Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2018 i Yachting World

Even I can hear myself starting to sound like a parrot. ‘Sailing is at an revolutionary moment’. I don’t know how many times I have written this in the last few years as yachts got faster and faster, then sprouted wings and took off. But honestly, the sport is full of surprises! The biggest recently is the monohull design chosen for the next America’s Cup. Any traditional sailor who wanted the boats to go back to a representation of the type of yacht the rest of us sail may have reeled at the renderings. This ‘water skater’ is a fully foiling machine the like of which we have never seen before, and it promises to be even quicker than the catamarans it supersedes. The team that dreamt it up, Emirates…

Greenings, one of the 12 Clipper 70 yachts competing in the current Clipper Round the World Race, ran aground and was abandoned on 31 October, just a few hours after the start of leg three from Cape Town to Western Australia. The South African National Sea Rescue Institute safely evacuated all 18 crewmembers. The yacht initially grounded on offlying rocks on the western side of Cape Peninsula, between Cape Town and Cape Point. She was then holed and blown 350 yards onto a nearby beach before the Clipper team could get a tug and towline attached. “During the course of that ... quite a lot of the hull had been ripped away but we don’t know how much because it’s covered in sand,” explained Clipper race founder Sir Robin Knox-Johnston.…

Renowned yachting photographer Rick Tomlinson has released a special 30th anniversary calendar for 2018, which features 12 current images, as well as a spread of pictures celebrating 30 years photographing the best of sailing – from early Whitbread races to the America’s Cup, superyachts, and Olympic classes. Tomlinson, who is based in Cowes on the Isle of Wight, was a pioneer of onboard race photography when he joined Drum for the 1985 Whitbread as race crew, in a serendipitous move that turned out to be a forerunner of today’s Onboard Reporters. “My whole ambition, even at school, was to do the Whitbread Race,” he recalls. “I had been working as sailor and a boatbuilder, and I got a job on the build programme for a boat called Drum, which was…

Whether you are excited or perplexed at the decision to abandon high speed foiling multihulls in favour of 75ft monohulls in the next America’s Cup, the change of tack ensures that sailing’s most prestigious trophy remains true to its roots in at least one key way. When you win the Cup you get to make the rules, albeit in conjunction with the challenger. As the defender you can do pretty much what you like, especially if you get on with the challenger. It is this that makes the Cup unique and so appealing to some of the world’s wealthiest and successful individuals. It is also why the pitch is skewed with each edition and why politics and posturing play such a big part. In addition, having won the Cup you…

Caspar Craven and his wife, Nichola, and their three children sailed round the world together on their Oyster 53, Aretha. Caspar is a sought-after keynote speaker on the topics of leadership, team building and dealing with adversity. His book Where the Magic Happens is being published by Bloomsbury in May 2018. www.casparcraven.com see a common pattern with many sailors. They love being on the water and sailing, but struggle to get their partner and children excited about going out to spend time afloat When Nichola, my wife, and I made the decision to sail round the world with our children, we had a big challenge ahead of us. Well, quite a few big challenges. The relevant one here was how did we instil and foster a love of being on…

Do you really need to stop work or take months off to make a transatlantic crossing? What if you can’t quit, or you don’t have the funds for your own boat? You can still do it, and each year scores of people manage to fit in a ‘time poor’ ARC transatlantic rally, sometimes as a starter experience to help with planning a bigger adventure later on. At almost every stage of life prior to retirement, from teens and early twenties to empty nesters, people have found a way. At this year’s ARC we spoke to some of the crews who had managed to squeeze an ocean crossing ambition into a few weeks or months away from work or between jobs. One means of managing it is to sail one way…

CAMPBELL FIELD ON DECODING WEATHER FORECASTS One of the biggest developments on land and sea is connectivity. With just a laptop and an Iridium GO, yachts can gain relatively inexpensive access to mountains of weather information. There are a multitude of apps and programs that will download and display forecast grib (gridded binary) files. That’s the easy part. The challenge is knowing how to use that information – which means understanding where your forecast comes from and, crucially, what it can’t tell you. The most important thing is to understand the source and format of your forecast data. I have witnessed two experienced sailors debating the relative merits of two weather apps. It was hard to convince them that the data from each came from the same source. But the…

EDDIE WARDEN OWEN ON BIG GUSTS OFFWIND Eddie Warden Owen, chief executive of the Royal Ocean Racing Club and respected helmsman, tactician and coach, offers advice on managing big gusts downwind This is one of those ‘yee-haw’ moments we all live for when sailing. The J/80 is in 20-plus knots of wind and is either on a reaching leg parallel to the coast with an offshore wind, or is on their normal angle downwind but just been hit by a gust and has ploughed into the wave ahead. These are conditions that a boat like the J/80 revels in, and on this occasion seem to be giving the team the ride of their lives. White horses are visible even though they are in the lee of the land, so it…

email yachting.world@timeinc.com Letters may be edited as appropriate www.twitter.com/yachtingworld www.facebook.com/yachtingworldmagazine Rogue waves – real or myth? My experience of rogue waves, based on an experience south of Fiji in 2015 in a ‘crush zone’, is that the waves fit within statistical variation: some big some not so big. I know that is not a very sexy explanation but it is probably true. I was motorsailing with a reefed main in 30-plus knots of wind heading 60° to the direction of the wind and waves. As I climbed over these magnificent 10-12m waves, I saw some huge ones in the distance with breaking crests. Were these rogue or freak waves? They were larger for sure, and as I rode up these monsters I looked to port and there was nothing but…

There is no better way to appreciate climate change as a reality than returning year on year to South Georgia, that most celebrated of sub-Antarctic islands in the Southern Ocean. For whatever reasons (and there are possibly many in an environment like this with temperatures for the large part of the year hovering around 0°C), whether the temperature is just below or just above makes all the difference. In the last three decades that I have been coming here the trend has been upward and this is backed up statistically as the island had been occupied by Norwegian and English whaling companies since the turn of the last century into the late Fifties and, since then, by a British Antarctic Survey field station. The carefully kept records tell the tale…

Snow Petrel is a finely illustrated account of the yacht of the same name and her incredible journey to Mawson’s Huts on Cape Denison in eastern Antarctica, the windiest place on earth. Passages to the southernmost continent in non-sponsored yachts, especially one this small, are rare, but one where a father goes along as crew for two of his children is exceptional. The father is Jon Tucker, an ex-teacher turned author, whose self-built gaff ketch, New Zealand Maid, was home for him and his wife Barbara as they raised their five sons at sea. One son, Ben Tucker, became a professional seaman, and is the skipper of the 34ft Snow Petrel, while another, Matt, his youngest brother, who was cook and crew, showed a bent for film and photography, which…

inReach “This is a personal satellite comms device that works like a Sat phone with text messaging, live online tracking and email. It’s a great, super-cheap way to keep our friends and family up to speed with our movements around the ocean. It’s also a very good back-up device for our onboard safety devices should we lose power for any reason. You can sync it with your phone and operate it through the excellent app. For a small subscription you have unlimited tracking and plenty of messaging/email to normal devices. A thoroughly recommended device for anyone venturing slightly offshore in any kind of boat.” Chris Draper “Apart from the obvious safety aspect, a Garmin InReach is a great bit of kit for reassuring the folks back home. For around £400…

HOW TO HANDLE BIG SEA STATES Whether it’s a bone-shuddering upwind slam or vomit-inducing downwind roll, the wrong sea state can make sailing through any stretch of water hard work. Here are some of my tips for sailing in waves: Do your homework Put extra time into route planning for coastal passages, identifying areas to avoid where sea may become aggressive or confused. If you must cross a shallow patch of water, remember wave height is measured from peak to trough so as a minimum subtract half the wave height from your expected depth of water. Remember barometric pressure and storm surges can further change sea levels. Use any natural protection afforded by the local geography to make your passage smoother. In an offshore breeze hug the coast for flatter…

One of the areas of offshore sailing that I am often asked about is the extremes of the conditions we encounter while racing. There are a few crew on the Volvo Ocean Race yacht Turn the Tide on Plastic who are new to the sport and, although technically competent sailors, will not have experienced the furious Southern Ocean or being becalmed as you watch your rivals get further away from you. In sailing, how you cope with pressure and stress or manage yourself and your emotions is crucial and has a direct impact on those around you and the overall performance of the crew. So, to arm the crew with as much emotional strength as possible, in preparation for this race we focussed on mental as well as physical preparation.…

Chris Draper Following two years spent in Bermuda, when Chris was tactician for Softbank Team Japan, the Draper family bought a 40ft catamaran and are now living aboard and cruising the Caribbean (see page 48). “At the moment we are in Bequia on our way back up to Antigua for the Dragon invitational event mid December. We’ll then spend the Caribbean season cruising and travelling to all of the events in Antigua and St Barths with our family while I do the regattas. Great times.” Paul Heiney is a well-known writer and broadcaster from the UK. His current book, One Wild Song, tells of his 18,000- mile round trip to Cape Horn. This year, Heiney completed his circumnavigation of Iceland in his Victoria 38 Wild Song, describing it as ‘some…

CROSBIE LORIMER ON BLACK JACK Black Jack 100, originally Alfa Romeo, is a Reichel Pugh design that was launched in 2003 and famously and repeatedly duelled with Wild Oats XI for Sydney Hobart line honours. After several years racing in Europe, the iconic 100-footer has been rebooted and has her sights on the Hobart trophy once more. I always told Peter you never want to buy a 100-footer and eventually he ignored me. But now we’re all pretty happy that we’re here!” The words of Mark Bradford, the easy-going skipper of the recently reminted Black Jack 100 (previously Esimit Europa 2 and originally Neville Crichton’s Alfa Romeo), say something of the trust that underpins the ten-year relationship he has enjoyed with Peter Harburg, owner of a number of yachts carrying…