Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2023 i Yachting World

Farewell Monique Monique the sailing hen, who famously accompanied French solo skipper Guirec Soudée on a five-year around the world voyage, has died. Soudée’s unique companion lived to the age of nine, the Rhode Island Red even laying eggs for Soudée while on a transatlantic voyage and icebound in Greenland. Monique and Soudée’s adventures are the subject of several books. See page 61 to read about one of them. Hanse’s record orders After what it describes as a ‘turbulent fiscal year’ Hanse Yachts reports that its order book is at an all-time high with a value of more than €260 million. The company, which includes Hanse, Moody and Dehler brands, has also made efficiencies to clear the backlog generated by the pandemic in new yacht construction. The shift in popularity…

According to the winner of the last Volvo Ocean Race, Charles Caudrelier, skippers for the current Ocean Race had little trouble in finding crew that wanted to do the race, they just didn’t find many that wanted to do Leg 3, which should be finishing just about as you read this. Despite the appeal of a fully crewed ride aboard an IMOCA, it seemed few fancied a 13,000-mile 30-plus day Southern Ocean sleigh ride from Cape Town to Itajai. Which is strange – normally there’s a queue as long as one outside a UK passport office for those keen to send a 60-footer offshore. It’s true that Leg 3 was the longest in the history of this fully crewed race, but it’s also far shorter than a solo lap of…

Why would a naval architect and structural engineer used to working with cutting edge materials for America’s Cup teams, including INEOS Britannia, and companies like Airbus, be excited about working with wood? “It’s quite simple for me,” says French designer Thomas Tison, “Modernity does not neglect where we all come from – on the contrary it makes the best of it. In a way a boat is a heritage, so to ignore wood would be to ignore the essence of yacht design and building. “Carbon fibre is only an evolution from this heritage and reinstating wood as a modern material increases the number of options a naval architect has for creation and performance.” Tison designed the stunning, contemporary 48ft offshore racer Elida which launched last year, and currently has a…

{Entry in the Mini Transat is highly competitive: there are currently 152 boats chasing 84 places} Xucia is Mini 6.50 #1081, a radical Sam Manuard-designed foiling iteration of the popular single-handed class. Rupert Holmes looks at the accelerating pace of change in the Mini 6.50s The past few years have seen an explosion of activity in the Mini 6.50 class, with qualifying races for the iconic Mini Transat race oversubscribed by up to 100% and two-year waiting lists for new Series-built boats. Yet the front of the fleet is no longer an economic place to go racing. Typical fully equipped prices for new Series builds are around €150,000, while the bill for new one-off Protos is well over double that figure, reflecting the costs of full carbon one-off boats that…

Ellen’s Trust celebrates 20 years The Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust marks its 20th anniversary this year. Since taking five young people from Great Ormond Street sailing in 2003, the charity hopes to welcome 750 on adventures in 2023 alone. Ancasta Group is also supporting the Trust: for every new boat sold, Ancasta will donate the cost for one young person to go on a Trust four-day sailing trip. Kevin Escoffier’s Holcim-PRB, the dominant leader of The Ocean Race, has set a new 24-hour IMOCA record by covering a breathtaking 595.26 nautical miles over 11-12 March, 2023. The crew of Holcim-PRB maintained an average pace of 24.8 knots racing at near 50°S on the race’s long Southern Ocean stage. The previous official IMOCA record was set by Alex Thomson on Hugo…

Details have been published of the Arkea Ultim Challenge-Brest, the solo, non-stop around the world race in giant Ultim trimarans. The inaugural around the world race for the single-handed 100-footers will start from Brest on 7 January 2024. Racing will be organised by OC Sport Pen Duick. There is a minimum entry requirement of four boats, and a maximum limit of eight. Currently five teams have entered, with three – Charles Caudrelier on Maxi Edmond de Rothschild, Thomas Coville on Sodebo Ultim 3, and Armel Le Cleac’h’s Maxi Banque Populaire – having met the qualification criteria. See more at ultim-challenge.com…

Cayard quits US Sailing With the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on the horizon, the US team is in disarray as boss Paul Cayard announced his resignation from the organisation. “Unfortunately, over the past couple of months, the US Sailing Association and I had a complete breakdown on several levels,” he said. “I am not a quitter, but I do know when it is time to go.” Pyewacket wins RORC Caribbean 600 Roy Disney’s Pyewacket 70 claimed both monohull line honours and the overall IRC win in the 2023 RORC Caribbean 600. The latest Pyewacket is a turbocharged Volvo 70 with a taller mast, lighter hull and deeper keel than the original box-rule ocean racers, and completed the course in 42h 45m 06s. Alex Thomson on Ken Howery’s Gunboat 68 Tosca…

The Yachtsman of the Year Award was set up in 1955 to celebrate the achievements of the best of British sailing. The trophy is awarded by members of the Yachting Journalists’ Association (YJA) to the Briton whose attainment in the previous year ‘most justifies such a title’. When I won in 2018 I’d only heard the phrase ‘Yachtsman of the Year’ in the documentary Maiden as it was awarded to my fellow ‘yachtsman’ and joint winner, Tracy Edwards MBE. When I heard about my nomination, I had to research the award to figure out what it was even being awarded for. It appears I wasn’t the only one. Charlie Dixon, who was awarded the Young Sailor of the Year title last month, said when interviewed afterwards: “I didn’t really know…

“Slip into the water, don’t jump. Try not to splash, and follow me,” our guide Torea hurriedly told us as the panga-style boat slowed to a stop, only 100m away from a sleeping giant. “Stay together, stay close to me. Ready? Let’s go!” As the boat clicked into neutral, Torea was already in the water and swimming away, urging us all to follow quickly. Lowering myself into the water, I barely had time to take in the vast blue void of the open ocean below me. By the time I took my first breath, he was already 10m away, kicking toward where he’d last seen the whale spout. From the boat, the distance we had to swim didn’t look far, but once in the water fighting the wind chop and…

Gunboat 70 and 80 In the seven years since Grand Large Yachting purchased cult catamaran brand Gunboat and brought it to a new headquarters in the south of France, it has steadily increased its market stature. Today we see a yard at full capacity, specialising in a real niche of top end quality and high performance, at a big size (and cost). It has two GB72Vs in build (its first flybridge model), two GB80s, and numbers six and seven of its GB68 – which is now redesigned as the GB70 (featured here). When you consider the GB80 is equivalent to a 100ft superyacht in size and price, you start to understand quite how far this brand has progressed. I have toured the La Grande-Motte yard a couple of times, the…

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Legendary Australian yachtsman Syd Fischer has died at the age of 95. A consumate sportsman, Fischer was awarded an OBE in 1971 for multiple sporting achievements including rugby, football and surf lifesaving, but it was sailing he was most famed for despite not taking up the sport until his mid-30s. He managed and funded five Australian America’s Cup campaigns, including Young Australia in 2000, the only one to contest for the ‘Auld Mug’. He was also widely called Australia’s greatest offshore sailor, skippering his series of Ragamuffin yachts. He competed in 42 Rolex Sydney Hobart races, winning line honours twice in 1988 and 1990 as well as overall victory in 1992. He took part in eight Admiral’s Cups, skippering on seven occasions, and in 1971 won the Fastnet Race and…

Coffee in hand, I gaze out from our cockpit across the flat lagoon of the palm-fringed coral atoll in Fakarava. We are in the Tuamotus, French Polynesia. Yesterday we swam with hundreds of sharks, this afternoon will be spent kiteboarding. It’s a destination we dreamed of long before we had a boat to bring us here. Inspired by the many adventurers, authors and sailors who came before, we wanted to spend at least a year in French Polynesia, taking our time to explore this country’s many delights, before continuing on across the Pacific. But making the decision to enter the world’s biggest ocean was not taken lightly. For many cruisers on the Atlantic side, deciding to transit the Panama Canal and enter the Pacific seems like a point of no…

The Caribbean regatta season is something of a pilgrimage to the sun, drawing competitors from across North America as well as across the Atlantic. Those coming from northern Europe or the Mediterranean often cross in the ARC rally or RORC Transatlantic Race. Then, after competing in your chosen events, and perhaps enjoying some cruising downtime in the islands, you have a choice of sailing or shipping the boat back for the European summer. The St Maarten Heineken Regatta (SMHR) is the first big inshore regatta of the Caribbean season, after the offshore RORC Caribbean 600, and was the first time many new arrivals to the Caribbean this year had lined up against one another. Adopting the slogan ‘serious fun’, the event lays on competitive racing over four days, each ending…

{Versatile peanuts (actually a legume, not a nut) are cheap and widely available for blitzing into nut butter or creating peanut satay sauce} Provisioning a yacht for a long period away from conventional shops, with limited cold store space, dry goods stowage and galley facilities, can be daunting. In a beautifully illustrated new book, The Hunter & The Gatherer, long-time liveaboards Catherine Lawson and David Bristow explain how they provision, shop, forage and cook while cruising tropical and remote waters. The couple have been cruising for more than two decades, and are currently exploring Indonesia and south-east Asia on their 40ft catamaran Wild One with their daughter, Maya, seeking out remote anchorages as much as possible. That desire to be far away has shaped their food mentality, which Catherine explains…

‘It’s just awesome coming off the line with 80 other boats’ HATTIE ROGERS NOMINATES THE WASZP “I’d like to be able to say the AC40 [Women’s and Youth America’s Cup foiler] because hopefully – fingers crossed! – I will be in it and it’s definitely the coolest boat that I’ve ever seen,” says Rogers. “But the Waszp dinghy is what’s got me into foiling and has got a lot of other younger sailors into foiling.” The Waszp is a one-design foiling dinghy designed to be more accessible to a wider range of sailors than development classes like the International Moth. It is raced in over 20 countries and has two smaller rig options for youth crews from just 40kg. “It’s just awesome coming off the line flying with 80 other…