles W ould you consider support from an expert meteorologist on your next ocean crossing? With costs lower than you might realise, maybe it’s time you should. Employing the services of a professional router is not just the preserve of the record-chasing ocean sailor or professional crew. Avoiding heavy weather or potentially dangerous conditions is the main reason bluewater sailors seek out forecasting advice. Stephanie Ball is a forecaster and router in Gibraltar, whose MeteoGib service covers the busy shipping lanes of the English Channel and Strait of…

Modern classic schooners will be mixing it with unashamedly contemporary carbon performance superyachts I t is no mystery why the Superyacht Cup is a perennially popular event, more than 20 years after it was founded. In Mallorca in June, sea breezes arrive predictably in the afternoon, the days are warm and the flat, blue water of Palma Bay lays out under the hazed backdrop of the mountains of the Serra de Tramuntana. Palma is also a hub of the superyacht industry, a place where every and any kind of work can be carried out, and an ideal stopover for Mediterranean cruising. Despite all that, the numbers for the regatta this year are down to a dozen entries. But this is a highly unusual year. Many owners decided to cross the…

T he most radical shake-up of the Volvo Ocean Race since its inception as the Whitbread in 1973 were announced in May in a raft of changes for the 2019 edition of the race onwards. The biggest change is in choice of a new one-design yacht. Volvo Ocean Race CEO Mark Turner confirmed that from 2019 the ocean legs will be sailed in a turbo-charged 60ft monohull, a foilassisted design. More intriguingly, Turner announced the potential for these new Volvo 60-footers to be reconfigured to compete within the Vendée Globe IMOCA fleet. Speaking to Yachting World in Paris ahead of the announcement, he explained: “We found ourselves looking at the fact that the best boat for the Volvo Ocean Race, which is a combination of performance, safety, technology development, actually can…

T he first edition of what is hoped to be an annual 935-mile Antigua to Bermuda Race will be remembered for the rapid sinking and abandonment of the Farr 56 Monterey 200 miles from Bermuda. Les Crane, pictured right, a previous commodore of the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, together with five crew, abandoned the Bermuda-registered Monterey after it began rapidly taking on water during the early hours of 17 May. The crew transferred via liferaft to the Volvo 60 Esprit de Corps IV, which had seen their flares and motored five miles to assist. Crane described the rescue after safely arriving in Bermuda. “I came up on watch at 0400; we were beating into 10-15 knots but the boat was very comfortable with the wind and the sea state,” said Crane.…

Jersey sailor Phil Sharp, together with his Spanish co-pilot Pablo Santurde, showed consistent and ruthless form aboard the Brit’s Class 40 Imerys to win the eighth edition of the Normandy Channel Race ahead of the 24-strong Class 40 fleet in May. The duo covered over 1,000 miles of English Channel and Irish Sea, from Caen, through the Solent, around the Fastnet and Tuskar rocks and back, at an average speed of over ten knots. It is an impressive start to Sharp’s build-up to the Transat Jacques Vabre later this year and ultimately to his Energy Challenge target to compete in the Vendee Globe 2020 – and to be the first vessel to circumnavigate non-stop using zero fossil fuels. This also marked a back-to-back victory for Santander’s Pablo Santurde, following his…

T he tropical heat of Antigua during the last week in April is not a languid heat. It is a loaded energy that brings a hot, heavy breeze out onto Rendezvous Bay, powering along the 143 boats competing in Antigua Sailing Week. It the hum of what feels like the half the island’s population working to feed, house and transport the 1,500 crew that descend from all over the world for one week. And it is accentuated by the buzz of adrenaline that comes with a week of surfing conditions, close, close racing, and a frisson of tension until the very end. Antigua Sailing Week may have typical Caribbean informality, yet it is also venerable. The 2017 edition was its 50th iteration. This year was not its largest – the days…

‘Svea’s deck is kept wonderfully clean. The original lines didn’t even have a deckhouse, something the class insisted upon’ S vea, the newest addition to the now ninestrong J Class fleet, is one of the most outstanding new yachts of modern times – a harmonious meeting of historic and modern design; a blend of J Class lines and maxi grand prix yacht technology. What follows will hopefully explain why she is the ultimate modern J; why her design and engineering had to be fast-tracked yet still produced such formidable results, and, crucially, why the other six Js and their 200 professional crewmembers awaiting her arrival in Bermuda this June have something to worry about. Svea’s build programme has been unrelenting since her American owner bought the bare aluminium hull two…

T he first thing you see on descending into the saloon from the deck of the 40m sloop My Song is a series of eight half models arranged vertically on the aft panel of the keel box. It is a history of the owner’s vessels going back 40 years, starting with an Italian trapeze dinghy at the bottom rising up through the Yngling, Mini Tonner and Mumm 30 and finishing with four luxury cruiser-racers – all named after one of jazz pianist and composer Keith Jarrett’s most famous recordings. It’s an individual touch, a record of a lifetime in performance sailing, but My Song sitting at the top of the tree also represents progression and evolution in the art and science of designing multi-purpose sailing superyachts. Every demand for compromise…