Innholdsfortegnelse for May-2018 i Yachting World

Oyster Yachts has been bought from administrators by British gaming software entrepreneur Richard Hadida. Hadida won the bid from a shortlist of seven bidders. He is a keen yachtsman who has chartered Oysters and sails with motorsports boss Eddie Jordan on Jordan’s Oyster 885, Lush. Oyster went into administration in February with the loss of 420 jobs after the Dutch backers, HTP Investment, decided not to continue to support the company financially. Oyster had its largest ever order book totalling £80m, but also an unsettled £7.3m claim relating to the loss of the Oyster 825 Polina Star III from a total keel failure in 2015. Hadida won’t disclose what he paid to buy Oyster, but he outbid a group that included four other high net worth individuals. He now owns…

John Fisher, crew on the Volvo Ocean Race entry Sun Hung Kai/Scallywag, was lost at sea after going overboard in the South Pacific. Fisher was reported as a man overboard on at 1300 UTC on Monday 26 March, approximately 1,400 miles west of Cape Horn. Scallywag was some 200 miles north-west of the remainder of the fleet at the time and conducted a lengthy search but was unable to find him. Some ten hours after the MOB was first reported, and with conditions forecast to worsen, organisers reported that the race team on the Volvo 65 had made the heartbreaking decision to call off their search and head towards South America. Conditions at the time were 35 knot winds with 6m waves, and the water temperature was 9°C. Richard Brisius,…

A new ‘Swan Classic by Frers Association’ has been launched by Argentine naval architect German Frers with the intention of uniting owners and enthusiasts who sail yachts designed in the 1980s. Over 350 of these designs are thought to still actively be sailing. Marietta Strasoldo, owner of the Swan 651 Lunz am Meer, chairs the association, whose headquarters is in London. It is modelled on a similar initiative created a few years ago for Swans designed by Sparkman & Stephens. “The current objective is to gather together as many of them as possible and to define, within the context of the existing races, the classifications dedicated to these vessels and possibly to create some new event,” says Strasoldo. Nautor’s Swan’s chairman, Leonardo Ferragamo, bought his first Swan in 1988, a…

Staying clipped on We had a number of letters relating to the MAIB report on the tether clip failure that led to the loss of a crewmember on the Clipper Race: The dangers of twisting and side loading carabiners are well known in the world of industrial working at height. Connectors used for industrial use are often highly over-engineered to allow for this ‘abuse’. But one simple method you often see on the harness of climbers or in industrial rope access is partially locking lanyard and connector together. There’s a Petzl product designed to do this but the same result can be achieved by wrapping the lanyard in tape or cable ties instead. This increases the chance of the hook being in line with the load. In the Clipper example,…

As soon as the sun began to disperse the fog that had settled at night over Pubnico Harbour we weighed anchor. Cape Sable was about 15 miles away and the wind, light and contrary, made it slow going. Three hours later a sheen in the veil of wet haze changed into a low, sandy shore. My wife, Nancy, spotted the first buoy, a red dot bobbing in and out of sight among the waves. We noticed the current was still running with us to the east. The visibility wasn’t too bad. We now motored less than a third of a mile from land. To starboard, swells grew higher and higher on scattered shoals only 150m away. On the shallowest spots of Horse Race, a wall of swelling sea thundered and…

If you don’t like the weather in Cape Town, wait ten minutes,” is an adage the local skipper of the first Kraken 66 told us as we set sail. Thankfully, we had a good couple of days to test White Dragon, sailing around the stunning Cape Peninsula – but he was right about the ‘variable’ conditions. It would change from intense heat without a breath of wind one minute to an unsettling dense mist and cold Force 5 the next. We’d chosen the ideal location to do a proper boat test on a bluewater cruiser built by a new brand with the specific requirement to be able to sail anywhere safely and comfortably. Still, as the first day passed, the conditions felt a little benign compared with the legendary Cape…

For many cruisers hailing from mild or cooler climates, such as northern Europe or North America, it can be difficult to imagine living on board in hot and humid weather. Yet tropical or warmer climes, including the Mediterranean, Caribbean and Pacific, are the most popular cruising grounds for sailors taking an extended cruise. There are two major factors to consider when preparing to sail to hotter climates: first and most obvious is how to keep cool on board, and second is how the environment such as UV degradation, mould and mildew will affect your boat and its fittings and fixtures. If buying a yacht specifically it’s important to keep shade, ventilation, and the effects of the sun and humidity in mind when boat shopping. When buying our Southerly 38, for…

ANDY RICE talks to offshore IMOCA 60 sailor and former Volvo Ocean Race skipper SAM DAVIES Weather fronts mark the boundary or transition zone between two air masses of different temperature, and represent one of the most predictably tough and challenging parts of any offshore passage. Getting through them safely with boat and crew intact is a vital skill for any cruising or racing sailor. With three circumnavigations of the globe and 24 transatlantic crossings in her logbook, British sailor Sam Davies has more experience than most of how to tackle this meteorological obstacle course. Here the professional racer shares her best tips on not only how to get through the front as safely and as comfortably as possible, but to do so in such a way that gets you…

Two-times America’s Cup winner Jimmy Spithill has switched from the defeated and now defunct Oracle Team USA back to Patrizio Bertelli’s Luna Rossa team, challenger of record for the 2021 America’s Cup. The 38-year-old Australian returns to the team he first joined in 2007. Luna Rossa’s mercurial owner Bertelli is said to have loved Spithill’s maverick style. It was here he earned the nickname ‘Pitbull’ for his aggressive pre-starts, most notably inflicting one of the Cup’s most crushing defeats in the fifth semifinal race in Valencia against Chris Dickson, helmsman of BMW Oracle. Spithill joins a team that has been centred around skipper Max Sirena and helmsman Francesco Bruni. Luna Rossa’s statement reads: ‘With his huge sports and technical experience on high-performance sailing boats, Jimmy brings additional strength to team…

Whip up a storm These superb images capture the brutal power of the wind over the sea. They were taken by Carlo Borlenghi during a Bora, a strong north-easterly katabatic wind that blows over the Adriatic Sea, and whipped up while the famed marine photographer was in Trieste in March. “The Barcolana press office organised a tug boat for shooting the Bora,” Borlenghi told us. “That day there was over 80 knots, over 130km/h.” The strongest Bora recorded was 164 knots in Croatia in 2003. One of the world’s greatest – and humblest – sailors, Australian Jon Sanders, returned to a hero’s reception in Fremantle in March after completing a record-breaking tenth circumnavigation. The 78-year-old had sailed his Sparkman & Stephens-designed 39-footer Perie Banou II alone round the world in…

Imagine escaping the daily routine of work, the long commute, the corporate life, the grey skies… What if you were paid to go sailing, or paid while you were sailing? Is that an impossible dream? Not any more. A wave of people are turning their backs on traditional, linear careers and the long wait for financial freedom to take a break or go sailing indefinitely. They have decided to downsize, go travelling, perhaps volunteering, and live more a simpler, freer life. But they are quite different to the impecunious sailing nomads of the 1960s and 1970s. These highly educated professionals are cruising in comparative comfort. If you’re smart – and most of these thirtysomething and fortysomething digital natives are smart and skilled – life on board can be turned into…

I have tattoos of a rooster and a pig on my feet. They’re meant to protect me from sinking. I have a nautical star on my forearm, so I can always find my way home. I wear red pants at boat shows and lectures. I have a passion for the traditions of the sea. Celestial navigation tops them, with its blend of romantic art and practical science. Since I first read Bernard Moitessier’s book The Long Way, long before ever going offshore myself, I’ve wanted to cross an ocean using only sun and stars as my guide. In the spring of 2017, sailing north from the BVIs to Bermuda with the ARC Europe fleet, we raised the stakes – we’d sail the route on our Swan 48 Isbjörn navigating entirely…

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 this year. www.casparcraven.com It’s the stuff of dreams. You love sailing and your partner and your children are so excited that they can’t wait to get back on the water and go sailing again. Not every sailor I speak to has that experience. So many people get put off sailing early on with an experience where they are cold, wet, fearful and shouted at. That’s quite a hard place to come back from. Here are some tips and ideas I…

Diva 34SC ‘The objective of the Diva 34SC is to create a yacht that can compete successfully on the race course, offer a family the comfort of three cabins and ease of handling for cruising,’ says Diva’s marketing literature. We’ve all heard such bold statements before, where yards think their latest designs will do everything for everyone – but this brilliant new model has the potential to deliver on its tall promise. Fabola Yachts is a Swedish company building in Estonia. Its aggressive attention to weight with the Diva 34 is noteworthy – with shells and structures all built in vacuum infusion, displacement is only 4.4 tonnes ready to sail. We’re told this model will start planing in 15 knots of wind in flat water. Elsewhere I was really impressed…

The boundary between control and carnage aboard has been thoroughly tested on the inaugural SuperFoiler Grand Prix season this spring. In 2013, inspired by the spectacle of the America’s Cup in San Francisco, the Australian father and son team of Bill and Jack Macartney made the bold decision to revisit the highly successful 18ft Skiff Grand Prix concept they’d masterminded in the 1990s, creating a new multi-venue event from scratch, boats and all. “The extraordinary spectacle of those 72ft America’s Cup catamarans suddenly rising up out of the water was like nothing I’d ever seen before. All of a sudden we saw there was a whole new dimension to it,” said Bill Macartney, “It was at that point that Jack and I said: ‘Look, this is too good to not…

Parting the seas The bow (and stern) wave of J Class yachts can be pretty impressive – particularly when the 180-tonne yachts race in the Caribbean swells off St Barth. Photographer Carlo Borlenghi captured the pin-sharp bow of the original 1934-built J Class Velsheda not only parting the seas while reaching at full pace, but appearing to create the sort of barrelling wave surfers seek in a shore-break. Velsheda was one of three J Class yachts racing at the St Barths Bucket, where it showed it still has the pace and crew skills to challenge the latest two Js, Topaz and Svea. Up and away The crew of Team Pavement take a spectacular flight during the SuperFoiler series in Busselton, Western Australia, in March. The yacht had been rocketing at…

Four Js at Superyacht Cup The Med’s big superyacht regatta will run from 19-23 June this year. The Superyacht Cup Palma currently has 17 entries, from the 62m neo-class schooner Athos, fresh from a four-year round the world cruise, to the superquick and now seasoned regatta campaigners Inoüi and WinWin. Among the entries there are also four of the head turning J Class boats – Velsheda, Ranger, Svea and Topaz – which will form a class of their own. We will be helping to bring some of the action from the regatta via videos and onboard reports online and on our Facebook page, plus a preview of the regatta in our July issue. Details from http://www.thesuperyachtcup.com Sparkling sailing conditions and a 26-strong fleet comprising some of the world’s foremost superyachts…

In 2015 Tasha and Ryan Hacker sold their education business and purchased a new Fontaine Pajot Helia 44, which they named Cheeky Monkey. They picked up their new cruising boat in La Rochelle, France, and over the next 18 months sailed her across the Atlantic to the Caribbean, through the Panama canal, and then to French Polynesia. Tasha turned to film-making and started a YouTube channel called Chase the Story. Although she had no prior experience as a film-maker, she had a number of transferrable skills such as marketing and communication which allowed her to swiftly grow her audience and increase exposure. Tasha had three main revenue streams: YouTube (via Google AdWords, and Patreon), which earned anywhere from $200 to $3,000 per month; writing, which earned between $250 and $1,000…

I’ve been reading Christian Williams’s book, Alone Together (East Wind Press) at bedtime. And the trouble is, it’s all such a helter-skelter of glee at so many levels that I struggled to know which bit to offer the readers of Yachting World. Williams is a 71-year-old retired editor of the Washington Post and scriptwriter of, among other things, NYPD Blue. In the book he sails solo to Hawaii and back from California in his mid-1980s Erikson 32. It’s his first big single-handed passage. For company, he takes along Ishmael and his shipmates from Moby Dick, leaving space for Xenophon, Thucydides and Charles Darwin. He gets so involved with Xenophon, whose luck is running out with the king of ancient Persia, that you begin to wonder what you are supposed to…

The ideas behind TeamO Marine formed when founder Oscar Mead started investigating alternatives to conventional safety harnesses after a competitor in a RORC race died after having been swept overboard. Tragically, he was towed face-forward by his harness line, making it impossible to breathe. This led to the company’s first product, the BackTow lifejacket/harness. This is fundamentally different to existing designs in that the harness attachment is transferred from the chest to the back after someone falls overboard. This means the casualty is pulled along face-up, with their head lifted clear of the water. Mead, a sailor and engineer in his late 20s, has a determination to improve the safety products we all use on a daily basis when on the water. “Right from the outset TeamO’s goal has been…

Although New Zealand is not in the tropical cyclone (hurricane) belt the remains of Tropical Cyclone Gita hit the west coast of both the north and south islands in late February, bringing high winds and storm surge. As a Category 4 cyclone Gita had already devastated Tonga as the worst storm since modern records began, flattening the 100-year-old Parliament building, among many others. It then continued across the Pacific, missing the more populated islands before curving south then east towards New Zealand. This does sometimes happen – after we had lost our rig on Concert in the 1996/97 BT Global Challenge we made our way to the Chatham Islands, arriving at the same time as the remains of a tropical storm. With 60 knots through the harbour it was not…

If I were to pick one development that has revolutionised my own sailing over the past 10 years it would undoubtedly be AIS. Not only has it brought an enhanced level of situational awareness to yachtsmen, but it’s also making huge advances in search and rescue applications. As much as we rely on this system it is sometimes easy to forget its limitations so this month I am considering best practice with AIS. A quick recap AIS uses VHF radio to transmit data gathered from a vessel’s GPS and other navigational sources. Message types are predefined and the number and type of messages received and transmitted depends on the class of AIS fitted. Class A systems are fitted on all vessels over 300 gross tonnes, all commercial passenger ferries regardless…