Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2019 i Yachting World

Golden Globe competitor Susie Goodall was rescued from the Southern Ocean in December after being pitchpoled and dismasted in her Rustler 36, DHL Starlight. Goodall was 4th in the round the world singlehanded race, which is raced in ‘retro’ designs as a homage to the original Golden Globe race of 1969. She was 2,000 miles west of Cape Horn when she was hit by 60-knot winds and 7m seas on 5 December. DHL Starlight’s self-steering windvane had broken before the storm hit, in winds of 30-35 knots, so Goodall had handsteered for a period. As conditions worsened, she reduced sail and set her series drogue before going down below to rest. A short while afterwards, DHL Starlight pitchpoled, flinging the solo sailor across the cabin and briefly knocking her unconscious.…

A large portion of the starboard bow section of Seb Josse’s maxi foiling trimaran Edmond de Rothschild was found in December on a beach in Cornwall. Around 10m of the hull section broke away during the second night of the Route du Rhum solo race in November. Josse reported coming to a violent halt while sailing in 30 knots of wind and 3.5m seas in the Bay of Biscay. He was 135 miles north-west of La Coruña at the time, so the debris travelled 375 miles north-east before it washed up on Gunwalloe cove on the west coast of the Lizard peninsula.…

Steven Ismail never really meant to join a rally, but he ended up doing one almost by accident and sailing to a destination he’d never originally intended. Ismail’s crew, a mixture of friends from Scotland and Norway from the oil business, thought a rally would be worth doing, but by then the ARC+ to Cape Verde and St Lucia was full so he signed up for the new ARC+ finishing in St Vincent. This new, small spin-off of the ARC stops at the Cape Verde Islands and finishes at Blue Lagoon Harbour Marina at the south end of St Vincent. It was created, really, as an overflow to the ARC+ from Las Palmas to Cape Verde and St Lucia, an event proving so popular that entries this year had to…

‘IT STARTED RAINING AND EVERY DECK SEAM LEAKED’ Pull up a coil of line, maties and have a sit while I recount the tale of a brave little sailing vessel called Vega. We all knows red sails in the sunset set flying from the tall masts of a classic wooden ship never fail to evoke fantasies of escape from today’s accelerated world back to a time of discovery, adventure, exotic destinations, and the romance of wooden vessels reaching out to far horizons in search of the mysterious unknown and contrast of cultures that make travel so stimulating. That dream became a reality back in 2001 for my mate Meggi Macoun and me when we discovered the traditional wooden sailing vessel Vega in the Canary Islands, where she’d been languishing on…

After upgrading the status of the ominous black clouds ahead from threatening-looking to really quite alarming, we turned to head back downwind… and hoisted even more sail. Boom! As gusts in the high 20s started barrelling through, this yacht really put on a show. Reaching and surfing, we were all whooping with delight, like kids with a powerful toy, especially when we clocked over 14 knots’ boat speed. Now this was what you’d call a test sail! We were on board Beneteau’s brand new Oceanis 46.1, a design tasked with updating the company’s most popular model, sailing off Port Ginesta, Barcelona, under full main and Code 0. The designer, Pascal Conq, was with us and we had all now become intent on seeing just what this ‘fat-nosed’ new shape was…

ANDY RICE talks to Volvo Ocean Race winning bowman JACK BOUTTELL British-Aussie pro sailor Jack Bouttell believes that success in his job as bowman comes down to preparation more than anything else. This applies especially to inshore bowmen about to go offshore for a big race: if you try to wing it, and make it up as you go along, you’ll come unstuck. A good bowman will find out as much as he can about the boat and the systems on board even before he has arrived at the marina. Training time is critical for planning and refining processes, especially working up a system of communications between the crew, as Bouttell found on the multilingual Volvo Race Dongfeng crew, and on maix trimaran Spindrift, where everything is spoken in French.…

I THOUGHT: THIS IS JUST AMAZING. HOW CAN ONE PERSON SAIL IT? ANDREW BISHOP NOMINATES CLUB MEDITERRANÉE “When I was young, I thought the coolest boat around was Club Mediterranée, the four-masted yacht built for Alain Colas to sail in the 1976 OSTAR,” says Andrew Bishop. This extraordinarily huge yacht, 246ft (75m) overall, was designed by Michel Bigoin so that Colas could win the famous race from Plymouth, but with over 1,000m2 of sails it was a beast to manage single-handed. Club Mediterranée was a marvel for its time, with cameras to monitor the masts and a hydraulic winch system. It was one of the first boats to feature a computer at the nav station and one of the very earliest to feature push-push-button controls from the helm. “I was…

Contessa 32 Assent is in her element in this photo taken during Cowes Week 2018, when it was gusting 40 knots. “As a lot of big boats were heading in, damaged or retired, [Kit and Jessie] Rogers’ Contessa was heading out to race, her crew cheering and enjoying the conditions,” says photographer Alex Irwin. “It was absolutely miserable, wet and windy and I was down to my last camera… but it turned out to be the best shot I’ve done, for the story and power behind it.” Assent, built in 1972, competed in two Fastnets, including the infamous 1979 race in which she was the only boat in her class to finish. Then owner Willy Ker later took her cruising to the Antarctic peninsula and, in 2009, to Greenland at…

The Offshore Academy in Cowes, a training centre of excellence for offshore short-handed racing, has been recognised by the National Great Britain campaign for its expertise in providing pathways to professional sailing. It will now sit alongside other British sporting institutions and icons, such as Wimbledon and Lewis Hamilton, by promoting the message ‘Sport is Great’. This is the UK government’s most ambitious international promotional campaign ever and showcases the best of what Britain has to offer to encourage foreigners to visit, do business, invest and study in the UK. The Offshore Academy was established in 2009 to help talented British sailors compete in the Figaro class, a single-handed offshore circuit based in France. It was set up with the ultimate goal of helping create the first British winner of…

Fish for supper I have been reading and watching your Bluewater Sailing Techniques online (www.yachtingworld.com/bluewater-sailing). The fishing episode was very interesting, and from my perspective in the Mediterranean, I catch a lot of bluefish, which are called Lüfer in Turkish. They are absolutely delicious. We catch them for around two weeks in autumn as they migrate south. They are voracious and will take almost anything when they are feeding but strips of fresh fish are best, especially barracuda. They can be tricky to unhook and if you catch one, be careful as they have been known to do fair damage to fingers. In Greece, a tip I have heard was to take a long length of brightly coloured wool or cotton, wrap it around your hand and tie it off…

I first became fascinated by solo ocean racing as a teenager growing up in land-locked Cambridgeshire. I would borrow secondhand sailing magazines and dream of what I could do with my life. Back then, the race I was fixated on from the first word I read about it was the BOC Challenge. I don’t know what entranced me the most, the extreme nature of racing a 60-footer round the world alone or the presence of Isabelle Autissier, a strong woman competing on equal terms with the men. But from those early stories the seeds of ambition were formed. By the time I was 18 I was sure I wanted to sail for a living and my ultimate goal would be to race in the Vendée Globe. For 18 years of…

Competitors in the 2017 Original Single-handed Transatlantic Race (OSTAR) experienced the worst conditions since the race was initiated in 1960 in the era of Blondie Hasler and Francis Chichester. This race is run in the true Corinthian spirit of the original event, with private yachtsmen sailing their own boats. Several contestants, including Mervyn Wheatley of the Royal Cruising Club (RCC), had competed in previous OSTARs or TWOSTARs and most were otherwise experienced in short-handed ocean racing. During two desperate nights in mid-Atlantic, the fleet was so torn apart by hurricane-force wind and huge seas that only seven of 21 starters made it to Newport, Rhode Island. The notably modest extract below is taken from the RCC journal for 2017, Roving Commissions. David Southwood, a member, describes how he coped in…

What makes this elegant modern classic so interesting is the sheer amount of technology that has gone into her design and compositewood build. It has taken established boatbuilding methods and integrated them with the latest design and cuttingedge thinking to ensure as near perfect a result as possible. From the look of her timeless lines, including liberal sheer, spoon bow and classic wineglass transom, it’s hard to tell Anna apart from yachts built in the 1930s era from which she was inspired. But beneath the gleaming teak brightwork are thousands of man and machine hours spent in CAD design work, CNC cutting and 3D printing. When you also factor in the amount of custom engineering involved, the first class finish and the fact that the whole of the interior is…

THIS MONTH LIFT CLASS 40 • OFFSHORE BOWMAN SKILLS • WEST FROM THE WINDWARD ISLES • DEALING WITH CALMS Seasickness is something everyone who ventures to sea will have experienced – either the first-hand misery, or the second-hand experience of watching someone else suffer. Finding ways to stave off the onset and alleviate the symptoms is a problem we can all relate to. In my case, this is personal. I’ve always had a problem with motion sickness – which is a bit of an issue when you’re a professional racing navigator. I’m not alone: Volvo Ocean Race skipper Chris Nicholson recently talked about how he got seasick when he made the shift from Olympic to offshore racing. For me, it all started young. I suspect I’m not alone in first…

Tearing down to the finish of the ARC rally in St Lucia, this is French sailor Jean-Pierre Dick’s JP54 The Kid on the way to taking line honours ahead of 165 other yachts in this year’s event. Dick was racing with a crew of five people, a group of associates and sponsors, to “pass on my knowledge of how to sail offshore”. A fast cruising design he conceived for himself, The Kid is a novel, lightweight, 54ft canting keel concept boat designed by Guillaume Verdier and based loosely on the IMOCA 60s Dick has raced solo round the world on the Vendée Globe. He and his crew completed the rally in 11d 4h, an impressive time considering that, by gybing down the course, they sailed 3,254 miles (the rhumb line…

A little like the oft-heard complaint about British buses – that you wait for ages for one to arrive and then several come along at once – a flurry of no less than eight America’s Cup challenges were received on the last day of the late entry deadline in November, writes Justin Chisholm. Two of the eight were quickly accepted as valid challenges by the current America’s Cup holders, Emirates Team New Zealand and the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron. Malta Altus Challenge from Malta and Stars & Stripes Team USA are now official, but there has been no word since on the status of the other six teams. Both the newly accepted challengers have shortened their development processes by purchasing turnkey boat design packages from Emirates Team New Zealand.…

Following the severe damage incurred by the Ultime maxi trimarans during the Route du Rhum, the much-anticipated solo round the world race for the Ultime class has been postponed. The Brest Oceans race was due to start on 29 December 2019, with hopes that up to half a dozen foiling Ultimes would take to the start line for a non-stop single-handed around the world race. However, with almost the entire fleet suffering serious damage during the Route du Rhum, organisers have confirmed that the race has been postponed. No new date has been announced, although it will likely be after the 2020-21 Vendée Globe. The Lorient-Bermuda race, which was scheduled to start on 5 May 2019 for the Ultime class, has also been postponed. During the Route du Rhum, Armel…

Nothing was going to stop them. When Swiss sailor Franco Niggeler’s crew won the 2018 RORC Transatlantic Race in December, they did so despite calling into Cape Verde to deal with an electrical problem, and later having to put out a fire on board. Their win in the Cookson 50 also cemented this design’s incredible reputation offshore. The Farr design may be over 12 years old, but the Cookson 50 continues to win in blue riband events such as the Rolex Sydney Hobart and Rolex Fastnet Race. Kuka3 dominated this edition of the RORC Transatlantic on handicap. The Swiss team did have one not-so-secret weapon: for this race Kuka3 was skippered by Roberto ‘Chuny’ Bermúdez de Castro. Chuny Bermúdez is one of the best ocean racers in the world. He…

Stretching, desperately reaching, holding a long warp at arm’s length while trying to retain my balance, I felt a familiar sharp twinge shoot down the base of my spine. I’d been here before: it was my body warning me I was on the brink of overdoing it and triggering the protective muscles surrounding my spine into spasm. It forced me to stop, take stock and smile ruefully at the situation. It was dark, my wife was below decks with the kids, blissfully unaware I was floating nearby on an inflatable paddleboard attempting to get a stern line around an urchin-infested rock, having finally found that secluded anchorage we had dreamt about on our Croatian charter. Would they hear my pitiful wails? Would I remain paralysed like this for the night?…

‘Sails like a witch,’ concludes one of Berthon’s famous brokerage adverts. The listings in the pages of Yachting World are many owners’ first impression of Berthon, and the impression they give is one of well-informed charm, with a dash of wit. Well spec’d boats are described as having ‘the full caboodle’, while a 50-footer is ‘built for fast cruising without gorillas’. Offers are invited ‘within the bounds of decency’. Everyone reads the Berthon pages, regardless of whether or not they thought they were in the market for a boat. ‘It takes a minimum of five years to learn the craft to become a broker’ Berthon’s characteristic tone was the brainchild of Sue Grant, the MD, who joined the company nearly 30 years ago. Bored by the conventional brokerage descriptions of…

What is it? A new concept in outdoor cooking Who’s it for? New yachts in the 45-65ft bracket There is a strong expectation that a new cruising yacht will have provision for cooking outside that goes well beyond an old-school barbecue mounted on the pushpit. However the reality is that, while a few are well executed, many cockpit galleys still leave much to be desired. Dometic has put a year of intense development work with boatbuilders into this retractable all-inone unit. It’s primarily designed to be used as an outside galley so is not intended to replace a yacht’s main galley. Nevertheless it provides everything needed to prepare hot food for a large crew without banishing the cooks into a roasting cabin on a hot day. There are four different…