Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2024 i Yachting World

It feels like a confessional, but I didn’t learn to sail as a child. It wasn’t until I was in my late teens that I first explored keelboat racing. However, a lifelong love of other sports that are all about getting immersed in the elements – horse riding up wild Welsh mountains and rowing on mist-laded rivers – made me a quick convert to the magic of being out on the water. By contrast, my own kids have probably spent more of their childhood in dinghies than anywhere else (and yes, they do truly love it). So I am always particularly fascinated to meet cruisers for whom sailing is a brave new world. I can’t help but admire anyone who is willing to try something so wholly unfamiliar – the…

America’s Cup showdown After years of preparation, who will be crowned winners of the 37th America’s Cup match? We’ll be reporting from Barcelona on the fast and furious AC75s as well as the first ever Women’s America’s Cup. Can Defenders Emirates Team New Zealand be defeated… and what next for the oldest contest in sport? Tropical adventures Two tempting tropical passages, from laid back family catamaran cruising in warm and friendly Thailand, to adventurous voyaging among little-visited islands of the Pacific. Les Voiles de St Tropez Classics to J-Class, moderns to Maxis, giant schooners, and everything in between: Les Voiles de St Tropez is a true gathering of icons. Expert knowledge The new cruising communities springing up all around the world, safely transferring fuel at sea, buying a bulletproof boat,…

“When you think about the Vendée Globe, you always remember the good stuff. I’ve done three now, and you remember the good bits of all the races. So it seems like the race is condensed into a really short length of time. But once you get out there, that’s when it hits…” says Initiatives-Coeur skipper Sam Davies. “The hard thing is when you realise just how long it is and how you’ve got to survive in those conditions.” The Vendée Globe can be a powerful drug. For some skippers it’s an experience so transformative it draws them back again and again. For first-timers it’s a daunting prospect: can they endure three brutal months? Will they even be the same person afterwards? More sailors than ever will pit themselves against the…

All the luckiest kids I know spent their childhoods messing about in boats. They had water-loving parents and garages filled with glassfibre toys, and sailed their dinghies and raced with the wind across bays and lakes at every chance they had. Some grew up and bought boats of their own, while others – like me – were grown before the sea called our names. There are lots of ways that people get into sailing, at all ages and stages of life. Some of us begin in the classroom, taking lessons with seasoned instructors, while others find the sea the best teacher and do their learning on increasingly daring passages. From Greece to Cape Town and across south-east Asia, these four crews share how they came to live on the sea.…

We were still five miles from port when we realised that clearing into Taiwan might not be as simple as we’d hoped. Our VHF radio crackled into life and a stern voice from the port authority asked who we were, where we were coming from, and where we were going. It was mid-October, and we’d just sailed 340 miles from Hong Kong across the Taiwan Strait, double-handed. The crossing was mostly upwind and rough, affirming the strait’s nickname, the Black Ditch. Strong currents, choppy waves and sporadic rain was not how we wanted to start what we planned would be a multi-year cruise, but packing up our home and saying goodbye to family had taken longer than we planned, so we took the weather we were given. Our cruising plans…

Solaris 74RS I was taken with the layout and interior design of this stylish, performance-cruising raised coachroof design. The first three examples have owner cabins forward with galley and crew cabin aft, which works well as the latter has a dedicated access hatch. The layout involves multiple levels and the galley is low down, four steps from the saloon for example, but it’s different, practical (including good refrigeration space) and is an interior you remember for good reason. The owner’s cabin on the show boat is neutral and minimalist, but in a sensible layout with the headboard aft rather than the en suite aft option. The saloon soleboards lift for full engine and machinery access below, or there is quick access through the hinging aft steps. Named Plaz, this is…

Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli’s team won the UniCredit Youth America’s Cup after a highly absorbing series comprising 12 international teams racing the one-design AC40s off Barcelona. The AC40s were something of an ambitious experiment for this 37th America’s Cup – being used for the Youth and Women’s America’s Cups this autumn, having already earned their keep as the one-design class raced at the first two Preliminary Events by the senior teams earlier in the cycle, and as a test platform for teams to trial components such as foil designs. But the combination of this young generation of speed foiling sailors, together with mini Cup boats, have already emerged as key positives from the AC37 (and at the time of going to press, we haven’t even seen the AC40s in action…

I’ve often claimed that I’m supposed to be 6ft tall, but that my current resting height is 1½in shorter thanks to the considerable time I’ve spent at speed in RIBs chasing some of the fastest racing boats in the world. In fact, I blame a large chunk of the suppression of my height on the 32nd America’s Cup cycle when I was one of the on-the-water radio commentators for two and a bit full seasons of racing in the old IACC monohulls. Even when dealing with boats that did barely any more than 10 knots upwind, getting from our commentary position at the pin end of the line to the windward mark in time for their rounding meant blasting around the outside of the course in a Protector RIB with…

CHARLIE DALIN Picking a favourite is fiendishly hard, but having led the fleet home last time around, there’s only one goal for Dalin and his new Macif. The boat is immaculately prepared, the team and skipper know what to do to get around in front – now it’s largely down to fate and fortune. THOMAS RUYANT Dalin and Ruyant have duelled each other across oceans for years, but it was Ruyant who won both the 2021 and 2023 TJV and 2022 Route du Rhum. Foil damage put paid to his chances in the 2020 Vendée – will his Antoine Koch / Finot-Conq design Vulnerable prove to be anything but? JÉRÉMIE BEYOU One of the most seasoned campaigners on the circuit, Beyou’s new Manuard-designed Charal is a consistent podium finisher. Beyou…

The mood on the Vinson of Antarctica was a wee bit on edge. Justino was staring into the radar in the pilothouse and Dion was all eyes on deck in a sharpish south-west wind. The flat light of a late evening on the wild coast of South Georgia was slowly fading. “She’s coming up!” Justino shouted to us up on deck. He was in no doubt we had to up anchor – and fast. Tor, our Rambo, who was already kitted up and on standby, ran forward for the windlass. I was closest to the wheel and we started to motor ahead on our 80m of chain, closing the distance to the berg even faster. It was an agonising five minutes and a race against time as we just snatched…

Not many years ago I was privileged to become involved with the vernacular sloops of the Windward Islands while on the Caribbean island of Carriacou in the Grenadines. These cargo-carrying craft are built on the beach by families who have been doing it for generations. There are no plans, just the eye of the master shipwright to produce sailing boats of surprising performance, well able to withstand the boisterous conditions for which they are built. The opening pages of Jon van Tamelen’s book Ancestor, from the excellent Seaworthy Publications in Florida, describe his purchase of the Carriacou sloop of the same name. The pages hark back to a better, simpler world as he buys her from her local owners with no broker, no advertisement, no paperwork. He saw her and…

FUJINON TECHNO-STABI SERIES BINOCULARS What is it? Robust, waterproof, high-power binoculars with which you can lock the image in focus. Who’s it for? All cruising sailors, race officers and anyone with an interest in seeing more detail of the natural, nautical and night sky world. Stabilised binoculars – if you haven’t heard the term or used them before – are a potential game-changer. For nearly as long as binoculars have been used at sea, it has been widely accepted that 7x50s are the best compromise for useable magnification on a moving vessel. (7x refers to the magnification, 50 is the objective (larger) lens diameter from which light is transmitted). However, what if you use clever trickery to keep the image still or locked at a higher magnification? Step up image…

‘The one constant has been Mamie and Papi’s boat’ SAM DAVIES NOMINATES NIÑITA “The coolest boat of all time is called Niñita, and is a Starling Burgess 60ft schooner,” says Davies. “It’s a really amazing, beautiful boat.” The custom-built Niñita has been a familiar fixture on the offshore racing circuit for two decades, with Davies’ parents sailing to stopover ports around the world. “She was my parents’ house for nearly 20 years. I never lived on board, but for me, that’s home. Wherever I’ve lived, they’ve come to look after my son. It’s like the grandmother ship.” Niñita features a bath and woodburning stove. Her seakindly lines are drawn from W Starling Burgess’s long-keeled schooner Niña, which won the 1928 Transatlantic Race, and the 1962 Newport Bermuda Race. “The original…

The sailing world is small. But of the 350 or so passengers on board the Boeing 777 I took recently from Heathrow to Seattle, my seat neighbour turned out to be a French cruiser. How do you spot a sailor on a plane? Very How do you spot a sailor on a plane? Very tanned hands and feet; eats dinner with a spoon; reads Yachting World. Six hours in, one of us broke the ice: “You’re a good sleeper in uncomfortable positions!” That launched us down all sorts of meandering conversation topics. “Can you home school and liveaboard with teenagers?” (Conclusion: it’s more fun for the parents to cruise with teenagers, and more fun for the teenagers to cruise before they are teenagers.) Or: “Why don’t many pro sailors own…

The frenetic activity of the Caribbean season had already slowed by the end of April in Anse du Marin, where Albius IV waited on the pontoon. This commanding new 60-footer is part of an Exploration range that began 12 years ago from a meeting between Jimmy Cornell and the managers of Grand Large Yachting who were looking for a new project for the French brand which they took over in 2010. The idea of the all-aluminium ocean-going centreboarder, which had won over so many sailors in the 1980s and 1990s, had lost a bit of momentum after the departure of Garcia’s two founding brothers in 2005. For Cornell’s part, the famous author-sailor knew this type of vessel better than most after three circumnavigations. Intending to attempt the Northwest Passage, he…

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Few things seem to break on any boat when the sun is shining, so when overnight squalls took the wind speed from 6 to 20 knots in seconds, I had the sneaky suspicion that I wasn’t going to bed. The radar screen exploded with storm cells as we tacked around tiny fishing boats, and suddenly the furling headsail stubbornly refused to furl. In the clear light of day, a replacement screw was all it took to get the furler back in action, but I was reminded – yet again – how crucial regular checks are. When you use your boat frequently, wear and tear is inevitable, but right before things go wrong, there are almost always warning signs. You spot suspicious fluids in the bilge or an outboard is tricky…

Paul Larsen explains the magic of deck chutes for spinnaker handling to Andy Rice Paul Larsen was converted to the appeal of deck chutes on a particular day aboard Sir Peter Harrison’s 35m maxi yacht Sojana. “You’d be racing into the leeward mark with another smaller boat, and you know they’d be thinking, ‘We won’t get our kite down until they drop theirs.’ Suddenly our kite disappears in the blink of an eye, we’re around the mark – but when I look back they’re just in a huge, huge mess back there!” Larsen can’t quite work out why deck chutes haven’t caught on in a bigger way in racing because they’re relatively easy to install and not difficult to use once you’ve got the basic rules of operation sorted. “It…