Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2025 i Yachting World

French ocean racer Charlie Dalin, who won the 2024/25 Vendée Globe, has revealed that he competed in the solo round the world marathon after being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Dalin, skipper of Macif Santé Prévoyance, had previously withdrawn from the 2023 Transat Jacques Vabre for unspecified medical issues. In his autobiography La Force du Destin (The Force of Destiny), released this October, he confirmed he had been diagnosed with a gastrointestinal stromal tumour. Despite this, Dalin went on to not only qualify for the Vendée Globe, but delivered one of the most impressive winning performances in the race’s history, pushing his IMOCA to blistering speeds and maintaining a ferocious work rate throughout. He finished the race in 64d 19h 22m, demolishing the course record by 10 days.…

Two yachts sank off the coast of Portugal following orca interactions this autumn. The first, a Sun Odyssey 349 named Oceanview, was struck off Sesimbra at around midday on 13 September. The incident was captured on video by a nearby tourist boat, the Mercedes-Benz Oceanic Lounge dolphin watching trip – the footage shows the yacht jerking with the impact. After suffering rudder damage the yacht began taking on water, and – despite attempts to tow it to safety – eventually sank. The five crew were safely rescued by a nearby tourist boat. Later that same day another four crew were rescued after reporting damage to their yacht off Cascais, although their vessel remained afloat. A French family were struck on 11 October near Peniche aboard their 36ft yacht Ti’fare. The…

Swan 51 on test The launch of the original Swan 51 in 1981 sparked one of the most successful design and build relationships between German Frers and Nautor Swan that continues today. Their 2025 version is a very different yacht for a different generation of sailors. Will it succeed? 40 Years of the ARC This November marks the 40th anniversary of the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers. We’ll be at the start in Las Palmas, talking to first-time and experienced transatlantic cruisers, and taking a look at how bluewater sailing has changed over the decades. Chasing imaginary islands Learning celestial navigation skills in the gloomy conditions of the deep South Atlantic set Kate Schnippering on a three-year quest for a little-visited archipelago. Advice from the experts Top tips from the pros…

Yacht charters and sailing holidays have moved on. No longer are your options limited to bareboat or flotilla in a smattering of locations – you can now sail higher performance or luxurious yachts, on an ever growing range of adventurous itineraries around the world. The relentless growth of multihulls for charter shows no signs of abating. “Don't even think about chartering a monohull in most of the Caribbean,” says Tim Geisler, whose Nautilus Sailing runs onboard courses and flotillas. “Monohulls are disappearing from charter fleets. Most charter companies rely on people buying sailboats to put into charter fleets, but no one is buying monohulls to put into charter fleets in the Caribbean as demand is so low.” At the top of the market, skippered charter cats are getting bigger. “Where…

Compared to the complexity of the Vendée Globe – the 24,000-mile non-stop, solo lap of the planet that is widely acknowledged as the toughest summit in offshore racing – a fully crewed 4,500-mile stopping tour around Europe wasn’t generally perceived as a challenge on the same level. Add in a racecourse set on what was expected to be the flat and fluky conditions of the Mediterranean, and The Ocean Race Europe was easy to underestimate. But while the original concept and evolution of the 60ft IMOCAs may have been based on heads-down, nononsense straight line blasting for thousands of miles, it turns out they can also deliver great racing on a course littered with obstacles and tactical challenges, all while locking horns with each other. The weather also turned out…

Gunboat Fusion 80 LOA 24.00m 78ft 9in • LWL 23.95m 78ft 6in • Beam 11.07m 36ft 3in • Draught 2.20m-4.06m 7ft 2in-13ft 3in • Sail area (upwind) 295m2 3,175ft2 • Price from €13.5m ex VAT • gunboat.com First, a Gunboat with a flybridge, and now a new line of voluminous flybridge cruisers… Read on and let us know your thoughts! Gunboat was/is the reference point in performance cruising cats. It didn’t just set the bar, it invented it. As Gunboat models evolved and were increasingly turbocharged, they became more elite cruiser-racers. To see the now French-owned brand move into a new high volume market sector will no doubt raise many eyebrows, but together with design partners including VPLP and Christophe Chedal-Anglais, Gunboat has done its homework. “We’ve led the fast…

Whether you’re new to cruising or are a seasoned liveaboard, welcoming family, friends or new crew aboard can be both a joy and a challenge. On the one hand you want your guests to feel at home and comfortable. On the other, you need them to respect the boat, follow the rules, and stay flexible. It’s a delicate dance, especially in the first few days, balancing the role of both host and captain. Over the last 10 years of cruising we’ve hosted nearly 100 individuals aboard, first on our monohull Agápe, a 42ft 1984 Tayana Vancouver, and now Agápe Nui, our 46ft Leopard catamaran. Many have returned multiple times, with stays ranging from a week to three months. My wife Rachel and I love sharing our alternative, chosen lifestyle –…

‘Sailing RB3 was breathtaking’ DYLAN FLETCHER NOMINATES AC75 ‘RB3’ ‘RB3’ was the hull name of INEOS Britannia, the AC75 the British America’s Cup team sailed in the 37th America’s Cup Match against Emirates Team New Zealand after winning the Louis Vuitton Cup Challengers Series – the best British performance in over 90 years. Dylan Fletcher shared America’s Cup helming duties with team boss Sir Ben Ainslie. “My coolest yacht would have to be either Shamrock IV or RB3,” he explains, “The two most successful British challenges of the Cup. “RB3 certainly means the most to me, given it was my first time sailing a Cup boat and it was such an epic experience. “Sailing RB3 was breathtaking. A huge leap from the AC40 into an incredible piece of engineering that…

Solo skipper Eric Marsh, who is taking part in the Mini Globe Race, was swept overboard from his Globe 5.80 plywood yacht Sunbear while racing from Fiji to Mauritius on 17 October. Marsh was tethered, and after some difficulty was able to haul himself back onto his small yacht. A visibly shaken Marsh said dockside after arriving: “It was a pretty scary ordeal and I’m still stressed out about it. I probably haven’t stopped shaking since it happened. I actually thought my life was going to end. “I was on the bow of Sunbear putting the spinnaker pole away and a big wave hit the side of the boat: the next thing I knew I was in the water. “I made several attempts – I was getting dragged by my…

British ocean racer Sam Goodchild, 35, has been named as the new skipper for Macif, following the news that Charlie Dalin is unable to campaign for the 2028 Vendée Globe due to health reasons. The campaign includes the build and development of a new Verdier-designed IMOCA for the 2028 Vendée, with a race schedule through to 2030. It will see Goodchild working with the de facto leading offshore racing team in the world, Mer Concept, while Dalin – also a naval architect – will remain involved in the design of the new boat (Dalin will also skipper in the solo 2026 Route du Rhum, health allowing). It is likely the most competitive sponsorship deal ever signed by a British sailor with a French team. “I was laughing at the first…

How Olympic sailing medals are decided could be changed for LA2028. For the next Games, World Sailing intends to run a reduced race series with a new event structure to decide the final medals. A new format was experimented with at the ILCA 6 (Women) and ILCA 7 (Men) Test Event in October in Vilamoura, Portugal last month. Replacing the current format of a 10-12 race opening series with one discard, followed by a 10-boat, double-points Medal race with no discard, the new format sees a shortened opening series of 6-8 races, with the top 28 sailors advancing. This is followed by a semi-finals round made up of two fleets, racing three short races, with the top 14 advancing. The finals are decided over three races, with no discard, winner…

What should an Olympic medal represent? Is it still sport’s ultimate accolade? Is it a demonstration that you’re the best in the world and have dedicated your entire life to proving it? Or is it more of a Blue Peter badge, a confirmation that you took part in a piece of sporting media entertainment that you should be proud of? As we head towards the next Olympic Games regatta in San Diego there are a growing number of sailors who are extremely worried that the medals in 2028 will represent more of a memento for turning up rather than a celebration of being the world’s best. It’s no secret that Olympic sailing has had the sword of Damocles hanging over it for decades. An expensive, complicated sport that still isn’t…

Fleeing bait fish ping against our hulls while troops of shrimp crackle like frying bacon as they drift past. A red painted fishing boat is anchored among the shallow reefs up ahead, its skipper dozing in the gentle dawn. Diving in off our back step, I swim against the current, grabbing hold of our anchor chain. Polaris’s twin hulls frame a white sandy spit topped with three leaning palm trees, shelving into light then dark blue sea. We’re cocooned off both port and starboard by two bigger islands cloaked in lowland forest and surrounded by twinkling ancient granite boulders. These are the Anambas islands, Indonesia’s northernmost sea border archipelago. The islands are dotted with traditional villages suspended over water on wooden stilts, gushing waterfalls, silica sand beaches and empty, well-protected…

TOBY HODGES Where: IJmuiden, The Netherlands Wind: 17-25 knots Model tested: Boreal 56 No2 with main options including genset, wind and hydrogenerator, 2nd autopilot When it’s blowing a gale and it’s hard to even see outside for the horizontal rain or, worse, sand being whipped off the nearby beach, there’s little appeal in going afloat. But if you were to choose one yacht to board in such conditions, even if just to stay in the marina… it might well be a Boreal. Equally, with more and more floating debris contaminating our oceans, and marine wildlife increasingly (and literally) biting back, you can understand the increasing amount of new cruising yacht buyers seeking belt and braces builds. They may never need that diff lock, get-out-of-trouble functionality, but it’s certainly reassuring to know…

Anchors are in many ways like insurance. You don’t know just how much you need a good one until you’re sitting in a howling gale with limited sea room, on a seabed covered in weed and rock, hoping beyond hope that your anchor is dug in and will hold fast. You sit down below decks in a red glow, looking at the lines on your plotter as the boat swings from side to side, trying to judge if it is holding or if you’re slipping towards the rocks just visible through the dark. Do you try to get some sleep? Do you rely on a drag alarm? Or do you rotate the crew through an anchor watch all night? This scenario is not uncommon for high latitude sailors who are…

Going firmly against the grain, La Tortue 147 is a non-conformist catamaran born from a childhood dream that became an engineering project and work of art. But what is the ‘turtle’ cat like on board? In a global market, you have to appeal to the widest possible audience with a unanimously attractive design, which you can produce in large quantities to be competitive. This seems like unassailable logic. And yet, at this year’s International Multihull Show in La Grande Motte, it was a catamaran that took the opposite approach to this theory that attracted the most visitors. From curious onlookers to design and naval architecture professionals, word spread quickly along the pontoons: this was the boat to see. While many shipyards present their latest innovations as challenging the status quo,…

In August 2025 the delayed Protocol for the 38th America’s Cup was signed and released. Within it were details of a major structural change to the America’s Cup: the formation of a new Partnership, which was finally confirmed in a public announcement by Grant Dalton, of Defenders Emirates Team New Zealand, and Ben Ainslie of Athena Racing, the British Challenger of Record. The new America’s Cup Partnership (ACP) is a fundamental shift from the ‘winner takes all’ tradition of the Cup, where the holder determined the timeframe, location, structure and yacht class of the next event – but was also wholly responsible for its running and funding. The new ACP seeks to involve all teams participating in the 38th America’s Cup (due to take place in Naples, Italy, in 2027)…

As part of the rally’s 40th anniversary celebrations, World Cruising Club, organisers of the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC), will be broadcasting new video and radio shows from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria ahead of the start, for crews and their families and friends. Around 1,200 sailors will be taking part in this year’s ARC and ARC+ rallies. ARC Radio will begin broadcasting online in November, and from 17 November will have live interviews with skippers and technical staff, plus key information about the ARC, from a studio in Las Palmas. ARC Live video will be broadcast as a Facebook Live on the ARC Atlantic Rally for Cruisers Facebook page, every day from 18 November at 1600 UTC. The shows can also be watched on the World Cruising Club YouTube…

The RYA and the Cruising Association request sailors around the British coast to report any entanglements with discarded fishing gear or unmarked lobster pots and other fishing creels. The issue was highlighted by Kirstin Jones, winner of Yachting Monthly’s Brian Black Memorial Award this year, with a striking image of discarded fishing gear entangling her yacht Wandering Albatross. While sailing in Barbuda in the Caribbean her boat was caught in the nets in rough seas. She managed to sail the steel 43-footer without engine into a sheltered anchorage, where it took over an hour to free the hull and propeller. Last year, a report by Ireland’s Marine Casualty Investigation Board (MCIB) concluded that a discarded trawl net, which wrapped around the propeller, rudder and keel of the Jeanneau Sun Odyssey…

Boat owners, future boat owners, dreamer boat owners – the most common question they ask me is: ‘What’s going to make me and my boat safer?’ They want to know what my one piece of crew-overboard gear is that I’d recommend, my thoughts on which sea survival course is the best, or an instruction manual for emergency situations. In other words they’re looking for a quick fix. I’ve got a bugbear here. You cannot buy safety. You cannot shortcut safety. Safety has to be earned, and that takes time. Gear and certificates don’t make you safer – not in isolation anyway. You need another key ingredient… So what is that? What actually makes you a safer sailor? It’s true that lifejackets, drogues, sea survival courses, an evacuation plan, knowing where…

“You need to focus on Section 10, it’s the best part!” That was the message that flooded my inbox again and again as we planned our trip to Patagonia. With a coastline of several hundred miles and thousands of rocky islands, temperate forests and stunning deep blue glaciers calving at the end of long fjords, it’s not easy to limit yourself to a few destinations when heading south to cruise this incredible region. We would arrive at the southernmost town in Chile, Puerto Williams, from the South Atlantic and would leave six weeks later, heading back into the Atlantic through the Magellan Strait. Even though the stretch between Puerto Williams and Punta Arenas, our entry and exit ports in Chile respectively, is only about 270 miles, the best advice we…

NEO ELECTRIC OUTBOARD Following the success of its original RemigoOne – a rudder style electric outboard that impressed our long term testers (see yachtingworld.com) – the Slovenian company has now unveiled a larger sibling in the Neo. This is a 1,500W motor to the One’s 1,000W, which equates to 4hp over 3hp, yet for only €200 more. It offers more thrust for the same physical size via ‘boost mode’: press once for a 60-second burst or again for continuous high power. Remigo promotes the Neo as being lightest in its class at 15.5kg, and with its variable length shaft suits a range of craft up to 1.5 tonnes, so is ideal for small keel boats or tenders. The 1,085Wh battery can be fast or solar charged and the outboard uses…

£1million is a lot of money to spend, but what does it buy you in today’s market? Just how much yacht you get for a million pounds (or euros) is a more complex question than it first appears. Over the past five years manufacturers have faced rising costs across the board, particularly in raw materials. At the same time, demand has continued to increase for larger yachts with more internal volume, with many buyers going bigger earlier on their yacht ownership journey. Where once seven figures was reserved for flagship models only, a surprising number of new higher spec cruisers now tip into that price bracket. Production builders like Hanse and Bavaria have managed to build large for under the £1m mark, largely due to the economies of scale they…