Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2025 i Yachting World

All departures are special. For the 240 crews that set off on the ARC and ARC+ transatlantic rallies this winter (see page 12), it was with a mix of celebration and trepidation, many taking on their first ocean crossing. For the 40 solo skippers who left Les Sables d’Olonne to start the Vendée Globe, those same feelings are amplified to an extraordinary degree. Several told me that one of the things they had worked on with a sports psychologist was how to prepare for the disconnect that comes from being among tens of thousands of people screaming your name, to suddenly being utterly alone. Sam Davies says she blocked out her first Vendée start, it was so much to process. Each skipper must bid goodbye to loved ones while managing…

British safety product company TeamO won the 2024 Design Award METS (DAME), the biggest marine equipment prize of the year, for its innovative new Hi-Lift lifejacket. The awards were held during the busiest Metstrade marine equipment show to date, in Amsterdam in mid-November. Readers will likely be familiar with TeamO for its BackTow technology, which came out nearly a decade ago, designed to prevent accidental drownings from MOBs being towed face-down by a lifejacket tether. While the Hi-Lift still incorporates that crucial tech, TeamO went right back to the drawing board of self-inflating lifejackets for this model, principally by rethinking the bladder design and how a casualty should best be supported in the water. “The vast majority of horseshoe shapes have buoyancy above the waterline which is wasted,” founder Oscar…

Boot Düsseldorf, the world’s largest yacht and watersports fair, is expected to attract over 200,000 visitors over nine days from 18 January, 2025. Show-goers include watersports enthusiasts from yachtsmen and motorboaters wanting to see the latest premieres through to windsurfers, paddleboarders and divers. If you haven’t been before, it’s a truly mammoth event, with approximately 1,500 exhibitors spread across 220,000m2 of space in 17 halls. Some notable yacht debuts we know about so far include the new Grand Soleil Blue, which is built out of recycled materials; Saffier Yachts’ new flagship SL46, which is by far the largest yacht yet from the family-run Dutch daysailer specialists; and the European Yacht of the Year (EYOTY) 2025-nominated ClubSwan 43 and cover model J/40 (see page 50). Nautor Swan will also be showing…

World Sailing’s Oceanic and Offshore Committee has approved an urgent change to the rule specifying the design requirements of storm and heavy weather sails. Matt Allen, chair of the committee, explained, “The use of staysails has increased and the use of storm and heavy weather sails as staysails has become common practice. This helps reduce the number of sails carried on board, but while a staysail increases performance it is not as effective in storms or heavy weather. “Without a clear definition of the conditions for which storm and heavy weather sails should be designed and manufactured, it is possible for a boat to carry such sails that meet the wording of the current rules but that are not capable of fulfilling their role in storm or heavy weather conditions.”…

Boat love is like any love: expensive, time consuming, and utterly hypnotic. And I have a problem. I have fallen in love with a boat. Being a professional sailor, I realise how stupid this is, and I really should know better. From working for owners and using their credit cards to pay the bills, I know full well that the saying ‘owning a boat is like standing in a shower and ripping up bank notes’ rings true. I’ve now learned that process begins right at the purchase stage, because apparently it’s a rite of passage to buy a boat that’s triple your original budget… Like any sensible sailor, I called upon the advice of trusted friends, colleagues and clients. Should I buy the boat? Am I crazy? Naturally, I picked…

The massive structure of Svartklubben lighthouse looms on the horizon. Standing on the small Swedish island of Singö, it guards the entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia. Passing it feels like we’re opening the pages of a new book. That morning, we’d hauled our anchor out of the mud in the beautiful Arholma anchorage, the northernmost island of the Stockholm archipelago. Sweden has so many excellent cruising grounds, each of which can keep you busy for a lifetime. We’d spent a month on the south-east coast of Sweden, meandering between the thousands of islands. But now we were going to where even Swedes rarely sail: the Gulf of Bothnia. From the Stockholm archipelago to the northernmost point of the Gulf it’s roughly 400 miles in a straight line. But we…

“For 23 years I have had the privilege to call myself an America’s Cup sailor, but today is the last day of that for me. The body says it’s time to stop. I am done,” wrote David Carr – or Freddie, as everyone knows him – on 19 October this year. The day INEOS Britannia bowed out of the 37th America’s Cup as Emirates Team New Zealand took victory marked the end of the third consecutive British campaign, and almost 10 years of trying (though they have avowed to go again). But for many involved with that bid, it has been a much longer process even than that. Carr did not come from the Olympic pathway, but from crewing in dinghies he moved to match racing, and began a livelong…

RUPERT HOLMES Where: Palma de Mallorca When: Late October, 2024 Weather: offshore winds 4-19 knots Test boat: second boat built, three-cabin version equipped primarily for club racing and occasional cruising Major options: carbon mast and rod rigging, full Flexiteek deck, sail inventory and electronics ‘The J is responsive and rewarding to sail in very light airs’ Stand-out designs are often the result of a succession of well-informed evolutions rather than a revolution that turns existing thinking on its head. The J/40 is born out of a long association between J/Boats in the USA and J Composites in France, a collaboration that created iconic designs including the 36ft J/109 and 40ft J/122. This new model represents a big refinement of successful and well-proven concepts, without losing the ethos and DNA that…

As owners seek to sail more self-sufficiently, beat the depreciation associated with many production boats and explore off the beaten track, a yacht that’s very well built has become key for some buyers. Those planning to sail to inhospitable places tend to have a strong vision of what is needed from the craft that will take them there. In the case of Jean-François Delvoye, designer of the Boreal series of yachts, the vision is one of a resilient all-rounder. “I wanted to build a solid but performing boat, a voluminous all-rounder, comfortable at sea and at anchor. A fast boat, simple to use and maintain, which makes you feel at ease in Cowes harbour, the Polynesian lagoons, or even in the Screaming Fifties,” he explained. Boreal designs, built from aluminium…

‘We were doing 41 knots hanging on a toe-strap’ FREDDIE CARR NOMINATES THE AC45F “The AC45 foiler was the one design boat we raced in 2016, leading up into the America’s Cup in Bermuda,” explains Carr. “The reason it’s my favourite is it hit a real sweet spot in the sport where we were sailing foiling catamarans – so we were going fast, close to the shore with a boundary race course, but we still had ropes and winches. Everything was human-powered, but we were foiling and doing stadium racing. You had to be a really good sailor to sail that boat mechanically. But it looked spectacular and fast. “The top speed we did in one was 41 knots. We were out training before the World Series event in Portsmouth.…

The 2024 Vendée Globe may have got off to a slow start, but the 10th running of the iconic single-handed around the world race has broken multiple records. The largest ever fleet of 40 IMOCAs set off on 10 November 2024 on the 24,500-mile race in just 4-7 knot breezes. Progress on the first morning was so slow that when Conrad Colman (MS Amlin) restarted an hour after the main fleet (a line fouled under his hull and he had to request team assistance, incurring a restart penalty), he briefly took the race lead after crossing the race line in marginally better wind. The benign conditions continued as the fleet crossed the notorious Bay of Biscay, and for the first time in Vendée Globe history not a single yacht returned…

The world’s largest sailing yacht is set to launch in June 2026. French luxury travel brand Orient Express is developing the Orient Express Corinthian, which will be a 220m (722ft) superyacht-style boutique cruise ship, comprising 54 luxurious suites as well as eight bars, five restaurants, a spa and pool. Three canting rigs will carry 4,500m² of sail area, each made up of 1,500m² using ‘SolidSail’ technology. The yacht will be built by Chantiers de l’Atlantique and is designed to cruise at up to 17 knots under sail power alone. It will also carry an LNG-powered engine capable of running on green hydrogen (once the technology has been approved for ocean-going passenger ships). Cruising Association president Robin Baron has been appointed the 34th President of the Cruising Association. A long-standing member…

The Italian Sea Group, a yachtbuilder which includes the Perini Navi range, is taking legal action against The New York Times for an article criticising the design of the 184ft Perini Navi Bayesian, which capsized and sank while at anchor off the Sicilian coast in August, resulting in the deaths of seven guests and crew. The New York Times published an in-depth article into the sinking on 31 October 2024, which reported that: “More than a dozen naval architects, engineers and other experts consulted by The Times found glaring weaknesses in the Bayesian’s design that they said could have contributed to the disaster.” In a statement, The Italian Sea Group (TISG) refuted the claims, saying: “The article reported a narrative about the sinking of the Bayesian, which was completely devoid…

Cruising away from the crowds Incredible inspiration from the waters less travelled – extraordinary encounters sailing to Papua New Guinea and remote Pacific islands, and Indian Ocean contrasts cruising the uninhabited Chagos and surprising Maldives. Gear of the Year Returning fresh from the bustling halls of the Metstrade marine equipment show in November, Rupert Holmes and Toby Hodges report on the DAME design award winners and their pick of the nominees. Multihull special Catamaran owners embarking on this season’s ARC share their preparations for a transatlantic on two hulls, plus latest multihull launches and more. Into the Southern Ocean… alone We follow the Vendée Globe solo skippers deep into the Screaming Fifties as the record-breaking fleet plunges south. Can the new generation IMOCAs keep up their blistering pace – and…

When it comes to regrets, I have none. But on all my voyages the golden rule has been to know what NOT to do. I learned that valuable lesson on my very first day on a sailing yacht. At the time I was working at the BBC World Service and the BBC yacht club had a 40ft sloop called Ariel based on the Hamble. I signed up for a sailing weekend along with a friend from television news called Charlie McLaren. We travelled down on Friday, met the captain and sailed to the Isle of Wight, planning to spend the night at Yarmouth. As we neared the island, the captain told Charlie, who was the mate for the weekend, to get the crew to lower the sails. Suddenly there was…

On most jetties or pontoons in a marina or harbour in Nordic countries you won't find cleats, but rings to tie your lines to. This means you have to get off the boat to get a line through a ring. Almost everywhere, fellow yachtsmen are very helpful, so in most cases problems are solved by helping hands. If not, you need to be prepared: there are ‘hook and moor’ systems available, which help you get a line through a ring without having to step off the boat. Usually, boats go ‘bow in’ to the pontoon, while the stern is tied to a mooring buoy. It helps to have a long line ready, so it can be looped through the ring on top of the mooring buoy. Again, there are very…

Newer followers of the America’s Cup may know Carr from the ‘Inside Tack’ – a daily debrief show he hosted after every race day during the 2024 Cup. The idea came to Carr three years ago, when he was competing at some of the UK summer regattas and realised that many sailing fans he spoke to had lost enthusiasm for the British Challenge. “There was a British team that was starting the journey into the America’s Cup, and nobody really cared. It just felt like we had a bit of a disconnect from the British sailing public,” he recalls. Carr, who is a huge sports fan, took inspiration from some Tour de France squads, and began a daily debrief YouTube show, chatting with sailors and team coaches like Giles Scott…

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Considering shipping your yacht? Terysa Vanderloo shares her experiences of shipping her catamaran from Thailand to Türkiye, plus what owners really need to know about shipping their own boat. When my partner Nick and I had our dream boat built in Asia, we knew that one day we’d face the dilemma of somehow transporting her to Europe. Cruising the Mediterranean had been a long-held dream of ours and somehow – despite initially basing ourselves out of the UK and being full-time liveaboard cruisers for almost 10 years – we had never realised this goal. Earlier this year we turned our attention to the logistics involved in making it happen. We took delivery of our 45ft Seawind catamaran in Thailand in August 2023, and what followed was almost a year of…

The Solitaire du Figaro is one of the most notoriously tidal racecourses in sailing; 2024 winner Tom Dolan explains how to plan tidal strategy with Andy Rice We’re all tadpoles swimming in a stream,” says Tom Dolan of single-handed offshore racing. With so many human, technical and environmental factors feeding into overall performance on the race course, Dolan is always looking at ways of simplifying any process that he can. One key area is understanding the complex tidal stream scenarios faced on every leg of the Solitaire du Figaro. With the scoreboard based on aggregate time, every moment matters. Dolan applies a few key rules of thumb to help analyse strategic and tactical situations – even in brutal sailing conditions where he is likely short on sleep and looking to…

November sees the largest exodus of yachts each year from wintery Europe to the Caribbean in the ARC and ARC+ rallies. This year 234 made the transatlantic crossing, 140 yachts sent on their way from Gran Canaria to Saint Lucia with the ARC and another 94 to Grenada via the Cape Verdes, writes Elaine Bunting. The crossing is close to 3,000 miles when shaped to pick up southerly tradewinds. The two gateway events are an established bucket list goal that prime new boat orders, particularly multihulls, and reflect now settled changes in ocean cruising. Every year, the number of cruising catamarans creeps up – this year a record number making up a third of the fleet. Between monos and multis, 28 new boats were launched this year or last. A…

Olympic achievements dominated this year’s Rolex Sailors of the Year Awards. Dutch ILCA legend Marit Bouwmeester was named the female 2024 Rolex World Sailor of the Year. Bouwmeester became the most successful female Olympic sailor of all time when she won gold in the women’s ILCA class at Paris 2024, adding to her previous gold from Rio 2016, silver at London 2012 and bronze at Tokyo 2020. Spanish 49er pairing of Diego Botin and Florian Trittel won the men’s award, after an exceptional year that included gold medals in the men’s skiff at Paris 2024, as well as a surprise win for the Spain SailGP Team in the overall Season 4 SailGP championship. New World Sailor of the Year awards were won by Polish 29er sailor Ewa Lewandowska, who took…

What the eye couldn’t see was a big topic of conversation in Barcelona during the America’s Cup. With crews huddled down below the sheerline inside their individual cockpits, the only sign there were humans aboard was the tops of a few helmets. In the images from the onboard cameras facing back at the largely expressionless helmsmen and flight controllers, we could only see below their goggles. Rarely did their facial features give anything away. Indeed, they frequently looked more like they were waiting for a bus rather than handling the fastest and most advanced sailing yachts in the world. Even when we could see a cyclor putting in a herculean effort to provide power to keep the beast blasting along, the image did little to take us into their world…

WOY26 LOA 8.0m 26ft 3in • LWL 7.13m 23ft 5in • Beam 2.42m 7ft 11in • Draught 1.1-1.9m 3ft 7in-6ft 3in • Displacement 1,112kg 2,450lb • Price circa €200,000 • woy-yachts.com One of the stand-out new yachts of recent years is the Thomas Tison-designed 48ft Elida, which combines high-tech timber construction with innovative laminates and local carbon reinforcement to create a very fast yet timeless racer/cruiser. This smaller vessel is designed for Elida’s builder, Jan Brügge Bootsbau on Germany’s Baltic coast, to continue in a similar ethos. It’s an exquisite open daysailer designed by Martin Menzner of Berckemeyer Yacht Design. The result is a radically modern design, including a flat hull with wide, open transom, a negative stem, twin rudders and a lifting keel with a T-bulb. For ease of…

Charlie Dalin’s latest generation Macif Sante Prevoyance is one of the most innovative new launches in the IMOCA class and among the favourites for the current Vendée Globe Charlie Dalin approached the 2024 Vendée Globe with a unique perspective. Dalin’s previous boat, Apivia (now Clarisse Cremer’s L’Occitane en Provence) was one of the benchmark IMOCAs of its generation. So fast, in fact, that it wasn’t until Dalin arrived in Les Sables d’Olonne in January 2021 that it became obvious just how hobbled Apivia had been, with a MacGuyver-esque arrangement of improvised stays supporting the port foil for 13,000 miles. Dalin was first across the line in the 2020/21 race, though eventually finished 2nd after Yannick Bestaven received redress time for his part in the rescue of Kevin Escoffier. So when…

There’s a huge amount of information available, in terms of tidal and weather data. I’m a big user of Adrena, which has a really good tidal pack based on data from the French Oceanography Service, and it’s extremely good for making sense of the English Channel. You can also load the data into Expedition, although I find Adrena a bit more user-friendly and gives great performance analysis. It does cost over €2,000 though, so if cost is a factor you can still do very well with Expedition or other alternatives. I’ll use SHOM charts – they’re like the French equivalent of Admiralty charts. SHOM doesn’t adjust for differences in atmospheric pressure, or rain, or if you’ve had a south-westerly wind blowing through the Channel for a week. Once you understand…

David Wilkinson’s journey towards buying a Kraken 50 was unique. “I’d sailed 4,000 miles across the Pacific recreating William Bligh’s voyage from Tonga to West Timor in a wooden longboat with Don McIntyre (organiser of the Golden Globe revival and Mini 5.80 races). Don lost 15kg along the way! “I had learned that all sorts can be done very simply when it comes to ocean sailing, but not necessarily in comfort. This time I wanted both comfort and safety,” explains Wilkinson. The decision about what made a truly bulletproof boat, however, was not straightforward. “When I was looking for the right boat in 2019, fast catamarans, like the Outremer, were also a serious consideration. There is a strong argument that simply by being fast and able to outrun any weather…