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november 2014

How to plan your

Atlantic crossing Weather • crew choice • sails

CruisiNg

Navigating through coral The insider’s guide to the Caribbean

TesTed

rapier 550: could this boat convert you to a multihull? sail-gen water-powered generator spirit’s gorgeous neo-classic

rACiNg

solo on the world’s biggest trimaran 5 tips: surfng downwind

Volvo: return to a race of daring and courage

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NOVEMBER 2014

How to plan your Atlantic crossing 15 top tips to help you prepare for an ocean voyage, from which yacht to buy and gear to ﬁt to how to choose crew and pick the best route

AT A GLANCE NEWS

Boat buying up at autumn shows. Our pick of the new yachts

Uffa Fox’s Huff of Arklow sails again

A doctor prescribes sailing

NEW GEAR AND YACHTS

On test Broadblue Rapier 550, a fast cruising cat with inside controls

New yachts Two 67-footers from Oyster and Contest

New gear See our new Tested section for experts’ views

CRUISING

86 90

Cruising Special report on navigation using Google Earth Bluewater Techniques Part 2: Navigating in coral

Chris Doyle’s Caribbean haunts

Reboot or bust

Pilotbook author Chris Doyle shares his favourite places to visit in the Windward Islands between Martinique and Grenada

With seven new one-design yachts, the Volvo Ocean Race puts the emphasis back on the crews in this toughest of challenges

Beauty with brains

Lone hunter

The new Spirit 74 hides some impressive engineering behind her lovely mahogany exterior and superlative interior decor

How can one man sail a 131ft trimaran solo across the Atlantic in the Route du Rhum? Matthew Sheahan sails with Yann Guichard

RACING

Working progress Sailing with the Falmouth Working Boat ﬂeet

Boat of the month Flyer, the famous Whitbread racer restored

102

Five tips Surﬁng downwind

REGULARS 3 18 22 24 61 104 117 124

From the Editor Letters Matthew Sheahan Skip Novak Great seamanship Yachts for sale Classiﬁed advertisements One amazing day

COVER PICTURE Published monthly on the second Thursday of the month by Time Inc (UK) Ltd, The Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark Street, London SE1 0SU ©Time Inc (UK) Ltd, 2014 ISSN 0043-9991

View from the spreaders of an Oyster 72. Photo: Mike Jones/Waterline Media

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EDITORIAL ENQUIRIES: The Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark Street, London SE1 0SU. Tel +44 (0)20 3148 4846. Fax: +44 (0)20 3148 8127 email: yachting.world@timeinc.com Editor Technical Editor Production Editor Test Editor Art Editor Editorial Artist Picture Editor/Design Assistant Magazine Assistant

Elaine Bunting 020 3148 4831 Matthew Sheahan 020 3148 4843 Belinda Bird 020 3148 4838 Toby Hodges 020 3148 4832 Robert Owen 020 3148 4837 Maggie Nelson 020 3148 4841 Vanda Woolsey 020 3148 4835 Helen Dormer 020 3148 4842

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Volume 166 Issue no 3274

LET THE GAMES BEGIN

wo big ocean races truly deserving of the worn epithet ‘epic’ begin this autumn. The stage is set, we are promised, for action and high drama. The Route du Rhum solo

transatlantic race is a phenomenon long famous in France, a legend-maker and connoisseur’s choice on every level, from speed and technical ability to peerless human stories. It is one of the races that have formed sailing’s addictive, egalitarian appeal in France.

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This time round, the inclusion of the world’s biggest racing trimarans ups the stakes substantially by pitting solo racers nakedly against their own physical capabilities. It is – or it could be – sailing’s version of The Hunger Games, brutal in the extreme. Some dislike the idea of a sailing event that courts danger by racing yachts of such immense power. But this is sport at its best: soaringly ambitious, scornful of limitations, inventive and idealistic. In the other corner, we will have the crewed Volvo Ocean Race which, despite very large sums of sponsorship money and intense technical experimentation, seemed in the

International Editions Poppy Lawton 020 3148 5490 Syndication 020 3148 5476 ukcontent@timeinc.com www.timeincukcontent.com Publishing Director Simon Owen Group Magazine Editor Garry Coward-Williams Managing Director Paul Williams

last few editions to lose its nobility. Why so? The technical focus and frailties of a development class often obscured human endeavour, and it became a race for the best machine. In creating one-designs the organisers hope, among other things, to throw the focus back onto the people who race these yachts so that their stories are central. Read our report on this, and the highs and lows of past races on page 42.

Can we help? Customer Hotline If you have problems obtaining Yachting World from your local UK newsagent, phone +44 (0)203 148 3333. Or go to yachtingworld.com Want to subscribe to Yachting World? Tel: +44 (0)844 848 0848. Subscription rates (one year): UK £58.35. North America $147.47. Europe/Eire €96.79 (inc VAT). Rest of the the world £99.33. Other rates on application. You can also subscribe online to print and digital editions at yachtingworld.com Boat Test reports/articles For downloadable PDFs and photocopies of articles, guides and reports from Yachting World visit ybw.com/boatreports or phone Holly Bridges +44 (0)1202 440 832

This month we also look at preparing and planning to sail across the Atlantic. This is the season when many thousands of crew get ready to make the long transocean passages from Europe to the Caribbean. As I’ve noted before, the size of this annual migration may make it seem to the casual observer like a commonplace and perhaps straightforward task, but that is wrong: it is still, and always will be, a great challenge. And despite the preparations being largely technical, ocean cruising is also a great endeavour in which people are one of the most interesting and rewarding elements. Elaine Bunting Editor

Need a back issue? Limited numbers of back issues are available from £6.95 (UK), inc p&p, from YW Back Issues, PO Box 772, Peterborough PE2 6WJ. Tel: +44 (0)1733 385170. Fax: +44 (0)1733 239356. www.mags-uk.com Looking for a book? ybw-books.com offers a range of 6,000 books and Admiralty charts. These can be ordered online via a secure server or by phoning +44 (0)23 8033 3051 from 0900-1700 Mon- Fri

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YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

PICTURE THIS Catching a wave

beautiful sight as the J Class yacht Shamrock V lifts to the swell during racing at the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup Porto Cervo in September. Four other Js raced: Lionheart, Rainbow, Ranger and Velsheda. Lionheart won, making it three in a row at the summerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s regattas. Photo by Carlo Borlenghi/Rolex

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

PICTURE THIS Battle stations

rew from the Volvo Ocean Race yacht Azzam (Abu Dhabi Racing) fully suited and booted as spray fies during their training for the race, which began in Alicante on 11 October. The team, skippered by Ian Walker, is considered a race favourite â&#x20AC;&#x201C; see page 42. Photo by Matt Knighton/Abu Dhabi Racing

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

onEdition

on the wind

Show sales up as confdence returns Buoyant autumn boat shows are a sign that boat buying is beginning to pick up again after a long spell in the doldrums. Elaine Bunting reports fresh mood of optimism appears to be sweeping over boat buyers and the marine industry alike this autumn as the season’s run of boat shows begins. In-water shows at Cannes and Southampton in September both recorded an increase in visitors. There were more than 580 boats at Cannes and over 200 at Southampton, and both shows exhibited more new models than at any time since the start of the long downturn in 2006. These new yachts are selling well again, according to dealers at both shows. Peter Thomas of Inspiration Marine, UK dealer for Hanse, Dehler and Moody, told us: “Business is considerably better than in other years. In the week of the Southampton Boat Show last year we had taken one deposit. By the same time this year, we had 12. It’s unbelievable, to be honest. Sales are right across the range, but it’s particularly encouraging at the smallest end.”

Cannes Boat Show packed in a huge range of new yachts

Thomas observes that, whereas a few years ago there was “a mini spurt, with people thinking ‘I’ll do it anyway’, this upturn seems more sustained. People are feeling more comfortable, we seem to be in a more settled period, the news coming out of industry is good and unemployment is still steadily falling.” Finance deals are returning, too, and Bavaria announced that they are to offer customers deals that include low rates on fnance – an introductory rate of two per cent is promised in January – and a service package for new yachts. The company also unveiled its new starter boat, the surprising and attractive Easy 9.7, a 32-footer priced at just under £50,000 inc VAT. The boat on show at Southampton, which we really liked, had the cruising upgrade and comes all-in at a cost of under £55,000 ready to sail away. Several were sold at the show and Bavaria hopes this will help kickstart the sluggish smaller boat market. “With a 20 per cent deposit, rolled in with fnance, the Easy 9.7 would cost £350-400 a month, which is within most families’ sphere,” comments Richard Hewitt from UK agent Clipper Marine. “It has been selling well and it does seem like things are on the mend.”

People are feeling more comfortable, we seem to be in a more settled period, the news coming out of industry is good and unemployment is still steadily falling

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

Photos: onEdition

Sir Ben Ainslie and Sir Robin Knox-Johnston on a Clipper Yacht together at Southampton to launch a competition for an 18-24-year-old to take part in the next round the world race

At the larger and more luxurious side of sailing, business also seems more solid. Oyster Marine, recently relocated nearby to a permanent base at Southampton Yacht Services and regrouping after bringing in new investors, reports a healthy order book with 30 new yachts on order and 85 per cent of build slots sold through 2015. Another encouraging sign is the appetite sailors have for setting off on their boats, often with ambitious or longer terms plans.

Andrew Bishop, managing director of World Cruising Club, reports that it has raised entry numbers for a successive year to the ARC transatlantic rally and ARC+ parallel rally, which crosses via the Cape Verdes, yet both are full. The two rallies will take 260 yachts to Saint Lucia in November and December. Looking further ahead, the company’s second Baltic Rally is already half full. Says Bishop: “We think 2015 is going to be a very busy year.”

Teenager Natasha Lambert sailed into the Southampton Boat Show in September in a well-earned celebration of her Sea and Summit Challenge. The 17-year-old, who is confned to a wheelchair owing to athetoid cerebral palsy, sailed her 21ft converted Mini, Miss Isle, 430 miles this summer from Cowes to Wales in 13 stages, capping the voyage by walking up Pen y Fan, the highest mountain in South Wales, with the aid of a special walking frame. Lambert controls the steering and sails of her boat using the sip-and-puff system, via a straw that she can operate by mouth. She was raising money for the RNLI, the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust and the RYA Foundation, which helps people with disabilities to go sailing. www.missisle.com

Matthew Sheahan’s pick of new yachts This year’s show has to be one of the best that Southampton has seen. Some fne weather helped, but the range of yachts feels broader than ever before, and there were some particularly intriguing and innovative designs. Here are my picks of the new yachts on display:

Rustler 37

GT35

Broadblue Rapier

Rustler’s reputation for elegant yet rugged, go-anywhere cruisers has stepped up another notch with its latest boat, the Rustler 37. A huge boat for the size and she attracted lots of interest. www.rustleryachts.com

A new solidly built, beautifully fnished 35ft performance cruiser designed by Stephen Jones, built by Windboats in Wroxham to the same standard that made several hundred Oysters. www.gtyachts.com

A must, especially if you thought you weren’t a multihull fan – this boat could change your mind. See our test on page 64. She makes you wonder if this is the new style for cruising cats. www.broadblue.com

Bayraider 25

Solent Whisper

Dufour 310

Beneteau Oceanis 35

It was easy to miss this boat from Swallow Boats tucked away in a corner of the show. Unless you’re into small, traditional-looking boats you might skip this one, but she is full of clever and innovative ideas. www.swallowboats.com

If you’re interested in foiling boats here’s one you should see. Her designer and builder, Ron Price, a lecturer at Solent University, claims she will fy in just fve knots and will exceed 25 knots in a breeze. For info contact the university at www. solent.ac.uk

If the clue weren’t in her name you’d swear she was 35ft. This is a big little boat that is full of surprises – one of which is the unusual boast that the owner’s cabin is designed to ‘transform into a cinema room’. www.dufour-yachts.com

A development of the much talked about three-confguration Oceanis 38 launched last year, here’s another example of what an open-plan saloon interior looks like. A big space in a modest boat, perfect for a couple and their guests. www.beneteau.co.uk

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

on the wind

Courtesy of R Pryke, G Harris

Back to bare wood with the seams opened to air and dry the canvas between the two skins

5Above: Huf of Arklow newly restored and repainted and back in the water at Cremyll Keelboats on the River Tamar near Plymouth. This photo shows her unusual stepped sheerline, which increases space and headroom down below

Apprentice Liam Ellis gluing splines of cedar

Huf of Arklow sails again After a long refit, the legendary and once groundbreaking Uffa Foxdesigned ocean racer has returned to the water. Elaine Bunting reports

Beken of Cowes

n September, Huff of Arklow slipped back into the water on the River Tamar near Plymouth ready to go sailing again after a remarkable restoration. One of the most groundbreaking yachts of her era and a milestone in the history of yacht design, the 44ft sloop was designed by Uffa Fox and built in Arklow in Ireland in 1951. She was one of a class known as the Flying 30 – eight were designed by Fox, but only this boat was ever built – and was the first offshore yacht to feature a fin and skeg, the first ever masthead rig sloop and the first oceangoing yacht designed to plane. With her odd, stepped sheerline, she still looks remarkable. At the time, Huff of Arklow was greeted with surprise and some scepticism, but she proved exceptionally speedy, recording speeds on passage of more than 20 knots. In recent years she had been based in Cowes and used for sail training. She is built of two cold-moulded skins of mahogany running diagonally and horizontally, but water had seeped into the canvas between these, the hull had sagged, and she was in need of restoration. Eyemouth International Sailing Craft

Association (EISCA), an educational charity that preserves and maintains a collection of boats exhibited in Cardiff and Eyemouth in Scotland, stepped in to fund the work using apprentice boatbuilders. She has been restored at Mashfords Boatyard in Cremyll to be as close as possible to her original condition yet comply with modern charter coding rules. Huff of Arklow was built for Douglas

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

5Above: Huf of Arklow sailing off Cowes shortly after her launch in Ireland in 1951

Heard, an ex-RAF pilot, keen racer and friend of Uffa Fox. He wanted a yacht that was similar to a scaled-up Flying Fifteen, but with sufﬁcient space to accommodate a crew of six. The yacht was built at John Tyrrell & Son in Arklow and Heard raced and cruised her extensively, sailing to the Azores, Bermuda, Iceland and the Faeroes. In the late 1970s Huff was the victim of an arson attack and when experts said she would never sail again a new owner, Chris Allen, bought her for £500. Following an extensive restoration in Southampton, she was used for chartering and made available for sail training voyages with underprivileged children. She was bought by EISCA in 1999 and has been restored over the winters since 2009 with the help of a £40,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. She has been completely resplined and glued, refastened with 8,000 copper nails and has regained her original waterline length and shape. Also restored is Dinky, the tender Uffa Fox designed to ﬁt at the stern of Huff of Arklow, where she can protect the helmsman from wind and spray. “It’s wonderful to see her sitting on her waterline again and she sails like she means it now,” says Barbara Bridgman who, with her husband, Dominic, has been involved with the restoration from the beginning. “She is odd to look at and extremely interesting to sail, very responsive and

Cockpit awaiting renovation, including new winch stands. The main track was moved aft

The ‘dinky’ Uffa Fox designed to ﬁt the stern

support of the Challenger series, one of the longest and most successful sponsorships in international sport and a key factor in popularising the America’s Cup. Carcelle was a Chevalier of the French Légion d’honneur, the highest honour that can be awarded under the French system, and an honorary member of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

Yves Carcelle Yves Carcelle, a long-time supporter and backer of the Louis Vuitton Cup and the Challenger series for the America’s Cup, has died at the age of 66. Carcelle was chairman and CEO of Louis Vuitton from 1990 to 2012. His enthusiasm for the America’s Cup led to continued

5Above: Loïck Peyron is moving from one of the smallest yachts in the solo race to one of the biggest

AC45s on foils America’s Cup teams have agreed to get their AC45s up on foils for the America’s Cup World Series. They have also committed to continue to race the foiling AC45s (photo left) on the World Series circuit in 2018 after the next America’s Cup ends in 2017.

Rio to clean up

ACEA/G M-R

5Above: Huf of Arklow going back into the water at her launch party in September

wisdom and is one of the best-qualifed people for the job. Banque Populaire VII is one of eight maxi trimarans making up a new Ultimes class in the Route du Rhum, which range from 70ft to the super giant Spindrift 2. At 131ft, the latter is the largest racing trimaran in the world. These leviathans will be the prime focus of this classic solo race and, although the course record is expected to fall to one of them, many observers are concerned about the safety of these huge yachts in the hands of lone sailors, which they fear could be a danger to other seafarers as well as to the skippers themselves. Controlling the largest of these boats is a fearsome task, as Matthew Sheahan found out when he joined skipper Yann Guichard on Spindrift 2. Read his insights into this world on page 54.

in BRiEF

PA Photos

a handful downwind, though she always few,” she claims. This winter work will be done to complete the furniture and electrical systems before Huff of Arklow goes racing and cruising in earnest. Next season, she will sail to Ireland to some of the important places in her history, will race at Dun Laoghaire and sail to Belfast, and she will be used for sail training and charter. For more info, see huffofarklow.org

French skipper Loïck Peyron has scrapped his plans to recreate a historic race in the Route du Rhum solo transatlantic race in Happy, his 30ft wooden trimaran and sistership to the 1978 winner Olympus Photo, after being called on to skipper the 100ft maxi trimaran Banque Populaire VII. Peyron, who had been planning a race in the style of the 1970s, using sextant navigation, has gone back to the future by stepping in to replace Armel Le Cléac’h, who seriously injured his right hand in a fall ashore this summer and was forced to withdraw. The choice of Peyron to replace Le Cléac’h is a smart one. Although arguably perhaps not as hard-charging as the younger skipper, the 54-year-old Peyron brings immense experience and

sealaunay.com

Peyron hits fast forward

Following long controversy about raw sewage defling the waters of Rio de Janeiro’s Gloria Marina, where the 2016 Olympic sailing events are to be held, offcials have unveiled a new sanitation project. A 1km pipeline in the city’s Flamengo neighbourhood will be built to stem the fow.

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

ON THE WIND WATCHING BRIEF What the Yachting World crew have been watching, reading or laughing at this month

Bluewater Techniques Cowes.co.uk

See the launch video of our new Bluewater Sailing Techniques series, ﬁlmed as we sailed to some of the village communities in Fiji at yachtingworld.com or on the Yachting World YouTube channel

Breakwater funnels Cowes tides

ew taking part in any of the season’s regattas in Cowes this year could have failed to notice the new breakwater under construction that has grown to 5m above chart datum. But how many have noticed a change in the tidal flow in the approaches to the River Medina? A local Notice to Mariners (No 23) describes significant changes to the westerly flow.‘When the tidal flow at Nos 1 and 2 fairway buoys is running in a westerly direction (expected from HW –3hrs to HW +3hrs), a tidal shadow with significantly reduced flow will be experienced immediately west of the breakwater in the Inner Fairway and extending along the foreshore in front of the Royal Yacht Squadron,’ the Notice says. For the Inner Fairway it says there is a westerly setting tidal flow of up to 1.25 knots ‘which will have a tendency to set vessels towards the western shore’. It also states that when a vessel crosses the boundaries of these areas the differing tidal flows may induce a turning moment. A full set of tidal flows will be recorded in November once works are complete.

As the earliest team to launch and begin training, Team SCA’s Volvo Ocean Race entry has long begged the question: who is the skipper? Only a month before the start was the choice revealed. It’s Sam Davies, 39, Cambridgeeducated engineer, veteran of the Mini Transat, the Solitaire du Figaro and two-times skipper in the Vendée Globe

Typical peak cross current HW -2hrs

x Main harbour entrance

Jeanneau 64 test

Snowden

We got the spray ﬂying in very strong winds on this test of Jeanneau’s impressive new ﬂagship. Two days of Mistrals in Marseille bit.ly/Wyghhz

1.5kts

Tidal shadow x Royal Yacht Squadron

Cowes

Will your next sail be made of this ?

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Light, strong and extremely

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long-lasting – will North 3Di trickle down to mass sailing? asks Matthew Sheahan

o one sails in Minden, The small town of 3,000 ple is in the desert in Nevada driest state in America. One dred and seventy miles no east of San Francisco, the st famous for being the first t galise gambling, but it is not known for its links to sailing definitely not where you m expect to fnd the world’s biggest sailmaker. Yet North Sails owes a large chunk of its market-lea position to this remote location and the technology th staff has developed here. The giant US sailmaker claim be 25 years ahead of the competition and, after a visit to huge facility in the desert – you couldn’t really call it loft – I can understand why. What it is producing now, o industrial scale, is 3Di. 3Di comprises spread flament tapes that have been impregnated with resin. These are arranged in multipl ers and thermo- and vacuum-cured over a 3D mould. Since the company started selling 3Di two year aimed at grand-prix racers, the robust nature of the material has taken many people by surprise. Indeed drastic reductions to the Volvo 65’s sail wardrobe over of the previous VO70 round the world yachts were base a level of reliability that was not previously possible. But its not just big grand-prix b Left: North’s that are seeing the benefits; the t 3Di technology nology is coming downstream has provided one A casual look at the job cards on of the biggest shop foor in Nevada is enough to steps forward home the message. in sailmaking They include Ker 40s, J/111s, technology McConaghy 38s, Melges 32s and

n In

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A tidal shadow may exist to the west of the breakwater during periods of westerly setting tide

YACHTING WORLD OCTOBER 2014

1.25kts

Making sails in the desert 0.5kts

and a former Yachtsman of the Year. The declaration appears to have been prompted only by the need to complete ofﬁcial paperwork. A press release gives a clue to the team’s thinking: ‘Team SCA has, from the start, eschewed the normal well-worn path of establishing a team behind the ﬁgure of a skipper. For them, each member of the 14-strong squad is as important in the team . . .’

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

technology

New bre akwate

Matthew Sheahan takes a tour of North Sails in Nevada, USA, to ﬁnd out how the next generation of ultra-strong sails is made bit.ly/Ze95cz

River Medina

ainhoasanchez.com

Who’s in charge?

Trinity House Mooring Buoy

Bash the record Bart’s Bash thrashes previous Guinness world record with 768 venues youtu.be/vA4WzA73wTc

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on the wind most retweeted @yachtingworld

Can your dog hoist a sail, steer, go out on the trapeze and tie up your boat? This one can – apparently. Check this out: bit.ly/1uR4o26

ÔYou have to go sailing againÕ A doctor prescribes sailing to inspire sufferers of chronic illness

ceans of Hope, a Challenge 67ft yacht built for the Global Challenge races, arrived in Boston in September after setting sail from Copenhagen on the frst stages of a new circumnavigation to take a crew suffering from multiple sclerosis (MS) round the world. The project is the idea of Dr Mikkel Anthonisen, a doctor and specialist at Copenhagen University Hospital, who came up with the idea after meeting a patient who had built a yacht to sail round the world and became depressed after deciding that MS had scuppered the dream. Dr Anthonisen told him: “You have to go sailing again,” and began thinking of ways to make that happen. Arriving at Rowes Wharf in Boston with a crew including fve people suffering from MS, he

remarked: “For the people with MS they have recaptured their identities; on board they are not defned by their illness.” Portuguese crewmember Luísa Matias, who had crossed the Atlantic from Lisbon, said: “It’s not possible to put into words how I feel, I can’t describe it. Arriving here is bittersweet. I am defnitely stronger in my legs and my core after this experience. I’ve replaced the bruises from the frst day with more balance – balance in life as well.” The route of Oceans of Hope will take crews to the Caribbean, through the Panama Canal and across the Pacifc to Australia before continuing across the Indian Ocean and round the Cape of Good Hope before returning to Copenhagen in November 2015.

New Coastguard control centre A major piece of the reorganisation of the UK’s Coastguard service was put in place in September when Solent and Portland Maritime Co-ordination Centres were relocated to a new National Maritime Operations Centre in Fareham in Hampshire. The bases in Portland and Lee-on-Solent are now closed and the centralised control room in Fareham co-ordinates rescues along the UK south coast from Dover to Falmouth. MRCCs in both those ports take over at each extremity. The modernisation plans fuelled public concerns about Coastguard lay-offs and a perceived reduction of local knowledge, but have always had the support of the Royal Yachting Association (RYA). Stuart Carruthers, cruising manager of the RYA, explains: “As far as you and I are concerned, there is no change in the Coastguard’s way of working. It’s about how they

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

A ruthlessly effective piece of self-promotion for a Route du Rhum campaign for Vincent Lantin on his Class 40 Shebangabang

Sorry but we just had to giggle at Danish magazine BådNyt’s headline about @ AlexThomson99, It means ‘speed monster’

manage the assets; the lifeboats and aerial systems are not changing. This is just the management being centralised and integrated.” The RYA expects benefts. “It has taken a system that was fairly disjointed and made a nationally integrated system that provides far greater resilience and really should have been done a long time ago,” Carruthers comments. Since last year Humber MRCC has been co-ordinating rescues on most of the UK east coast from Southwold to the Scottish border.

Polish sailors Tomasz Januszewski and Jacuaw Nowak as Captain America and Superman, spotted at ISAF Worlds Santander

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on the wind Bart’s Bash

S Armstrong

An estimated 20,000 yachts from more than 700 clubs worldwide sailed in September in memory of the Olympic double medallist Andrew ‘Bart’ Simpson, who lost his life in a sailing accident last year. The one-day event was run by the charitable foundation set up in his name and boats that took part ranged from an Optimist to a 100ft super maxi. Organisers hope to make Bart’s Bash a sailing marathon in the future. The photos here show Simpson’s young son Freddie high-fving a photo of his father and Sir Ben Ainslie taking part in the racing.

Next MoNth on sale 13 November

T Zydler

R Longford

The Royal Corinthian Yacht Club in Cowes

Voyage to Greenland

Yacht clubs join forces

embers of the Royal Ocean Racing Club (RORC) and the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club in Cowes (RCYC) have voted by an overwhelming majority to merge to form one club. “This is an important milestone in the history and development of the RORC, which celebrates its 90th year in 2015,” comments Mike Greville, RORC commodore. “The proposal to combine the two clubs evolved from a shared vision about what they could create together, which neither could achieve alone. For RORC this gives a permanent base and clubhouse facility at the very heart of UK yachting and for RCYC

this creates a strong club at the forefront of international yachting.” RCYC vice commodore Amanda Dreyer was equally positive about the decision. “We identifed that both clubs have similar cultures and long-term strategies for growth and there are powerful and mutual benefts for both,” she says. From November, the combined club will operate under the name of RORC although the Royal Corinthian name will be preserved for use in connection with the Cowes clubhouse and Solent-based inshore racing. The headquarters of the club will remain at the London clubhouse in St James’s Place.

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

Tom Zydler heads north from the US to Greenland, taking in some of the fnest scenery in the far north

Ice yachting Matthew Sheahan travels to Poland to join the ultra high-speed elite of ice yachting and meet a man who combines top match racing with a fearsome reputation on ice

On test: Rustler 37 The British yard’s launch of its new traditional offshore

cruising yacht has been hotly anticipated. Toby Hodges put her to the test

Bluewater Sailing In Part 3 of our Bluewater Sailing Techniques series, Dan Bower describes how to deal with squalls and what to do when one hits

Three times round Jeanne Socrates made three circumnavigations before fnally managing to achieve her ambition of sailing round the world non-stop solo. She tells her remarkable story.

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LETTERS

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email yachtingworldletters@timeinc.com Write to The Editor, Yachting World, The Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark Street, London SE1 0SU Letters may be edited as appropriate

Strong and fast

LETTER OF THE MONTH

I am writing regarding the group test on 37-38-footers featuring the Varianta 37 (August issue). I represented Contest from 1980-1995 and Hanse from 2006-2012. I sailed my 2006 Hanse 400 6X to the Caribbean. I make sailboat hardware, such as the Dutchman Flaking System, Boom Brake. etc. I was the only American to fnish the 2000 OSTAR and after inspecting the Varianta in production I became the US agent. The reviewers were rather critical, saying, for example: ‘The design is old and consequently she looks dated’, noting she does not have portlights in the hull. Is that really important versus an excellent design, clean and elegant lines, lots of sail area and a high-end rudder bearing system? You noted that she was ‘built to a good standard, with frames and bulkheads laminated in’. Of course, many production boats like Jeanneau do not bother laminating in anything and key structural bonds are hidden. The Varianta has more easily inspected laminated-in bulkheads than the other boats, with the largest keel bolts, a stronger structure, which give a solid feeling, even when sailing much faster than the other boats. The Varianta 37 has six 33mm keel bolts, and

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a 30 and 24mm bolt. These are 80 per cent larger than on similar boats. Readers may appreciate knowing this, given some recent incidents. The article compared her to a cheap car, saying you have doubts. What doubts should one have with a boat designed by Judel/Vrolijk and built by the Hanse Group? Note that several Variantas are owned by yard associates – and I’ll be racing mine to Bermuda soon. Martin Van Breems President, Dutchmar.com

To the victor the spoils Thank you for your feature about the J Class (September issue). These boats are superb and extremely well-raced. As the saying goes, to the victor the spoils! The technology and the money being spent is a part of the class’s evolution and it would be great to see even more of the J yachts racing in the years to come. Since reading the article I will be interested to imagine all the highly trained crew that have to work in complete harmony as they round each mark of the course. One mistake is expensive. That must make it exhilarating, and this kind of racing is more spectacular to observe than nearly any other. What a pity we cannot see it on TV! Lars Andersson

Above:

Rescue from a reef

sensational Js.

Your features on keels (September) and cruising in Fiji (October) made me think of the bone-chilling crunch as your pride and joy, not to mention in many cases your life savings, makes contact with an invisible reef. Having spent the last 50 years of my life as a tuna captain threading my way among the minefeld of reefs in Fiji waters – and without the aid of aids such as GPSs or radar – I have had more than my share of close encounters. So when the owners of

But are we being

No killing machines

sensationalist?

I have just read the J Class story. Sensationalistic, to say the least. Please don’t portray these elegant yachts as killing machines. You must be joking – they are used for charter and family cruising most of the year. Sure it gets a little crazy and close during the races. That’s part of the thrill. Siâni Flewog

YACHTING WORLD NOvemBeR 2014

the yacht Ginger entered my offce looking for help, I knew well of the terror they had faced two nights before. Having driven their beautiful 55ft yacht onto an invisible Fiji reef in the middle of a fat calm night, they sent out a Mayday which, fortunately, was picked up by one of my fshing vessels only four hours away. The incident took place in Northern Lau and 40 hours later the grateful, but distraught owners, an elderly German couple, entered my offce seeking my assistance. Knowing full well the likely sad outcome we were heading for, I suggested they contact some of the major salvage companies, which they did, but they soon found no one willing to talk to them seriously because they were uninsured. So they returned to plead with me, assuring me that the boat was “only just on the reef “ and just needed a “little pull “ to get it off, that it was only 20m or so from the edge! I have found over the years that ‘only just on the reef’ is akin to being ‘slightly pregnant’. I also knew by experience that boats that go in over the breakers onto a reef rarely stay there, but get pushed higher and higher and more distant from the edge. Normally, I would have fown out to

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LETTERS

approach in an effort to get close enough for our tow ropes (now all joined together) to reach the yacht a good 300m from the edge. Fortunately, we had just enough rope to reach the yacht, but at the peak tide of 2m and with full power and the yacht rolling slightly, she would not budge an inch towards us. The tide was past peak when we decided to go to plan B. This involved attaching four 200lt plastic drums to the masthead and flling them with water to induce a 50° tilt with the hope of lifting the keel somewhat. I rigged the drums to hit the water as the yacht heeled to prevent a total rollover. We began to see a bit of forward movement, but when the yacht swung like a pendulum back upright, the keel dug in again and arrested any progress. We were losing the tide now, and had to suspend operations. The next day dawned with a smaller tide of only 1.9m and each day it was getting smaller. We knew it had to be today, or else in a month’s time. At this moment the solution arrived in the shape of several villagers in a 23ft glassfbre boat powered by a 40hp outboard. I knew we had enough pull, but what I needed was a more steady tilt. What followed was a comical scene involving the locals with the outboard tearing off at right angles with the drums pulling on the mast tip, a momentary severe tilt, the yacht lurching 10m forward and the outboard being sent like a slingshot back at the yacht. After repeating this 50 times and accompanied by shouts of joy, the yacht reached deep water and the reef gave up its prize. All it took was one more night in the lagoon and a thread-the-needle escape to the sea on the next tide. So how did this all happen? It is a trap for the young and old. Do not sail in reef-strewn areas relying on your electronic charts alone, accurate as you may think they are. Do not traverse reef areas on your 20-mile range; on this range many minor reefs are not even shown. Not until you zoom in do you realise you are either surrounded by reefs (if you are lucky) or are sitting on one – as the crew of Ginger found out. Grahame Southwick

YACHTING WORLD NOvemBeR 2014

Above: beware hidden reefs in the Pacifc. Charts can be misleading

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have a look, but in a moment of weakness, I agreed to depart that very night in my 51ft cat with two 700hp engines to give it a try – their life savings were at stake. After a quick assembly of a few 200lt plastic drums, tow ropes and my best guys we were on our way at 20 knots. After a very long all-night run, we arrived at a point some four miles from the reef at sun-up, to be confronted by the strangest sight. From that distance the yacht appeared to be foating upright. But how could that be? It was dead low water. As we got closer, all was revealed. The reef was indeed dry and the yacht standing majestically upright, balanced precariously on its rather narrow-winged keel. The problem, as expected, was that now the boat was some 250m from the breakers and deep water. A close inspection revealed only superfcial scratching of the hull, but we had a mammoth task ahead of us to get it back into the water and through the breakers. The next high tide confrmed our worst fears. She was not foating and the keel was still anchoring her to the reef. Nothing short of a massive tug was going to shift her, and this was unlikely to happen without tearing the keel clean off the hull. In addition, the reef breakers were building and I knew that if we ran out of time, daylight, water or bollard pull, the boat might be pulled only partially off and be sitting in the surf zone, where she would be turned to matchwood in hours. I determined that our only chance was to try to pull her into the lagoon rather than back over the front edge. At least she would be out of danger of breaking up even if we had to return later with more gear. The other problem was getting into the shallow lagoon. At high water my cat, which has open props, had barely a foot clearance through the deepest part of the entrance. The last thing I wanted was to chew up my $12,000 props and bend a shaft. With everyone holding their breath we felt our way into the lagoon and wondered how we would get the yacht out the same way if we got it off. The next challenge was to thread our way through a mass of coral heads and sandy pools from the inside

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LEADING EDGE

Matthew Sheahan It’s not just Big Brother watching you, but Little Brother too. How a system trialled in Waitrose can help keep tabs on everything aboard your boat

hen you next walk into a high street store you may well be followed, not by humans, but by a series of transmit and receive units that will plot your position anywhere inside the store by connecting to your phone. The beacons, as they are known, will have ‘heard’ your mobile phone approach and started to track your movements up and down the aisles, making note of how many areas you visit and how long you stay there. Armed with all the latest discounts, the beacons will then send your phone notifications about what’s on offer and perhaps why you should move 10m to your left to see the bargain of the week, or 5m to the By comparing crew’s right to buy three for two. Over time, the shop’s syspositions with the boat’s tems will build a more compreperformance data, it will hensive proﬁle of your habits. If you have a loyalty card, it alknow who drives the boat ready knows what you normally buy, but now it will know how best upwind or who sails effectively you found the items with too much mainsheet and whether you dithered between two different brands. This allows the beacons to anticipate what you’re after in the future and provide a guiding hand. The system could welcome you into the store, provide personal discounts and offer alternatives to items that are out of stock. In the UK, Waitrose has already trialled this, the One Stop chain of convenience stores has announced it will be using the system, as well as the retailer House of Fraser in its Aberdeen store. Other stores are believed to be taking a longerterm, more softly softly approach. Rather than hassling you on your phone from the minute you walk through the doors, they watch, wait and compare your behaviour with your shared calendar and your

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

contacts list. From this they know that your best friend has a birthday in a week’s time and can remind you, offering details of when the offer will be on for that single malt whisky you buy him each year. The iBeacon technology has been developed by Apple and uses a low-energy version of Bluetooth (BLE 4.0) to connect an array of beacons set up in the store to your phone. Each beacon operates over a short distance, around 50m, but in combination with other units can triangulate your position accurately. While physical tracking might feel a little eerie, it is not that different from what happens online, where your browsing habits are stored to serve up offers based on what you’ve been looking at on other web pages. But beacon technology combined with digital switching could present a new wave of functions aboard our boats in the near future. Armed with your personal preferences, the boat’s computer could switch on the lights, dim them to how you like them, draw/open the blinds, select your favourite music and turn on the heating as you walk down the pontoon. Alternatively, your preferences might be for a quick departure, in which case the various seacocks would be opened, the instruments switched on, navlights illuminated, radar activated and the chartplotter ﬁred up to download the route plan you loaded at home during the week. Once on board the beacons could identify each member of the crew, ﬁll out the log, not just with who’s aboard, but who’s been up on deck the longest and could do with an off-watch spell. By comparing crew’s positions aboard to the boat’s performance data, the computer will know who drives the boat best upwind, or who tends to sail with a bit too much mainsheet on and the most weather helm. It will know the best kite trimmers and who’s hiked the hardest. And all because someone found out how to follow you in Waitrose. Twitter: @matthewsheahan

SOUNDINGS

Skip Novak When it comes to sea trials for a new or reﬁtted boat, it’s a case of don’t do what I do, do what I say

nyone who owns a boat knows the subject. We’ve all done it, setting out to sea on an extended voyage, with little or no sea trials. I can consider my myself an expert on this subject. To be honest, neither of my four Whitbread entries had been extensively tested before the events. King’s Legend in 1977 spent most of her time on the dock in Cowes in constant preparation in anticipation of the great unknown. Alaska Eagle, ex Flyer I, had been extensively modified in error and was late out of the shipyard in the Netherlands. Drum did have a go for a month in Solent waters, but her summer’s work-up and big test offshore ended upside-down in The scenario goes like this: the 1985 Fastnet Race and put the boat is launched, rig in, us back to square one ﬁve weeks before the start. On Fazisi, the systems run up, then day Soviet entry in 1989, we just after day the sea trials are beat the bailiff to the start line. Pelagic and Pelagic Australis, postponed owing to the my two expedition boats had similar chequered histories thousand and one other jobs coming off the starting blocks. My racing career culminated in the The Race in 2001. It is one thing to start a delivery unprepared, or even Leg 1 of the Whitbread to Cape Town, but another to start what turned out to be a 64day non-stop race round the world on a state-of-theart maxi catamaran. How we survived these adventures and came through is a testament to the qualities of the crews, who were always experienced sailors and/or technical experts able to deal with things on the go. I never felt unsafe in a sense, but rather the various predicaments that inevitably arose had to be simply embraced as we carried on. But safety certainly can be an issue when starting a long voyage untested, especially for debutante boat

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

owners and their crews. New boat launches and postrefit situations are particularly vulnerable. The scenario goes something like this: the boat is launched, the rig dropped in, systems run up and then day after day the sea trials are postponed owing to the thousand and one other jobs big and small, important and less so. It is the endless list syndrome – no matter how many things you tick off, at least the same or more are added as the scheduled departure time draws near. Add to this the usual delays from suppliers and technicians, plus inclement weather, or no wind at all, and there is every reason not to leave the dock. When I speak about sea trials, they should be just that – sailing or motoring in sheltered waters offer little difference from hoisting sails and running up systems at the dock. It is almost an irrelevance. Sea trials should imply going to sea, with enough time in hand to observe properly. The high-pressure hose test for deck leaks is a classic case in point. That is a static test of little value. It is much more conclusive to sail hard offshore with green water on the deck and the boat working to the max, to reveal where the leaks might be. Plumbing is another aspect that should be always be fundamentally suspect. Given the motion of a boat offshore in heavy weather will the engine cooling system work, ditto will the exhaust riser be sufficient in a big following sea? Will the port heads suck seawater on port tack? Are the through-hull hose fittings really secure under load and motion? Chafe points on running rigging, sails and ultimate mast tuning can only be resolved after a reasonable extended thrash in high winds and big seas. In order to achieve this utopian situation, two requirements are evident. Clear priorities – get offshore when the conditions are right. The guy delivering the cockpit cushions, already late, can come back another day. The second is willpower; to muster the troops and willingly go out in gale conditions takes some. I must try it one day.

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How to plan your

Photos: T Johnson/tjhawaii.com

What yacht do you need, what sails should you fy, what gear should you carry

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

Atlantic crossing and what preparations are best? Elaine Buntingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 15 top tips to get you across

he Atlantic crossing season is coming round again. In the next few months, up to 5,000 sailors will cross from Europe to the Caribbean on one of the biggest sailing adventures of their lives. In most cases, the crossing is the culmination of years of planning and preparation. So what can you learn from these preparations? Here is a fairly succinct scamper round my favourite tips, drawn from my own ocean passages in the Atlantic, PaciďŹ c and Indian Oceans and from talking over the years to hundreds of transatlantic sailors, whether those on the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) or crews who sail independently.

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

CROSSING THE ATLANTIC Power planning However much power you expect to use on an ocean crossing, you will need more. Nav lights, radar, radio scheds, autopilot, watermaker, fridge, freezer, computer, fans – you name it, they all add up. Last year, when we carried out our annual survey of skippers after they had ﬁnished the ARC, we found that yachts of between 46ft and 55ft had a battery capacity, on average, of 700Ah, rising to 1,000Ah for yachts over 56ft. Since the design life for marine batteries is ﬁve years, it makes sense to set off with new batteries – it’s easier and may be cheaper than replacing them later. A majority of people in our survey had an extra house or domestic battery bank and one or two had boosted the battery used for their windlass.

Interestingly, when we asked about the

The right yacht

Above: the

power equation again in our follow-up survey

Numerically, the most common transatlantic yachts are ordinary production cruisers with standard kit, usually with upgrades of safety and power generation equipment. The happy truth is there’s no black art to sailing 3,000 miles downwind; the toughest part can be getting across the Bay of Biscay. So whatever boat you have right now, the chances are that she’ll be ﬁne for an Atlantic crossing with a bit of extra preparation. You don’t have to let waiting for the ‘right’ boat put you off going. However, this doesn’t apply so much if you intend to complete an Atlantic circuit and sail back. The CaribbeanAzores-Europe route can be very tough, with a real chance of rough windward work, and a yacht that is wonderfully comfortable and spacious at anchor can slam and be very uncomfortable on the way back. Shipping back or delivery are both alternative options. I’ve found that skippers tend to focus on equipment that adds comfort, but also complication: watermakers, generators, comms equipment. All are undoubtedly useful, but remember that every additional item adds complication, spares and service cost/time. Apart from a sound boat, all you really need is water, food, fuel and a (paper) chart of ‘North Atlantic, Southern Part’. Whatever else you do, don’t let those extras distract you from ensuring the integrity of the rig (including the boom and gooseneck ﬁttings), rudder and hull. These are paramount. Rudders, in particular, are subjected to very high side loads in big following seas. I’ve seen people about to set off across the Atlantic on boats that were sporting the latest luxury kit, from ice cream makers to air conditioning, but with split pins not bent back or a clevis pin working out.

average production

a few months later, numerous skippers said

yacht is perfectly

that they had increased battery capacity yet

capable of a safe

again or planned to do so in future.

The sail plan What sails are best? The simple answer is reasonably recent, quality sails that aren’t liable to break. However expensive, good sails are worth every penny. As to what combination is best on a long downwind passage, that’s a complicated and potentially

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

passage across

Rather than adding to machinery with a diesel generator, it’s worth looking at wind generators, solar panels and the Watt & Sea or Sea-Gen water turbines (see New Gear, page 76). These alternative power generation sources have advanced a lot in recent years. A larger alternator may be worth ﬁtting too, and if only one is ﬁtted to the engine, carry a spare.

long-winded debate. Let’s just say that, for the average family crew, a smart crossing is all about consistent speed, 24 hours a day. The key is not to have downtime. There is absolutely no need to sail hot angles downwind unless you are sailing to polars on a high-performance design. A spinnaker or code sail is great in lighter winds, but in stronger winds you will need several crew on watch at a time and if you blow the sail in a squall or a sudden reload it will be a costly choice. There is nothing wrong with the old ‘barn doors’ arrangement of mainsail and poled-out genoa. Sure, it’s unﬂashy and unheroic, but it’s also easy, trouble-free and you’ll trot along in any conditions with minimal drop in speed for the occasional gybe. Just keep an eye out for chafe and be sure to set up a preventer on the boom and a foreguy topping lift and downhaul when poling out the headsail, so you can furl in quickly when that night-time squall hits (which it will).

A sailing passage is not a liner service, so enjoy the experience and take time out from the deadlines of daily life. The crossing is the adventure, not the arrival in the Caribbean

Crew strength

Never underestimate how tiring ocean sailing can be and consider how hard-pressed you would be two-handed if the autopilot were to fail. Extra crew make life much easier and add to the stimulation. You can ﬁnd fresh new faces from Crewseekers or World Cruising’s Ocean Crewlink website, but go on a trial cruise to assess your compatibility. Being stuck for weeks with someone who is driving you nuts does not make for a happy boat. Be especially wary of people boasting lots of experience – sailing has way more than its fair share of bluffers – and make your own mind up when you see them in action. Agree any ﬁnancial contributions in advance too. Sometimes it’s better and more useful to have someone who knows very little, but is co-operative and keen to learn than a know-all ‘expert’. A good cook is always worth having, as are crew who are easygoing, have a good sense of humour and share your approach. Beware of

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

CROSSING THE ATLANTIC heavy drinkers and make sure – absolutely sure – that you know your crew’s health status and any medication they may need to take, especially mood stabilisers.

atmosphere on board more than a single stressed person who is on a deadline and champing to be on land.

7 8

Take it steady

Training and preparations

Ocean seamanship is more about fixing things and managing problems on board than navigation or routeing. Diesel engine maintenance, medical and first aid training, and manufacturers’ courses on servicing and maintaining their equipment are all invaluable preparation. A real benefit of many of these courses is that they get you and your crew thinking about uncomfortable scenarios in a non-frightening, constructive environment, helping to drive away fear of the unknown and the unspeakable. If there was one course I would earmark as a must, whether planning for ocean sailing or shorter passages, it’s a sea survival course. It’s about so much more than survival. You will learn so much and may well look differently at your preparations afterwards.

Keep your head in the yacht In some seasons an Atlantic crossing is quick. In others it’s slow. The weather varies quite a bit, especially early in November and early December, when the tradewinds can be elusive. So if you are ﬁxated on a certain arrival day, you’ll be set up for disappointment before you even leave. This might sound daft, but many crews feel a bit disappointed after crossing the Atlantic because they were a day or two slower than anticipated. A sailing passage is not a liner service, so kick back, enjoy the experience, bring a few books and maybe go on a digital detox to enjoy time out from the deadlines that shape daily life on shore. The crossing is the adventure, not the arrival in the Caribbean. And whatever you do, don’t let your crew book ﬂights immediately after your estimated ETA – nothing sours the

Don’t go all-out at the beginning of a crossing. It usually takes around three days for a crew to ﬁnd their sea legs and settle into a routine. Be kind to your crew during this time – and also your boat. It will be fully provisioned, fuelled and watered at the outset and that amounts to tonnes of extra displacement. The increased loads on gear and rigging are signiﬁcant, so throttle back and don’t push hard early on.

Prepare for gear failure Be prepared for key equipment to fail because sooner or later it probably will. If it’s gear you normally rely on, like an autopilot or watermaker, have a contingency or a workable plan to do without. Of all the gear problems that give most stress and trouble, the most pressing is autopilot failure. That will start to put a small crew under strain by robbing everyone of rest time. For the same reason, it’s a good idea to make sure most or all of your crew are decent helmsmen downwind in following seas. If not, spend some time on passage tutoring them. Crossing an ocean is something any keen yachtsman should do at least once. It’s not for everyone – even on a big rally you soon learn the truth that the ocean is a huge, empty place. But being out there on your own at the mercy of the elements in the selfcontained and self-sufﬁcient world of a sailing yacht is the essence of its charm as well as the challenge.

ROUTES AND WEATHER

Early or late, which way to go?

cruising boat it is hard to gain the increase in speed to compensate for the extra distance. Once hull speed is reached, shorter will always be faster.

eather is a large part of any crossing:

During a typical crossing, the tradewinds will be

With well-established high pressure, a direct

deciding when to go; which route to

Force 4 or 5, with some lighter periods and a few

(that is, northerly) route is usually fastest, staying

follow; and the sails to carry. The main

days of winds of 25-plus knots. A ﬂexible sailplan is

far enough away from the high to keep the wind, but

consideration is to avoid the hurricane season from

necessary to take account of the changing wind

minimising distance. However, the less established

June to November, so most yachts leave in late

strengths – there is no one-size-ﬁts-all answer. The

the high is, the greater the chance of a mid-Atlantic

November to arrive in time for Christmas, although

most common sailplan is goosewinged, with most

trough or low developing, giving adverse winds. In

the trades in January are often stronger.

skippers carrying a specialist downwind sail for

this case a more southerly route is better.

However, it is human nature to push boundaries and some crews always leave early to get a longer

when the wind goes light. Because squalls are common and can have

Racing boats often take the northerly route and the faster the boat, the more likely this will pay off.

season. The earlier you leave, though, the more

gale-force gusts on the leading edge, it is important

However, it runs the risk of meeting depressions

important it is to stay east before committing to a

to be able to reduce sail quickly. Boats with only

which develop mid-Atlantic.

westerly course. Late hurricanes generally develop

asymmetric spinnakers tend to struggle in strong

to the west, making a passage via the Cape Verde

downwind conditions and I would always carry a

potential gain of passing north of a depression must

islands more attractive. It shortens the time in

whisker pole to pole out a headsail as well.

be balanced against the risk that it could deepen

potential hurricane areas and offers an escape route south as hurricanes rarely track south of 10°N.

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

Sailing hot angles may work for a lightweight ﬂyer, but it adds a lot of distance. For a heavier

These should not be underestimated and the

and track across the route. The route is also more prone to a northerly swell.

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CROSSING THE ATLANTIC Other tips

Take no cardboard packaging on board to avoid importing cockroach eggs.

Spares: assume any piece of equipment

ROUTES AND WEATHER The southerly route, on the other hand, offers

a great deal of variation and weather forecasts are

lower risk, with steadier tradewinds and less chance

important. There needs to be some ﬂexibility in the

of an uncomfortable northerly swell.

route to take account of forecasts and how they

that can go wrong will and plan your spares list carefully. Getting professionals to install equipment for you is not always good value – if you do it yourself you will have a better understanding of how to effect a repair.

change over time. I like to pick up weather charts

When does the engine go on? I like to arrive with at least one-third of my fuel left for

from NOAA and also GRIB ﬁles. So, the default options are: go south for comfort

safety. Others will put on the engine when the wind

and safety; go north for speed. Most boats take a

drops and call in at Cape Verde to refuel if necessary.

more middle route, depending on the forecast.

The choice of route may also depend on fuel capacity

Chris Tibbs is a

wind is not unusual and can be motored through to

meteorologist and sailor

keep on schedule. Yet for some crews, the engine is

with over 250,000 miles

only for emergencies and a more southerly route will

at sea, including three

reduce the risk of light winds. Neither route is right

circumnavigations and six

or wrong. They are just different ways of sailing in

speed records. He is a

what may be very different boats.

lecturer to ARC crews and

I have sailed across the Atlantic over 20 times and no two times have been the same. There can be

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

in a sailing boat. If going further than the Caribbean, carry some jerrycans – fuel is often a taxi-ride away from the shore.

Safety: don’t be afraid to wear lifejackets

and a crew’s willingness to use the engine. A mid-Atlantic trough giving 24-48 hours of light

Fuel: it’s difﬁcult to have too much, even

provides routeing services.

and use lifelines and always use them at night and in bad weather. If in doubt, play it safe. Drum into crew never to leave the cockpit to go forward when no one else is awake. And think about safety below decks too; for example, the risk to crews wearing shorts while handling pans of boiling water. Discourage crew from peeing over the side: there are no recorded cases of men YW falling overboard while using the heads.

Chris Doyle’s

Caribbean haunts

Pilotbook author Chris Doyle shares his

favourite places to sail in the Windward Islands

ONCE YOU’VE PUT THE OCEAN SAILING BEHIND YOU, where should you cruise during a season in the Caribbean? With some 28 island nations and more than 7,000 islands, the choice is huge. But if you’re smart, you can follow a route that works with the prevailing wind direction and will take you to some of the most interesting places and cultures. No one knows more about the region than author Chris Doyle, so we gave him carte blanche to describe his ideal cruising itinerary. He suggests starting in Martinique and gently working southwards, as follows:

Grand Anse D’Artlet, Martinique When I think of Martinique, Grand Anse D’Artlet comes immediately to mind. It is a beautiful and peaceful bay, far from any sizeable town. A tiny village is strung out along a white sand beach, mountains rise behind. The clear pale blue water tempts you to jump in for a snorkel. These attributes apply to many a Caribbean bay, but Grand Anse D’Artlet is special; something about

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

travelshots.com/Alamy

One of the loveliest anchorages in the whole of the Caribbean, lying behind the reef in the Tobago Cays in the Grenadines

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

caribbean HaUnTS its towering mountains, the beach and the palms that, in the right light, and especially when the hills are a lush green, divert the mind far from the Caribbean to a distant exotic Pacifc hideaway. It is so lovely, indeed, that many a French cruiser has ended up staying here for years. The town plans to charge for the moorings it laid with EU funds about a year ago and this might be a problem for such stalled-out cruisers. Right now, anyone can use the moorings, or not, as they please; there’s no charge. An excellent government dock makes it easy to get ashore and step into a quiet holiday atmosphere. Some of the beach restaurants have perfect locations, but indifferent service and only passable food. Le P’Ti Bateau, right at the head of the dock, is a restaurant that is pleasant and friendly. If you turn right on the main road, a short walk will bring you to Coco Delices, downhill on the right, where they have a comfortable lounging area for using the wi-fi and they serve good food. Officialdom is delightfully French. A 20-minute walk takes you to the neighbouring village of Anse D’Arlet, where you can clear in or out on the Customs computer at Cyber Base, the internet store.

Pigeon Island, Rodney Bay, Saint Lucia

Anse Cochon For pure sybaritic pleasure a stop in Anse Cochon takes some beating. It is a pleasant bay with excellent snorkelling. If you come ashore mid-afternoon, you may be able to take your dinghy to the dock after the diveboat has left; otherwise, beach it, swells permitting.

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Above: the charming colonial era town of St George’s in Grenada

Climb the scenic wooden staircase to Ti Kaye hotel at the top of the hill. Here the gardens, the view and the exceptionally friendly staff make you feel as though you have arrived in a little Garden of Eden. Spend some time and get a massage (or other treatment) at Kai Koko Spa, which is perched on the edge of the cliff and is spectacularly beautiful, with one side of each room open to the precipitous panorama. Take bathing things so you can relax in the welcome room’s hot tub looking right down on the bay. If you fnish in the late afternoon you will be in time to take a relaxing drink in the bar, which is an ideal platform for watching the green fash at sunset. And follow this with a good meal on the restaurant deck, where you can gaze down on your yacht way below, peacefully at anchor.

Blue Lagoon, St Vincent St Vincent is a spectacular island with some delightful surprises, such as Cumberland Bay, a deep photogenic bay tucked into the rugged and mountainous terrain of the island’s west coast. Five restaurants are dotted around the beach, all apparently making a living off the occasional passing yacht. Even more surprising is that the government has put in a dock where you can take on water and do laundry, and provide bay-wide free wi-f right in the middle of nowhere. While this is good for local hiking, better access to St Vincent’s interior is the area between Blue Lagoon and Young Island Cut, the yachting centre of St Vincent. Blue Lagoon Marina, St Vincent’s only real marina, has until recently been part of the bareboat industry.

GmbH, PB/Alamy

Rodney Bay is the yachting capital of Saint Lucia, a thriving, vibrant community surrounding IGY’s pleasantly laid-out Rodney Bay Marina. Restaurants such as The Edge, Jacques, Buzz and Big Chef invite you to try some of the best food the Caribbean has to offer, while many more serve good, but less fancy fare. You can enjoy what is on offer here, but anchor away from the bustle in the peace and quiet of Pigeon Island, Rodney Bay’s north-west headland. A causeway, covered in hotels, now links Pigeon Island to the shore, but before it was built, Pigeon really was an island and the main base for the British Navy in the days of sailing ships. Its two hills rise to around 300ft and are linked by a ridge. From up high, you can see Martinique and you have a clear view of any approaching ships. It was a substantial base, with a fort, barracks, storerooms and a hospital. It is now owned by the Saint Lucia National Trust, which has restored the fort and some buildings. A US$6 entrance fee allows you to wander all over the island, explore the fort, scale the highest hill and wander down the shady paths. Its name is apt as you will see lots of pigeons of varying types, along with fnches, and maybe a tiny sparrowhawk. You are also likely to see a mongoose, whose ancestors were introduced from India. Near the dinghy dock, Barbara’s informal Jambe de Bois, with its easy chairs inside, hobbit chairs outside, wi-f, and good and inexpensive meals will quickly become your base.

Underwater sculptures in Grenada, each of them cast from a living person

Above: anchored in Union Island, St Vincent. Far left: a waterfall in Grenada.

Left: market in Union Island

CARIBBEAN HAUNTS Moorings Moorings in the Caribbean are often not the haven of security to which you may be accustomed. Many local entrepreneurs put down moorings as personal parking meters and these have no legal status. They might contain nothing more than a single 45gal drum of concrete held together with worn-away quarter-inch chain – usually with a little good chain and heavy rope near the buoy to fool you. The shackles are rarely wired and can come undone. On the other hand, most moorings put down by marinas are professionally installed and maintained, and are secure. Marine park and town moorings lie somewhere in the middle. They are at least professionally installed and sometimes well-maintained, but boats have been lost from Caribbean park moorings so take care.

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

MARTINIQUE N

Grand Anse D’Arlet Anse D’Arlet

I S L A N D S

Rodney Bay

PIGEON ISLAND

Caribbean Sea 14°N

Anse Cochon

SAINT LUCIA

Atlantic HAITI O c e a n

Caribbean Sea

VENEZUELA

Soufriere volcano

Montreal Gardens

Young Island Cut

MAYREAU UNION ISLAND

Tobago Cays Marine Park BARADEL ISLAND PALM ISLAND

THE GRENADINES

I N

Blue Lagoon

13°N

D W A R D

ST VINCENT

Cumberland Bay

61°W

Built by CSY, one of the original bareboat companies, it was Above: after a later taken over by Sunsail. Sometimes so many bareboats hike ashore, enjoy the panoramic view were packed in here there was no room. Recently, Sunsail moved to Grenada, after selling the ma- from the islands in rina to Kelly and Janke Glace, yachting folk who live nearby. the Tobago Cays They are transforming it from a make-do charter turnaround facility into a delightful base for visiting St Vincent. There is already a restaurant and beach bar, and soon a new boardwalk café and a quality food shop. Customs has agreed to open a station here too. This is the perfect place from which to visit two outstanding attractions; Montreal Gardens and the Soufriere volcano. The seven-acre Montreal Gardens are tucked close to the central mountain range at the head of the Mesopotamia Valley, a rich agricultural area about a 20-minute drive from Blue Lagoon. You will not ﬁnd more beautiful gardens in the Eastern Caribbean. Tim Vaughn, the owner, has created an intriguing landscape with winding paths, bridges, steps, a tunnel and a river, but his genius is in planting and then letting Nature take over, resulting in a kind of controlled jungle; a riot of colours, leaf shapes and spectacular growth. It is like a visit to some fairytale land where you can, for an hour or two, feel like Alice in Wonderland strolling around in awe of the beauty. The only sounds are rustling leaves, running water and birdsong. Driving to, and hiking up, the Soufriere volcano takes a whole day. You’ll also expend considerable energy and you will need a guide. However, it is unquestionably one of the Windwards’ most dramatic hikes. Starting on the windward side, you pass through farmland, rainforest, montane forest and then Chris Doyle has sailed in the into an area where only tiny plants can Caribbean since crossing from survive. The mountain top is often in the UK in the 1970s. He has been cloud, cold and damp. a charter skipper, delivery If you take lunch and eat it slowly at skipper and now writes the the top, you are likely to get a window in best-known pilotbooks for the the clouds that will allow you to see into islands. He sails a 40ft the crater, an impressive 1,000ft catamaran called Ti Kanot sheer drop with no guardrail. In

nautical miles Molinere Point St George’s

Atlantic Ocean

GRENADA Port Louis Marina

12°N

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caribbean HaUnTS Tobago Cays

the middle, a huge smoking island keeps growing and is now hundreds of feet high, an indication that the volcano’s dormancy is unlikely to last forever.

Union Island Union is the centre of the southern Grenadines. Want to bring your whole family to visit? Book rooms for them ashore and take them daysailing. From here you are a short hop from the Tobago Cays, where you can frolic with turtles and play on the islands. Palm Island and PSV resorts are close by, as is Mayreau. All are visible from the best anchorage, which is in brilliant turquoise water tucked up close to the outer reef, not too far from Janti’s Happy Island. Janti is one of the few people in the world to have built his own island. He created it out of conch shells and concrete on the rubble top of the reef. The result is a very unusual bar, which is very popular at sunset. For a tiny Grenadine island, the shopping is surprisingly good. It is a real pleasure to visit the local market of colourfully painted wooden stalls surrounding a green, where the vendors will fll your bags with fresh fruit and vegetables. Close by, Nicolas and Linda’s Captain Gourmet is a great little store that sells fresh French bread, yoghurt, frozen shrimp, steak and smoked salmon, along with cheeses and cream. Everyone gathers in the chairs outside the store for coffee or lunch. Hiking or biking all over the island is well rewarded by spectacular views of the Grenadines. Katie Bingham at Sail Grenadines in the Anchorage Hotel rents bikes. The hike to the Pinnacle is on the tough side, but the view and a sense of accomplishment make it worth the effort (see right).

St George’s, Grenada Grenada, the ‘Isle of Spice’, is a lush and beautiful land full of fruit and spice trees, with sparkling waterfalls and wonderful mountain hikes. Nestled way back in the country is the Grenada Chocolate Factory, a small co-operative that produces some of the best chocolate in the world. St George’s, the capital, is one of the Caribbean’s most photogenic towns. It fows over a ridge, with the sea on one side and the protected Carenage on the other. Many of the old buildings are built of brick, with roofs of ‘fsh scale’ pottery tiles. Fort George stands on the hill to the south, with the hospital underneath. Across the bay, the Carenage merges into the lagoon, home of Camper and Nicholsons’ lovely Port Louis Marina. The Lagoon is a yachting centre with a big Island Water World chandlery, the Grenada Yacht Club, yacht services, Foodland supermarket and many restaurants. Grenada’s big international airport and numerous anchorages and marinas on the south coast make it a favourite with cruisers who spend months and sometimes years here, and as soon as you visit you can appreciate why.

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

Hiking Union’s peak For a tough hike, brimming with challenges and ending with a world-class view, you cannot beat climbing the Pinnacle. It takes about three hours dock to dock. Most of it is an easy regular walk, but the fnal climb involves non-technical rock scrambling. At the very top you sit on a rock with a heady 360° view. Long trousers and a long-sleeved shirt, sturdy shoes and a small cutlass (from the local hardware store for about EC$20) will give some protection against prickles. Take the main road south out of Clifton. It climbs a hill, and at the top take either of the two roads that turn off to the right. Walk up this road and a couple of hundred feet before the antenna compound turn right onto the grass. Head slightly downhill and look for a cut in the trees to take you to another feld. From here, a discernible path leads you down to the water hole (sometimes dry) close to the Pinnacle. When you fnd the watering hole, head round the left side. A poorly marked path leads through the bush to the base of the Pinnacle. Here the path becomes more apparent. It is very small, tough in places and a real scramble. You can follow the ridge all the way to the highest point, and the views from here make the effort well worth it.

The Tobago Cays Marine Park, a short sail from Union Island, is a world-class beauty spot with bountiful underwater wildlife. A group of small uninhabited islands sits inside a big horseshoe reef where you can anchor in shallow water in gorgeous shades of gold, blue, turquoise and green. Since this area became a park, life has returned to the shallows, making for rewarding snorkelling. Everyone loves to swim with turtles, and green turtles are everywhere, but especially near Baradel Island. Conchs have come back in a big way and it is lovely to see so many of these shellfsh thriving, where once they were rare. Another major benefciary of the park is the white ‘decorator’ urchin. These were just about extirpated some years ago, they now cluster in huge groups. Back on the boat, if you are here mid-winter to spring, you can throw some small bread scraps and quickly attract a fock of laughing gulls.

Fishing As you sail between islands, why not fsh for your supper? It is easy and nothing tastes better than fresh fsh. Tuna, wahoo, barracuda, kingfsh, rainbow runners and Spanish mackerel often go for little plastic lures and they all taste delicious. You need a gadget that holds the line and releases it when a fsh strikes. Clothes pins are not strong enough, but cheap plastic awning clamps work well, as do plastic woodworking spring clamps. I tie my line way up high, then clamp it at deck level, so when a fsh strikes, the line jumps out of the clamp and I see it pulling. When you catch a fsh, slow the boat by luffng or rolling up the jib. I keep a big ice chest handy, which saves a lot of mess on deck. You will be able to haul up most fsh by hand; gloves will protect your fngers from line cuts. Nearly anything you catch between Martinique and Grenada will be edible, but I throw back Spanish mackerel, barracuda and jacks if they weigh more than 2kg.

Reboot or bust B Carlin/Team Vestas Wind:

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s always been tough, but the future of the Volvo Ocean Race now hangs on whether its new VO65 one-design can switch the focus from problems to people, says Matthew Sheahan

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

volvo ocean race

‘T

eeth are chattering, eyes are bloodshot, bodies are aching. When we do have the chance to sleep, it is in bursts. Except for a few naps during the night, Team SCA has been up for 24 hours,’ Corinna Halloran reported from the all-female VO65 crew. ‘The waves are pretty unreal; walls of white water nearly reaching the first spreader come flying over the deck. Some crash over the cockpit coaming and fll the cockpit like a bathtub.’ The RORC Sevenstar Round Britain and Ireland Race in August was the frst real test of the new breed of Volvo 65s in conditions that the crews will doubtless fnd again during the 32,000-mile Volvo Ocean Race, which started on 11 October from Alicante. ‘Up here the seas are very cold and we’ve had the biggest sea state we’ve encountered in our training,’ Halloran continued. ‘Sam [Davies] kept saying it reminded her of the Southern Ocean.’ Team SCA was frst to take delivery of the new one-design over a year before the start of the round the world race. The team clocked up 20,000 miles in training, but the Round Britain took them to another level. Thirty- to 40-knot conditions and ferce competition among five of the seven-strong VO65 fleet pushed the women harder ever before. And they were not alone. ‘This is agonising. I feel absolutely horrible. I have never felt this way on a boat before – ever,’ Amory Ross reported from on board Team Alvimedica. Ross is no stranger to high-speed offshore sailing, having completed a full lap of the Volvo Ocean Race course aboard Puma last time around. ‘It’s a combination of wind, waves, maybe some sickness – a few of the guys have colds and coughs – and, probably most importantly, working on my computer. The sea state is really poor and focusing on my screen is proving costly.’ For others the 1,800-nautical mile event – one of just three that were sanctioned under the strict VOR class rules during the build-up to the event – was their frst experience of a Volvo boat offshore. And it was a baptism of fre. “If you make it to your bunk you are shaken and jolted so much that sleep can be grabbed only minutes at a time before you are shocked awake by the rapid deceleration from yet another wave impact,” says Justin Chisholm, who was acting as onboard reporter for Ian Walker’s hugely experienced team on Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing. Not everyone had seasons of experience to draw on. For most of the crew of team Dongfeng Racing, the

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

All Whitbread photos: PPL Media

whitbread history

Crew were still building their berths as Burton Cutter left the Solent on Leg 1

Ramon Carlin, winner of the frst Whitbread in 1973 on Swan 65 Sayula II

5Top: Conny van Rietschoten in 1977 5Above: Kiwi hero Sir Peter Blake in 1981

Pioneering days A Ross/Team Alvimedica

Barry Pickthall reveals how the early Whitbread Round the World crews were as innovative as they were ill-prepared

C Halloran/TEam SCA

The race has a fearsome reputation for breaking boats and bodies, but so bad was the damage in recent events it became clear radical change was needed 5Top: Team Alvimedica is introduced to heavy weather on the Round Britain and Ireland Race

3Left: all-female Team SCA has two extra crew compared to the male teams – good for watch systems, but is that enough for sail-handling?

ailing pioneers Francis Chichester, Alec Rose and Robin Knox-Johnston had already done it single-handedly, but a race round the world for fully crewed yachts was thought a step too far in the Sixties. Any number of blazered armchair sailors said it could never be done. Yet a meeting between the Royal Naval Sailing Association and brewery boss Sam Whitbread in a Portsmouth pub led to 17 disparate crews on the start line for the frst Whitbread Round the World Race in September 1973. Only 14 went the distance and a heavy price price was paid in lives and broken boats. But lessons from this and subsequent Whitbread races held every four years for the next three decades pioneered many of the advances now commonplace on cruising yachts.

Preparation In 1973, preparedness meant making it to the startline with the crew and food on board. When Sir Alec Rose fred the cannon from Southsea Castle, many crews were too busy still fnishing their boats to think about what lay ahead. Aboard Les Williams’s Burton Cutter crew were cutting wood to make berths as they sailed out of the Solent. The 80-footer was built in Poole by a

company more used to making fuel tanks than boats and there had been no time even to hoist her sails before the race. For Peter Blake, then a keen but green 25-year-old, the experience was a baptism of fre. “We had a big drum of rope in the cockpit and I was cutting off the sheets to size each time we hoisted a new sail,” he recalled years later. Improvisation was the key. Arriving late for measurement at HMS Vernon, Burton Cutter was found to be foating down by the bow. Skipper Williams was at a loss as to how to reballast her in the short time available. Not so owner Alan Smith. A West Country businessman who was more hunting and shooting than sailing, he simply rang up his gunsmith and arranged for lead shot to be poured into her skeg. Burton Cutter was frst into Cape Town, pioneering an upwind route through the South Atlantic High when others chose the longer trade route to Brazil. But the boat began to break up soon after heading into the Southern Ocean and only rejoined the race on the last leg from Rio back to Portsmouth. Four years later, few lessons had been taken on board. In 1977 Williams co-skippered the British maxi Heath’s Condor with Robin Knox-Johnston. Again, little time was left for sailing

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

volvo ocean race

learning curve was vertical. It’s likely to remain so for some time. In their crew of ten, which includes four Chinese/ Hong Kong crew, only two have sailed the Volvo race before. Yann Riou reported from on board as conditions took their toll: ‘There is not too much talking on board. The guys go straight from the deck to their bunk.’ And that’s when things are going well. The Volvo Ocean Race and Whitbread Race before it have a fearsome reputation for breaking boats and bodies. Indeed, so bad was the damage during recent races that it became clear that radical changes were required for the race to survive. It took just a few hours for the frst casualty to be declared in the last race in 2011 – Ian Walker’s Fastnet-winning Volvo 70 Azzam lost her mast just after the start in Alicante. A short time later Mike Sanderson’s VO70 was reported to be sinking and a crewman had broken his foot during a sail change. Sure, the breeze was 30 to 40 knots, but the fleet hadn’t left the Mediterranean yet – there were still 39,000 miles to go. Seventeen days later, on the same opening leg to Cape Town, the mast on Ken Read’s Puma came crashing down in the Southern Atlantic, 2,000 miles from the fnish. Just two and a half weeks into the nine-month odyssey and half the feet was broken. This was the third generation of Volvo 70s; a boat on which race organisers, technicians and crews hoped the hard, often destructive lessons from the last two cycles had been learned. Yet the Volvo race was hitting the headlines again for all the wrong reasons. Since the move to big, powerful canting-keel monohulls, the race has developed a reputation for explosive starts. Less than 12 hours into the 2005 race when the VO70s were new, a brutal weather system caused widespread damage, forcing two teams to head for shore and retire

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

The core of team Abu Dhabi has been together for two previous events, making this a race favourite, particularly after a 1st in class in the Round Britain and Ireland Race

whitbread history

‘If they hadn’t gone for

A Ross/Team Alvimedica

a one-design feet there wouldn’t be a race,’ says Abu Dhabi’s Ian Walker

Above: with just eight crew, time for sleep will be scarce,

Photos: M Knighton/Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing

but they do have secure pipecots – ﬁtted with seatbelts!

Cornelius van Rietschoten’s Flyer surﬁng in heavy weather in the Southern Ocean

Condor of Bermuda had an experimental carbon mast – it failed on the ﬁrst leg

Sir Peter Blake’s Ceramco New Zealand lost her rig on the ﬁrst Atlantic leg

before the race and the crew were still rigging her experimental carbon fbre mast on the eve of the start. Little wonder, then, that they lost it overboard during the frst leg. Contrast this with the efforts of an then-unknown Dutchman, Cornelis van Rietschoten. After commissioning Sparkman & Stephens to design a boat to beat Ramon Carlin’s 1973-74 race winner, the Swan 65 Sayula II, he embarked on a transatlantic crossing to test the boat and crew, plus a return race (which they won) and a Fastnet. Flyer and her crew were honed to such a high level compared to the rest of the feet the race was almost won already. Van Rietschoten returned with a second Flyer four years later, this one a Frers-designed maxi built expressly to win line honours. Again preparation paid off – the crew became the only team in the history of the event to win both line and handicap honours. Van Rietschoten not only repeated the pre-race trials, he funded a research programme that had far-reaching effects. First, he commissioned Britain’s National Weather Centre to condense a century of weather statistics. These went into a computer program to predict the likely local scenarios, particularly in the Southern Ocean. The program wasn’t a complete success, but the lessons learned from the research, along with coaching given by weather guru David Houghton, meant the crew only got the weather ‘wrong’ once. In the previous race the frst Flyer crew found themselves on the wrong side of pressure systems 14 times – and still won.

During the frst two races crews suffered badly from colds and fu in the Southern Ocean because short bursts of activity led to sweating that then chilled on the body under layers of feece and oilskins. The challenge was to ‘wick’ sweat away from the skin. Working with Musto and the National Aerospace Laboratory at Farnborough, the Flyer crew helped to develop the frst three-layer system, which went on to revolutionise how manufacturers made their sailing clothing. The third improvement centred on rigging. During the frst two races, yachts were rigged with 1x19 wire. By 1981 rod rigging was in vogue, with the rigging bent at the spreader tips. Van Rietschoten, an engineer at heart who was reluctant to change from a ketch to a sloop rig, was unconvinced. He commissioned Dutch Aerospace laboratories to develop a discontinuous rigging system with individual rods between spar and spreader tips that could articulate at each connection point. The industry thought this was over the top until three maxis lost their rigs early that season. Navtec took up the idea and offered it as standard. That was too late for Peter Blake’s frst New Zealand entry. Ceramco New Zealand set out from Portsmouth with continuous rod rigging and off Ascension Island it failed at a spreader tip, leading to her crew making the longest voyage in history under jury rig.

Watch systems The frst Whitbread races were laissez faire events compared to today’s full-on racing. Crews tended not to fy

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volvo ocean race

from the leg. Later, as the feet headed through the Western Approaches to the Leg 7 finish in Portsmouth, Telefonica sank following a problem with her canting keel. Halfway around the world in the VO70s’ second race in 2008-9, half the feet was in trouble. Three broken boats, another withdrawn and several injured crew made for a depleted line-up for the restart of Leg 5 from China to Brazil. The race has always been tough. But its problems have been exacerbated by an over-enthusiastic flirtation with technology. The problems threatened to kill the event, which by now had gained a reputation for being a game of last man standing. The answer, according to the organisers, was to take the biggest gamble of all by creating a fleet of robustly built, strict one-design offshore racers. “Let’s be frank, if they [the organisers] hadn’t gone for a one-design there wouldn’t be a race,” says Ian Walker, who skippers Abu Dhabi again. His Olympic background in the 470 class puts him in a good place for his third campaign and explains why he has always been a staunch supporter of the one-design concept. He also knows better than most the risks a one-off boat can present, having suffered major structural breakdowns in the previous two events. “I take my hat off to them in creating such a sophisticated one-design. The Volvo 65 is more one-design than a Laser, where you can choose your tiller extension, toestraps, burgee, mainsheet jammer and bridles and compass. On the 65 we can’t change anything. We can’t cut a rope or fle the end off a bolt if it’s sticking out without asking permission.” Come the start not only will all boats be the same to within a few kilograms, but their sail wardrobes will be identical in types and mileage, something never achieved before in this race. All of which leads to a quiet confdence that this time the Volvo Ocean Race will indeed be different. The Round Britain and Ireland Race was a proving ground for the new boats. It demonstrated how robust they are, how close the racing will be and the possible price of the smallest mistake or problem. The next challenge for the event is to prove how such a strict one-design package can allow teams like Chris Nicholson’s Team Vestas Wind to arrive on the start line at the eleventh hour yet remain competitive. Levelling the playing feld by providing the same equipment for all teams will provide the closest competition ever

Above: a typically wet and in this event. The irony is the move to a one-design feet brings the Volvo back to its Here Sam Davies takes a selfe roots by placing the emphasis on the crews. Forty years ago, teams may have set off aboard a disparate range of styles and designs, but the 1973-74 race that launched a feet of 17 into the unknown was about crews not technology. “We would go for weeks without a decent fix, but that never concerned us,” recalls Butch Dalrymple-Smith, a crewmember aboard winner Sayula II. “There were no weather maps, no outside routers: just our barograph and a look at the sky and sea.” While the technology has moved on considerably, the 2014-15 Volvo Ocean Race looks to return the focus to stories about the crews at the heart of this special event. And those have already begun with a sprint around the British Isles. exhilarating ride on Team SCA.

Team SCA

Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing

Dongfeng Race Team

Skipper: Sam Davies All-female crew that had the frst VO65 – believed to have clocked up more miles than other teams. Previous races: 3 Average age: 36

Skipper: Ian Walker A favourite for overall victory, core team has sailed together on two Volvo events and has a young average age. Previous races: 21 Average age: 35

Skipper: Charles Caudrelier Only two of crew have previous Volvo experience, but this team, half of it Chinese, has been clocking up deep sea miles. Previous races: 3 Average age: 32

In our opinion

+ -

Crew have learned quickly. Offshore Challenges management team is a big asset Short on offshore experience

In our opinion

Two additional crew allowed, management team has two previous VOR victories Short on Volvo experience, physically less able than male crews

Solid team with plenty of experience Crew seem to have a habit of attracting bad luck in previous events

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

+ -

Team Brunel

Team Alvimedica

Skipper: Bouwe Bekking Only two crew lack Volvo experience – skipper Bekking has completed six, navigator Andrew Cape has fve. A mixture of brawn and wise heads. Previous races: 18 Average age: 38

Skipper: Charlie Enright Modest previous experience in this American team, but Will Oxley (navigator) and Ryan Houston have done two previous events. Previous races: 7 Average age: 32

In our opinion

+ Huge depth of talent and ability - Relatively late to launch,

so may need to pick up the pace

Demonstrated they can hang in there in Round Britain and Ireland race Modest previous experience

WHITBREAD HISTORY C Halloran/Team SCA

Top: Lion New Zealand’s botanical bash Above: crossing the equator on Drum Left: Tracy Edwards with Maiden

The irony is the move to a one-design ﬂeet brings the Volvo back to its roots as a race about crews Follow the race at www.volvoocean race.com and read Matthew Sheahan’s regular reports and blogs throughout the event, plus his analysis of race entry prospects at www.yachtingworld.com

Team Spain

Team Vestas Wind

Skipper: Iker Martinez Though only ﬁve members were declared as we went to press, this Spanish team still had eight Volvo races between it. Previous races: 13 Average age: 35

Skipper: Chris Nicholson The last team to declare, but plenty of previous Volvo experience. Will be skipper Nicholson’s ﬁfth race. Previous races: 14 Average age: 37

In our opinion

Considerable VOR experience plus extensive round the world knowledge Late to the game, so little chance to get to know the boat

Strong team, good performance in Round Britain and Ireland event Slow to declare team raises questions about preparedness

+ -

spinnakers at night for fear of mishandling them and watch systems on some boats were very laid-back. Of Burton Cutter in 1973, Blake recalled: “We had a game of backgammon running below and anyone still in the game was excused watches. It put a lot of pressure on the losers, who ﬁnished up not only out of pocket, but doing more than their fair share of the work.”

Parties They knew how to hold parties during the early years. With none of the crew and PR regimes that police Volvo raceboats today, hedonistic events were fuelled by the sponsor’s brew and an ethic among crews that what goes on on tour stays on tour. In a libertine era, life ashore was played out to the full. The most notable parties – or at least those that can be written about – include a riotous affair at a local yacht club during the 1973-74 race, when Clare Francis led a conga straight into the swimming pool. That night ended in a haze of tear gas as riot police charged into this millionaire’s oasis to clear out the prostitutes. Peter Blake inaugurated the Garden Party aboard Ceramco New Zealand in 1986, but the most memorable event was on Lion New Zealand four years later during the Punta del Este stopover. Called on to bring a plant to the boat, guests excelled themselves by denuding hotels and restaurants of every potplant not bolted down. One crew even arrived pulling a palm tree behind their VW transporter, having ripped it out of the harbour boulevard.

Fatalities Death is never mentioned yet never far from any crewman’s mind, especially when yachts are riding on a knife-edge between windswept and wipeout in the Roaring Forties and Furious Fifties. But ultimate danger also heightens the challenge for these sailors – it is what has always attracted a special breed of sportsmen and women to the Whitbread/Volvo Ocean Race. The dangers quickly became apparent when untested crews entered the Southern Ocean in 1973. Paul Waterhouse was the first to lose his life. He was lost overboard from Tauranga 12 days after the fleet left Cape Town. Four days later co-skipper Dominique Guillet disappeared overboard from the 60ft ketch 33 Export. On the ninth day of Leg 3, Chay Blyth encouraged his Great Britain II crew to make more sail after a southerly buster passed. Tidying up the foredeck, Bernie Hosking pulled on a sail-tie caught in the forestay. It gave way and he too was lost. Three deaths in that first race were three too many and the race might have ended then had the Press had its way. There have been two more deaths since, both from falling overboard. Each was tragic, but the Whitbread and Volvo races have been responsible for huge strides made in safety equipment in the four decades since. Lifejackets, harnesses, MOB tracking devices, immersion suits and sprayhoods have helped to extend life expectancy from just a few minutes to half an hour or more in the Southern Ocean, a legacy YW that overshadows the best parties.

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

supersail

A spectacular coachroof skylight foods the saloon with natural light

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

Beauty with brains

The 74ft Spirit of Galatea is not just lovely, she hides some impressive

engineering beneath her rich mahogany exterior, fnds Toby Hodges

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

Photos: A Morris/amdm.co.uk

supersail

eauty can be distracting. So when even Sean McMillan, the founder and designer of Spirit Yachts, says his new Spirit of Galatea is “undoubtedly the most beautiful boat we’ve built so far”, I can be forgiven for intially overlooking that the 74-footer also includes the fnest engineering by the Ipswich yard in its 20-year history. McMillan was given carte blanche to build the best, most beautiful boat possible. But look below the glossy brightwork and stainless steel deckwear and you find systems for easy maintenance and evidence of much thought about weight centralisation, noise and vibration. She is also the frst Spirit with a full hydraulic power package. Nevertheless, it is the coachroof design that is likely to catch your eye frst. Galatea’s owner, a UK client who lives mostly in Greece, fell in love with coachroof fan windows McMillan sketched for a concept 130-footer fve years ago. Their effect is just as striking inside – the glass cost £38,000 alone. “Every piece of glass is a compound 3D curve, massively toughened,” McMillan explains. The glass is tempered to prevent the interior becoming too hot.

Faster than the wind Barely a zephyr disturbed the Solent’s surface for our summer’s day trial, but Galatea ghosted along. With a jibtop reacher, she exceeded true wind speeds, making six knots in just nine knots of apparent breeze. This lightweight hull is nothing if not easily driven. Her epoxy strip-plank construction creates a stiff, light structure, to which a modern rig and appendages add performance. The 53rd Spirit, Galatea includes many of the features that have made her sisters so popular. Ruby-rich mahogany is everywhere, including on the large surrounding caprails. The anchor roller is carved precisely out of the fine stemhead and provides a tack point clear of the hydraulic furler for asymmetric sails. The joiner work by master craftsmen is exceptional, but the compact keyhole-shaped cockpit is also practical thanks to deep benches. Galatea’s cockpit and saloon are close together – her owner wanted a boat to use socially with friends and family. The linking companionway is steep, but the effect of entering directly into a wide saloon is striking. The elegant interior has the air of a gentleman’s club thanks to the satinfnished mahogany and button-back seating. That fanned

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

Above: Galatea is pure class as

glass centrepiece above foods in natural light. knots in nine knots of apparent wind A comparatively full shape forward provides plenty of beam for the saloon and athwartships galley. The engine is positioned centrally for optimum weight distribution, so insulation was critical. The owner asked Spirit to keep the systems as quiet as possible. Halyard’s anti-vibration Aquadrive system takes noise out of the shaft by transmitting thrust to the hull not the engine. And there’s a custom-built lift silencer for an engine positioned on or below the waterline. “It’s quite a jump in system engineering for us to go to this level,” admits Sam Whitworth, head of Spirit’s mechanical engineering. she powers up the Solent at six

Systems upgrade Spirit admits it used to have a reputation for good-looking boats without the systems to match. Over the last four years it has focused on electrical and mechanical engineering. Bar the engine and fuel systems, most machinery is in the rudder room. Small soundproof bulkhead doors from the aft cabin provide access for servicing the generator, airconditioning unit, PTO (power take off) pumps, etc. These surround the carbon quadrant and stock. The hydraulic package by South African company Meridian was chosen for its reliability, general manager Innis McGowan says. Until now hydraulics had only been used for rig trim. Aboard the 74 they also operate the thruster, windlass and furler. Both PTO and DC power can be sourced and the hydraulics can still be pumped manually if the electrics fail. A touchscreen beside the navstation provides complete diagnostic control. Spirit Yachts’ stiff construction should instill as much confdence as their engineering. On Galatea a wide fange helps spread keel loads and a stainless steel cage absorbs the keel, mast base and shroud loads. The delivery crew reported 35 knots of wind and 15ft waves between Ipswich and the Solent and remarked how quiet and solid she felt. Spirit has always produced yachts of distracting beauty, but now it engineers them to a standard to match. Galatea may be a few metres short of accepted superyacht size, but she oozes superyacht quality. And those good looks YW are sure to draw eyes away from any larger boat.

Dimensions LOA

22.70m

74ft 6in

LWL

15.60m

51ft 2in

Beam

4.80m

15ft 9in

Draught

3.00m

9ft 10in

Displacement

22,000kg

48,500lb

(lightship) Ballast ratio

40 per cent

Sail area

222m2

2,390ft2

Fractional sloop

Top left and right: the tempered glass for the coachroof skylight cost £38,000; the cockpit is practical yet close to the saloon for entertaining

3Left: the anchor roller is carved precisely out of the fne mahoagany stemhead

Right: rich mahogany is used throughout 6Below left and right: joinery is as immaculate as you’d expect of Spirit’s master craftsmen; the delivery crew reported no problems in 15ft waves

Lone

Is one man’s bid to race across the Atlantic alone in the world’s biggest trimaran safe – or even humanly possible? Matthew Sheahan fnds out

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

Photos: Th Martinez/Sea & Co; E Stichelbaut

hunter

C Schmid/Spindrift Racing

SPINDRIFT 2

At what point did the idea of handling a boat the size of three tennis courts with no powered winches make sense?

t 131ft, Spindrift 2 is the biggest sailing trimaran in the world – and looks it. But I didn’t really appreciate how large she is until we tried to thread our way out of her home port at low tide. As we left La Trinité-sur-Mer in Brittany, we might as well have been piloting a cross-channel ferry up the Grand Union Canal for all the spare space there was on either side of her her 72ft wide hull. To make matters more interesting, Spindrift 2 has no inboard engine. She is manoeuvred using a RIB strapped to the underside of her aft beam and below the cockpit, leaving the RIB driver and skipper to communicate via a pair of handheld VHFs. There was a tense atmosphere aboard that I had not expected. “It’s when we get close to the shore that things start to get stressful for us,” skipper Yann Guichard said. This moment made it clear that handling this beast required a totally different approach. For example, would you think it was safer to gybe than tack when the breeze tops 30 knots? Would you consider hoisting a headsail to be one of the most dangerous manoeuvres? And would you plan to spend an entire Atlantic crossing on deck? Me neither. But these are just some of the strategies Guichard will employ when he sets off on the solo Route du Rhum transatlantic race in November. From St Malo, the single-handed race to Guadeloupe is a race famous for its impressive feet of grand prix machines and the incredible crowds that it draws for the start, and infamous for storm force weather and feet destruction. Spindrift 2 is intimidating in the extreme; each dreadnought-styled, slab-sided bow towers out of the water like that of a naval destroyer. The high freeboard and rounded gunwales of her outer foats make climbing aboard a large enough task. Her main hull looks more like a sea wall. Not one sail can be lifted by one person; it took fve shore crew to lug the smallest headsail on to the deck for our trial. Guichard weighs 80kg, half that of the Code 0, and he stands no chance of moving the sail other than sliding it across the relatively small area of deck on the central hull. Even a mainsail batten is 11m long and weighs 20kg.

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

Above: the closer to land, the larger she feels 4Right: take her offshore, though, and she seems almost normal – until something breaks

Aside from winch handles and rope tails, little can be manhandled alone. At what point did the idea of handling a boat the size of three tennis courts with no powered winches alone make sense? It has been four decades since size was considered the answer to short-handed long-distance racing. Yachts like the 128ft three-masted monohull Vendredi Treize and the 236ft four-masted Club Mediterranée were radical designs built for the 1976 OSTAR transatlantic race. But they never achieved their potential, were considered dangerous in the hands of one sailor and were banned from subsequent OSTAR races to curb the excesses, with the size limit capped at 56ft. Are the latest giant multihulls entered for the Route du Rhum a return to the earlier philosophy and is this the start of a return to short-handed ocean-going behemoths? Guichard smiles at the idea. “No, this boat was not intended for solo records. It was built for breaking records with a team, but the Route du Rhum was an opportunity for me. It was just an opportunity to race the boat rather than see it tied to the dock in November,” he says. “Our long-term goal is to set a new record around the world in 2015 with a Jules Vernes Challenge. But we have spent a lot of time working on systems that will allow me to sail her alone. “But there is another reason why I want to do this race with this boat. With a multihull, every day you can fy hulls and that’s often unstable. I did the last Route du Rhum on Gitana II [a 77ft trimaran] and it was very stressful. Four times I nearly capsized. You only need a small gust and you risk a capsize. A bigger boat is more stable, but you have to to know the forecast perfectly; you know the wind will increase in four hours then need to prepare for that early. “Modern weather forecasting is what has made handling a boat of this size possible. Around 20-30 years ago you had

Th Martinez/Sea & Co

Spindrift 2

Yann Guichard Although Guichard’s background is in Olympic sailing, he is one of the world’s leading multihull sailors with numerous records and titles in classes and events such as Route du Rhum, Transat Jacques Vabre and Extreme Sailing Series. In 2011 E Stichelbaut

he shared the helm with Loïck Peyron of the AC45 Team Energy during the America’s Cup Series.

your forecast at the start, then had to imagine what would come next. If I don’t know what the weather will be for three days after the start it is not possible to take this boat.” For this information Guichard will use weather routers. He stresses it is not only impossible to handle a boat of this size and do the weather analysis himself, but weather routers need to provide more help than just forecasting the weather. They need to be able to advise on what sail confguration to plan for, when to eat and when to sleep. “I did the routeing for Marc Guillemot in 2002 when the weather was very bad and I know that it is important that the routers know the boat and how it works in detail as well understanding the weather,” he says. When it comes to physically handling the boat, the team has made some modifcations for Guichard’s solo trip, most notably adding a bicycle in the cockpit that has been adapted to drive the winches. “Your legs are more effcient than your arms,” Guichard explains. “If you’re just trimming with your arms you might be able to do, say, 20 minutes. Using your legs you could go for an hour.” Which sounds fne until you stop to think about either statement. Top-winding a winch for 20 minutes or cycling hard for an hour may be achievable for many of us in a daily gym session. But Guichard explains that it takes about 25 minutes to furl a headsail. Tacking, reefng and trimming all require similar exertion. Changing a headsail can take around two hours. That’s an all-day gym session, every day and every night across the Atlantic.

Launched as Banque Populaire V in 2008, in January 2012 she took the Jules Verne Trophy in 45d 1h 42m 53s, the fastest circumnavigation of the world by any type of yacht. Prior to that, she set the transatlantic record (west to east) in 3d 15h 25m 48s, and the 24-hour speed record of 908.2nm, averaging 37.84 knots. In January 2013, she was bought by Dona Bertarelli and Spindrift Racing. The boat holds a total of eight world records.

DIMENSIONS LOA

40.00m

131ft 3in

Length ﬂoats 37.00m

121ft 4in

Beam(max)

75ft 5in

23.00m

Displacement 21 tonnes 46,297lb Draught

5.10m

16ft 9in

Air draught

41.00m

134ft 6in

Mainsail

365m2

3,929ft2

4,736ft2

3,143ft2

1,787ft2

Gennaker Reacher Staysail

440m 292m 166m

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

SPINDRIFT 2 Giants of the Route du Rhum This year the Route du Rhum features a class

Spindrift 2’s size, while intimidating, provides

called ‘Ultimes’ for giant multihulls. Spindrift 2

good stability because

is the biggest tri in the race, but her rivals are:

of her high inertia

BANQUE POPULAIRE VII Skipper: Loïck Peyron Designer: VPLP LOA: 31.50m (103ft) Sail area upwind: 411m2 (4,424ft2) Sail area downwind 678m2 (7,298ft2) SODEBO ULTIM’ Skipper: Thomas Colville Designer: VPLP LOA: 31.00m (102ft) Sail area upwind: 444m2 (4,779ft2) Sail area downwind: 663m2 (7,136ft2) IDEC SPORT Skipper: Francis Joyon Designer: Nigel Irens and Benoit Cabaret LOA: 29.70m (97ft) Sail area upwind: 350m2 (3,767ft2) Sail area downwind: 520m2 (5,597ft2) PRINCE DE BRETAGNE Skipper: Lemonchois Lionel Designer: VPLP LOA: 24.00m (78ft 9in) Sail area upwind 317m2 (3,412ft2) Sail area downwind: 441m2 (4,747ft2) Photos: E Stichelbaut

EDMOND DE ROTHSCHILD Skipper: Sébastien Josse Designer: VPLP LOA 21.30m (70ft) Sail area upwind: 310m2 (3,337ft2) Sail area downwind: 409m2 (4,402ft2)

Top: yacht race meets spinning class as

And then there are the engineering problems associated than the pedestals (above), Guichard says with developing the gearbox and flywheel system that uses pedal power to turn a highly loaded winch. The bike will be mounted across the deck, causing Guichard to face either uphill or downhill depending on the tack that the boat is on. Guichard is understated, but he is a multiple recordholder, a highly experienced sailor who has completed many ocean crossings including a Jules Vernes Trophy nonstop circumnavigation. Handling the boat under normal conditions doesn’t seem to worry him. So what does? “The weather, for sure,” he says. “Five days before we will know the conditions at the start. Upwind in 30 knots with an approaching cold front and a big shift on the back will be very tough. A steady 30 knots is no problem, but passing through a front is a bigger issue, especially if I have to tack. “In fact, if that is the case I’m more likely to gybe as it is easier. It’s bizarre, but if you lose control of the boat when you tack you have to release all the sails to regain control then have to grind everything back in. Gybing is often safer. “Another serious risk is that I cannot manage a big issue – if I break a sail or something. If I break a reef line, say, I can replace it. If it’s something I can’t I’ll have to decide whether to continue. Even then, it’s not like I can just head for a port.” Indeed, there are few places where a €20m carbon platform this size with no inboard engine and an appetite for double figure speeds can slip into in bad weather. It’s something the shore crew know only too well. So quick is this machine they cannot ship or move the team support

pedalling powers winches – more effcient

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

boats to the fnishing point fast enough. They often rely on chartered boats at the other end to catch the tri when she arrives. Dealing with chartered boats, ensuring they are up to the job, available at the right time and handled accurately can be as stressful as sailing this monster at 30-40 knots. If the shore team is not ready to receive her, turning her around and sending her back out to sea might not always be an option, particularly if she is being sailed single-handed. Negotiating Spindrift 2 out of the English Channel into the Western Approaches after the start of the Route du Rhum will be a stressful time. Few of the skippers will get much sleep during this period. But what about afterwards? “I will sleep outside, so I can react quickly,” he said. “I will not do anything inside other than cook and change batteries. I’ll sleep for ten to 20 minutes, maybe 30 in stable conditions. But not for the frst two days. You can’t when you’re on your own – there’s too much to do and you’re nervous.” Spindrift 2 has a big fuse attached to the mainsheet traveller which will release in an emergency to stop the boat capsizing if suddenly overpowered. “We have a clutch in the roof for the mainsheet traveller with an electronic release,” Guichard explains. “I can set it up so it releases at a given heel angle, speed or load. It’s called the UpSideUp system.” When it comes to the most risky manoeuvres Guichard is clear which present the biggest risks. “Sail changing,” he says. “The most risky manoeuvre is when you change a headsail, particularly between the big gennaker to the reacher or J1. There will be a lot of wind, maybe 30 knots or more, so any issue with the furling can turn into a big problem. Another risk is when hoisting a sail.

C Schmid/Spindrift Racing

ON BOARD

What’s she like on board?

The clew and the sheet attachments can damage or break the mast if they flog against it. The wingmast is only a sandwich construction. When you are alone it can take 1520 minutes to hoist the sail, so there is a risk of damage.” Given the risks and the physical challenge that Spindrift 2 presents, what is the big appeal of racing her alone? “For me it is the speed. I have sailed multihulls for 25 years. It’s a big thrill, you feel like you are fying. Above 30 knots you can feel the speed, but she is still very stable because she is so big. Her inertia is what keeps the high average speeds compared to smaller boats whose speeds may be similar but they fuctuate more.” Guichard adds: “Sailing with a full crew means I know where the limits are and so long as I do not have equipment breakages I can operate within them. That may be at 80 per cent if the conditions are suitable, but I may have to slow down and be patient and sail at 30-40 per cent. Sometimes you have to put your foot on the brakes and wait.” This is easier said than done on a boat that has hit top speeds of 47 knots, clocked up 908 miles in 24 hours and strains at the leash every time she slips her moorings. But for all this and her awesome potential, what started to worry me was how quickly I got used to her size once we were out in the open ocean and got going. When this giant was removed from all references of scale, I started to understand how this could look normal to Guichard.

ven when slipping along at ten knots in fve-knot winds, Spindrift 2 shows what a potent 21-tonne machine she is. Her shortened sailplan is fairly straightforward, comprising a Code zero foremost and three headsails (an outer, inner and a staysail). All her control lines are led back behind the protection of the carbon coachroof. Here, she has an array of giant Harken winches and three pedestals in an area bounded by a mainsheet traveller so large it looks like one of those ride-on model trains. But if one line more than any other confrms her loads and complexity it is the 8:1 cat’s cradle of a mainsheet purchase. In these light winds, I found her surprisingly responsive. But when sailing at over double the windspeed it was often diffcult to sail to both her true wind angle display and telltales. There is the disparity between the anemometer, reading at a height of 41m, and the mirror-like calm at sea level, plus a 21-tonne multihull carries a lot of momentum. When you sail through what little breeze there is into a lull, the apparent wind comes charging forward fast and bearing away to keep the headsail fying does nothing other than see you chasing off in an errant direction. Follow those jib luffs and you’ll do a full circle. As the breeze comes back on, the reverse happens and you feel

Putting your foot on the brakes is easier said than done on a boat that has hit top speeds of 47 knots

like you stumbled across the ultimate lift as you accelerate and arc up into the breeze. It is little surprise then that there was so much trimming going on and so little steering. Just because she’s big and carries her way doesn’t mean she provides an easy ride for the crew. Below decks, she’s extremely poor value for money given her size. For a boat that covers more area than many people’s houses, her accommodation is barely any greater than that of a 30ft club racer. And it’s black – very black. Her navigation station is the most comfortable seat on the

boat but is still cramped. That said, the galley has a view, albeit through an emergency escape hatch (pictured above), and she is the frst boat I’ve sailed that has a bucket and a urinal. A nice touch, you might think, but actually it’s a reminder of the possible violent motion and risks of injury aboard. Yet there are two good reasons why such a bare interior suits this boat. The frst is that there will be plenty of reasons to stay on deck. The second is that, at Spindrift 2’s pace, you don’t have to YW spend too long at sea.

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

GREAT SEAMANSHIP flying dragon

GeRDa’S Sea SaGa

Introduced by Tom Cunliffe

by Morin Scott Just after World War II two young sailors set off in a 29ft Dragon keelboat to sail across a wild North Sea from Harwich to Norway via the German coast. Morin’s crew was Conny van Rietschoten, later famous for his round the world exploits

n 1927, with yachts built to the 1906 ‘metre-boat’ rule becoming ever-more expensive, Johan Anker designed a keelboat with long overhangs, a coachroof and rudimentary accommodation. The idea was to be affordable for younger folk who would, in addition to enjoying one-design racing, also be able to cruise from one regatta to the next. His 29ft Dragon class succeeded admirably and to this day fleets of Dragons compete at high levels throughout the world. Twenty years later, hot on the heels of World War II, the young Englishman Morin Scott liked the sound of Anker’s dream of arriving at distant regattas on his boat’s own bottom, and pointed his Dragon’s bow towards Norway from Harwich via the Kiel Canal. Gerda was in full racing trim with a canvas cover over her nonself-draining cockpit as the sole concession to any unpleasantness that might come her way. The North Sea has a bad reputation, but

Morin had a secret weapon. His crew was none other than a Dutchman called Cornelis ‘Conny’ van Rietschoten, the man who went on to win the Whitbread Round the World Race twice (1977/8 and 1981/2) as skipper of his own Flyer and Flyer II. Morin’s account of the North Sea trip in his little book, Gerda’s Sea Saga is a real period piece. We are not told about Scott’s war, but we are left in little doubt about his shipmate’s teenage survival underground against the Nazis. The duo’s ‘stiff upper lip’ attitude modified with understated humour brings them through a truly shocking passage, part of which runs along the Friesian coast of the German Bight in what Scott calls ‘the swept channel’. ‘Swept’, of course, did not refer to dredging. The hazards were mines. We join them in late May after their first night out from Harwich with Orfordness astern. They have a few gallons of water, no engine and less freeboard than some soap dishes.

First Published

1950, by Robert Ross and Co Currently AvAilAble

Secondhand copies may be available via online retailers

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

137 61

GREAT SEAMANSHIP

Breakfast was a small meal and we ate little, banking on the promised moderation making a cooked meal possible later in the day. By 1000, however, instead of moderating, both wind and sea had increased, and it was with some diffculty that we took down fve turns on the boom.

alf an hour later we rolled up another two turns and rigged the cockpit cover. I had been at the tiller for a couple of hours and now took the precaution of lashing myself in place. The wind was south-south-west and the fact that a close-reefed mainsail and working jib was all we could carry even on a broad reach gives an idea of its strength. The seas were about 30ft long with breaking crests, which broke over the boat occasionally. At 1100 I remembered it was my birthday so, hailing Conny, I steered Gerda off before the wind to give him a chance to broach the rum bottle and pour a small (?) measure into two tin mugs. Thereupon we very solemnly raised our shapely goblets, Conny saying: ‘Many happy returns of the day’, to which I replied: ‘Not another like this, I hope’. After this simple ceremony, Conny stowed mugs and bottle, closed the hatch and returned to the company of our best friend, the Vortex pump, while I tightened my belt, my safety lashing and my sou’wester chin-straps and headed Gerda once more for Texel with a considerably improved outlook on life in general. By noon, the situation had further deteriorated. Several times the gallant little ship had heeled over to an alarming angle and remained there far too long to be healthy. Much as it went against the grain to reduce speed, there was nothing for it but to lower the main altogether. Less water came aboard with the mainsail down and so we drove on throughout the afternoon; Conny in the cabin pumping from time to time, and myself at the tiller. Every hour or two we ate a tube of malted milk tablets, a store of which had been embarked for such situations. Towards evening the wind abated slightly and at 1900 the mainsail was hoisted with seven rolls in it. As the log showed that we had covered over a 100 miles since midnight, we began to keep an eye open for land ahead (HarwichTexel is 140 miles approx). Gerda made great speed and at 2130 lights were in sight ahead. These were identified as Den Helder, but since it was now getting dark and the wind was increasing again, we lowered the mainsail, gybed and set off on a course of N20°E, determined to push on ‘round the corner’ at least. Within an hour the Texel light vessel was sighted and at 0100 it was close abeam to starboard. Having now definitely fixed our position, life seemed much better. We gybed again and steered north-east till daylight. Wind and sea had increased through the night and by 0400 we had been pooped several times, yet even when this was avoided water came aboard as we surfed on the crests. We surged forward on the top of the wave for ten seconds or so with the breaking top bubbling and frothing on either side at such a height that it flowed over the cabin top. From inside, Conny could see green water through the cabin ports on both sides at the same time!

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

It is very difficult to judge heights and I do not want to be compared to the fisherman of the music hall stories. At this time, however, I distinctly remember noticing that the length of these seas was at least three times the length of Gerda, 90ft in fact, and the majority had big breaking crests. This, I estimate, would give a height of about 20ft and they certainly looked all of that and much more. By this time I had been at the tiller for about 19 hours and was not, understandably, 100 per cent efficient. Conny was no better off for he had been busily employed at the pump, chart, passing out the food, etc, and in any case it would have been too dangerous to try changing places. So it happened that at 0400, when my attention was caught by something else, we were pooped over the quarter again, but with more force than usual. The stern was flung round and the whole vessel literally thrown over onto her side and held there by the pressure of the wind for what seemed like an eternity. The level of water (if anything was level in that ceaselessly heaving turmoil) was a third of the way up the cockpit cover. The cabin hatch was closed. I could feel the water pouring over the cockpit coaming, under the cover, onto my legs in considerable quantity. It seemed to go on for hours. Would she never come up? At that moment I knew real fear. After an age she righted, but I could tell by her sluggish motion she was well nigh filled.

Above: the seas came over the deck constantly as the little vessel drove through 20ft waves.

4Above right: top, Morin Scott and,

s always after a big sea had come over, I shouted to Conny ‘I’m here’. Then as the water gushed from the rubber hose, came Conny’s interrogative ‘Pumping?’ to which I replied ‘Yes’. Then he shouted up: ‘For God’s sake (and ours) sail her easy till I get this lot out or we’ve had it!’ There was six inches of water above the bunks and I never heard such a welcome sound as that pump sucking dry. From Texel, the course was east along the swept channel and with the wind from the south-west she ran along comfortably despite the big seas. Land and shipping in sight improved our morale, as did knowing exactly (and not just vaguely) where we were. However, I foresaw that if we were to have another night at sea, firstly I must have a spell off the tiller as I had been on for 28 hours, and secondly we both needed some hot food. One or two attempts by Conny to light the Primus had proved fruitless due to some undiscovered fault in the stove. Accordingly, after some acrobatics, we managed to change places and I settled down to the Primus. After an hour’s work and a minor fire in the cabin, I was able to throw back the hatch and ask what the ‘chef’ could suggest for a hot lunch. Fortunately, everything was so wet in the cabin that nothing but the meths and the matches would burn. The glee with which I opened two tins of soup, poured them

bottom, a young Conny van Rietschoten

3Left: the Dragon Gerda was in full racing mode, the only concession to comfort a canvas cover over her nondraining cockpit

into a saucepan and stirred slowly with a wooden spoon is hard to describe. We had been soaked for well over 36 hours, eating only malted milk tablets and rum and not much of either. By the time we had finished our soup we were at the Huibert Gat whistle buoy, a turning point in the swept channel, which we were following for convenience. As soon as we gybed and got onto our new course I fell unconscious in a corner of the cabin. Two hours later I came to feeling considerably refreshed and poked my nose out to see how things were. Conny blinked and shook his head.

had awakened him from a peculiar sort of trance. Somehow or other the correct course had been steered, but he had been hallucinating that I was ashore buying methylated spirits and that the compass had taken the form of a plate of bacon and eggs. Fortunately there were one or two ships in sight and from observations of these and our clock and log, it was easy to find our position and alter course to the east again, picking up JE18 buoy soon after. After some more acrobatics I took the tiller again and Conny produced a magnificent meal of scrambled eggs (three each) and bacon served in a mug, accompanied by bread and butter. Between 2100 and midnight the weather did its worst. The wind backed to the south and blew like blazes. Rain came down in sheets and we tore eastward through the pitch black night as if the devil himself was after us, catching our last glimpses of a swept channel buoy at about 2200. Sometime around midnight the weather improved, but our knowledge of affairs between then and 0200 is almost nil. Sleep overcame Conny in the cabin while I dozed at the tiller. This was our third night without proper rest and we had reached the point where sleep was inescapable. At 0200 it suddenly penetrated my skull that I had not seen a buoy for a long time. I shouted to wake Conny. No reply. Then I tried to move and found that I was entirely numb from the waist downwards. Terrible thoughts flashed through my mind –

I was paralysed. Conny was overboard . . . I screamed and banged on the deck with all my might and after an age Conny answered. Then both legs were filled with the pains of acute pins and needles. Conny pulled himself together as quickly as he could and came to take the tiller, while I cried with the pain of the returning feeling. Our memories were blurred. We had seen a buoy earlier flashing every six seconds; this had been identified on the chart as a buoy F1G, misreading the G for a six, so from this phoney position Conny had given me a course which, as far as we knew, I had not steered! On this very vague information, a course was produced to take us to the Elbe Light Vessel. The course was south-east. The wind was south and fresh at that. We were physically and mentally exhausted. We must be within ten miles of Heligoland, but would the visibility clear to give us a glimpse of it? Not blooming likely. After what we thought was a couple of thousand years, but which was really more like two and a half hours, we sighted a light vessel. It took us another hour of hoping, praying and swearing to get close enough to read the word ‘Weser’ along her side. This meant that the outer Elbe light ship was only nine miles away on a broad reach. We were elated. The tide was with us, so 0845 saw us pass the Elbe I lightship and alter course for number II. In the shelter of the banks the sea became smooth and we were able to discard our trusty friend the cockpit cover. The sun came out and all the world seemed wonderful. At 0930, we passed the Elbe II lightship and at 1100, Elbe III. The wind fell lighter, but it was with great difficulty that we persuaded ourselves to shake out the reefs. The next day we towed through the canal to recuperate in Kiel. The comments on our trip were amusing, the ‘peach’ being from a young Dane when we finally reached Norway who, on hearing that we had come via the Kiel Canal, said in surprise: ‘Oh! So you didn’t cross the North Sea then?’

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

ON TEST

Cruise control It steers like a car. It has no cockpit nor aft deck. Are we ready for a radical 56ft catamaran with a potential average speed of 15 knots? Toby Hodges ďŹ nds out Photos by Paul Wyeth/pwpictures.com

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

BROADBLUE RAPIER 550

arty McFly, Michael J Fox’s lead character in the 1980s ﬁlm Back to the Future, breaks into a wild electric guitar solo while playing a Chuck Berry number during a 1955 high school dance. The audience is stunned into silence. “I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet,” he declares, embarrassed. That scene came to mind as I approached the Broadblue Rapier 550. I wondered if we were ready for such a radical-looking British boat. Sailors may be forward in embracing new technology, but we remain sceptical about change to our boats. We want to know something works before setting out to sea. So a contemporary design like this, brimming with new ideas about how to sail offshore quickly yet easily, is one most will view with scepticism. And that’s before they wonder where the cockpit or aft deck is – or the winches for that matter.

The answer is inside. Step aboard the Rapier 550 and your jaw drops. This is an entirely new breed of boat, one that could appeal to monohull, multihull and motor boat cruisers. She is designed for fast ocean cruising and potentially she can reel off 350-mile days at an average of 15 knots.

An inside job The real eye-opener is that she can be controlled by one person from an internal cockpit. We are used to unusual cockpit layouts on multihulls, but the only other yacht I know to have tried an internal version is the 59ft catamaran Impossible Dream, designed by Nic Bailey for wheelchair use. And it was Bailey who again teamed up with Darren Newton and his Multimarine yard to create this more reﬁned and rather futuristic production boat. But does it work and is it safe? And more pertinently, are we ready for it?

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

I was debating these questions as I boarded the Rapier at Gunwharf Quays in Portsmouth. Within all that glass, I found a vast open-plan area: a saloon and galley with abundant space and light, plus a cockpit and bridge area forward. This ‘cockpit’ is the centrepiece of the boat. Broadblue wanted to produce a boat that could be sailed single-handed without compromise on performance. MD Mark Jarvis explains: “This means one person can sail it from anywhere on the boat.” To achieve this an ingenious winch station was designed around the mast compression post. All sheets and running rigging can be worked via three electric winches. Two of these are reversible, which, together with a digital switching system, means sheets can be trimmed or eased remotely, as can the traveller – more on that later. Broadblue says this all-encompassing superstructure means there’s no need to go out into an exposed cockpit and lets the builders dispense with an extra bimini or furniture to create a simpler, lighter yacht.

The futuristic inside cockpit, lit up at night, and the living area with a central winch station from which sail controls can be handled

Remote-controlled I remained sceptical as to how practical the theory would prove at sea. Indeed, during our trials the word ‘foreign’ soon flled my notebook. To sit at the bridge feels odd enough; I was uncomfortable at not being able to see the mast from the helm. But when you sail her the Rapier seems truly alien. With her car’s steering wheel and seat for helming, her remote manoeuvring and operation, she will feel more familiar to motor boaters than yachtsmen. Just leaving the dock puts you into unfamiliar territory. It can be done from the two leather Recaro racing seats while watching aerial footage from a mastmounted camera. Or there’s the option to use a remote control for the twin throttles from the side deck – a more practical option on a boat of 26ft (8m) beam. Remote control functionality is at the heart of the Rapier. Her two reversible winches and traveller can be operated from four positions: there are dedicated buttons by the winches and the interior and exterior helms, plus a handheld remote which works anywhere on board. I was in the pilot seat as the whirr of a winch behind me informed me we were hoisting sail – Jarvis, remote control in hand, was monitoring the hoist through an aft hatch. To hand-steer the Rapier using the wheel feels strange because there is no feedback. You have to wait for the lag in the hydraulic linkage after turning the Italian racing wheel slightly. Monitoring the rudder offset gauge on the autopilot display also helps. But the unimpeded view forward from the bridge is extraordinary. The full jib can be seen, but try to monitor the telltales and you’ll get neck ache (trust me on

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

5Above: the main control screen for the EmpirBus digital switching system – a neat system for all electrics. Left: a secure helming position with a good view forward and partial views through the glass

The UpSideUp system, a new anti-capsize device, monitors factors like wind and heel to depower the boat if necessary

A bank of clutches for the sheets and running rigging of the boat

5Above: a hatch in the bridge

Two reversible winches handle control lines. We would like to see an emergency stop and guards for this potentially dangerous working area

offers ventilation and lets the helmsman communicate with crew on the foredeck

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

ON TEST: brOadbluE rapiEr 550 this). So I steered by numbers – and fnally I began to appreciate this boat. Quite simply, she is the easiest and most comfortable yacht to sail at double-fgure speeds. We sailed upwind, matching the true wind speed at 40° to the apparent breeze, with no noise, no heel and no wake. I felt as though I was in a simulator; as if I was watching the Solent slip by on a screen such was the utter comfort and ease. No wet weather kit needed here. The instruments are the only indicators of the conditions. Speed is gauged only by a sudden deceleration during a painfully slow tack – it feels something like falling off the plane on a powerboat. The inner sailor in me was itching to get out – I wanted to feel the boat. Thankfully, the Rapier allows carbon tillers to be mounted directly over the stocks on each quarter for a wind-in-the-hair experience. A button push to exchange helms and I was tiller-steering this 55ft spaceship.

Wind-in-the-hair sailing This was more like it! The feedback is direct, even if currently a little stiff. Remote switches located on coamings beside the tillers also provide the ability to trim the sails, combining with tillers to give sailors everything they may be missing. As such, she is incredibly rewarding for a large multihull. At 11 knots close-reaching, the Eastern Solent fashed by in minutes. Off Gurnard we set the asymmetric and ran some deep angles to get back east past Cowes. The 550 exceeded the single-fgure apparent wind speeds, averaging over eight knots, despite running as deep as possible (140-160° true). Heat her up a bit and the Rapier’s acceleration is instant, a testament to her lightweight build. I did get used to steering from the wheel inside, but I never reconciled myself to being unable to see the mainsail. I was reportedly at the tiller and wheel for longer than anyone had been to date, but Jarvis told me the sailing we did was unusual for her design: “She is designed for long-distance bluewater sailing, so lots of autopilot use, chewing off miles with everyone in comfort.” Her designer, Darren Newton, put it more bluntly: “We’re all liars. We all believe we are Volvo skippers, wanting to be outside with spray in our faces. It’s not about doing 20 knots plus. It’s about doing 15 knots and averaging a safe, good pace with the family.” The Rapier certainly offers comfort on passage. Whether on or off watch, the space and light below is astonishing and the Rapier’s forwards focus helps connect crew to their surroundings. The views forward are more like those offered by a motor cruiser. The catamaran Impossible Dream, developed 12 years ago, has 48 hydraulic operations to facilitate her internal helm station. For the Rapier, the same designers

have managed to use just three winches to provide the same functionality thanks to modern reversible technology. This internal cockpit has been designed beautifully. The whole area around the carbon compression post is more like a work of art than a winch-pit. The clutches and winches have been sited so that there is always a winch free when needed. Large, stiff canvas buckets keep all tail ends tidy, and drainage has been well considered. The issue I had with this ‘sail station’, however, concerned the safety of mounting such powerful winches in the living area. Four different switches can operate the two reversible winches from a variety of positions, so it only needs a hand to be in the wrong place for a potentially very nasty accident to occur.

Safety measures We have recommended to Broadblue that an emergency stop button be ftted and a winch guard be designed. Jarvis says they intend to create covers that can be ftted while sailing – a practical solution as once sails are set the sheets/halyards rarely need

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

5Above: helming upwind using a tiller instead of the wheel offers windin-your-hair sailing

to be swapped on a winch other than for a sail change. If power is lost, winches can be manually operated, including the traveller. The Rapier has a French safety system called UpSideUp that alerts owners to changing conditions and can be used to depower the boat automatically if no action is taken once set parameters are exceeded. It is a prudent system to have for a powerful, fast boat designed for short-handed sailing. Another factor to the Rapier’s operation is the EmpirBus NXT, a node-based digital switching system used for all push-button electrics. A control panel in the middle of the dashboard gives diagnostics on electrical systems, pumps and liquids, lights, alarms, autopilot and fuses. Siting the bridge and internal cockpit forward leaves a one-level living area of a size unrivalled by any boat of this length. It’s like being in a foating conservatory of tempered, tinted glass. Doors, aft windows and a skylight that all slide open prevents the Rapier from feeling stuffy, however. The abundant views and light on offer proved exceptional at sea, but at night it is hard not to feel like a goldfsh in

3 1

The traveller, on the aft crossbeam, is on a neat Antal line driver for controlling the main remotely. Liferaft stowage is provided in the area between the davits.

Optional tillers ft onto the top of the rudder stocks for direct steering – they are also ideal for emergency steering. Remote control trimming switches are located next to the tillers.

Ultra-clean carbon spreader-less rig from Future Fibres, with lowers swept forward.

The hulls are chined to reduce spray. Daggerboards and a forward canard are optional, but not necessary for offshore cruising, according to her designer. The test boat’s keels give good downwind stability, but slow her through tacks.

A forward starboard locker offers a cavernous sail locker or can be a crew cabin if required, although that would go against the ethos of the boat.

The dreadnought bows are sacrifcial sections bonded on to the bow mould. Fore and aft crash bulkheads maintain the yacht’s displacement if breeched.

6 5 2

Saloon: the saloon and galley can be custom-designed. The test boat had a carbon coffee table to port which adjoins to the sofa to become a daybed. The choice of teak sole on this main deck somewhat is impractical as it shows every stain

Galley: the split layout of the galley works well, but lacks stowage space in this format, with no raised lockers. There are no dedicated crockery, cutlery or glassware areas, for example, and long-distance cruisers will want more practical stowage

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

ON TEST: BROADBLUE RAPIER 550 DATA BROADBLUE RAPIER 550 SPECIFICATIONS R 550 01

LOA

16.76m

54ft 11in

Beam (max)

8.00m

26ft 4in

Draught

1.30m

4ft 3in

9,800kg

21,605lb

Disp (lightship) Berths Engine

6-8 2 x 40hp on shafts diesel. Electric hybrid option is available

Owner’s cabin: this area has a technical area aft, which offers good access to all the Rapier’s machinery

Water

550lt

Fuel

300lt

66gal

Mainsail

110m2

1,184ft2

Jib

50m2

538ft2

1,292ft2

2,153ft2

Gennaker Spinnaker

the proverbial bowl. Blinds would come very near the top of my options list. The layout of the main living area can be customised. For the ﬁrst Rapier we sailed, Nic Bailey designed a split galley and saloon for an open-plan yet cohesive feel. Darren Newton wanted the mast base aft to allow for large foresails, so the bridge is on a raised section forward of the compression post. This is the only area on the boat where headroom is constricted, but a hatch allows the helmsman to communicate with crew on the foredeck. A sofa each side of the helm encourages fellow crew to sit alongside the helmsman in comfort (and facing forward). This helps them to engage with the sailing rather than head for shelter and leave the helmsman alone on deck.

120m 200m

120gal

RAPIER PERFORMANCE CATAMARANS

Accommodation Part of the port hull is given over to an owner’s suite. By positioning this fairly far forward, the berth has maximum beam and there’s room for a dedicated technical area aft. This houses the machinery and electronics, plus a workbench. A problem with this is that the genset is mounted directly abaft the owner’s headboard – the last place noise or vibration is wanted. My main gripe, however, concerned the finish, especially considering the quality of the Rapier’s build. A French firm was contracted to do the Alpi woodwork, much of which, including the locker doors and grain, didn’t line up neatly. Elsewhere, the Rapier seemed as though she had been finished hurriedly. She still has plenty of wow-factor, especially lit up at night, but potential owners will be expecting a more polished interior finish. Two bright, spacious double en-suite guest cabins are located in the starboard hull. These are stylish and roomy, but again I thought they lacked finishing touches and locker space in the heads.

Conclusion This boat is well very designed and built, and her designers deserve credit for lateral thinking. The interior volume, forward-looking bridge, option for tiller-steering and lightweight build combine to make this the most complete fusion of motor boat, performance yacht and liveaboard I have seen. She is a comfy, milemunching machine suitable for short-handed sailing. The obvious appeal is to motor boaters. They are more likely to put their faith in her systems and appreciate the driving position. I was sceptical about whether the outside-in approach would work at sea, but I have to admit I came to appreciate the idea. It’s about accepting a very different concept; as designer Darren Newton says, “it’s about being honest about how we sail offshore today”. It was certainly the most comfortable tour of the Solent I have ever done.

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

The hard work has been done, all the ﬁnite tooling created to build a solid yet light boat, but she lacks some of the ﬁne polishing I expect for her £1.5m price. And I have reservations about the safety of the remotely controlled winches in the internal cockpit. All these things can be corrected, however. The base price of the Rapier is similar to that of the Jeanneau 64 we tested last month. Their volumes and living areas are comparable. The Rapier’s speed will allow you more time at anchor and she won’t need a crew. She is also customisable, but will cost a third more over her base price to hit the test boat’s spec. So the question is whether the Rapier is ahead of her time, like Marty McFly’s guitar solo in Back to the Future. Are we ready for this futuristic cat? I think so and believe her innovation should be encouraged. Given a few improvements, she will appeal to an increasing crossbred market sector – one that is honest about the cruising they want to do.

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NEW YACHTS

Oyster 675/cOntest 67cs

Quite a Contest!

Is 67ft too large for two? With the launch of two new 67-footers, the question of what size of boat is manageable without a crew is raised once again

eading luxury yacht builder Oyster Marine and Dutch yard Contest have both announced new 67-footers with a performance twist. Oyster’s 675 will join last year’s 745 to form a new Coupé range for the UK builder. And Contest has commissioned Judel/Vrolijk for the frst time to design its new 67CS. This is a size on the increase for owners who like to get places quickly and engage in the odd race, and may need crew to help manage the boat. But what size is now manageable without a crew? The Oyster 625, the Contest 62CS and the HallbergRassy 64 all launched four to fve years ago. The Oyster was designed as a crossover, a boat for owners who still wanted to sail themselves, but also offered the option of a forepeak crew cabin. The Rassy was very much intended as a couples’ boat. Have things moved on again? “Around 60ft is the biggest size that owners want to sail alone with their family and friends and 80ft is the smallest to socially separate crew,” Oyster CEO David Tydeman says. “Between the two sizes, we found it is a different type of owner and sailing.”

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

He explains that it is one that means cohabiting with crew. Both the 745 and 675 are four-cabin models. Arjen Conijn, managing director of Contest, sees his company’s new 67-footer as a hybrid solution. “It is possible to sail just with the family or with a crew,” he declares. The difference is that her size provides the opportunity “to bring a crew aboard one day”. Conijn feels the development of equipment such as thrusters and electric winches has made this size practical without crew. “Five years ago our 62 launched and proved it was manageable and now it will be with this [67],” he says. “Our 72 is the starting point for permanent crew.” That said, the 67CS has a forepeak crew cabin on each of its interior layout options. In the October issue we tested the Jeanneau 64. She has been well designed to allow a couple to manage her easily at sea, but we still doubt whether many owners will run her without paid help. Modern yachts of this size can certainly be sailed by two, but the maintenance of the yacht, including its systems and engineering, will often require a professional hand.

The move to designers Judel/Vrolijk is a bold statement by Contest Yachts. Just as a GTi badge on a car suggests increased performance, it’s fair to assume a yacht drawn by this frm will be no slouch. Contest wanted to fnd a naval architect to establish the sort of long-term relationship it enjoyed with Georg Nissen, one that could produce continuity. Over the past ten years, Contest has pushed for more performance while trying to maintain its trademark quality and comfort. “Comfort and quality remain king,” Arjen Conijn says, “but wherever we can win performance without losing our core focus we will do it.” The hull lines of the 67CS have been optimised for moderate displacement and performance. She has reasonably fat sections aft and a hint of a chine to the topsides for offwind stability, plus a sharp forefoot for upwind work. The 67CS also has a generous rig that offers many sail combinations. Her low-profle coachroof is in keeping with the rest of Contest’s 42-72ft range. Wetzel Brown Partners have again handled styling in the interior– four layouts are offered, including the choice of forward or aft owner’s cabin. The 67CS is planned for launch in 2016. www.contestyachts.com

new yachts with toby hodges

Dimensions LOA 19.9m /65ft 4in LWL 18.2m/59ft 9in Beam 5.7m/18ft 8in Draught 2.8m/9ft 2in Disp 35,000kg/77,161lb

Oyster Coupé Oyster has now divided its eight-boat range into three distinct labels: ‘With the Family’ for the Oyster 475 to 625; ‘With the Chauffeur’ for their 80ft-plus yachts; and ‘The Coupés’ for the new 675 and 745. Modern hull forms and rig options help the latter offer “fve to ten per cent more performance without challenging the ethos of the brand,” CEO David Tydeman believes. Oyster found that owners of this size range tended to favour rig set-ups to help them get the most speed out of the boat, including carbon masts and fully battened mains. The 675 has a stretched coachroof, which Oyster says gives ‘a sense of power and purpose in a manner akin to the more tasteful of performance road cars’. A comparatively tall rig offers performance, twin rudders will help tame the powerful sailplan and a swinging centreboard is offered. Further options include foredeck tender stowage or an extended transom to incorporate a dinghy garage, plus enclosed or passageway galley formats. The 675 and 745 (three of which have been sold already) are planned for launch in 2016. www.oystermarine.com

Dimensions LOA 20.30m/66ft 7in LWL 18.50m/60ft 8in Beam 5.65m/18ft 6in Disp 39,500kg/87,081lb

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137 73

NEW YACHTS

dragonfly 25 She will plane like a dinghy, has room for the family, can dry out up a creek and be trailed easily – when this Dragonfy 25 launches in 2015, she could be my dream boat. This sporty, fun-looking new tri marks 25 years of Dragonfy’s innovative swing-wings concept. She weighs just 1,050kg and has a beam of 2.50m with hulls folded, so can be trailed behind a normal car using a single-axle trailer. This Jens Quorning design should appeal to sportsboat sailors who want to move up a size, offering weekend accommodation, while still providing adrenalininducing speeds. Three full-size berths are offered or two adult and two kids’ berths for families. The frst ten have already sold. Price €69,900 ex VAT. www.trimarans.com

PoInTEr 25 This is an elegant trailable performance yacht with a spread of options. She is a good blend of size and price, and should suit keelboat sailors looking to upgrade to a nippy cabin cruiser. The Pointer has a large sailplan for a slender hull, thanks to a square-top main and below-deck jib furler. The cockpit can seat six and there are four berths. Like the Dutch-built Winner 8 and 9 from Van de Stadt, she has a modular interior that can be ftted out to suit. Indeed, it is possible to customise your Pointer online by choosing styling, colours and electronic gear. Standard spec includes a choice of hull colour, a cast iron keel, carbon tiller and Harken deck gear. A 4kW electric motor is offered instead of the Yanmar saildrive. Price €59,500. www.pointeryachts.com

Elan IMPrESSIon 45 Slovenian brand Elan offers two ranges: Performance cruiser-racers and Impression deck saloons. This new Impression 45, which launched at the Cannes Boat Show, is an evolution of the 444 and I expect she will be just as popular. Elan is one of the few production manufacturers that still offer a dedicated deck saloon range and this 45 presents generous accommodation for the price. Available with two, three or four cabins, she should appeal to families and charter outfts. A convertible saloon double berth makes it possible to sleep ten on board. Price ex VAT €168.990. www.elan-yachts.com

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

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NEW GEAR Sail-Gen water-powered generator £1,990 Who’s it for? Long-distance sailors who don’t want to use the engine on passage. Contact: www.sail-gen.co.uk

s the size of yachts increases, so does our appetite for power-hungry products on board. Our ARC survey last year revealed that the average power consumption on a 41-45ft yacht was 200AHr per day. As a result, yachtsmen on long passages are often forced to use diesel to keep the battery bank charged – either the engine or a generator. Given their noise and extra expense, wind, solar or water energy generation is an attractive option. Water generators are arguably the best form of sustainable energy while on passage. Sail-Gen say this hydro generator is “the most efficient and practical dedicated water generator available”, matching typical onboard power consumption at five to six knots. “Historically, there has been a resistance to water generators from the belief they cause a loss of boat speed,” Sail-Gen’s designer, Pete Anderson, says. French company Watt & Sea helped to dispel these preconceptions with an outboard leg-style hydro generator. It was a hit among top solo racers – “that punched a hole in the drag concept,” Anderson says, and there is now a market for dedicated water generators. Fifteen years ago, Anderson’s company, Eclectic Energy, unveiled the Duogen, a combination water-and-wind generator. It reduces drag and maximises efficiency by using a diving plane to keep the impeller flying through the water at a controlled depth. The company has now produced this more compact Sail-Gen, a water-only version of the Duogen. It has the same direct drive operation as Duogen in water mode, but is 25 per cent cheaper than the Duogen and less than the €2,900 price tag of the 300W Watt & Sea cruising model. The dive plane foil decouples the prop from the yacht’s movement, keeping it at a constant depth and efficiency. By contrast, with an outboard leg-style generator, vertical movement and roll can be transmitted to the impeller. The Sail-Gen can also be recovered easily at speed, unlike the Duogen. Pulling a recovery line adjusts the dive plane, forcing it to the surface. The Sail-Gen produces an average output of 10A at six knots compared to 8A from the Duogen. At an average of eight

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

A rigid aluminium frame with carbon ﬁbre drive shaft and alloy impeller

The dive plane regulates the height – typical immersion depth is 1ft. An impact wire forces the unit to the surface if it strikes debris

knots, the Sail-Gen will generate 500 AHr per day – enough to meet the average power consumption of a 55ft yacht. A downside is that the Sail-Gen has to be ﬁtted within 50cm of the centreline and a charge regulator is recommended to prevent overcharging the battery bank. It also remains a large, expensive item to ﬁt

on the transom. And the drag? Typically less than the log can show, Anderson claims. He says the Sea-Gen creates up to 15kg of drag, which equates to up to a tenth of a knot on small, lightweight yachts. It is available with two impellers to suit different speeds and in 12V and 24V models. Price: from £1,990

NEW GEAR with Toby Hodges

Ergofit Extreme lifejacket Lifejacket manufacturer Crewsaver worked with the Volvo Ocean Race team Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing to design and produce this Extreme version of its ErgoFit lifejacket. An obvious attraction for the Volvo crew is that the jacket can accommodate a built-in (or retro-fitted) McMurdo S20 personal AIS beacon, which will automatically activate when the lifejacket inflates. The Extreme provides 290N buoyancy with a bladder design that Crewsaver say turns an inverted wearer in under three seconds. The jacket has a chin support to help keep airways clear. There is also a dual buckle system, durable nylon cover, hanging loop for storing below and a number, so that crew can identify individual jackets. Price: £325. www.crewsaver.com

Jimmy Cornell’s set-up World cruising guru Jimmy Cornell ﬁtted the Sail-Gen to his new Exploration 45 “I have a Sail-Gen hydro generator, a D400 wind generator and a 180W solar panel on my new boat. On a windy passage, like that right now from Greenland to Rhode Island, these cope with the autopilot, electronics, fridge, and electric toilets. “The mainstay of my system is the Sail-Gen because it is not dependent on sunlight or strong winds, producing 140A to 200A per 24 hours depending on the speed of the boat. The system has been thoroughly tested on the 7,000 miles Aventura has sailed since she left London in May. The only improvement I would make is to increase the size of the solar panel by at least 100W.”

Vivosmart smartband from Garmin So enthusiastically has the tech industry embraced wearable gadgetry that since we featured it in the last issue a spate of similar products have already been launched. Industry forecasts estimate that over 90 million wearable devices will have been produced by 2015. Marine electronics manufacturer Garmin is an early adopter in this field. Its latest Vivosmart activity tracker is designed to keep you on top of health goals with smart notifications. It is an evolution of its VivoFit device, providing vibration alerts for texts, calls, and emails from a smartphone as well as showing activity levels and goals – handy stuff so long as you don’t run or sail as an escape from work. The Vivosmart is waterproof and has a battery that will last all week. A small display can be swiped to scroll through pages and the band nudges the wearer to be more active by vibrating after a period of inactivity. Not a product for a lazy weekend afloat, then. Price: £139.99. www.garmin.com

2 OTHER HYDRO GENERATORS Watt & Sea Cruising hydro-generator

Aquair 100

This 8kg aluminium cruising model weighs just 1kg more than Watt & Sea’s original carbon racing model favoured by Vendée Globe sailors. It will produce all energy requirements once sailing over ﬁve knots (120W), with minimal drag (just 0.01 of a knot). Supplied with a transom-mounted bracket, it comes in 300W or 600W outputs. Price: €2,900 for 300W model, €4,150 for 600W model. www.wattandsea.com

The Aquair is a compact, economic, trailing-type generator – a spinning prop on a long line that produces 5A at six knots when towed 30m behind the yacht. But it can also be used as a wind generator in port – a single electrical connection allows it to be pole-mounted or hoisted by a halyard. The Aquair is available with a coarse pitch prop for yachts that sail at eight to 12 knots. Price: £955.56. www.ampair.com

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

NEW GEAR A QUICK LOOK Harken T2 Ratchamatic blocks Harken’s latest 40mm and 57mm auto ratchet blocks feature a variable height soft-attachment system, spliced through the centre of the block. Ideal for dinghy and sportsboat sailors, Ratchamatic blocks automatically disengage for smooth, fast releases and re-engage when trimming. Arrows on the block clearly mark the ratcheting direction. Price: TBC. www.harken.com/ ratchets

Henri Lloyd Fast Dry Silver range

Antal Powered Line Driver Here is a neat solution for controlling the traveller on larger yachts. Italian deck hardware specialists Antal launched the Line Driver last year and I was impressed with its operation during our trial of the Broadblue Rapier 550 (see page 64). The bit you’ll see is the smart-looking anodised aluminium self-tailing sheave that controls the mainsail car via an electric motor. The motor and gearbox are hidden below decks and the speed of the car adjustment can be altered. The line driver itself can also be hidden. The unit comes in three motor sizes plus a hydraulic version. The price will push it towards the bigger boat market, but it is a very tidy solution compared to the typical complicated traveller control lines that can litter a cockpit. Price: €2,928. www.antal.it

This new T-shirt range incorporates silver-ion technology – its anti-microbial properties repel bacteria and reduce body odour. The garments also all have UV protection ranging from Factor 30-50, come in long- and short-sleeve styles and in men’s and ladies’ ﬁts. They will suit those who want to look smart while highly active. Price: from £25. www.henrilloyd.co.uk

X1 Waterbike That many boaters are also keen cyclists helps explain why Schiller Bikes have created this X1 for cycling aﬂoat. It’s a novel concept, which can be assembled in ten minutes. It won’t make a tender redundant and US$6,500 is steep for a posh pedalo, but it certainly beats an exercise bike in the gym. Price: US$6,495. www.schillerbikes.com

RNLI lifejacket bags

Seatrack Smart This affordable tactical and nav system solely for tablets doesn’t need to be connected to a yacht’s instruments. Designed to appeal to entry-level navigators and sportsboat sailors, the standalone program strips down Seatrack’s full-function products to provide performance indicators and projections at the chart table or on a wireless screen. “Unlike iRegatta, this has a chart, so you can see the boat moving using the tablet’s built-in GPS,” Seatrack’s founder Peter Schoﬁeld says. Features include laylines, time to laylines, COG, apparent wind on next leg and startline tools. You can enter wind values if you lack wind instruments. The catch? It is currently only available for Android tablets. Price £75. www.seatrack.co.uk

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2012

The RNLI has produced a range of limitededition bags made from decommissioned lifejackets from their 235 stations. ‘Made for Life’ bags incorporate original details like retro-reﬂective tape, inﬂation pull cords and whistles, and are available in several styles, from tablet bag to messenger bag/man bag. Price: from £40. www. rnlishop.org.uk

NEW GEAR

Tested

Our panel puts the latest products through their paces

Karver KJH Handle £125 Who’s it for? Any sailor who wants added purchase when hand-pulling a rope of 8mm or less. Contact: www.karver-systems.com

There can be few actions in sailing more fundamental than pulling a rope and even fewer that could be reinvented. Perhaps that’s why I found Karver’s KJH handle so intriguing. How on earth could they improve an action that was so basic? The answer is to attach a handle to the line. Dinghy sailors have known this for years, with trapeze handles used in all sorts of situations where they can be attached to the dead end of a control line to enable a quick and efficient pull. What Karver have done is to design a handle that is completely portable and can be attached to almost any rope up to 8mm in diameter. The design is impressively simple – a set of sprung cam cleats inside a moulded handle. To use the device, you simply drop the handle over the line and slide it forward slightly to open the jaws, then let the rope settle in before pulling back. If you’re racing and in a rush, it takes a little while to get used to the correct action. And you have to use two hands – one to hold the handle, the other to lift the rope in place. But once you’ve mastered it, the unit is highly effective, particularly on modern highmodulus ropes that are thin and stiff, making them more difficult to grip. A number of uses presents themselves, from hauling on control lines to sheets. With practice you can even use the device for halyards. Another clever use is as a flying

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

Attach the strop to a ﬁxed point to transfer tension and the handle has a secondary use as a ﬂying cam cleat

cam cleat. The handle comes with a small Spectra strop which can be attached to a fixed point or even a block and tackle to allow you to transfer or tension lines. But perhaps even more impressive is that this is not simply a device for racing sailors – the KJH handle is useful aboard cruisers big and small. The only downside I could find was stowage. Ideally, the KJH is most useful when kept about your person. In a racing situation a pocket is not that convenient and too slow to access, yet the manufacturers advise strongly that you should not attach it to yourself for obvious reasons. The answer it seems is to find the right jacket with a pocket and to anticipate when you’re going to use it. With practice you do and for cruising this is not even an issue. Overall, then, an ingenious and handy bit of kit that reinvents one of the most basic operations of all. MS

8 10

Our regular test panel Pip Hare

Ross Applebey

Henry Bomby

Rupert Holmes

Philippe Falle

Matthew Sheahan

Pro ocean racing sailor/Yachtmaster instructor

Long-term cruising owner. ARC and Caribbean season

Young offshore solo sailor. Figaro circuit for three years

Sailing journalist and short-handed offshore sailor

Yachtmaster examiner. Runs racing charter

Yachting World’s Technical and Racing Editor

Spinlock Deckvest LITE £139.24 Who’s it for? Sailors who want a lightweight and unobtrusive lifejacket – except in extreme conditions. Contact: www.spinlock.co.uk

This is the best lifejacket I have used, principally because it feels the least cumbersome. I am not going to argue that it’s the best lifejacket around for protection once activated nor for turning a wearer in the water. But if it is the most comfortable lifejacket I’ve ever worn, it’s the one most likely to persuade boaters to wear it in the first place. With its Deckvest range, Spinlock has redesigned inflating lifejackets to make them less awkward; stylish, even. It’s a style that has been copied, but is yet to be bettered. And the LITE is the lightest and best yet for any normal sailor, be it for weekending, coastal racing or cruising. A double-zip runs all around the horseshoe-shaped jacket, which makes it easy to check and repack the fluorescent bladder. A lifting strop is hidden within and the CO2 cylinder has an easy-to-understand colour-guide to check its status. That said, you’ll need to be an expert in origami to repack the inflatable innards into the slim package. And the LITE is a fairly basic model – there is no integrated harness, for example, and a sprayhood and light are optional extras. It might be worth upgrading to the 5D model for a more feature-packed jacket. The single crotch-strap and buckles are neat and well designed to avoid snagging. The jacket also comes in a neat net bag for packing, allowing air to circulate when stored. Put all of this together and you have a light lifejacket that is also unobtrusive – it’s now the first item I pack when travelling to a boat test. TH

9 10

Exposure Marine X2 £200 Who’s it for? Anyone who sails in the dark Contact: www.spinlock.co.uk Why would you need a torch that costs £200, particularly if it needs recharging rather than uses batteries? Although I had been impressed with Exposure Marine’s innovative and extremely handy bite torch, which is half the size of a disposable lighter and hangs around your neck, I struggled to see the advantages of this larger brother, the X2. Or I did until I tried one. With its powerful yet dimmable beam, red night-vision beam, light weight and its lit buttons on the knurled alloy casing, the X2 is impressive. If nothing else, it reveals how heavy and inefﬁcient most domestic torches are – and how poorly suited they are to a night watch offshore. In addition to a luminous strip around the body to help you ﬁnd the X2

at night, I liked the two-second build up to the full light to help your eyes adapt and avoid blinding other crew if the on switch was pressed accidentally. Having said that, it does take a while to get used to the two buttons which are used to activate the various functions. But once you do, it’s clear they operate well – and by this point you’ll probably feel, like me, that the X2 is worth its price-tag too. MS

9 10

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

CRUISING

T Johnson/ tjhawaii.com

NOAA issues new coral danger list

We concentrate on navigation in coral waters in our Bluewater Sailing Techniques series this month (see page 90), and recently the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has issued details of 20 new coral types listed and protected as endangered species, which add to the 66 already protected. In total, 22 species of coral are protected, including elkhorn and staghorn coral. Some 15 of these occur in the Indian and Pacific Oceans and five in the Caribbean. The organisation explains: ‘The final decision to list these 20 corals is a result of the most extensive rulemaking ever undertaken by NOAA. The amount of scientific information sought, obtained and analysed was unprecedented. This included general reef-building coral biology, habitat characteristics and threats.’ There are no prohibitions relating to individual contact with coral, except for elkhorn and staghorn in the Caribbean. It is never a good idea to touch or stand on coral, for your own safety as well as for the health of the coral. NOAA says: ‘Coral reefs worldwide have declined significantly – some individual species have declined by at least 90 per cent. Healthy coral reefs provide shoreline protection for coastal communities and habitat for a variety of species, including commercially important fish.’

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

CRUISING

L Collaert

with Elaine Bunting

Solo sailor to rebuild his wrecked yacht

wiss-French solo sailor Yvan Bourgnon’s attempt to become the frst skipper to circumnavigate the globe in a beach cat, which we reported on in our August issue, has met with disaster, reports Liesbet Collaert. Bourgnon started his world tour in Les Sables d’Olonne on 5 October last year and in August was three-quarters of his way round the world in his 20ft boat, Ma Louloutte, when he fell overboard off Sri Lanka’s south-west coast. Ma Louloutte crashed on the rocks and broke into pieces. Bourgnon survived unscathed, but says the loss of the boat and the end of his dream of circumnavigation has left him heartbroken. “I fell asleep for fve minutes and it cost me my boat!” The Indian Ocean had proved challenging. His voyage from Bali towards the Maldives was the second longest of his voyage. Problems such as a broken rudder and shroud, very heavy monsoon rains and strong winds up to 65 knots caused him some diffculties. He had to sail upwind for long periods and remarked: “In upwind

conditions, with over 15 knots of wind, it is impossible for me to sleep on this boat.” He decided to divert to Sri Lanka to repair the cat and get some rest. “Sailing onward to the Maldives would have put a lot of stress on the temporary stay and damaged rudder, so I would have had to stay alert this whole time,” he said. Exhausted from the last 1,000 mile struggle yet only a few tacks from his new destination, Bourgnon turned on the autopilot and fell asleep. Having crossed most of the world’s oceans and with only 5,000 miles left to sail to complete the circle by sailing through the Red Sea and Mediterranean, Bourgnon is not giving up now. “The worst is behind me and all I have left are protected waters. I will fnish this adventure!” He is reconstructing his beach catamaran in a shipyard in Sri Lanka with local help. He plans to complete the rebuild by December and leave again in January 2015 with the goal of arriving back at his starting point in Les Sables d’Olonne at the end of March.

J Capdevielle

The wreckage of Ma Louloutte on rocks off Sri Lanka

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

CRUISING

Voyage round Britain A couple recovering from cancer have completed a 2,000-mile voyage round Britain to raise money for charity. Alan and Geraldine Sinfeld, about whom we wrote in our July issue, sailed their Bavaria 34, Tante Helena, round Britain, crossing Scotland through the Caledonian Canal. Alan arrived back at his home port in Suffolk in late August. Alan and Geraldine both lost their frst partners to cancer before marrying in 2002. Alan took up sailing after the death of his wife, Wendy. He married Geraldine, whose husband, Ian, had also died of cancer. He learned to sail, bought a boat and the couple planned a four-month voyage round Britain from their home port in Suffolk. But cancer was to strike both again. Last year, Alan, 71, was diagnosed with prostate cancer and had an operation. He was recovering from this when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer and had to have more surgery and chemotherapy. This year, Geraldine was diagnosed with bladder cancer and had surgery and chemotherapy. The couple left Shotley, near Ipswich, in July and returned home six weeks later after a voyage that took them to more than 40 ports. ‘’It has been amazing, but sad, too,” says Alan, “as Geraldine has not been well and wasn’t able to accompany me for as much of the journey as we had hoped.’’ The couple have raised £4,000 for the Urology Foundation. www.tantehelena.com

Oyster plans second world rally A round the world rally run by Oyster Yachts to celebrate its 40th anniversary is to be held again. The event, which was joined by 26 Oyster owners in 2013/14, was to be repeated in 2016, but the company has postponed for another year to garner more entries and changed the programme to allow crews more time in the Pacifc. Oyster has reiterated that the rally, along with Oyster’s twice-yearly regattas in the Mediterranean and Caribbean, is to be central to creating an owners’ community separate from open-to-all events such as World Cruising Club’s World ARC. “Maintaining this Oyster club is a commitment to our owners, to cruising the world and is what the brand stands for,” says managing director David Tydeman. Oyster’s next world rally will break the circumnavigation into sections to allow crews time to explore the Pacifc, and will move apart from World ARC so that the two do not overlap in ports. It will start in early 2017 in the Caribbean, go through the Panama Canal, then take four months to sail

from the Marquesas in April 2017 to Vanuatu before fnishing in Auckland in October. A following stage, called the Oyster Asian Rally, will start from Hamilton Island, Australia, and travel through Micronesia to Bali, where boats can either return to Australia, be shipped home or continue round the Cape of Good Hope with a less intensive social programme – “not a full rally, but a lighter thing, with support technically,” Tydeman explains. The event seeks to address an issue for many family crews doing a continuous round the world cruise: that the safe route back to Europe via South Africa makes for long ocean passages in a relatively short timespan. To keep in synch with the typhoon and monsoon seasons, a circumnavigation on the traditional tradewinds route needs to be followed over a 16-18 month period. The alternative is to undertake it over two years with the holding period of a season spent in Australia or New Zealand. The company is hoping for an entry of around 25-30 yachts.

Above: gathering of Oysters in Antigua. The company hopes the world rally will help create an owners’ community

Entry fees imposed on visiting yachts in Greece have been abolished, according to the Cruising Association. The controversial fees to the Hellenic Coast Guard, better known as the port police, were an entry fee and a berthing charge for each day a boat was in port, charged per metre LOA. These fees are no longer payable and berthing fees are instead collected by the municipality. Discounts are available for advance payments of a month or more. Jim Baerselman of the Cruising Association comments: “From now on, visits to the port police will be only be required on entering the country, or once a year after that to have your transit log checked.” More info from www.cruising.org.uk

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

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Greek fees cut

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CRUISING

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Google Earth navigation Satellite imagery is allowing navigators to sail off-chart with confdence. Pacifc cruiser Rory Garland explains how

Getting the technology right

T Johnson/tjhawaii.com

ruising in remote tropical regions can be challenging, especially where there are no charts suitable for pilotage. Often the charts that do exist are old and inaccurate. To make matters worse, coral can grow surprisingly fast and what was a clear channel 20 years ago might now have coral heads just below the surface. In these situations the navigator needs to piece together every available bit of information in advance. We have been sailing our Grand Soleil 52, Streetcar, in the Pacifc for over two years. During this time we have adopted a range of new techniques to supplement standard navigation and pilotage practices using publicly available satellite imagery to fll in the gaps and give us the confdence to explore off-chart. Most people are familiar with using Google Earth satellite imagery to explore on land, or even to see into their neighbourâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s garden. Many cruisers are now fnding

satellite imagery can help with navigation. Coverage extends over coastal waters and captures most of the reefs and rocks associated with the land. In tropical zones the water is clear enough for shallow areas to be visible on satellite imagery. Even in murky lagoon water suspicious discoloured patches can be identifed. Conveniently, satellite images can be easily referenced to WGS84 for plotting GPS positions.These features combine to provide a powerful tool to support navigation and pilotage.

Sources of free software for using satellite imagery Google Earth SAS.Planet OpenCPN GE2KAP

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

www.google.com/earth/download/ge/ www.openhub.net/p/sasplanet www.opencpn.org/ocpn/download http://www.gdayii.ca/Downloads.php

In our navigation station we use a PC with a Garmin puck-type GPS plugged into the USB. Reception is good enough from the chart table, although this might not be the case on all boats. I use a PC with Windows because itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the most common platform for all the various navigation software and avoids compatibility problems when exchanging fles with other cruisers. You also need good-quality access to the internet to download the images. In some parts of the Pacifc there is good enough mobile coverage to allow continuous downloading as you sail. Otherwise, you need to anticipate your areas of coverage and download when you can.

Left: on this Google Earth image reef systems and shallows appear as light blue areas on the western side of Fiji

We use three programs for navigation: n Google Earth running on the PC n Open CPN with Google Earth charts n SAS.Planet connected to other satellite image resources. With Google Earth you can pan along a proposed route and zoom into areas of interest. The detail is automatically adjusted as you zoom. You can even explore archived images to fnd the clearest pictures. If you connect a GPS, the boat’s location is shown on the images, although I fnd this can be temperamental in Google Earth. Google Earth saves (caches) viewed imagery up to a memory size limit. In the options you can maximise this cache size. This means that while you still have a good internet connection you can traverse a planned route zooming in and panning as you go along. Provided you don’t exceed the memory limitation, all the images will be available later when you are under way and not connected to the internet. Open CPN is freely available chartplotting software. It is the product of an online community of volunteer programmers. Electronic charts can be displayed and overlaid with waypoints, routes and tracks. And there is a whole range of additional plugins that add to the functionality.

Using another freely available program called GE2KAP alongside Google Earth, you can create your own Google Earth charts. These can then be imported to Open CPN and overlaid onto navigation charts. You can toggle between the satellite images and the chart to compare features. SAS.Planet is another Geographic Information System, like Google Earth. It is a Russian freeware program, which is easy to download and does not even need to be installed. You just double click the downloaded fle. Many cruisers in the tropical Pacifc are now using SAS.Planet because it provides access to images from other sources, such as Bing and Yahoo. In some areas these are better quality than the Google Earth images. Like Google Earth, SAS.Planet can be connected to your GPS so that you can see the boat’s position superimposed over the satellite images. You can also use it like a chartplotter to create waypoints and routes as well as record your tracks. The drawback with SAS.Planet is that converting the images into charts for later use in OpenCPN is not straightforward. So if you do not have access to the internet, you’ll

have to rely on images stored in the cache. As with Google Earth, this cache is limited by the amount of memory allocated. With good internet coverage OpenCPN and SAS.Planet used together is our best option. In Fiji there is very good mobile phone network coverage and I can usually download images through SAS.Planet as we sail. When this is possible I like to run Open CPN alongside SAS.Planet so I can watch the chart and satellite imagery side by side. In order to run both at once on the same PC, I installed a piece of software that makes the GPS input available to both programs. I use Franson GPSGate, which is easy to install and use. In more remote areas you need to prepare all your satellite image charts in advance. Recently, we spent six months cruising through Tuvalu, Kiribati and Marshall Islands. Being ex-colonies, all these atolls have previously been charted. However, charts are dated and there are plenty of omissions and inaccuracies. We knew that satellite imagery was going to be a real asset. But in this region the internet is not good enough for downloading data. So before we left

Right: electronic chart with Google Earth overlay in Open CPN, showing our tracks in and out of a well-known Fiji anchorage

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

CRUISING etc, are the currency of these anchorages. It’s useful information, but remember to check for errors.

Additional resources Most cruisers write blogs and upload cruising information to websites. We always spend time going through these resources before heading off. We always check out the website www. noonsite.com, and some of the best cruiser resources for the Pacifc are compiled by Soggy Paws on http://svsoggypaws.com.

Avoiding damage to coral

Above: in the Great Astrolab Reef we found Bing images viewed in SAS.Planet much clearer than Google Earth in OpenCPN. Left: we were able to use Google Earth images to pick

One important potential beneft of using satellite imagery to navigate is being able to avoid damaging coral. When anchored, a boat swings around, dragging its chain across the seabed. If you are anchored carelessly, live corals and the habitats they provide are scythed down as the chain is dragged to and fro. In some countries this is an offence and will carry a large fne. The traditional way of avoiding damage to the coral (and snagging your chain) is to buoy the anchor chain with foats. The chain is then always suspended above the seabed. This works, but we once got into trouble when a squall brought a sudden wind reversal and one of the foats caught on our propeller. If we hadn’t been able to cut it free quickly, it could have damaged our shaft. Now we use the satellite images to help identify safe anchoring spots clear of coral.

out underwater

Fiji we used GE2KAP to assemble portfolios of Google Earth charts for all the atolls. These Google Earth charts proved to be invaluable, allowing us to explore further and providing us with enough information to fnd useful protected anchorages around the lagoons. Those who have cruised atolls in convergence zone regions will know that you always need an exit strategy from your anchorage. Sudden and sometimes violent

wind reversals can turn your idyllic spot into a lee shore with many miles of fetch across the lagoon. Having the Google Earth charts allowed us always to have a plan ready for these situations. Another beneft of taking time to collate this type of cruising information is being able to contribute to the communities of cruisers who cross your path in these remote areas. Thumbdrives full of Google Earth charts, tracks, waypoints, anchorages,

Right: when anchoring a 30m radius swing

obstacles in

Changing how we navigate

Tarawa, Kiribati

The use of satellite imagery for navigation in tropical areas is a huge step forward. It allows us to explore further with confdence and we can usually fnd alternatives if plan A doesn’t come off. But it doesn’t replace traditional methods of pilotage. We always have someone on lookout. The radar is always on to provide accurate measurement and the hand-bearing compass is at hand. I treat every piece of information with suspicion, especially when there are inconsistencies. The challenge is to separate the ‘fact’ from the ‘uncertainties’ and then fgure out the best way to make use of the information. But I have found satellite imagery can contribute signifcantly to the ‘fact’ side of the equation. As they say, the camera YW never lies. Well, almost never.

circle is frst superimposed on a satellite image clear of coral heads. We approach slowly and drop anchor in the middle

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

Rory Garland started sailing as a child, hanging onto a Flying Dutchman in the Caribbean. He has raced dinghies and keelboats in Europe, delivered boats all over the world and professionally skippered sailing and motor boats. He and his partner, Kate, and their young daughter, Hannah, are currently cruising in the Pacifc on their Grand Soleil 52, Streetcar.

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1 Introducing the series

Navigating in coral

3 Coping with squalls

4 Sailing with poled-out headsail

5 Spinnaker for ocean passages

6 MOB under spinnaker

BLUEWATER SAILING TECHNIQUES

PART 2

Navigating in coral waters Dan Bower gives detailed advice on entering tricky coral passes and the use of Mk1 yeball combined with more modern techniques

deserted tropical paradise is getting harder to find, particularly in the busier Caribbean Islands where the number of visiting yachts means that any straightforward, well-marked pretty bay is full to bursting. However, with a little work and skill there are still little treasures to be uncovered. Even in peak season in the British Virgin Islands, for example, you can find your own private spot – if you’re prepared to do a bit of eyeball navigation pilotage. In the Pacific and further afield this becomes more of a necessity. With the exception of commercial harbours, most of the islands in the South Pacific and Indonesia don’t have much in the way of manmade navigational marks, and the only shelter to be found is inside the coral lagoons. Getting through a reef pass is the only way to experience the idyllic atolls that most yachtsmen are looking for.

Navigating an unmarked pass This is one of those rare opportunities that requires going back to basics with pilotage and navigation skills. We are so used to

Series author: Dan Bower Dan and Em Bower, both in their thirties, are lifelong sailors. Six years ago they bought Skyelark of London, a Skye 51 by American designer Rob Ladd, built in Taiwan in 1986, and have been sailing and chartering her ever since, making some 12 transatlantic crossings and covering around 60,000 miles.

trusting our chartplotters implicitly that the notion of your eyes being right even when the display clearly indicates something different is a touch disquieting. In the main, I believe our navigation software. When it shows the very berth I’m tied to, it’s hard not to be impressed, but further from home accuracy cannot be assured and you can become unstuck. In a well-documented case in 2010, a Clipper round the world race yacht hit a reef the crew thought they were missing by over a mile. The problem is not the GPS, it is the

charts. Many are reliant on data from the 1860s, with positions derived from surveys using a sextant and visual fixes. This causes two main problems: charted passages may not be sufficiently detailed or accurate; and you may not be where your GPS thinks you are. This is known as chart offset and applies particularly in the South Pacific islands. Don’t despair, the charts are a very good representation of what exists, but they need to be taken in context. Visual pilotage is actually easier than ever if you have a good radar set, forward-facing sonar and satellite photos courtesy of Google Earth.

Key points for a coral pass It is important to enter on your own terms and in your own time. If possible, consider a close alternative anchorage to wait for the optimum conditions and perhaps even check out the pass with a dinghy. Speak to other skippers who are already in (or have been in), visiting by tender or speaking to them on a radio net. Make sure you plan your arrival time and only enter if the conditions are right. Tidal ﬂow – slack water is the optimal

An instructional 12 part series in association with Pantaenius 90

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

7 MOB recovery

8 Night watches

9 Anchoring in coral waters

10 Using a dinghy

11 Snorkelling on reefs

12 Fishing on board

Interpreting what you see When navigating in coral, usually dark is deep

Water colours Dark blue = deep! Light blue = 10m, shows the edge of the reef Green = 4-10m Light green = under 4m Yellow/white = less than 1.m

Above: Dan indicates the hand signal used to show where to steer to avoid a danger. Right: ﬁlming from the spreaders, an ideal place from which to con a yacht into a lagoon

Bottom colours Brown rings = grass or coral

R Owen

Dark brown/black blotches = coral heads, and difﬁcult to ascertain depths. Stay away.

time to enter, and even then there will be wind-driven current in the pass. The ebb tide is the most troublesome, with a higher flow rate and increased risk of standing waves. (Slack tide can be found in publications or calculated as 12 hours from moonrise/set). Sunlight is the most important consideration, as you need to be able to see what’s under the water, so the sun must be high, and preferably behind you. Overcast or even short-term cloud obscuring the sun affects what you can distinguish. You need a good pilotage plan, principally how to confirm your position with the chart: for example, visual fixes, contour lines, transits, clearing lines and back bearings. Satellite imagery comes with many chart packs or can be obtained in advance from Google Earth and that will help you to familiarise yourself with the passage. Georeferenced images can also indicate chart offset if overlaid on your chart.

Ready to enter? Get the engine on, the sails down (but lash the main halyard so the sail is ready to hoist again quickly if your engine fails), the crew

prepared and briefed. The crew are going to be your pilots so familiarise them with the charts and photos. Agree hand signals or commands if using a headset. Clear and practised communication is critical. Are they pointing to a danger or saying go that way? Identify your position. Is it correct relative to the chart? Conﬁrm with visual ﬁx, spot depths, radar overlay and good old MkI eyeball. Some chartplotters allow you to alter chart offset manually, allowing you to move your position relative to the chart. This can be useful, but do not rely on it. Make a mental note of your line of retreat, or place of refuge. That sounds pessimistic, but it’s better to have a bailout plan – even if you don’t need it, it will make you feel a whole lot better! This is a time for the GPS: record your track so you can follow it in and out. Keep your eyes primed. Reef navigation is all about the eyeball, so you have to give them their best chance. The main thing that helps is height. An aerial view is much clearer than a view from the deck, so consider sending a crewmember up to the spreaders to con you in. If you have crew to spare then post

Do’s and dont’s 

Do agree hand signals with the crew. Are they pointing where to go, or to the danger? (We point to a danger, or wave in the direction we want to go)



Do use ﬂoats at intervals on your anchor chain to minimise the chance of getting the chain wrapped around coral heads



Do remember dinghies and outboards can also be susceptible to coral heads where it is very shallow



Don’t forget local advice. Radio other yachts in the anchorage (isn’t AIS great?) as they may have local advice about the passes and where is clear or foul for anchoring



Don’t assume charts are accurate. Atolls and lagoons have patches that are unsurveyed, so great care is needed here.

Come what may! YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

1 Introducing the series

Navigating in coral

3 Coping with squalls

Entering Mana Entering the pass at Mana in Fiji is tricky, as we show in our free accompanying video at yachtingworld.com. It is narrow and twisty, poorly marked and has a strong ebbing stream. Once you are in the pass there is no option to abort as there is simply not enough room for you to turn around safely. Our charts, which are up to date and the best you can get, show no pass into the island, or any lagoon at all. We had a hand-drawn sketch chart from a pilot book, but without any reference points.

another on the bow. Polarised sunglasses can help cut through the glare. If crew numbers allow, place someone competent at the helm so that the skipper can pilot the boat in. That way you’re free to take bearings, worry about the chart (literally) and move to the best vantage points – you have enough to do. The helmsman can concentrate on steering. Keep an eye on the currents. Around reefs these can be strong and variable, and often ﬂow towards danger; it’s not uncommon to have sideways currents at the entrance to a pass, so monitor your ground track. Proceed slowly and look where you’re going. Having a pilotage plan is great, but remember it is only as good as the chart. Place trust in your crew and depth sounder. Forward-facing sonar is useful if you have it. Usually a coral pass leads into a clear and safe lagoon – hopefully the paradise you were looking for. Consider your anchorage point and aim for a sandy patch as anchoring in coral is, if not illegal, irresponsible. It is a good plan to save your track because then you can ﬁnd your way out along a known safe route. Consider taking off a couple of waypoints and transferring them to your chart – belt and braces if your track gets lost – and can be useful for a future visit.

We used a Google Earth overlay to provide an idea of what we would be entering, and we transferred waypoints from that onto our on-deck GPS to give us something to go on, but from that point on, it was all about eyeball navigation. With one person up the mast, one on the foredeck, motoring just fast enough to keep steerage we threaded our way through the reef, avoiding some mid-channel coral heads. Satellite images are available as bolt-ons with proprietary chart packs, or it is possible to make your own with Google Earth using open source

5 Spinnaker for ocean passages

6 MOB under spinnaker

software (GE2KAP), or download charts from the cruising community who have put them together for the greater good. For instance, for the Paciﬁc an amazing resource has been compiled by cruising sailors Sherry and Dave aboard Soggy Paws – http://svsoggypaws.com/ﬁles/. You must test for yourself the accuracy and limitations of these. They are only available for a computer-based system and need navigation software to overlay the GPS position. Not all programs will recognise them as charts. A free, simple package is OpenCPN – Google it!

TOP TIPS  Get a pair of good-quality polarising sunglasses; they will help you see below the glare on the water surface.  Rain run-off from rivers will affect water clarity, so consider the conditions and local terrain, and proceed cautiously if the water is cloudy. Get someone aloft if possible.  It’s easy to confuse dark patches cast by cloud shadows with coral heads, so you’ll need to interpret as you go.  Proceed with great caution if it’s overcast, and if possible make sure the timing of passing clouds or squalls won’t coincide with a critical phase of eyeball navigation.  If going through a running pass or breaking into a coral atoll, take great care: there is likely to be current against you. There may be less current at the edges of the pass.  If there is a choice when entering a coral pass, always take the leeward one, but if there isn’t, try to enter at slack tide or on the ﬂood to minimise the sea state or any standing waves.

Above: using a polarising ﬁlter to show how sunglasses help cut through the glare

Don’t miss any of the Bluewater Sailing Techniques series Subscribe to Yachting World. From this month, we have a special offer running to get a digital subscription with every print subscription. See ‘subscribe’ at yachtingworld.com

 When leaving, you will have current with you and your SOG will be greater, so retrace your original route carefully.  If in doubt, use your GPS track to retrace your route and wait for another time – or day if need be.

Come what may! 92

4 Sailing with poled-out headsail

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

PERFORMANCE

Falmouth Working Boats do not normally fy spinnakers, but for Fowey Week anything goes downwind

Matt’s selfe. Owner David Carne is to the right, his son Nick in the middle and Mark Dowland at the helm

Upwind there is a greater range of speed and pointing ability than you might expect of a feet of six-tonne boats

Despite the boat’s traditional appearance, there are some lowstretch, high-load modern ropes in key places

Working progress Matthew Sheahan gets to grips with the blossoming Falmouth Working Boat feet and fnds common ground

t’s all pretty alien to me. There are no colour-coded lines, clutches or labels that might offer clues to the workings of the deck gear aboard David Carne’s Falmouth Working Boat, Victory. Even though the turning blocks either side of the elegant circular wooden mast have a few words written in green marker pen on top of their basic rectangular teak sheave cages, names and controls are unfamiliar. As we wrestle with the long, ungainly spars, juggling the various lines in order to raise the mainsail and topsail, I think this could easily be an Outward Bound team-building exercise to separate the chiefs from the Indians. I’m clearly the latter, but I try to look as if this is all pretty normal. With just 30 minutes to hoist sail, slip our moorings and head out to the startline I need to demonstrate that I understand the task in hand and am ready to go into action.

Yet the reality is that I’m tracing each line for a clue as to what it does and how to sail this 130-year-old six-tonne classic. As it turns out, once the mainsail, topsail, staysail and jib are hoisted, trimming is little different from any other boat, but my investigation has revealed something else. While the overall appearance of these boats may be in keeping with their working class roots, they have been tweaked and breathed on in key places to get the best out of them, just like any other racing boat. Take the mainsheet traveller system, for example. A well-used looking piece of grey lashing used as a mainsheet strop spanning the tiller turns out to be a piece of expensive high modulus Spectra. On further inspection, the ramshackle kicker with blocks from several decades back also has low-stretch Spectra lines. Modern thimble-type bullseyes have replaced

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

blocks, and the attachments for mainsheet and kicker on the boom are webbing strops rather than traditional steel brackets. As the seconds count down to our frst start of the day and 12 boats offer their bowsprits up to the line, it is clear that this is just like any other competitive feet. For the next 120 minutes, trimming, tweaking and cheating the tide is all that matters. Suddenly, the scene looks more familiar and I’m back in my comfort zone. Falmouth Working Boats are well known for their competitive racing. In their home waters in the West Country there are around 28 that race regularly, and Saturday and Sunday racing will see a turnout of 10-15. But I had joined Carne and his crew during Fowey Week, one of several away regattas. Here the feet races outside the harbour, but also takes part in an exhibition race inside later in the afternoon after racing has fnished for the other classes. Apart from the boats themselves and the closeness of the racing, in which positions changed more regularly

PERFORMANCE with Matthew Sheahan

L Whitehead/photolounge.co.uk

Falmouth Working Boat no 24, Rebecca, takes the lead. She is a relatively modern example, launched in 1978

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

performance

No fancy modern gear here; just basic wooden turning blocks sitting either side of the mast

Traditional belaying pins for peak and throat halyards

The 6:1 system looks straightforward, but the key upwind is the Spectra traveller/strop

Belt and braces stainless steel gooseneck is required when you’re dealing with heavy wooden spars

A modern kicker strop attachment reduces the twisting moment on the boom and load on the gooseneck

than in a sportsboat feet, what struck me most was how quickly they respond to differences in sail and rig trim. Just as with a modern race boat, runner load plays a big part in changing gear upwind – even more surprising was how much you could feel it. “We’re having to put more and more runner load on to compete with the modern boats, but it’s taking its toll in maintenance,” says Carne. Modern boats? It turns out that Victory, built on the beach in 1884 using larch on oak frames, is something of a novelty in the feet where all but a couple are glassfbre. The feet also spans more than 150 years. Although the oldest boat, Boy Willie, is also wooden and believed to be over 150 years old, the youngest, Moon, is just six. Yet despite this yawning generation gap, the differences between the boats are more subtle than you might expect. “We are good upwind as we can point well,” explains Carne. “But we are not so nimble around the corners. Victory has a much deeper stem, less rocker and a fatter forefoot than the modern boats, which makes it more diffcult to turn quickly.” To have such close racing with subtle differences in performance under a selfadministered handicapping system is impressive – it’s the goal of many a class. So what constitutes a Falmouth Working Boat? The answer is not as clear cut as you might think. Under the association rules the traditional characteristics include: a West Country hull shape, with straight vertical stem, transom stern and long straight keel;

a three-quarter decked open boat; a gaff cutter rig; and a topsail set on a topsail yard with or without a jackyard. From this broad defnition the feet is split into two groups, small (25ft hull length) and large (29ft hull length) classes. For both there are maximum sail areas (total 1,000ft2 for large class, 650ft2 for small class), hull draught and beams, along with a handful of additional measurement details. Sails can only be replaced after fve years and only one suit may be used to keep the costs down. Money is a subject that most would prefer not to discuss, particularly as there is such a slow turnover of boats that values are kept under wraps. “Broadly speaking a new boat would cost around £25,000 to build and most cost around £2,000 a year to run,” says Carne. But there is one rule that both limits costs and sets out the spirit of the class. Before carrying out modifcations to an existing boat that will affect its performance, an owner must consult the committee, giving full details of the proposed modifcation and must obtain its agreement that the changes correspond to the letter and spirit of the class rules (Rule 3a). Several of the boats still work for a living, as they have for 200 years, as oyster dredgers. Around the oyster beds of the river Fal powered craft are prohibited, here sail is the only way of harvesting the seabed. “There are around 12 that dredge in Falmouth and a couple of those race regularly,” explains Carne. “When they are trawling they use a smaller jib to balance the

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

Below: the inharbour exhibition race at Fowey provides plenty of nip and tuck for these heavy boats

boat and they have no topsail. Having sailed to where they wish to dredge, they drop their peak halyard to lower the gaff, lower the staysail onto the deck, back the jib to lay ahull and drift sideways.” It’s the working background of these boats that explains how and why they became popular local racing boats. “It is important that a working boat can be managed short-handed,” says Carne. “It was important for a working boat to get its catch back to shore quickly.” They are indeed surprisingly quick boats. If instruments were allowed, seven knots would dial up quickly. But for racing at least, all electronic aids are prohibited. Carne maintains he’s had nine knots out of Victory. So what keeps the class going? “Singing,” he says. “Not sea shanties, but local songs. If you can’t do that you’re no use to anyone!” It was obvious that I had more things to accomplish if I truly wanted to learn the ropes of a Falmouth Working Boat. YW

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PERFORMANCE

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Flyer A once-famous round the world ocean racer has been meticulously restored to glory. Barry Pickthall went aboard

ne name dominated ocean racing in the late 1970s and early 80s: Dutch round the world racer Cornelis van Riestchoten, who owned two yachts named Flyer. This great sailor died in December 2013, but a group of Dutch enthusiasts have restored the frst of his yachts and rechristened her at his memorial service at the Royal Maas Yacht Club in Rotterdam in September before sailing her to Alicante to take pride of place in the

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

spectator feet of the Volvo Ocean Race. Inspired by stories from the frst Whitbread Round the World Race in 1973/4, Conny, as he was called, had retired from day-to-day business and, at the age of 45, was looking for new challenges. Fiercely competitive – he was a scratch amateur golfer and a crack shot – he decided to take on the world’s greatest yachting challenge. He entered the 1977/8 Whitbread despite not having sailed competitively since racing his yacht Maze in the 1957 Fastnet Race. His frst step in planning his Whitbread campaign was to call on Sparkman & Stephens to produce a successor to their Swan 65 Sayula II, winner of the frst Whitbread Race. Flyer was a great improvement on the earlier S&S-designed Swan 65. Some 2ft 9in longer on the waterline and 1 ton lighter, she

carried more sail area, yet rated exactly the same canvas as King’s Legend, her slooprigged Swan 65 rival in the 1977/8 race. Van Riestchoten picked an international team and set out on an intensive programme to test boat and crew during two Atlantic crossings and a Fastnet Race. No other competitor did anything like this amount of preparation and, in retrospect, it showed from the start. Flyer won the frst leg, not only on handicap, but overall. Great Britain II, the 77-footer in which Chay Blyth had won line honours in the previous Whitbread, was 3rd. Van Rietschoten’s crew went on to enjoy a tremendous match race against Skip Novak and his crew on King’s Legend on the next leg to Auckland, but then extended their lead on the third leg to Rio de Janiero,and had only to cover King’s Legend on the fnal

PERFORMANCE with Matthew Sheahan

Her spacious navigation station remains very much the same as it was originally with the exception of the addition of updated B&G equipment and a chartplotter

In Alaska Eagle guise showing the forward cockpit and winch arrangement. At that time she was a sloop, and her performance suffered

The yacht today after her full restoration. Her layout is a reminder of just how small cockpits were in the early days of the Whitbread race

Above: Flyer, restored to her ketch rig on her sailing trial in the Netherlands in August

Photos: M Stoﬀelen/PPL

stage back to Portsmouth to secure overall honours by a 59-hour margin. The yacht, renamed Flying Wilma, went on under Gerard Dykstra’s leadership, to win line and handicap honours in the Nedlloyd Spice Race from Jakarta to Rotterdam, and was then bought by Neil Bergt, the head of Alaska Airlines to race under the Alaska Eagle name in the 1981/2 Whitbread. Bergt called on Dykstra for advice to improve the design, but instead of adding 2ft to the height of the mizzen mast, as he prescribed, went for a much more expensive option put forward by Bill Langhan, then head of S&S. This involved changing her rig from ketch to sloop, remodelling her stern and removing the doghouse. Quite why cutting sail area and increasing both wetted area and rating did not ring alarm bells is unclear, but the

Looking forward down the main walkway through the yacht towards the main mast and the fo’c’s’le with crew cabins on either side. Four crew hotbunked from each cabin

Flyer’s hull was shot-blasted to remove 30 years of paint and return her to her original livery during this fve-month restoration at Royal Huisman Shipyard

YACHTING WORLD NOvembeR 2014

performance modifcations hammered her performance and she fnished well down the order on the frst leg. Bergt left the crew to their own devices for the rest of the race, then donated the boat to Orange Coast College, California, where she has been sailing 10,000 miles a year training students for the past 30 years. Enter Diedreick Nolten, a successful Volvo truck dealer from the Netherlands, and Gerard Schoostra, who has been skippering Flyer’s old rival King’s Legend in the Caribbean. Nolten was just 11 when Van Rietschoten returned to a hero’s welcome at the Royal Maas Yacht Club in 1978, an event that remained etched on his memory. The pair got talking about where the Flyer yachts are now. It didn’t take long to fnd Alaska Eagle. She had been listed in brokerage ads for the previous six months without a nibble. The pair few over to San Francisco, gave the yacht the once over and decided to bring her back to the Netherlands to be restored for posterity by Royal Huisman Shipyard.

Above: Flyer’s alloy doghouse protecting the aft cockpit – a popular refuge from the icy conditions of the Southern Ocean in 1977/8 – has been replicated during the yacht’s recent restoration, transforming the open cockpit. Below: classic Sparkman & Stephens lines with fn and skeg profle

Once back in the Netherlands, the yacht, still in Alaska Eagle guise, took pride of place at last year’s HISWA Boat Show where 1,000 visitors visited her each day. That cemented the project in sailors’ minds and support began to roll in. Work began last March to shot-blast the hull and deck, restore her doghouse and change her back to a ketch. That required two Sparcraft masts and a new North sail wardrobe. Winches were overhauled, and blocks and running rigging replaced. Everything came together in time for her relaunch on 21 August. By comparison with today’s stripped out Volvo racers, Flyer is very comfortable, with enclosed cabins for the crew. Four crew hot-bunked from each cabin and there were exclusive cabins for skipper and navigator on opposite sides of a central walkway near the aft companionway. The large galley had a 400lt deep freeze with plenty of stowage to feed a crew of 12 for six weeks at a time, and there was an open plan saloon opposite. The forecabin and foc’s’le are devoted to sail stowage, but also have four cot berths for use when in port. Flyer has a large engine room, part of which is devoted to dry oilskins and clothing during a voyage with heat from the engine backed up by a Webasto diesel heater. There is an enclosed heads next to the engine, but Flyer’s crew were ‘encouraged’ to perform their natural functions while standing or crouching on the triangular bumpkin mounted on the transom. Mizzen rigs are now a thing of the past on racing yachts, but back in the days of racing under IOR, twin-masted boats gained a signifcant beneft from ‘untaxed’ sail area. This came into play whenever the wind was abaft the beam and a mizzen staysail or

100 YACHTING WORLD

PPL

Restored to her ketch rig

SPECIFICATIONS LOA 19.86m 65ft 2in LWL 15.16m 49ft 9in Displacement 26.6 tons Designer: Sparkman & Stephens Builder: Royal Huisman Shipyard Results 1st 1977 Transatlantic Race Handicap honours in the 1977/8 Whitbread Race 1st Nedlloyd Spice Race

mizzen spinnaker could be set. The rig also gave assurance to van Rietschoten as if one mast broke, there was a second to sail home under and from which to build a jury rig. Her alloy dodger protecting the stern cockpit (lost during her Alaska Eagle conversion) afforded great protection in the Southern Ocean and was so popular that van Rietschoten was forced to issue an edict, “No dodger dwellers!” for those on watch. Her central cockpit housing the main coffee grinders and where main mast

NOvembeR 2014

Above: though prone to rolling downwind, like most IOR designs from this era, Flyer has great directional stability, as demonstrated when returning through the Solent to Portsmouth at the end of the 1977/8 race running before a Force 10 gale with all sail set. Her gunwales were awash, but she never came close to broaching control lines are led, had only a wave breaker around the forward end to give protection during the 1977/8 Whitbread race. Alaska Eagle ftted a fold-down canvas sprayhood for the 1981/2 race and this has been retained during the recent restoration. At the beginning of September she was fttingly used to scatter Conny van Rietschoten’s ashes, as he had asked, over the North Sea waters he so loved. The yacht is now managed by a charity called the Foundation for the Preservation of Flyer, formed by Nolten, Schoostra and others. It aims to inspire young people and provide opportunities for those with terminal cancer to go sailing, while also preserving the yacht for the next generation. The frst stage was to recruit a crew of paying passengers to sail Flyer down to Alicante for the start of this winter’s Volvo Race, followed by a series of voyages to which the public can sign up.

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PERFORMANCE

102

TIPS SURFING

Using waves to increase downwind speed is a dinghy skill useful in big boats too. Jonty Sherwill asks dinghy sailor and Volvo Ocean Race winner Rob Greenhalgh for his tips

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

one are the days of sitting back on the downwind legs to enjoy the view. Powerful modern cruiser-racers respond much more like dinghies and need the constant application of subtle steering input, as well as well-timed pumping of the sails, to keep the boat on each wave longer for good downwind performance. IRC is honed to level the playing ﬁeld as much as possible between heavy and light displacement yachts, but the lighter boats that plane more easily

1 PICK THE RIGHT ROUTE

still need to maximise their gains on breezy runs by using good technique if they are to stand a chance of holding off the heavy brigade on the upwind legs. The benefit of getting your surfing technique right is best gauged when there’s a comparable boat nearby. But knowing what to do, how much and when can be difficult to judge. The reward can be a significant increase in VMG towards the bottom mark, but it’s also important to understand what the rules allow to avoid being protested.

4 FURTHER, BUT FASTER

There may be better surfing waves on one side of the course so investigate pre-start; don’t leave it until the first downwind leg to find out. The best surfing conditions can exist soon after large windshifts so think about that after a large shift on a beat – there could be some good surfing to be found on the next downwind leg. Offshore wavetrains are important – set up your downwind leg strategy to use the wavetrain/direction to the maximum.

Knowing your boat is paramount. If the wavetrain is above VMG, then you have to make sure that the extra speed of using the waves will offset the extra distance travelled. Commit to the mode change, work the waves hard and if it means sailing higher, then there will be an initial loss until you start seeing the beneﬁts from using the waves. However, every missed wave is costly.

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2 VELOCITY MADE GOOD (VMG)

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3 RIDING THE WAVES Keep looking for the next wave. Once you are on a wave, don’t just go ploughing to the bottom of the wave and slam into the back of the one in front. Instead, as you come down the face of a wave, head the boat up gently, ﬁnd an escape from the trough and look for the next wave to use. Again the technique will vary from boat to boat.

The whole crew will need to change mode, pumping with every wave (once per wave to promote planing is allowed – but no pumping is permitted once the boat is planing or surﬁng). A simultaneous pump on the main and spinnaker is considered one pump. Coinciding the mode change with a windshift or pressure change can work well, but be quick to change back if it isn’t working or conditions change.

Rob Greenhalgh won the ﬁrst of his three Volvo Ocean Race campaigns in 2005/6 aboard ABN AMRO One, but made his name in dinghies, including world championships in the International 14 and 18ft Skiff classes. A full-time offshore professional sailor, Greenhalgh still says his ﬁrst love is dinghy sailing, which includes a new challenge, the foiling International Moth.

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

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INDEX TO ADVERTISERS Allspars Ltd 101 Amateur Photography 71 Ancasta Boat Sales Ltd 71, 106/107 Berret Racoupeau 97 Berthon International 104/105 Bruce Banks Sails Ltd 101 Budget Marine 39 Cantiere Del Pardo Spa 17 CNT Yacht Broker’s Di Franconi Fosco 114 Concordia Yacht Company S.L. (Northrup & Johnson) 115 Conyplex B.V. (Contest) 112, Cover IV Discovery Yachts Ltd 25 Dixon Yacht Design 97 Dolphin Sails 101 Doyle Sailmakers Inc 60 Elvstrom Sails A/S 79 Farr Yacht Design 97 Fox’s Marina Ipswich Ltd 85 Fox’s Yacht Sales 112 Fraser Yachts Florida Inc 110/111 Gerard Dijkstra & Partners 97 Grenada Marine 39 Grenada Sailing Week 21 Grupo Yates Alemanes 101 Gunfeet Marine Ltd 19 Harken Inc. 41 Hoek Design Naval Architects 97

Humphreys Yacht Design Ltd IBI Plus Inspiration Marine Group IPAD Jeckells Of Wroxham Ltd Kemp Sails Ltd Kiriacoulis Mediterranean Cruises Ltd Lilley Marine Marine Survey Bureau Marvin Series North Sails (Uk) Ltd Oyster Brokerage Ltd Oyster Marine Parker & Kay Sailmakers Persak & Wurmfeld Design Reckmann Mast Systems & Sails Rustler Yachts Ltd Sailing Perfection Bv - Equiplite Europe Saint Maarten Yacht Club Sevenstar Yacht Transport Sirena Marine Solaris Yachts Customs Southern Spars Stanley Gibbons Publications Ltd Storm Sailing App Tofnou Zoe Napier & Associates Ltd

97 93, 114 Cover III 85 101 101 114 108 97 97 13, 101 109 2 101 97 21 89 101 33 31 Cover II, 23 113 15 75 93 93 21

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001 137

ONE AMAZING DAY

PETER DICKSON

The ﬂeet bunched in light winds of the 1988 Round the Island Race

Peter Dickson (69) is the chairman of Cowes

A Black/PPL

t was 25 June 1988 – the Round the Island Race. I was the Island Sailing Club’s vice-commodore and it was my job to be in charge of the race. It felt slightly strange because I was usually on the other side of the fence as a competitor, but I was looking forward to the new challenge. The idea of starting the fleet of 1,561 boats was daunting for a newcomer, but a total of seven starts were completed over a period of about an hour in the light breeze, so it all worked out well. It was so simple, I thought; we didn’t even have to lay a course. Dutifully, the easterly breeze dropped and the southwesterly sea breeze kicked in. The run turned into a beat and the fleet zoomed off in a lovely wind. All we had to do was wait for the boats to arrive back in Cowes. I remember thinking at the time: ‘What can possibly go wrong?’ At about 1600 only a small proportion of the fleet had finished, around ten of the big boats. At this point the southwesterly wind started to drop off, which was unusual so early in the day. So, most of the fleet – probably around 1,000 boats – was now becalmed in Osborne Bay. They were spread out across the Solent, lined up several boats deep like soldiers in a row, and although it was a fantastic sight, the idea that the race could go wrong at this stage was devastating. All sorts of things passed through my mind. I seriously believed it was going to be the end of the race, with nobody able to finish. I couldn’t have felt more distressed. However, a breeze filled in slightly from the east and pushed the entire fleet towards Cowes. It was great news – the boats were on the move again – but it also meant the entire fleet arrived at the finish together, causing chaos for the race finish team. In a normal situation the boats arrive in a steady stream, peel off to head back to harbour in an orderly manner, and the crews go ashore to sign their declarations. On this occasion everyone finished at the same time, so it was pretty much impossible to get all the sail numbers and their finish times. Thankfully, each crew has to declare its own finish time and note the boat ahead and astern. Just as I thought things couldn’t get much worse, en masse the entire fleet clogged the mouth of the river. No other traffic, not even the ferries, could get through for over an hour because the yachts that had finished headed across the flow of traffic of those yet to finish. Then they steamed into the

Island Sailing Club pontoon and dropped off their crews to sign their declarations. Then they returned ten minutes later to pick up their crews again. It was utter chaos. My initial thought was: ‘Wow, this is really exciting.’ That lasted a second or so. It soon became obvious how dangerous this was – potentially the most serious problem of the day. I remember rushing down the pontoon to help push off and catch boats as crews leaped ashore. Meanwhile, back at HQ I joined the team of race ofﬁcers whose job it was to embark upon the mammoth task of processing results, which went on throughout the night. I distinctly remember my alarm going off at 0530 in the morning, exactly 24 hours after I had woken up for the start. By about this time, we’d pretty much got all the declarations processed on to the computer and the results published. The most amazing thing about it was that the prizegiving was held at midday and everything carried on as normal as though nothing had happened. All the results were up and all the prizes awarded. No one really knew what had happened behind the scenes, which is a credit to the professional race team that ran the event. The day marked a real turning point in the development of the race, particularly in terms of safety. From that day on boats were banned from coming alongside the Island Sailing Club pontoon after the race. We also introduced the Royal Yacht Squadron line for the start to ensure boats were kept west of the harbour and ﬁnished boats east of the harbour. Interviewed by Sue Pelling

age of nine and raced dinghies. He then moved

Elected as the Island Sailing Club (ISC)

Week and Cowes Combined Clubs. He is also

to the Isle of Wight and started racing handicap

vice-commodore in 1989, the club’s centenary

an RYA race ofﬁcer and principal race ofﬁcer

cruisers, competing in his ﬁrst Cowes Week in

year, he served as its Cowes Week race ofﬁcer

for Cowes Classics Week.

1966. He raced with some success in four

and was part of the course-setting team. He

yachts named Star-born.

later became commodore of the ISC.

Dickson was introduced to sailing at the

124

YACHTING WORLD NOVEMBER 2014

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