A classic wooden yawl might not seem the obvious choice for offshore racing, But Nic Compton finds this classic yacht is up for it

There’s no shortage of stunning boats moored at Port Pendennis in Falmouth when I visit the marina in June, not least a couple of enormous, shiny superyachts being polished to death by their crews. But I haven’t come to see them.

The boat I’ve come to see is tucked away at the far end of the outer jetty. With her glowing varnish, immaculately scrubbed decks and period fittings, Amokura looks every bit the timeless classic she is: a precious piece of maritime heritage to be nurtured and preserved and treated with the utmost respect and reverence. She’s a concours d’elegance winner; the lead boat in any parade of sail.

Yet, as she motored out of the marina towards the open waters of the Carrick Roads, Amokura wasn’t heading towards yet another classic boat festival, to compare baggywrinkle tying techniques with other aficionados – far from it.

Amokura’s new ‘classic’ rig was designed by Ashley Butler for short-handed offshore sailing

This 80-year-old classic was off to Ireland to race, tack for tack and gybe for gybe, against a fleet of modern racing yachts in the 270-mile Dun Laoghaire to Dingle Race. Not only that, but she was being sailed two-handed, by owner Paul Moxon and friend Steve Jones – not bad going for a 50ft wooden boat with no electric winches or other fancy gizmos.

And the D2D was just the qualifier en route to a bigger goal: this year’s Fastnet Race, in which Amokura was again competing in the two-handed division (sadly, she had to retire, facing a very windy forecast). It’s an unlikely development for this old wooden boat with no previous history of racing (she entered the 1959 Fastnet, but also retired) and might be expected to be resting on her laurels, just happy to have survived so long.

But her owner has clearly taken the old adage that ‘ships and sailors rot in port’ to heart and has ensured that both yacht and crew are race ready, regardless of age.

Article continues below…

Marilee: The inside story of the 1926 Herreshoff NY40’s remarkable restoration

When the New York Yacht Club commissioned the new NY40 one-design class in 1916 Nathanael Herreshoff’s objective was to design…

Blitzen – the 1938 Olin Stephens design that was the grand prix boat of the day

Olin Stephens was just 30 years old when Blitzen was launched in 1938, following in the wake of the prodigiously…

Paul had relatively little yacht sailing experience when he bought Amokura in 2012. True, he spent more of his teens teaching dinghy sailing, first at Woolverstone Marina in Suffolk, then Mercury Marina on the Hamble and finally with the Island Cruising Club in Salcombe. He even bought a 21ft Pandora International centreboarder in his early 20s, and made a cross-Channel crossing on the Island Cruising Club’s schooner, Hoshi.

He did very little sailing, however, during his 20s and 30s, while he concentrated on his career (starting at PricewaterhouseCoopers and moving on to ABN AMRO) and having a family. When he finally decided to buy a boat as he approached his 40th year, he looked for something he could go long-distance cruising with his family.

“I had been on day charters in modern boats and didn’t like their tendency to broach in any sort of strong wind,” he says. “I wasn’t particularly looking for a classic boat, but I wanted a boat with the ability to go offshore and go places. That’s what pushed me towards the classics. When my wife and I saw Amokura, we liked her age and the heritage she embodied, and we figured: in for a penny, in for a pound.”

Paul Moxon (left) and Steve Jones met on a crew finding website

Paul had no intention of racing at that stage. He spent the first season cruising with the family around Palma, before bringing the boat back to the UK for some badly-needed restoration at Cockwells Boatyard in Falmouth – including new decks.

The lead keel was also dropped and rebedded and new garboard planks fitted in an effort to cure a persistent leak. He then sailed back to Palma, where Amokura was based for the next three years.

“The original plan had been to keep her in the UK,” he says. “But after our first year in the Med, we liked it and decided to keep her there after the refit.”

Back to original

As the job list grew, however, Paul decided to bring the yacht back to UK rather than face the “punishing heat” and equally punishing labour rates of refitting the boat in Palma.

Apart from anything, he had long harboured a desire to return Amokura to her original rig – or something approaching it – rather than the reduced rig with aluminium spars fitted in 1969.

“It was quite clear sailing in the Med that she was underpowered,” says Paul. “The rig looked stubby and not quite right, and she wouldn’t sail through any chop in anything less than ten knots.”

The boom crutch. Amokura is named after a Pacific seabird

The boat was still leaking too, particularly when the rig was put under pressure. So, in late 2015, Paul sailed Amokura back across Biscay to Ashley Butler’s new yard in Penpol, just outside Falmouth.

Ashley made another attempt at curing the persistent leak that had eluded previous shipwrights, this time removing the old wooden keel and replacing it with a new one carved out of a single, two-tonne piece of iroko.

Meanwhile, Paul spent several months with naval architect Theo Rye (now sadly deceased) experimenting with different sail configurations.

“We were trying to find the right balance between what was original and what works now,” he says. “We tested the rudder balance at various points of sail, and superimposed practical tests on the theoretical.”

Amokura was designed by Fred Shepherd and launched in 1939. Credit: Andy Nickerson

The result was a fractional yawl rig with wooden spars, no bowsprit and a large yankee (i.e. staysail), which resembles much more closely the rig shown in the iconic photos taken by Beken of Cowes in 1947 – although the new version sports white rather than tan sails. The spars were duly made by Butler & Co, while the sails were made by Peter Crockford at SailTech in Penryn.

By then Paul had teamed up with classic boat enthusiast Steve Jones, who himself owns a wooden Folkboat. Most of his long-distance sailing was done two-handed, with his wife and children joining the boat once they had arrived at their chosen cruising destination. The new rig was therefore geared for that kind of sailing.

“When we re-rigged the boat, we focused on making her easy to sail short-handed – or even single-handed with an autopilot. We’ve run all the lines to the bottom of the mast rather than run them back to the cockpit, which means they’re easier to pull because there’s less friction and there aren’t any lines on deck to trip you up.

“It also means you just have one place to go to adjust almost everything. Because she’s a heavy boat, the deck provides a stable platform and going forward to the mast even in foul weather is not as intensely dangerous and stressful as it would be on a lighter, more flighty boat.

“To hoist the main, for example, the halyard has a 2:1 purchase, to the top of the mast straight down to the deck, and because there aren’t any turning blocks, you have a straight pull. You use your weight to hoist the sail most of the way and put the halyard around the winch to sweat the last four or five feet.

“You only use the winch handle right at the very end, to tension the luff. We thought about how each job can be done short-handed for a Biscay crossing, so while one person is sleeping down below the other can reef the main single-handedly.”

Ashley Butler proved just the man to oversee the work; having himself sailed many miles short and single-handed, first on his restored Morecambe Bay prawner Ziska and then on an East Coast bawley he built himself (the 32ft Sally B), clocking up two Atlantic crossings in the process.

The interior was rebuilt at the International Boatbuilding Training College in Lowestoft

He therefore knows all about the demands of sailing traditional boats with small crews, though he says, “as it turns out the simplicity of working the rig has led to it being really practical to race Amokura short-handed.”

And so Amokura set off with her new rig in 2016 to join the party at the Brest and Douarnenez festivals, winning her class at Douarnenez through the simple expedient of being the only boat in that class.

Paul and family also took the boat to the Gulf du Morbihan, where her most famous owner, George Millar, cruised on the yacht in the early 1960s, an adventure described in his book Oyster River.

George Millar bought Amokura in 1954

Paul even managed to trace the descendant of the same family who welcomed Millar all those years ago and swung from the same mooring Amokura had occupied then – even if the River Auray is now a long way from the verdant idyll Millar describes in his book, being as packed with moorings as the Hamble.

Getting serious

Back in the UK, Amokura attended the 2018 Sea Salts & Sail festival at Mousehole and took part in a light-hearted race around Mount’s Bay. But it was at the Hamble Classics that year that Paul really got a taste for competitive sailing. “It was the first time we’d done some proper racing, and I really enjoyed it. We got a good feel for it.”

Never a man to do things by halves, on the back of that success, Paul decided to enter Amokura in the 2019 Rolex Fastnet Race, simply “because it was there”. First, however, he had to get his ship in order.

The lovely traditional wheel. Steering is via a worm gear

“The racing has certainly upped the pressure,” he says. “We’re sailing the boat harder than before, which puts a strain on the hull, which means she leaks more. We replaced another plank last winter, which has helped, but to be honest at the moment I’m more focused on bilge pumps than leaks!”

Before she could compete in the Fastnet, however, Amokura had to comply with the RORC safety rules – which were clearly not written with an 80-year-old classic yacht in mind. Credit where credit’s due, the RORC proved open to the idea, and Paul found them generally “pragmatic”, “risk-focused” and “not box-ticking”.

“We had a sensible conversation with the RORC to work out what the regulations really meant and how we could sensibly comply. Amokura is essentially a very safe boat, but how do we reconcile that with a set of rules design to make modern boats safe to race?

“For example, the rules require you to carry an emergency tiller, but Amokura has wheel steering with old-fashioned gear linkage, so it’s not possible to fit an emergency tiller. Instead, we came up with a plan, if the steering fails, to use a sea anchor trailed over stern to alter course.”

Modern safety gear

In the end, the main modification was to alter the forehatch fittings to ensure it could be opened from both inside and outside, and it could be locked properly. Amokura also had to be fitted with modern safety gear, as evidenced by the rash of white plastic boxes, which have sprouted around her aft deck.

Other changes were made not for compliance but to upgrade the boat “from a cruising to a basic racing set-up”, including fitting new wind and speed sensors because, as Paul says, “if you haven’t got reliable sensors, you can’t work out an accurate wind angle. It’s a luxury we haven’t had before and has made a big difference.”

Handles to open hatches from both sides had to be fitted

And then there was the small matter of a spinnaker. “I was warned off having a spinnaker, because people thought it might be a stretch too far for short-handed sailing. But I decided to try it anyway, and I’ve never looked back,” he says.

“The brief to Gavin Watson at Penrose Sails was to make a sail that was more forgiving to cope with short-handed sailing, so we’ve had to trade off some power for ease of handling. The shape is narrower at the shoulder, but it sets easily and you can just leave it and go off and make a cup of tea. If you don’t like the look of something, you can shield the spinnaker behind the main and snuff it down.”

Charging full speed ahead

It’s a credit to Paul’s sympathetic approach that he has managed to make the yacht ‘race ready’ without indulging in the shiny bling that blights so many other racing classics. If it wasn’t for all the safety gear attached to the guardrails aft, you’d never know.

Amokura has been sympathetically restored to her former glory

Out on Falmouth Bay, the wind picks up to a brisk Force 5, and Amokura laps it up. With her 20 tons of displacement it takes a lot of wind to worry her, and in these conditions she just charges full speed ahead, several times achieving hull speed judging by the hollowed out wave amidship.

Her two-man crew give a bravura performance, holding on to full sail for the photos, despite the breezy conditions. Swooping and leaping over the waves, she really does look like the Pacific Ocean seabird after which she is named.

Amokura might be 80 years old, but she sails like a yacht in her prime. Paul’s ambitious campaign has breathed new life into her tired timbers and, whatever the results on the race circuit, has ensured she is in a fit state to sail for another 80 years.

Amokura specification

LOA: 15.32m (50ft 3in)
LWL: 11.58m (38ft)
Beam: 3.66m (12ft)
Draught: 2.13m (7ft)
Displacement: 20 tonnes

Extracts from George Millar’s article for the 1954 Royal Cruising Club journal

“[Amokura] will eat up to windward with the best of them, which is the only true insurance policy afloat; further, with her yawl rig and reasonable length of keel she is a good one for self-steering both on and off the wind.

1 June 1954

On June 1st we took 18 shirts, 12 towels, and 14 linen sheets (I do not hold with sleeping in blankets) to the 24-hour laundry, which has an Italianate name, and that morning we entered the docks to fill our two 20-gallon tanks with gasoil.

The engine, burning only ½ gallon an hour, will give us 5 knots in a calm; so our range is about 400 miles under power. We also took paraffin (8 gallons), fresh water (125 gallons), distilled water, lubricating oil, linseed oil, and turpentine.

3 June 1954

All went well (especially Amokura) until 0930, when we were over the Kaiser-i-hind Bank, some 60 miles SW of Ushant, and the wind headed us. I experimented until she sailed herself closehauled, the boomed foresail sheeted in very hard, the mizzen rather free, the main trimmed for efficiency.

She needed one and a half spokes to hold her off, and thus she seemed to travel better than with my tired self fussing over her. That day, the next, and the intervening night, we touched the wheel no more, except when putting about.”

Amokura on sea trials in Southampton Water in 1939

The many lives of Amokura

1939 – Designed by Fred Shepherd and built by AH Moody & Son, Swanwick, on the Hamble for Major (later Sir) Ernest Harston. She was named after the Maori word for the red-tailed tropicbird, a seabird native to the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Her original sail plans show a small staysail set on inner forestay, and later photos by Beken of Cowes show her setting a large yankee on the outer, fractionally rigged forestay. The hull was painted black.

1946 – Described as a “most marvellous ocean racer” by Uffa Fox, in a private letter to Fred Shepherd

1953 – Bought by Manchester builder EA Crosby.

1954 – Bought by George Millar, who was awarded a DSO and a Légion d’Honneur for his wartime exploits.
Millar sailed widely on Amokura, including trips to the Mediterranean, and wrote about her in his book ‘Oyster River’. Entered the 1959 Fastnet Race, but retired.

1960 – Bought by Horace Morgan, based at Corpach, near Fort William, Scotland

1969 – Bought by Richard Carr MBE, of Carr biscuits, a friend of George Millar who was in the same POW camp. Carr reduced her rig and fitted aluminium spars.

Amokura moored in Montfalcone, Italy in the 1970s

1979 – Under American ownership, sailed to the Caribbean, the East Coast of America and back to the Med. Hull painted white.

1981 – Described as “seaworthy family cruiser” in Cruising Under Sail by Eric Hiscock

1990 – Seized by Spanish authorities for drug smuggling and sold to Peter Guan, who kept her in Vilamoura, Spain

Amokura was refitted in 2013

1996 – Bought by ‘serial classic boat enthusiast’ David Japp and restored at the International Boatbuilding Training College in Lowestoft.

2004 – Bought by Jane Scrinar & Anthony Harwood, based in the UK.

2006 – Bought by Peter & Gillian Phillips, and was based in Valencia, Spain, then Cogolin, France.

2012 – Bought by Paul Moxon. Redecked in 2013; rerigged with wooden spars in 2016; hull painted dark blue in 2019.

Article first published in the October 2019 issue of Yachting World.

The post Amokura: The classic yacht celebrating her 80th anniversary on the racing circuit appeared first on Yachting World.

The French canals provide an attractive alternative to the Strait of Gibraltar for yachts looking to enter the Mediterranean. Terysa Vanderloo reports

For many skippers wishing to sail between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, it’s necessary to go via the Strait of Gibraltar. However, for shallow draught yachts, an attractive alternative awaits: a cruise through the French canals.

This isn’t necessarily a quicker option; while there are fewer miles to travel, the canals are a slower affair due to the 8km/h speed limit, numerous locks and time spent at either end unstepping and stepping the mast.

However, it’s a rewarding and enriching journey, unlike any other type of boating. My partner Nick and I recently took our Southerly 38 through the Canal de Deux Mers and found it to be a truly unique cruising experience.

Some of the stunning tree-lined scenery on the French canals

While there is an entire network of European waterways waiting to be explored, there are two main routes that British sailors might be interested in: one is the east-west route via the UNESCO-listed Canal du Midi and the Canal de Garonne, jointly known as the Canal de Deux Mers, which connects Mediterranean France with the Bay of Biscay.

The other option is the north-south route, which links the English Channel with the Mediterranean via the Rhône, the Saône and the Seine, as well as a number of smaller canals.

The first factor you must bear in mind before deciding on a cruise through the French inland waterways is the dimensions of the canals, particularly draught. Not all canals are maintained at the same depth: for example, the Seine is 3m, the River Saône is 1.8m, and the Canal du Midi is 1.5m (and these depths can be patchy in places). Our Southerly 38, Ruby Rose, has a swing keel, which gives a minimum draught of 0.8m.

Article continues below…

Why the Kiel Canal, shortcut to the Baltic, is a fascinating mini cruise all of its own

The Kiel Canal can be a fascinating voyage in a yacht, as Detlef Jens reports

Through the Panama Canal in your yacht: everything you need to know

Cape Horn sailors and ditch diggers sacrificed all to make the path between the Atlantic and Pacific easier for the…

Air draught is another consideration; there are many low bridges to squeeze under, most of which have a towpath that leads underneath the bridge, which narrows the width of the canal as well. The narrowest part of the Canal du Midi is 5.45m and the lowest bridge is 3.25m above the waterline. Other canals in France offer slightly different dimensions, but unstepping the mast will be necessary for all sailing boats entering the canals.

We chose Chantier Allemande in Grau d’Agde on the Mediterranean for the unstepping, and Paulliac to step on the Atlantic side. Costs were reasonable although varied; unstepping was €35, stepping was €120.

However, it wasn’t so much the locations for unstepping and stepping our mast that had us scratching our heads – it was the matter of transporting our rig. Should it go by road? Or on deck? Our mast is 16m high and our boat is 12m in length, so our major concern with having our mast on deck was dealing with the overhang.

We felt it might be easier to transport by road, and so initially explored that option. We were quoted €1,000 for the mast transport, not including storage costs incurred by the boatyards.

Ultimately, we chose to keep the mast on deck. Constructing the frame was an unfamiliar although enjoyable challenge. We built two A-frames out of pine beams, one at the bow and one across the transom. Due to the air draught restrictions, we set the rig on its frame under our bimini.

Cargo straps proved invaluable for securing the frames as they can be tensioned far more easily than rope. Once the mast was sitting in the frame, we also added two additional struts, one in the cockpit and another on the coachroof, cut to size and wedged into place to provide extra support.

We covered the two mast ends with towels and an old pillow, then placed a bucket over the top. It may have looked odd, but we knew the ends of the mast would be the most vulnerable to damage while in the canals. Indeed, when we arrived in Paulliac we had a very scuffed bucket, but not a single scratch on the mast.

Staking your territory

One of the delights of travelling along the canals is that you can pull over and tie up almost anywhere. It’s forbidden to tie to a tree, so ground stakes must be used (you need to carry your own), but the reward is a huge amount of flexibility in terms of where to stop for the night.

This isn’t your only option. There are moorings and facilities placed at regular intervals, often with electricity and water and sometimes even showers and a laundry. The costs vary from €2-€20 per night.

Most ‘nature moorings’ (posts for tying up to, but no other facilities) are free and often found on the outskirts of town. A good cruising guide will provide detailed information on the location of all moorings and facilities along the canals.

Negotiating aqueducts by yacht is a memorable experience

Getting around is easy: the towpaths are often converted to bike tracks so having bikes on board is therefore recommended. However, the canals almost always pass through the centre of the towns and villages on its meandering path, and so provisioning, finding a restaurant or taking in the local sights rarely requires more than a leisurely stroll.

Being France, a produce market, a bakery and somewhere to buy a bottle of wine is never far away. Supermarkets are also usually nearby.

Unstepping the mast at Grau d’Agde on the Mediterranean coast

Before entering the canals, the logistics of negotiating the locks with just the two of us on board was an unknown.

Most locks in the French waterways have now been automated, which means you activate the lock by twisting a pole suspended in the middle of the canal on your approach.

The Canal du Midi is an exception, and the locks are still operated by a lock keeper (éclusier).

Going downstream is easy: you enter the lock when it is full and tying up to the bollards provided is merely a matter of practicing your lassoing technique or stepping off the boat, just like tying up to any dock.

In an automated lock, you press a button on the control panel to close the gate and start the process. The lock then empties itself of water and once you’re down and the gate opens, you retrieve your lines and continue on your way.

Rising waters

Going upstream is inherently more challenging: you enter the lock when the water is at its lowest level, sometimes several metres down, and have to attach your bow and stern lines either to bollards at the top of the lock wall, or to poles or floating bollards which are set vertically into the wall.

The latter option isn’t available in most locks on the Midi: because it is UNESCO-listed very few alterations to the original locks have been made. This left us wondering exactly how we were meant to secure our boat when going upstream on the Canal du Midi.

Canal du Midi tunnels can be narrow

We were advised by fellow canal goers to enter the lock and then throw your lines up to the éclusier, though we felt that expecting the éclusiers to abandon their actual job – operating the locks – was impolite.

So we tried lassoing the bollards from the boat, but this proved an unreliable technique at best; the bollards were above the level of the boat, often above head height, and sometimes quite far away.

We quickly decided that the best thing to do was to let me off the boat in advance (either to the waiting pontoons outside every lock, or we simply nosed the boat into the bank).

Upstream locks are more challenging

I’d then go up to the lock, greet the friendly éclusier (who was occasionally unaware of our presence), and wait at the lock entrance for Nick to bring the boat through.

We employed the boathook to retrieve the bow line, and Nick could throw up the stern line or, more usually, simply hold it out for my waiting boathook. Once the lock was full I’d jump back on board. This method ensured that Nick didn’t have to leave the helm, and I was able to manage the lines.

It also left the éclusier to get on with operating the locks or help other boaters out with their lines, many of whom were enjoying a hire boat holiday and sometimes weren’t as experienced at line handling and boat manoeuvring as we are.

Having the mast on deck does impact the cockpit space

We enjoyed a month in the canals, and could have easily spent an entire season exploring the route from Agde to Pauilliac. This passage goes through some historical and beautiful towns such as Beziérs, Carcassonne, Castelnaudary, Toulouse, Moissac, Montauban, and Bordeaux.

The countryside, ranging from rolling vineyards with snow-capped mountains in the background, to verdant green farmland dotted with church spires, not to mention the bustling streets of central Toulouse and Bordeaux, was also as fascinating as it was varied.

The two canals offered vastly different experiences, with the tree-lined Garonne far quieter and more sedate than the wonderfully atmospheric Canal du Midi. We consider our trip to be mere reconnaissance for many more journeys through the French canals in the future.

The historic Canal du Midi is UNESCO listed

About the author

Terysa Vanderloo has been living aboard her Southerly 38 with her partner Nick Fabbri for five years and together they have sailed three continents, two oceans and 25,000 miles. For more detailed information about their experiences on the French canals, see their YouTube channel, Sailing Yacht Ruby Rose.

The post French canals offer a scenic route to the Med for sailing yachts appeared first on Yachting World.

Pip Hare explains how to set up your liferaft properly so you know how to use it in the event of an emergency

When was the last time you gave your liferaft a second thought? Once bought and installed most of us don’t consider this life-saving piece of equipment again until the service date rolls around. Other than keeping it dry and visually inspecting the case, there’s not much day-to-day maintenance we can do for our rafts. The location it is stowed in however, should be reviewed more regularly.

The stowage and ‘launch-ability’ of your liferaft could be as vital to crew survival as the liferaft itself. Any member of the crew should be able to perform a launch – and this includes the smallest adults or any teenagers mature enough to understand the process.

There are pros and cons to every stowage location, and what is right for you and your boat will depend on crew size, yacht design and liferaft type; but here are a few things to consider when choosing where yours should go.

Pushpit or transom mounted cages offer a good solution to easy launching, but if mounting your liferaft canister vertically, double check with the manufacturer that it’s designed for that orientation. The weight of the inflation gas bottle inside can damage the contents if resting where it was not intended. And the drain holes in the canister may need relocating for different orientations.

Article continues below…

How well does your lifejacket work? We put 3 offshore models to the test

As I plunge into the sea off the east coast of Iceland, the water temperature shows 6°C and the cold…

Mayday, we’re sinking – crew rescued from the ARC yacht Magritte as she goes down

Early evening on 3 December Steve Arnold was awoken by his friend and crewmate Andy Mills, who had noticed water…

Ensure bespoke frames and cases are unlocked and extra lashings removed every time you go to sea. It should go without saying yet this is a common omission. This is particularly important if you have a hydrostatic unit (HSU) as part of a float-free system. The raft should be held in place only by the strap attached to the HSU and the painter should be attached to the ‘weak link’. There must be no other lashings in place or the float free system will not work.

Remove UV covers before sailing. Once again this is of greater importance if you have an HSU fitted, however it’s a good principle in general. Liferafts are not designed to ‘burst’ out of a cover when they inflate.

Will your liferaft fit under the bottom guardrail? This can allow smaller crew members to launch deck-mounted rafts without lifting. If the answer is no then consider changing the bottom guardrail attachment to a lashing, which can be cut easily. Don’t forget to brief everyone about this procedure. Make a regular check that the dedicated knife is in position and still sharp.

If sailing with a liferaft in a locker, whether canister or valise, practise removal from the locker regularly and be honest with yourself whether this really is possible. Avoid large lockers where it can get buried and if you have only one locker consider building in a compartment or shelf to keep the raft separate.

You may have had your boat for years and always kept the raft in the same place, but the location should be ‘trimmed’ as you and your crew change in number, age and ability.

Canisters in lockers are difficult to grab, especially when wet. If yours does not come with handles, place lifting straps underneath the liferaft so it’s ready to go in an emergency. Avoid tying anything around the canister as it could inhibit inflation.

Launching liferafts that will not float free should be considered a two-step process. Step one manoeuvres the liferaft on deck or into the open as early as possible. This should be a well-practised procedure with a dedicated spot to put the raft and attach the painter.

Don’t worry about over-reacting, just get the raft out the minute you have concerns. Over the course of my sailing life I can think of at least 10 times I have put the raft ‘on deck’ for reasons ranging from thick fog and no radar to a collision with a whale. Whatever the design of your vessel, serious thought should go into whether adaptations can be made to house a float-free system.

If you plan to mount the liferaft vertically, check with the manufacturer that it’s designed for that orientation

What to take

Grab bags are vital to survival in your liferaft and should be checked, maintained and adapted for each new passage and crew. Charge or replace batteries, check medicine dates and tailor the contents to the environment.

Essential emergency items should be stored in watertight containers that will float: old flare containers are ideal for this job, but also look out for the type of storage containers used by sea kayakers which tend to be different colours.

It is easy to fill a grab bag with personal and supplementary items, making it too bulky or heavy to move so I use a system of hierarchy on longer passages. The primary bag contains emergency essentials, passports and medication, the others have supplementary survival equipment and personal effects. Crew may also pack their own small dry bags with essentials, but it must be understood by everybody on board which bags to grab first.

In a habit learned from offshore racing I now carry an emergency water container even on deliveries. This is a 10lt container, filled with nine litres of water to allow it to float. Fitting containers and grab bags with a tether and clip will stop them from falling over the side if put on deck in preparation for abandonment.

Many liferaft service points will let you add extra items, if space will allow, when your raft is re-packed. This is an opportunity to add medication, food, extra water and small items of equipment. Anything put in the raft can be individually vacuum bagged first to keep it dry. I recommend adding electronic distress signalling devices, such as PLBs or SARTS rather than packing extra flares.

Can you lift it?

The weight of a six-man liferaft can very from 28kg for an ISO <24hr pack to 65kg for the SOLAS A pack. If your crew numbers regularly fluctuate between fully crewed and double-handed, it may be more practical to buy two liferafts, or hire an extra one when you have more crew. If purchasing a lightweight raft, ensure you fully understand the difference in standards and contents.

First published in the September 2018 edition of Yachting World.

The post Liferaft storage and preparation: Top tips from pro sailor Pip Hare appeared first on Yachting World.

How quickly you react in a man overboard situation can be critical. Pro navigator Mike Broughton gives his top tips and explains how technology can help

Turning a yacht around after a person goes overboard (MOB) and heading back in the right direction to retrieve them isn’t always easy when you’re taken by surprise, particularly at night. As navigators we need to employ all the help available to us, and be able to use any electronic tools instantly.

Sadly, there have been MOB occurrences when the technology has been available and not deployed, or not deployed correctly. The obvious solution is to practice MOB drills.

Coming from a military aviation background I’m used to placing a great emphasis on practising emergencies. To survive military flying training you need to be able to maintain a cool head when things are falling apart. The focus is on developing ‘automotive actions’ to a crisis. Learning the correct initial actions to an emergency is essential for a pilot as these first actions are carried out in seconds.

‘Subsequent actions’ are carried out in a longer timescale, and often with the help of flight reference cards. These can also help confirm those vital ‘initial actions’. I can still remember how to shut down both engines of a Sea King in mid-air in the event of a fire, some 25 years since I last flew that type of helicopter! Sailors can also learn from this method of training.

Different MOB drills are needed for different yachts, depending on wind strength, sea state, number and experience of crew, point of sail, boat speed and time of day. There is good reason why the RYA doesn’t specify a single way to execute a MOB recovery. However, whatever type of yacht you sail, there are still some ‘initial actions’ for MOB that can be standardised.

The subsequent actions will vary depending on the conditions mentioned above. Practice helps a great deal, but even talking through these actions when alongside will help. Not many people go out and practise MOB drills at night.

Searching for a MOB in the dark is never easy. Apart from AIS PLBs, one of the best new ways of showing your position is to utilise ultra-bright LED flares. They are mesmerisingly bright. They last five to six hours and can easily be switched on and off like a torch. I’ve also trialled using an infrared camera.

Using technology

Modern technology can now help in an MOB situation more than ever before, from wearable transmitters that activate an alarm when a crewmember is out of range, to personal locator beacons (PLBs). Crew can now activate the MOB button not just on the chartplotter but also on a smart watch.

Clever boat instrument systems can also translate that information onto other displays that is easy to interpret. If you have AIS transposed onto your chartplotter or navigation software then it can pick up an AIS PLB. Some activate an audio alarm but it helps to know what to expect.

In last year’s RORC Caribbean 600 race, when the 53ft catamaran Fujin capsized at night, I was navigating on a Ker 56 reaching at 20 knots. I’d gone below to download weather data and could hardly hear myself think as the noisy carbon boat crashed through waves. But I heard a beeping sound coming out of the back of the laptop so I checked my power leads and struggled to find reason for it.

About to give up, I scrolled through several weather programmes and discovered it coming from the Adrena navigation software and found my only clue to Fujin’s plight – an AIS PLB and a round red circle on the chart about three miles ahead.

Unable to transmit a Mayday or recover their grab bag in the windy conditions, a Fujin crewmember had initiated his AIS PLB. This was their initial alert. With an AIS PLB there is no boat name showing, so my initial suspicion was that we were looking for a single person in the water – but instead found a capsized catamaran with the whole crew waving torches hoping we’d see them. From this PLB activation a full recovery operation was launched and Fujin was eventually saved.

Article continues below…

Fujin: The inside story of this carbon catamaran’s Caribbean refit

After Fujin capsized during the 2018 RORC Caribbean 600 race it would have been understandable if owner Greg Slyngstad had…

Bluewater Sailing Techniques Part 7: man overboard under spinnaker

Man overboard at sea is thankfully a very rare occurrence. But with any risk assessment, you have to consider the…

If you are overboard in the water, understanding how to activate your PLB or automatic identification system (AIS) transmitter is imperative. Some are set up to activate with your lifejacket and some people (me included) like to have my AIS PLB in my pocket should I happen to ‘sin’ and not wear a lifejacket when sailing in warm waters.

Knowing how to summon help on your VHF radio should also be part of your pre-sailing safety brief. Showing your crew how to push the distress button to utilise the digital selective calling (DSC) is a rapid way to send details of your identity and position.

Due to the annoying number of false alarms, if you press the red button in anger then you need to be ready to authenticate the message with voice or repeat the signal to give the coastguard the confidence to act on a genuine alarm.

Immediate man overboard actions

• Call out ‘Man Overboard’ to alert the rest of the crew
• Drop a lifebuoy/danbuoy/jonbuoy
• Get a crew member to point at the person in the water (where the helmsman can easily see them)
• Press the MOB button on chart plotter/smart watch
• By day, throw an orange smoke cannister (have one in easy reach of the helm), at night throw a floating torch
• Start your recovery manoeuvre

About the author

Mike Broughton is a pro race navigator who has won many titles including World and European championships. He is a qualified MCA Master to captain superyachts and previously had a successful career in the Fleet Air Arm flying Sea King and Lynx helicopters.

First published in the October 2019 edition of Yachting World.

The post Man overboard: How to react and safely recover your crewmate appeared first on Yachting World.

Meteorologist Chris Tibbs explains everything you should know about the Agulhas Current before you sail the Indian Ocean

On any round-the-world cruise by the sunny route, there is the dilemma of how to cross the Indian Ocean. For me the Red Sea Route has no appeal whatsoever and although the reports of piracy have reduced it is not a risk many want to take.

Weather-wise there is a need to get out of the central part of the Indian Ocean before the tropical cyclone (hurricane) season gets going in November, although around Mauritius and Reunion you’re unlikely to find anything nasty until December. The majority of yachts therefore leave Reunion Island for South Africa in November.

You need to consider the approaching cyclone season moving into summer months, versus the Southern Ocean depressions throwing up active cold fronts that will reach north to Mozambique and Madagascar. The later you leave the passage to South Africa, the less active these fronts should be, but the higher the risk of tropical cyclones.

There are few yacht-friendly ports in Madagascar and Foreign Office travel advice does not make comfortable reading, so most yachts make the passage in one hop. With around 1,400 miles to Durban, or slightly less to Richards Bay, you need a weather window of about ten days.

These tend to be the favourite arrival ports, being further north than other South African ports, warmer and away from the Southern Ocean – although the fronts can still be very aggressive and secondary lows may form on them.

Article continues below…

Jet stream: Everything you need to know about its effect on sailing

What is the jet stream? The jet stream is a ‘river’ of strong wind high in the atmosphere which is…

Pro navigator’s tips on how to use the ocean’s currents for an offshore advantage

There are a number of yacht races around the world in which strategic decisions on whether to go into or…

Long-range forecasts

Here is the rub: a 10-day forecast is at best an indication and in reality the weather may be quite different. As you head south-west into more turbulent weather you will be planning your arrival in South Africa, and the areas of typically worst weather, on a long-range forecast.

This is of course nothing new for anyone making a long passage, but what makes this rather more interesting, from a meteorological point of view, and concerning for sailors is the Agulhas Current.

Like the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic the Agulhas Current is a western boundary current, but being in the southern hemisphere it brings warm water south. This river of warm water meets the cold conditions of the Southern Ocean and adds energy to developing storms.

Southern Ocean cold fronts move quickly along the coast from the south, and fuelled by warm water they will often interact with low pressure over the land intensifying the front and spawning secondary lows. Behind the front are gale force south-south-westerly winds, which in itself is bad enough, but add a south-bound current and the wind over current conditions can quickly become dangerous.

Just as UK sailors would never dream of going through the Portland Race in a storm, so you also need to avoid the Agulhas Current in wind over current situations that can produce boat-breaking waves of freak proportions.

But approaching South Africa you have to go through it: the challenge is therefore to arrive at a time when the ‘normal’ north-easterly winds are blowing with the current, and avoid a front – which is easier said than done. Observations are sparse so sailors have to rely on model predictions and, although South Africa produces an analysis chart for the area, there are no forecast ones.

GRIB file highlights a cold front off South Africa

This means generally relying on GRIB files, which when offshore require big downloads via a satellite phone or SSB to get a large enough picture for an extended period. There’s then the dilemma in what to do if a cold front is on its way.

The Agulhas Current runs close to the shore along the continental shelf and can build up to speeds of 5 knots. It is generally not very wide, usually less than 50 miles, but can be double this. Its position can be downloaded as model currents in the form of GRIB files and there are satellite-derived positions for it as well. I usually use the RTOFS model as it is readily available through saildocs.

Tough choices

There are hard decisions to make if approaching the coast at the time of a cold front. Having to heave-to and stop, 100 miles or so from safety, is frustrating after a long passage. However, trying to cross the stream is a whole lot harder and could mean breakages and damage.

Last year’s World ARC saw exactly this scenario. After suffering some gear failure and fuel problems one yacht missed the weather window. With options restricted to pressing on into a wind against current situation, heaving-to, or finding a safe port to the north it was a hard choice for the skipper. Fortunately the yacht arrived safely, but only a couple of hours ahead of gale force south-westerlies, which were predicted to reach 50 knots later in the day.

About the author

Chris Tibbs is a meteorologist and weather router, as well as a professional sailor and navigator, forecasting for Olympic teams and the ARC rally.

The post Agulhas Current explained: What it is and how it affects Indian Ocean sailors appeared first on Yachting World.

Alex Thomson and his co-skipper Neal McDonald have been forced to abandon the recently launched IMOCA 60’s keel after striking a submerged object at high speed

The first major test for Vendée Globe contender Alex Thomson’s new IMOCA 60 Hugo Boss has ended with Thomson jettisoning the yacht’s keel after hitting a submerged object during the Transat Jacques Vabres Normandie Le Havre race.

Thomson was competing in the Transat Jacques Vabres transatlantic race from Le Harve to Brazil with co-skipper Neal McDonald when the collision took place around 380 miles west-north-west of the Canary Islands.

In a statement released by Thomson’s racing team on 3 November, it was confirmed that: “At around 0937 UK time yesterday (Sunday) morning, while sailing at approximately 25 knots, Thomson and McDonald hit a submerged unidentified object in the water. Both skippers escaped without major injuries.”

The submerged object has not yet been identified, but the collision was strong enough to cause critical damage to the keel, which only remained attached by the hydraulic ram of the canting mechanism.

Photo: Alex Thomson Racing

Speaking from onboard the boat after the incident, Thomson said: “This morning, Neal and I were both awake, going about 25 knots, when we hit something in the water. I was stood inside the cockpit just behind the pedestal. Neal was just behind the cockpit door.

“We’re not sure what we hit but it was something big under the water, which must have been submerged to have hit our keel and physically stop the boat at 25 knots. The keel sustained a lot of damage and it was left attached only by the hydraulic ram.

“Neal and I are both physically OK. No major injuries, just some bruises. We were very lucky. If you were to get into your car, close your eyes, and drive at 40 miles an hour into a brick wall… that’s what it felt like!”

In a further update this morning (4 November), the Alex Thomson Racing team reported that despite Thomson and McDonald’s attempts to stabilise the keel, the decision was made to detach the fin and bulb to reduce the risk of damage to the hull. The keel was cut loose in the early hours of November 4.

The team’s statement explains: “Despite their very best efforts, it became clear that keeping the keel attached would put the boat at great risk. With the keel attached only by the hydraulic ram, and in an unstable position, there was a serious risk of significant damage to the hull.

“We did everything that we could to preserve the keel but collectively we determined that it was far too dangerous to keep it in place. Therefore, with guidance from our team shore-side, Alex and Neal set about cutting the hydraulic ram to free the keel from the boat. After many hours, they were successful in their efforts and the keel is now no longer attached to the boat.”

Article continues below…

Alex Thomson airlifted to safety as his new Hugo Boss is capsized by a rogue wave

Alex Thomson and his co-skipper, Spanish sailor Guillermo Altadill, were airlifted off the 60ft yacht Hugo Boss yesterday afternoon some…

Alex Thomson profile: Understanding the man behind the suit

Everyone knows Alex Thomson. He’s not only one of the most immediately recognisable IMOCA 60 skippers, but one of the…

Hugo Boss is currently underway at low speed, with the ballast tanks filled and foils fully extended for as much stability as possible. It is currently in light easterly winds with a slight sea state. His team report there is no immediate risk to the boat or the skippers. The team is currently working on a strategy to safely bring the boat to port.

The incident comes just weeks after Thomson’s newest Hugo Boss was launched. Thomson is aiming to win the 2020 Vendée Globe, having come 2nd in the 2016 edition and 3rd in the 2012 race, but this will represent a significant setback to the campaign. The pair were seven days into the 4,350 mile race from Le Havre, France to Salvador, Brazil, and were not among the leading bunch at the time, after early sail damage forced them to opt for an unfavourable westerly route.

In October 2015, Thomson was rescued from his previous Hugo Boss in that year’s Transat Jaques Vabre race after reporting a ‘rogue wave’ had capsized the yacht, dismasting her and leaving the IMOCA 60 flooded and disabled. He and his co-skipper were airlifted to safety. Thomson’s team later retrieved the yacht and rebuilt it, before Thomson went on to sail it to a famous 2nd place in the last Vendée Globe.

The post Alex Thomson’s Hugo Boss forced out of Transat Jacques Vabre after collision damage appeared first on Yachting World.

The Rolex Fastnet Race is one of those rare events where weekend sailors can truly take on the pros. The 2019 Fastnet saw legendary performances right across the 388-boat fleet

They say you should never meet your heroes, lest they be found to be merely mortal. Yet one of sailing’s rarest qualities is that there are a handful of events where the ordinary weekend racer can line up against their yachting idols, even if they don’t expect to meet them after.

For few events is this truer than the biennial Rolex Fastnet Race. The time frames may vary hugely – this year the fastest boat completed the course in just 28 hours, the slowest took over six days – and so the weather experienced by the line honours yachts and small boats may be wildly different, but the course – 605 miles from Cowes to Plymouth around the Fastnet Rock – is identical.

First timers and school crews set off from the same start line as sailors like François Gabart, Dean Barker, Sam Davies and Jimmy Spithill on Saturday 3 August. This is no small part of the race’s huge appeal – entries sold out in four minutes and 13 seconds this year, with a record fleet of 388 boats starting.

A record fleet of 388 yachts started this year’s Rolex Fastnet Race. Photo: Carlo Borlenghi

The other big draws include the course itself, a famously tactical route dodging tidal gates along the south coast of England, and slaloming around Traffic Separation Schemes (TSS) zones before – usually – beating into the Celtic Sea to round the iconic Fastnet Rock lighthouse and turn for home.

There is also the respect that this true blue riband event earns, and demands. This year, 2019, was the 40th anniversary of the 1979 Fastnet tragedy. While the race may be held in August (and a week earlier than usual this year) competitors were never more keenly aware that beyond Land’s End there is no guarantee of balmy summer conditions and very few places to hide. To compete in the Fastnet is to test yourself, and your yacht.

Article continues below…

Fastnet 2019: The entries that prove this is more than just a yacht race

Among the 300-plus boats in next month’s record-sized Rolex Fastnet Race fleet, many of the 3,000 crew members are competing…

Fastnet Race 1979: Restored survivor Assent heads back to the Rock

It’s a gloomy, grey afternoon on the Solent and I’m in a camera boat taking pictures of a yacht sailing…

Pinch yourself

Fastnet 2019 was a heady experience for Pip Hare, sailing her IMOCA 60 Pip Hare Ocean Racing, who not only lined up against her heroes but had the surreal experience of leading them on the water. Hare was competing in the 20-boat double-handed IMOCA 60 fleet with race co-skipper Paul Larsen.

The Rolex Fastnet Race is a qualifier for next year’s Vendée Globe and was a key test event for many of the most innovative and highly funded IMOCA teams in the world: Jérémie Beyou with the new VPLP-designed foiling Charal; Samantha Davies on Initiatives Couer with its enormous latest generation foils; Vendée Globe winner Armel le Cleac’h on Banque Populaire.

Against them Hare was sailing the oldest boat in the fleet; her 2000 non-foiling design, light years behind in development terms. With a transition zone of light winds forecast for the first night at sea, many of the bigger boats, including the bulk of the IMOCA fleet, headed out into the Channel in the hope of picking up new south-westerly pressure.

Pip Hare enjoyed a class and overall race lead on her 19-year-old IMOCA in the early stages of the race. Photo: Carlo Borlenghi

Not so Pip and Paul, who went for a more coastal route to pick up a light northerly breeze while the rest faded to a near-standstill. Their decision was rewarded with an overall class lead for the first day of racing – not only on the theoretical tracker line, but also sailing past the Lizard first on the water before the faster foiling designs overhauled them.

“We were leading Class IMOCA until four miles off the Scillies, we were ahead of all those guys and it was just absolutely incredible,” said an elated Hare after the race. “At one stage we were winning on line honours.”

“My computer had crashed, and we were just laughing at the fact that I have an old boat, an inherited sail wardrobe, I was navigating on my phone, we’re on a scratch budget, and we still led the fleet.” Inevitably, the latest generation foilers pulled away on the long leg out to the Rock, with Beyou’s Charal taking the class win into Plymouth.

Million euro match race

Meanwhile, as the IMOCA fleet powered their way towards Ireland, the Ultimes were on their final approach to the finish in Plymouth. Ahead of the race there had been speculation that the mighty foiling Ultimes – Macif, Sodebo and Maxi Edmond de Rothschild – could decimate the course record. But the initial forecasts looked distinctly unpromising – with light winds at the start, and stronger following breezes only forecast for the slowest classes.

In the event the transition zone was smaller, and the new south-westerlies and westerlies much stronger, than many had predicted, making for a faster race for the big boats – and a tougher one for the smaller yachts.

Even the Ultime teams’ own weather routers, the very best in the business, didn’t expect the record to fall. “We knew it would be quick, but we didn’t think we would break the record because the transition at the south of England was very slow,” recalls Charles Caudrelier, co-skipper of Maxi Edmond de Rothschild.

The Ultime Maxi Edmond de Rothschild set a new course record of just over 28 hours. Photo: Carlo Borlenghi

Caudrelier and Cammas made a strong start in their debut race together, leading away from Cowes before the shifting sands of Shingles Bank demonstrated that even with two Volvo Ocean Race-winning skippers on board the Solent can be a tricky place to sail.

“We had a big crash,” admits Caudrelier. “The Shingle Bank was very far away from the chart position – more than 200m, so it was a big surprise. We were sitting at 20 knots, and the boat stopped at zero – not in one second, but we climbed a bit of a hill! We had to hoist the daggerboard to get off the sandbank.”

The impact damaged the T-foil tip of the daggerboard, but they were able to continue racing, chasing François Gabart (with last minute co-skipper Jimmy Spithill) on Macif by a couple of miles, and covering Macif’s line.

Sodebo was one of three latest generation Ultimes racing in this year’s Fastnet. Photo: Kurt Arrigo / Rolex

“It was a 24 hour match race,” explains Caudrelier, “It’s the first time there has been such a tight race in the Ultimes, and our speeds were very close. We spent a lot of time 1-2 miles apart and sometimes less than 100m, so it was a really fantastic fight for the first time.”

Caudrelier estimates that Maxi Edmond de Rothschild was sailing between 1-5% slower on its damaged board, but they managed to stay with Macif to the very end, before snatching victory on the final gybe layline the finish.

Maxi Edmond de Rothschild pipped Macif by just 58 seconds on the line, both Ultimes also smashing the Fastnet race record. Caudrelier and Cammas took Multihull line honours in 1d 4h 2m 26s, beating Loïck Peyron and the crew of Banque Populaire’s 2011 time by 4h 45m.

Power reaching

Monohull line honours went to George David’s Rambler 88, the American team setting a new record to the Rock in the power reach conditions. They were also first home to Plymouth, crossing the line after 1d 19h of racing, just outside the race record, but half an hour ahead of the biggest boat in the fleet, the 100ft Scallywag.

For George David, Fastnet 2019 was his fifth race to the Rock. It is now eight years since he, his wife and crew were rescued from the Celtic Sea after his previous yacht, Rambler 100, lost its keel and capsized at the Fastnet Rock, but that moment still has a strong hold on David. On the pontoon in Plymouth, he was emotional in recalling how this year’s rounding was in strikingly similar conditions.

“This was a little bit sentimental for me to come back and go through that same experience, same time of day. Blowing 25-30. Big, lumpy sea. The conditions were almost dead-on the same.”

Rambler 88 batters her way to monohull line honours. Photo: Carlo Borlenghi

Hot on Rambler’s tail was Wizard. The former Groupama 4 VO70, which Cammas sailed to victory in the 2012 Volvo Ocean Race, powered into Plymouth just two hours later to sit at the top of the IRC overall leaderboard, a position it never relinquished.

There were no secrets to Wizard’s win. Baltimore brothers David and Peter Askew took the Fastnet Challenge Cup on their first attempt by having the right boats for the conditions – the VO70s were built for windy reaching conditions and severe sea states – and by building an experienced team who could push the boat hard for every one of those 605 miles.

The boat is skippered by Charlie Enright, along with fellow Volvo sailors Mark Towill and Rob Greenhalgh, with Will Oxley navigating. Slick decision-making meant there were no errors or hesitations.

Wizard powers away from the Fastnet Rock on her way to the overall IRC race win. Photo: Kurt Arrigo / Rolex

While Scallywag skipper David Witt reported that they made a mistake with their sail choice at the Rock, blowing out a key headsail, Mark Towill says that was an equally key moment in Wizard’s victory.

“It was quite a busy point in the race because the frontal passage happened right as we were getting to the Rock, so we had lots of changes in pressure, and we weren’t sure if we were going to be rounding in 28 knots or 10. But the guys did a pretty good job of being ready for everything and it all worked pretty smoothly,” he explained.

What was full-power sailing in a Volvo 70 inevitably became firehose conditions in some of the lighter designs. Among the leaders in IRC 1 was Ino XXX, an HH42 that normally races in the Fast 40+ inshore circuit.

Richard Matthews was competing in his 23rd Fastnet on the Ker 51 Oystercatcher XXXIII. Photo: Kurt Arrigo / Rolex

“It was very, very, very wet,” crew member Ben Cooper reported. “There was a lot of bailing and bilge pumping, but we had enough pumps and arms and buckets so it wasn’t a problem at all. We didn’t hold back, that’s for sure.

“Going across the Irish Sea was quite straightforward, then we had about six hours of upwind before a very, very fast reach home. It was very entertaining – like being on a bucking bronco, you couldn’t cook, you couldn’t eat, sleep was quite hard.”

One of the most punishing rides was on the diminutive blue Seacart 30 trimaran Buzz. “It’s an extreme boat,” owner Ross Hobson describes. “It’s physically and mentally abusive, because you’re sitting there getting beaten up, we’re all sore from getting hit by waves.

The Fastnet was a first serious test for many of the newest and most high-tech foil-assisted IMOCA 60s ahead of next year’s Vendée Globe. Kurt Arrigo / Rolex

“You’re depowering all the time – we were on four reefs and a reef in the jib. We played it a bit safe, because it was more important to get round safely. We knew that the organisers were taking a wee bit of a risk letting us out there.”

Buzz was taking so much water over the trampoline that the crew helmed in full survival suits and in Plymouth discovered two fish tucked next to the port beam.

For some of the smaller boats, the prospect of beating up to the Rock in a punishing sea state was one thing, but a developing forecast of 45-knot winds predicted to sweep the fleet by Thursday were quite another, and several dove for shelter in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.

Family adventure

Others pushed on towards Ireland, all the while forming a get-out plan of bailing into Baltimore or Kinsale if conditions worsened. Among these was Assent. Assent is the famous cyan Contessa 32 which was the last boat to finish in the 1979 Fastnet, and went on to be sailed from the high north to Antarctica by solo adventurer Willy Ker.

For this year’s race Assent was sailed by Simon and Kit Rogers, sons of Contessa designer Jeremy Rogers, and their respective eldest children, students Hattie and Jonah. The slowest rated boat in the entire Fastnet fleet, their race was always going to be a grand adventure, and it more than lived up to the promise, says Simon Rogers.

After a brief anchor in Lyme Bay on the outbound leg, the Contessa 32 – which has a waterline length of just 24ft – had a very, very long beat to the Rock. “Going up to the Rock was frankly bloody hard work. It was 300 miles basically on the nose, and it just went on… and on…” Rogers recalls.

The Rogers family aboard their Contessa 32 Assent

With 25-30 knot winds by the second night the Assent crew were getting what Simon describes as ‘a proper beating’, with pitch darkness and a lot of rain. But, with severe winds forecast to sweep the south-west by Thursday there was no let up – the crew were racing the clock.

All on board are highly competitive (Hattie is a 29er squad sailor) and pushed the diminutive vintage yacht hard. “We were thrashing the pants off her!” admits Simon. “All the way to Ireland you just couldn’t take your foot off the gas – we were working the jib and two reefs at one stage.”

Their efforts paid off, and as they reached the Rock the forecast conditions had been pushed back 18 hours, so the team decided to continue racing and turned for home. “As soon as we saw the Emerald Isle, the spirits lifted and the dolphins arrived,” Rogers recalls.

But still their race was not straightforward. Becalmed off the west coast of the Scillies, they were forced to anchor in 308ft of water for 11 hours. “We were just clinging onto the planet so we didn’t’ reverse back through the TSS. It was absolutely flat calm, but we had the benefit of seeing dolphins hunting at night and phosphorescence streams all around, it was breathtakingly wonderful to watch.”

The Greig City Academy completed their second Rolex Fastnet Race on the school Frers 45 Scaramouche in IRC 3. Photo: Paul Wyeth

Having hauled in the longest anchor line imaginable the Assent team resumed racing in a building breeze, but by their final approach to Plymouth the forecast storms had begun lashing the south west of England. “It was horizontal rain, blowing 30 and gusting 35, and just as we were coming into Plymouth the lightning storm started,” recalls Simon.

“I just thought surely we’d done enough? It was a dead run in 3m breaking waves, the waves were going straight over the top of the outer pier, and we were struggling to steer. So we dropped the main and centred it.”

Assent finally finished under just one third of her furled headsail – the family crew wet, very tired, more than a little overwhelmed by the support their story drew, and justly proud of their accomplishment. “It was a bit like going back to the grass roots of what RORC racing was all about,” Rogers explains.

Willy Ker, Assent‘s indomitable former owner, died just before the Fastnet and his funeral was held on the last day of Assent‘s race. But the 2019 Fastnet proves that the spirit of amateur offshore racing lives on.

The JPK 1030 Leon won IRC3. Photo: Carlo Borlenghi

Design race

Just two design houses dominated the awards ceremonies at Fastnet 2019. Juan Kouyoumdjian designed the monohull line honours winner Rambler 88 and originally drew the VO70 that is now Wizard, with the Groupama team. Wizard won IRC Zero and overall. Juan K-designed foils had also been recently fitted to the 2010 IMOCA PRB, which took an impressive 2nd in class.

Meanwhile the smaller IRC fleets were a near total command for designer Jacques Vader and builder Jean Pierre Kelbert, who together create the JPK line of yachts. In IRC 1 Jacques Pelletier took 1st in his Milon 41 L’Ange de Milon, which he describes as a ‘prototype’ of the JPK 1010, also designed by Vader. In IRC 2 Géry Trentesaux’s JPK 1180 Courrier Recommandé took 1st place, with three of the top four boats also being 1180s.

In IRC 3 their domination was even more complete. Kelbert was sailing with Alexis Loison double-handed, the pair winning class in the JPK 10.30 Léon, with six of the top seven boats being JPK 1030s or 1080s.

First published in the November 2019 edition of Yachting World.

The post Fastnet 2019: The inside story of an unforgettable race to the rock appeared first on Yachting World.

The Brest Atlantiques Race, a new double-handed race for the Ultime giant trimarans, started from the Breton port of Brest this morning on a 14,000-mile around Atlantic loop

The four Ultimes set off in a 30-knot north-westerly wind and heavy sea with 4.5 metres waves, and were rapidly reaching boat speeds of 30 knots plus. The start had been originally scheduled for Sunday, but was postponed due to 40-50 knot winds and 8m waves in Biscay.

Macif, skippered by François Gabart with Gwénolé Gahinet, was the first across the line, closely followed by Maxi Edmond de Rothschild (Franck Cammas and Charles Caudrelier) the Sodebo Ultim 3 (Thomas Coville and Jean-Luc Nélias) and Actual Leader (Yves Le Blevec and Alex Pella).

The descent into the Bay of Biscay has been fast so far, with the fleet some 90 miles off the start after just three hours of racing. They are expected to cross Cape Finisterre, at the north-western tip of Spain, after about ten hours.

The Brest Atlantiques Race is a new concept: a double-handed race on a non-stop circular loop around the Atlantic. After leaving the west coast of Brittany the four Ultimes will sail a transatlantic course to Brazil. The current routing has the fleet crossing the equator in four to five days.

The first 5,000-mile section takes the fleet to the Brazilian coast where they round the Cagarras Islands in the bay of Rio de Janeiro to port. Then they head on a 3,250-mile leg from Rio de Janeiro to Cape Town, dipping into the South Atlantic. Ice migrating north at Gough Island means the race organisation has added an ice limit.

Race director Jacques Carraes explained, “I’ve put them a limit that west of Gough Island they can go under 40 degrees, and after leaving Gough Island to starboard they can go to 43 degrees south, but no more.”

At Cape Town the fleet will round Robben Island, before returning north on a relatively less travelled route, the 7,000 miles return from South Africa to Brest.

Article continues below…

Fastnet record falls to Maxi Edmond de Rothschild as Ultimes finish 1 minute apart

Before the start of this year’s Rolex Fastnet Race it was far from clear that the race record for the…

Trying to break the 40-day barrier: Thomas Coville and the most radical Ultime yet

This week solo yachtsman Thomas Coville opened the doors to the build of his Sodebo Ultim 3, the newest Ultime…

Tactically the route is challenging, particularly rounding the St Helena high. However, for this race the skippers are able to utilise unlimited weather routing, just as for a record attempt. Combined with the fact that the boats are being sailed double-handed, this is likely to keep these phenomenally fast boats sailing at a very high percentage of their potential performance.

The other innovation for this race is that each boat will be sailing with an Onboard Reporter, who will be sending back videos to give a hitherto unseen view of life on the Ultimes, which regularly travel at over 40 knots.

Before the start François Gabart (Macif) commented: “We’re going to have to be careful in the Bay of Biscay with some tough conditions, but it’s good to reach the trade winds quickly. We have to find the right pace from the start for the boat and for us.

“During the first few hours, we will always have one of us listening and not far from the helm to try to go fast without forcing the boat.”

Thomas Coville (Sodebo Ultim 3) said: “The first day in the Bay of Biscay will be very busy, you have to be very concentrated straight away; there can be no mistakes, it will take a lot of energy from the start.

“I can see what is at stake in these first few hours of racing, it’s not insignificant, but I don’t have any particular worries. We have to pass this Bay of Biscay fairly quickly, after that it’s going to be an absolutely fabulous ride to Brazil.”

Franck Cammas (Maxi Edmond de Rothschild) added: “The start will be windy and tonight it will calm down, so we’ll go fast tonight! Until then, we’ll try to be careful, to get out unharmed past Cape Finisterre, there’s no point in attacking from the start, we’re only at the beginning of the race. We can do more tomorrow morning.”

Yves Le Blevec (Actual Leader) concurred: “The first ten hours will be cautious, it will be necessary to balance the need for speed and competition with that of being safe.”

You can follow the race online, with live tracking at: brestatlantiques.com

We’ll have a full report from Brest with insights into this new event and the incredible Ultimes in the January 2020 issue of Yachting World.

The post Four Ultimes fly into Biscay in new 14,000-mile Brest Atlantiques race appeared first on Yachting World.

Weather modelling is an ever-evolving process, and the Volvo Ocean Race teams spent a year battling to understand which model is the most accurate in any given geographical region and synoptic weather situation, explains shore-side navigator Anderson Reggio

Vestas 11th Hour Racing is unique in that our sponsor Vestas shared the race team’s obsession with understanding how wind flows around various topographies, and we’ve therefore been fortunate enough to tap into their computing power around the world.

Every team in the race is provided with access to the major global models (GFS, ECMWF, Arpege) as well as high-resolution models in certain areas of the world (HIRLAM and AROME HD in Europe, HRRR in the US, etc.) With all teams having access to the same ‘bucket’ of information, it’s up to the teams themselves to decide which model they will download, with the analysis of that model being done entirely on board in real time.

Any added resources that can be provided to give situational context to the sailors before they set off, could aid them in decision-making on a given leg. But as the onshore navigation and meteo support team for Vestas 11th Hour Racing, we also gained access to high-resolution weather files from Vestas based on historical weather data and a custom Vestas topographical algorithm.

The same area of Newport showing the level of forecasting detail possible using a Vestas 333m grid output

Our chosen spatial scale could then be applied to strategically chosen locations throughout the race. These weather files were part of our pre-leg research presented to the sailing team as another aid to understanding how the wind will shift in pressure and direction if a given weather scenario takes shape.

Additionally, Vestas provided us with real time forecasts during leg starts at a spatial resolution unmatched by most major weather models. Ultra-high-resolution forecasting models were run on Vestas’s super-computer ‘Mindstorm’, which is usually used to run power forecasts, icing forecasts, and extreme weather event predictions for the Vestas turbines and wind parks all over the globe. Running forecasts at these higher resolutions requires significant resources in the form of CPU hours.

Global models such as the GFS and ECMWF are limited by the computing power necessary to churn out a full global output with tradeoffs between time, projection and resolution. The longer a weather model projects forward in time, the wider the scale necessary to achieve an output in a timely manner.

Pinpoint weather

For our leg starts we were only worried about a very small geographic region and for a relatively short duration, so we could scale the resolution of our modelling to an exceptionally high 300m grid and nest that inside broader spatial resolutions of 1km, 3km, and 9km, with each broader geographic scale extending further and further forward in time.

This enabled us to see potential variations in wind speed and direction that may otherwise be missed by the major models at our disposal. The more information you have, the more confidence you can have in the plan when the team leaves the dock.

Any time a new weather model is produced its accuracy is studied intently, and initially there was a healthy dose of scepticism across the team as to whether their custom models were going to be beneficial. That scepticism was quickly erased when the model helped to pick up a key shift in the Mediterranean, which helped us win the first leg of the 2017 Volvo Ocean Race from Alicante to Lisbon.

Article continues below…

Expert tips on understanding shipping forecasts and weather broadcasts

When ashore we get our forecasts from a variety of sources, nowadays largely through the internet. However, unless we have…

Offshore weather planning: the options for receiving weather data at sea

When I skippered a yacht in the first Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) 30 years ago the weather planning information…

When passing Cabo de Gata we’d been tipped by Vestas modelling that there was potential for a left-hand shift to be gained by being the most inshore boat, and that the land breeze running down slope at night would increase in pressure. There were low risks associated with putting our toe into the bay to see if the shift was present – and sure enough it was, enabling us to sneak around the competition and build a lead that we held to Lisbon.

Ultimately, as the race has progressed, we have worked together to refine the meteorological variables that we want to see within the GRIB files. By the final leg the process was as simple as providing a lat/long grid, and we receive back a link to the next geographic region in which we are interested.

The partnership has had great benefits to both sides. We’ve received information unavailable to our competitors with proven value in points on the scoreboard. Vestas has gained a perspective that it would not normally see in how weather files can be utilised by racing sailors. They’ve received real time feedback from the race team, which in turn helps refine their modelling of coastal environments. It has been a partnership unlike any other in the history of the Volvo Ocean Race.

About the author

Anderson Reggio is shore-side navigator and performance analyst for the Volvo Ocean Race team Vestas 11th Hour Racing, and was previously a winning navigator for maxis, superyachts and TP52s. He is also a highly sought-after race officer.

First published in the August 2018 edition of Yachting World.

The post Volvo Ocean Race: How Vestas used supercomputer forecasting to gain an advantage appeared first on Yachting World.

This year marked the 40th anniversary of a race never to be forgotten. Elaine Bunting looks back at crews’ experiences of the 1979 Fastnet Race

Back in 1979, Ted Turner’s Tenacious took line honours in the Fastnet Race, finishing in 3 days 8 hours. Over the last 30 years the average speed across the 605-mile Fastnet course has increased phenomenally: at the elite end, the fastest Ultime trimarans complete the course in just a third of Tenacious’s time. Yet for the smallest yachts in the race, the race can still take five full days.

Yacht design has changed enormously in 30 years, but even more so communications, navigation and access to weather information. So it begs the question of whether a tragedy on such a wide scale could ever happen again?

Navigating in 1979 was a world away from today. Since today there is never a doubt as to our position, the role of the navigator is more one of tactician and strategist. Back then, nav aids such as Loran and Decca were specifically banned and sat nav, then in its infancy, was also prohibited. The tools for the navigator were a sextant, a radio direction finder (RDF), compass and experience of dead reckoning navigational skills.

Royal Navy helicopter comes to the aid of Camargue. Eight crew were rescued at 1033 on 14 August 1979. Photo: Getty Images

Communications were poor. VHF or MF radio was not mandatory. The larger yachts mostly carried VHF but only an estimated 25% of the smaller yachts did. Radio sets were heavy, cumbersome and expensive, and also power-hungry on yachts with small capacity batteries.

Professional navigator and columnist Mike Broughton was just 17 when he took part in the 1979 Fastnet, the youngest competitor in the race, along with Yachting World’s former technical editor Matthew Sheahan. Broughton was racing Hullaballoo, a 3/4 Tonner.

“It was all about the shipping forecast in those days. The news came from the radio. There was gossip that a storm was on the way and we knew the Prime Minister [Edward Heath in Morning Cloud] had retired,” he explains.

Article continues below…

Fastnet Race 1979: Restored survivor Assent heads back to the Rock

It’s a gloomy, grey afternoon on the Solent and I’m in a camera boat taking pictures of a yacht sailing…

Fastnet Race 1979: Life and death decision – Matthew Sheahan’s story

At 0830 Tuesday 14 August 1979, aged 17, five minutes changed my life. Five minutes that, despite the stress of…

“The navigation was quite primitive. We did have RDF, but on the Irish coast it was a reciprocal and if you had a 5-10° error, with no cross-cut you never knew [exactly] where you were. We didn’t even have VHF. We had a French search tug signalling Kilo, ‘I wish to communicate with you’, in Morse code.”

Now yachts not only have EPIRBs, but AIS, often radar, and access to weather through multiple means, not least long periods of 4G mobile phone coverage. Crews carry PLBs and AIS personal locators. YB trackers allow teams to see each other’s positions, tracks and speeds.

Safety gear is checked and of a regulated standard; 40 years ago, only a very few tether lines met any agreed standard, and liferafts without drogues were apt to blow rapidly downwind, or even (as happened) to disintegrate.

A yacht 150 miles north-west of St Ives under jury rig. Photo: PA Archive

Clothing was poor by modern standards, and leaked as a matter of course. Hypothermia was a real risk. Attitudes to safety gear were also very different; lifejackets and harnesses were not routinely worn. Crews were much less drilled and there were no mandatory qualifications.

While one could argue that, as a society, we may be more risk averse than we were 40 years ago, we are also better informed. Access to better forecasts allows skippers to decide earlier whether or not to press on. The number of retirements seen in any Fastnet Race is to its credit, and not a negative. If a storm of similar ferocity were to affect the race again, it is almost certain many would seek shelter rather than press on.

But could a storm ever cause another Fastnet disaster? Very possibly. The sea state that brewed so violently 30 years ago would probably still see boats rolled and damaged. Even short-term forecasts can be sufficiently inaccurate to lead to unforeseen conditions, duration of peak winds or sea state, just as we saw during the race this year in August.

A well equipped 1979 yacht, with Sailor VHF radio and RDF

“Boats are better now, organised better, the weather forecasts better,” says Mike Broughton. “But as yachtsmen we are easily belittled by 40-45 knots of wind. And boats get more radical. When you hear of inshore yachts doing it that are thin and lightly built, and so wet that guys didn’t go below, you wonder if it is the same trend as in 1979. But the training and the gear is just so much better.”

The 1979 Fastnet storm

The first indication of a storm to come was at 1505 on Monday 13 August, when the BBC Shipping Forecast broadcast the following warning: ‘Sole, Fastnet, Shannon. South-westerly gale Force 8 imminent.’ By the next broadcast at 1905 that had been upgraded to: ‘Force 8 increasing severe gale Force 9 imminent.’

It was while hand-drawing the 2200 chart around a low pressure of 978mb that forecasters realised the isobars were tightening up to such a degree that it was inevitable a Force 10 would occur in the Fastnet sea area. But the length of the shipping forecast storm warning was not enough to allow the majority of competitors to run for shelter.

Satellite picture of the storm as it was developing on 1532UTC 13 August 1979

The strongest winds were in a corridor to the south of Ireland, which lay across the race fleet, bringing winds of 60 knots plus. The growth of the sea state was initially puzzling, as it increased ahead of the wind.

Some competitors later reported 6-7m seas and, later, huge, confused cross seas. Although estimating wave heights is very difficult from a yacht, claims of huge waves were substantiated by a report from a Nimrod pilot on 14 August of wave heights of ‘50-60ft’.

Satellite pictures showed a well-defined, active cold front, and this was followed by a trough, shown on the later charts. Most importantly, the change of wind direction behind the trough was in the region of 90°.

The strongest winds arrived as the pressure rapidly rose after the trough. Gusts contained within the leading edge of squalls could have been half as much again as the average wind speed (or perhaps more than that), making reported gusts of 80 knots realistic.

This change in the wind direction was the one overriding factor that generated problems for the boats. In other circumstances, yachts might have run under bare poles or towed warps, but on this occasion crews had no chance and yachts were knocked down repeatedly.

Storms of this intensity, or greater, are not unknown in this area, though they are rare in summer. In October 2017, a record wave height for Irish waters of 26m was recorded at the Kinsale gas platform off the Cork coast. Some of the highest waves in 1979 were also recorded by the Marathon platform in the same gas field.

First published in the October 2019 edition of Yachting World.

The post Fastnet 79: Could sailing’s biggest disaster ever happen again? appeared first on Yachting World.

Stuck for Christmas gift ideas for the sailor who has it all? Yachting World is here to help with 41 great ideas

Are you wondering what to get the sailor in your life for Christmas? Here is our pick of 41 top products that are perfect Christmas gift ideas for sailors:

1. Garmin inReach

Christmas gift ideas: Garmin inReach

This is a clever portable device that provides an affordable way to keep friends and family in touch with your whereabouts when offshore. It allows you to send and receive SMS text messages to any mobile phone, email address or other inReach device, anywhere in the world, via the Iridium satellite constellation.

In Reach works like a Sat phone and provides live online tracking and email and can also be sinked with your phone and operated through an app.

inReach SE+ £399.99. explore.garmin.com

2. Henri Lloyd neoprene gloves 

Christmas gift ideas: Henri Lloyd Cobra Winter Glove

Sailing with cold hands sucks. We tested a selection of winter gloves and these came out top. The full-fingered gloves have neoprene thermal insulation, which means that even when they (inevitably) get wet, they keep your hands warm.

The grippy surface on the palms proved particularly good when handling intricate jobs and overall we were really impressed with this glove. Tough, flexible and easy to get on and off even when wet.

£30-35. henrilloyd.com

3. Yachting World subscription

Christmas gift ideas: A Yachting World subscription

A hardcopy of the world’s favourite sailing magazine every month from £18.49 a year – or an ipad/iphone digital issues for £15.49…

Now THAT’S Christmas!

See the latest Yachting World subscription offers

4. Musto Corsica BR1 Jacket

Sailor gift ideas: Musto Corsica ladies jacket

Warm, waterproof, and ideal for both winter sailing or walking the high street, the Corsica jacket is lined with heat-retentive Arctec fleece that keeps much of its insulating power even when wet.

£160. musto.com

5. Gill Tarp Barrel Bag

Christmas gift ideas: Gill Tarp Barrel Bag

All sailors need a decent kit bag. This 60L no-nonsense barrel bag is made from durable waterproof tarpaulin and features a two-way zip and padded shoulder strap.

£60. gillmarine.com

6. Jerrycan backpack

Christmas gift ideas: Dacoblue portable jerry can

Dacoblue founder Conny Dahlin became all too aware of the difficulties of transporting fuel and water during a five-year circumnavigation on his Oceanis 411. His solution? These sturdy, UV-resistant 20lt bladder that can be carried with a shoulder strap or full backpack style harness.

The bags can be lashed for stowage on deck when necessary using stainless steel eyelets around their edges. Once empty the bladder can be folded away and stowed in a locker, eliminating the need to have the deck festooned with empty cans. Different colours and labels are available for fuel and potable water.

From $176. dacoblue.com

7. Wing-Surfer 

For the person who has or wants every toy, this is the latest compact watersports trend. The inflatable handheld wing offers a cross between windsurfing and kitesurfing rigs, but with no strings or rigging needed. It allows a very simple, pure method for a board rider to harness the wind, be it on a foiling kiteboard or a SUP – just blow it up, grab the handles and go.

From $799. naishkites.com

8. Papa’s Pilar Rum

Christmas gift ideas: Pilar rum

Because every sailor enjoys a drop of rum, right?! Inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s adventures between Florida and Cuba on his boat, Pilar, this rum brand was created in collaboration with Hemingway’s estate, and the family remains involved and donates a majority of its proceeds to charity.

The blonde rum version costs $19.99. Dark rum $28.29 papaspilar.com

9. Waterproof iPhone housing

Christmas gift ideas:Proshotcase waterproof phone housing

GoPros and similar action cameras are great devices, but they are both expensive (some more than £500) and need charging. Recent smartphones have a camera that is just as good as a high-end action camera. This neat case turns an iPhone into a fully waterproof action camera.

It’s waterproof to 50ft or 130ft, depending on model, and is compatible with all GoPro mounting accessories. Full control of the phone’s camera is achieved via the volume buttons.

From US$119.99 proshotcase.com

10. Carboteck bracket and bezel

Christmas gift ideas: Carboteck bracket

An upgrade for the dinghy sailing enthusiast in your life. This forged light and impact resistant carbon bezel is designed for use with a Velocitek Prism or a Raymarine Tacktick Micro Compass. The forged carbon is created by mixing paste fibres with resin, then squeezing the material into the desired shape.

Prices: Bezel £49.99; Compass bracket £89.99. carboteck.com

The post 41 great Christmas gift ideas for sailors – our pick of the very best kit appeared first on Yachting World.

Meteorologist Chris Tibbs explains how Southern hemisphere cyclone systems develop and what sailors need to know about them

Although New Zealand is not in the tropical cyclone (hurricane) belt, the remains of Tropical Cyclone Gita hit the west coast of both the north and south islands in late February 2018, bringing high winds and storm surge.

As a Category 4 cyclone Gita had already devastated Tonga as the worst storm since modern records began, flattening the 100-year-old Parliament building, among many others. It then continued across the Pacific, missing the more populated islands before curving south then east towards New Zealand.

This does sometimes happen – after we had lost our rig on Concert in the 1996/97 BT Global Challenge we made our way to the Chatham Islands, arriving at the same time as the remains of a tropical storm. With 60 knots through the harbour it was not quite the port of refuge we had hoped for!

Head for Auckland

With Auckland at 37°S, New Zealand is south of the hurricane belt making it an ideal cruising destination in its own right, and also a place to sit out the cyclone season during the southern hemisphere summer. Therefore a significant number of yachts head to New Zealand at the end of the tropical Pacific sailing season, returning at the start of the next one.

This can be a tough passage as at the end of the South Pacific winter depressions frequently still rattle through the Southern Ocean, sending cold fronts across New Zealand and pushing further north. The tropical cyclone season officially starts at the beginning of November (finishing at the end of April) and insurance companies require yachts to be well south by then, or cover will be reduced.

Article continues below…

Agulhas Current explained: What it is and how it affects Indian Ocean sailors

On any round-the-world cruise by the sunny route, there is the dilemma of how to cross the Indian Ocean. For…

Jet stream: Everything you need to know about its effect on sailing

What is the jet stream? The jet stream is a ‘river’ of strong wind high in the atmosphere which is…

We therefore sail south before the start of the cyclone season while avoiding the last of the winter gales. Although Auckland is a similar distance south of the equator as the Algarve is north, the cold Southern Ocean is not far away and with large temperature contrasts the weather can change rapidly. It’s around 1,100 miles from Fiji to Auckland and a couple of hundred fewer from New Caledonia, requiring a weather window of a week or more to make the passage.

This makes it quite tricky as there is often a 6-9 day pattern formed of cold fronts, followed by a ridge of high pressure before this is disturbed by the next front. With passage times similar to this cycle, choosing the best departure time to avoid arriving at the same time as an active cold front is important.

The ‘normal’ pattern of high pressure between New Zealand and the tropical Pacific islands means starting the passage in mainly easterly trade winds, but close to New Zealand the predominant wind direction is south-westerly, as it is on the south side of the high pressure.

If all were static it would be a relatively simple passage: let the tradewinds take you to the west of the direct route then the westerlies will bring you east again. However, active cold fronts will come through strongly swinging the wind more to the south.

These are the same cold fronts as the ones bringing ‘southerly busters’ in Australia – just a little further north and generally not quite so aggressive. Starting from New Caledonia, the distance is shorter but you are significantly further east than from Fiji. The passage to New Zealand has a reputation for being a tough one, and timing is everything. Although the pattern may average out at 6-9 days, nothing in the weather is that consistent.

Easier return

The return from New Zealand to the tropical Pacific is generally easier, getting east in the westerlies before tracking north into the trade winds and the tropics. It’s also considered safer as the worst and most changeable weather is likely at the start.

However this is not always the case: as the UK has the Fastnet 79 disaster and Australia the 1998 Sydney Hobart, New Zealand has the Queen’s Birthday storm of June 1994.

A tropical depression quickly formed between Vanuatu and Fiji, and as this low deepened and moved south out of the tropics it entrained cold air, causing the low to rapidly deepen. ‘Explosive cyclogenesis’ is the technical term, although these are sometimes called meteorological bombs when the barometer drops more than 14mb in 24 hours.

In 1994 this generated winds in excess of 50 knots and a swell of 10-15m. This was the height of the season for cruisers heading to the tropical Pacific and whilst 21 people were rescued, three lives and seven boats were lost. It was not a tropical cyclone but still a nasty storm in an area where we expect conditions to be benign.

About the author

Chris Tibbs is a meteorologist and weather router, as well as a professional sailor and navigator, forecasting for Olympic teams and the ARC rally.

First published in the May 2018 edition of Yachting World.

The post Southern hemisphere cyclones: Everything you need to know appeared first on Yachting World.

Viracocha III is unlike any other vessel – this 60ft reed boat was built on a remote Chilean beach for a transpacific voyage. Andy Dare explains all...

Adventurer Phil Buck is no stranger to reed boats, having twice before sailed from Chile to Easter Island non-stop. However, his latest project aims to sail more than twice that distance, bypassing Easter Island, aiming for Mangareva Island in French Polynesia, in a boat that will start sinking as soon as it’s launched.

“Nobody has done it – at least [not since] ancestral rafts. We are using a very different sailing system that nobody has tried in modern times that I know of,” explains Buck.

As the reeds will be continually absorbing water, there will be little time for celebrations in Polynesia, before they head off again, on another 5,000-mile leg to Sydney, making a total voyage of some six months.

One of the individual tortora reeds which, en masse, form the hull

Adventure sailor

A professional adventurer, Buck cycled from one side of America to the other aged just 17. A few years later, he kayaked coast to coast, then spent ten years climbing the highest mountains in the Americas.

When he was 11, Buck read about Thor Heyerdahl, and ever since has dreamt about making his own expedition across the Pacific. Heyerdahl’s Kon Tiki was a balsa raft, but Buck was fascinated by the reed boats of Lake Titicaca and wondered if it would be possible to recreate the voyage on such a boat.

The most renowned reed boat builders in the world today still live and work on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca, specifically the Limanchi family. Heyerdahl had taken the Limanchi family to Morocco to build Ra II for his successful expedition across the Atlantic in 1970.

Article continues below…

Undaunted – the 42-inch yacht still hoping to become the smallest boat ever to cross the Atlantic

Just 24 hours into his first attempt to sail solo across the Atlantic in Undaunted, his 42-inch yacht, Matt Kent…

Expert advice: How to sail across the Pacific Ocean

You can lose a lot of friends when you’re sailing across the Pacific. After the first couple of photos you…

Buck also sought out the Limanchis and they have built all three of his Viracocha boats. “I learnt from my father at seven years old. I built models, then bigger and bigger boats up to 8m,” explains Juan Limanchi, one of the builders from Huatajata, who is now in his 80s.

Buck’s first reed boat took two years to build. Setting off in 2000, he sailed from Arica, in the extreme north of Chile, 2,850 miles westwards to Easter Island, arriving after 44 days – relatively fast for such a boat at an average speed of 2.7 knots.

Based on this success, Buck built another boat with the aim of showing it was possible to sail across the Pacific to Australia. They set off from Via del Mar, some 1,000 miles further south, to make better use of the Humboldt Current.

The two sides of Viracocha III’s hull are bound together and compressed by ropes

They arrived in Easter Island after 76 days – much slower than expected, running low on food, with a severe list to one side and with the boat sitting about 1m lower in the water than at the launch. Buck sensibly decided not to continue.

Now, on his third boat, Buck’s experiences have led to some changes for Viracocha III. A system of longitudinal ropes will keep the boat tensioned in the swells, and it also has taller masts and much more sail area.

He is keeping the whole boat as authentic as possible in its construction, so there is no metal, no plastic, and no nails. The boat is built with simple wooden dowels, together with ropework and knots – lots of knots!

“I have managed to make three blocks or pulleys to install on the very top of our three masts, critical pieces of equipment as we will need to raise and douse sails quickly through the many storms we expect to encounter from South America to Australia,” says Buck.

“I could have installed metal pins and fasteners for added security but that would have compromised my no metal, self-imposed rule. Will they last the whole six-month voyage? Only time will tell.”

Reeds and knots

To make a reed boat, you simply tie more and more reed together until you get the size of boat you want, but it takes a lot of reeds: about 22 tons. Even for ten experienced Aymaran builders, this process has taken five months.

Port holes are unglazed, and instead covered with painted wooden washboards

After being dried in the strong altiplano sun for two to four weeks, the reeds are gathered and tied into ‘amaros’, or large bundles of approximately 500 reeds, about 50cm wide by 2m long. Hundreds of amaros were then joined together into ‘chorizos’ along the 18m length of the boat.

Thirty of these chorizos were then laid along two sides of a platform, each being tied to the next, to form two giant cylinders. In the centre is a smaller inner core, called the ‘corazón’, or heart.

Here Buck has added wooden poles, hoping to stiffen the boat against the Pacific swells. Next, two smaller cylinders of reeds are tied to either side, before the ‘estera’, or skin, is wrapped around the outside of the whole boat.

Reeds are tied together with rope. As the reeds expand in the water, the boat becomes stiffer

The whole boat is joined together and tensioned using very long sisal ropes, each 685m in length. These ropes are spiralled around one of the bundles and the heart, spaced every 30cm over the entire length of the boat. The same is done on the other side.

They’re then tightened using a block and tackle, while being hit with a wooden bat to promote an even compression. The two hulls are not directly tied to each other, but each is tied to the heart under tension, holding the boat together, deep inside its core.

Rigid expansion

On land, reeds dry and shrink over time, yet the fibrous rope stretches as it dries, requiring more tightening. Fortunately, the opposite occurs at sea as the reeds expand with the absorption of water and rope shrinks, further tightening and creating an amazingly rigid boat.

Finally, two further large reed bundles are tied to each side to form the ‘sawi’, similar to gunwales. These widen the boat, and thus the deck, giving the rigging more stability, as well as helping to break the rolling ocean waves.

The rigging is the only thing that looks remotely similar to something seen in a ‘modern’ boat, using traditional wooden blocks to tension the natural fibre ropes.

Along both sides are many ‘guaras’ or leeboards. These can be independently raised, lowered, or even removed completely.

Crew accommodation in the central deckhouse

Stowage is difficult, as there is no interior due to the hulls being solid. The gap between the hulls and the deck has some limited space, but there are three cabin structures built onto the deck.

The smaller forward one is for stowage, the largest central cabin is the main accommodation area, with four double-level and four single bunks. The aft cabin houses the navigation area, galley and additional stowage.

From the aft cabin crew can climb out of a small opening onto a raised deck area, where the helmsman will access the tiller.

In a test-run of the launch, thousands of volunteers assembled on a Chilean beach to haul the boat towards the shore on wooden rollers

Man-powered launch

It was only fitting for Viracocha III to be launched in a traditional way, and in February 2018 Buck arranged for a ‘test run’ to prove it could be done. Using local media to drum up interest, he managed to gather thousands of volunteers.

First the boat was lowered from its platform by hand and, with just the muscle power of about one thousand men, women and children pulling on ropes, the boat was moved along a system of wooden rails and rollers toward the sea. It was rather like a Ben Hur film – but 100 per cent real.

Viracocha III at sea after her March 2019 launch

Specification

LWL: 18.0m (60ft)
LOA: 22.5m (74ft)
Beam: 4.9m (16ft)
Weight(circa): 2,200kg (4,850lb)
Draught at launch: 1.0m (3ft 4in)
Draught after one week in the water: 1.25m (4ft 2in)
Crew: 8-12

First published in the June 2018 edition of Yachting World.

Viracocha III was successfully launched in March 2019 and reached Tahiti four months later. The boat has remained here ever since, having suffered severe hull damage in the Tuamotus. You can follow their adventures on the Viracocha Expidition Facebook page.

The post Viracocha III: The Chilean reed boat built to sail across the Pacific appeared first on Yachting World.

Magnificent scenery, quiet anchorages and sometimes hair-raising pilotage make the coast of British Columbia very special. Suzy Carmody reports

The coastline of south-east Alaska and northern British Columbia is a fractured network of islands, like a broken pane of glass, and the Inside Passage threads in between them.

My husband Neil and I arrived in Sitka, Alaska, from Hawaii at the end of June and spent three months cruising the inshore waterways in our Liberty 458 Distant Drummer.

After a great trip down through south-east Alaska we entered British Columbia (BC) at Prince Rupert. We continued our journey south through the Inside Passage to Queen Charlotte Sound and then sailed down the west coast of Vancouver Island to Victoria.

The voyage was a feast of magnificent scenery and tranquil anchorages, hot springs, historical settlements and salmon. Salmon everywhere.

Neil fishing for cutthroat trout at the log jam at Butedale Lake. Photo: Suzy Carmody

Approaching Prince Rupert from Ketchikan, Alaska, required us to come out from hiding among the islands and cross the Dixon Entrance. This gap between Prince of Wales Island and Haida Gwaii (formerly Queen Charlotte Islands) is exposed to the strong winds and large swells of the north-east Pacific and is known for its rough seas.

After waiting up in Foggy Bay for a couple of days of strong southerlies to pass by, we were lucky enough to cross the entrance on a very pleasant starboard tack in a light westerly wind.

We took a shortcut through Venn Passage, which had to be planned for slack water as the tides rip through the narrow strait. The channel is not very well buoyed but the charts were good so all went well and we arrived safely in Prince Rupert (simply ‘Rupert’ to the locals).

Article continues below…

Cruising around Newfoundland: An unspoiled wilderness full of surprises

Two beluga whales flanked Frances B, our Mason 44, as we threaded out of Ingonish, on northern Cape Breton Island.…

Sailing Nova Scotia: Jagged coastline makes for a unique cruising experience

As soon as the sun began to disperse the fog that had settled at night over Pubnico Harbour we weighed…

We completed our customs and immigration formalities and tied up at the dock at the Prince Rupert Rowing and Yacht Club (PRRYC) in time for sundowners.

Rupert is a very friendly town with most of the facilities we needed – supermarket, laundry, fuel dock and a good selection of pubs and restaurants – all within cycling distance of the PRRYC.

The museum is interesting with great displays of implements and carvings used by the indigenous First Nation people (Inuit; Metis), who have lived in the area for thousands of years. I loved the clothing and headdresses decorated with puffin beaks, bear claws and seal whiskers.

Rupert is the railhead for the so-called Rupert Rocket and we decided to take the train into the mountains to the pretty village of Smithers, to see some of the hinterland.

The railway follows the Skeena River valley deep into the Coast Mountains and stops a number of times to wait for enormous freight trains carrying wheat and coal to the docks at Rupert and bound for Asia to pass. The journey was great fun and we were able to enjoy the superb scenery from a panorama car.

Back on board Distant Drummer and heading south our first destination was the hot springs at Bishop Bay. When we left Prince Rupert a big fat high was sitting in the north-east Pacific with gale warnings for the offshore areas.

However, we were following the inland route down the Grenville Channel, a narrow slit that runs north-south between Pitt Island and the mainland. With a stiff northerly breeze we got the headsail up and zipped along at over 8 knots. Wonderful!

There are a few places to spend the night along the way, at the north end of the channel we stopped at Kumealon Bay and we anchored at Coughlan Anchorage at the southern end. Both were peaceful bays lined with fir trees illuminated by golden evening sunshine.

Bishop Bay lies 40 miles due inland from the Pacific, near a town named Kitimat. The anchorage was amazingly quiet and the water so calm it felt almost stagnant.

Distant Drummer and dilapidated buildings at the dock at Butedale. Photo: Suzy Carmody

A wooden bathhouse has been constructed over the springs and is decorated with memorabilia from various boats that have passed through. As we soaked in the warm water we looked for souvenirs from people we knew and when we left we hung up a coconut from Hawaii to record Distant Drummer’s visit.

Our next stop was Butedale, an easy day passage from Bishop Bay via Ursula Channel and Princess Royal Channel. Butedale was one of the 50 or so canneries dotted along the coast of BC built at the turn of the 20th Century to provide fish processing facilities to the fishing fleet in the area. The cannery operated from 1911-1967 but the buildings are now dilapidated and slipping down into the sea.

The only person living there was Cory Lindsay, the caretaker, who showed us around and explained the uses of the machinery, which is now overgrown with weeds.

Passing the time while Neil fishes at the log jam, Butedale Lake. Photo: Neil Carmody

The roof of the remaining bunkhouse has fallen in but it is possible to enter the old cook house and see the range and the long wooden tables where hundreds of workers ate. It has such a poignant atmosphere. In the power house, which straddles the creek, a pair of water-powered generators have been preserved.

While at Butedale we walked up to the lake in the valley above the settlement to a fishing hole where Cory had told us we could catch cutthroat trout. The end of the lake was jammed with huge logs, about 1-2m in diameter and often more than 30m long, which we had to scramble over to get to the fishing spot at the centre.

We were a bit tentative at first, but we quickly got the hang of balancing and soon were leaping about like lumberjacks. We didn’t catch any fish but had a great time trying.

Fishing in the evening sunlight at Kumealon Bay, Grenville Channel. Photo: Suzy Carmody

It started raining as we left Butedale and did not stop for the four days it took us to thread our way through the slender channels and turbulent narrows to reach Shearwater.

The islands and passageways in BC are even more of a jigsaw than those of Alaska. Despite the weather, we were enchanted by Bottleneck Inlet, a tiny slot on the eastern side of the northern end of Findlayson Channel.

The crevice is less than 100m wide and the tight, sinuous channel is breathtaking. We dropped anchor squeezed in between cliffs and rockfalls – it felt primeval.

Shearwater was established as a seaplane base during World War II and is now a privately owned settlement. We spent a couple of days tied up at the dock while we topped up our provisions and enjoyed a meal and a couple of glasses of wine at the local pub.

The First Nation settlement of Bella Bella is a short sail or boat-taxi ride away. There’s not much too see there except the Band shop, where the groceries are cheaper than in Shearwater, and the little shop by the dock, which sells coffee and gifts.

We spent six days at Pruth Bay on Calvert Island waiting for a good weather window to cross Queen Charlotte Sound. Our plan was to head down the wild west coast of Vancouver Island.

Logs litter the southern beaches at Pruth Bay. Photo: Suzy Carmody

The beaches behind the Hakai Institute (and scientific research organisation) in Pruth Bay are spectacular; broad sweeps of white sand with the swell crashing against rocky offshore islets and splashing and foaming on to the beach.

Finally, a big fat high settled in to the north-east Pacific and brought us a favourable nor’wester for a fantastic reach across the sound.

We passed Triangle Island at sundown, giving Cape Scott a wide berth as it is known for its treacherous currents and rough seas. Throughout the overnight sail to Cape Cook we were in heavy fog.

The boardwalk at Hot Springs Cove is carved with the names of passing vessels. Photo: Suzy Carmody

With a 2-3m swell it was pretty uncomfortable so at dawn we decided to cut in to the coast and anchor in Esperanza Inlet. The route into Nuchatlitz Bay was a tortuous, a narrow conduit between islands, rocks and shoals.

But it was worth it; the anchorage was beautifully peaceful and after a spectacular sunset we had a long, sound sleep.

Although we were bound for Tofino we were looking forward to a long, hot soak at Hot Springs Cove on the west side of Sidney Inlet.

It is about a 2km walk to the springs through magnificent forest, checking out the planks of the boardwalk, which are engraved with the names of yachts that have passed by.

The springs were the most pleasant that we visited down the coast as they were in the natural rock with no pipes or concrete.

We got up early in order to avoid the onslaught of tourists from Tofino and it was glorious to bask in the warm sunshine and soak in the steaming hot water.

Tofina and Clayoquot Sound Photo: All Canada Photos / Alamy

We had very little wind we left for the hop down to Tofino so we motored at a leisurely five knots through the islands and shallow channels at the mouth of the Clayoquot Sound.

One thing we found surprising about the west coast of Vancouver Island (apart from the lack of wind) was the shallow depth of the water. Unlike the steep cliffs and deep waters of the inland passages the coastal shelf here is less than 100m deep and extends 15-20 miles offshore.

Although this makes for easier anchoring, parts of the route into Tofino were barely underwater and in the marina we were touching bottom at low tide!

Swarms of jellyfish invaded Pruth Bay. Photo: Suzy Carmody

Tofino is a tourist town and consequently has several good restaurants. We had a superb meal at a place named Wolf in the Fog.

South of Tofino we stopped at the historic town of Ucluelet, a pretty fishing port lying at the northern entrance to Barkley Sound. It’s a good place to kick off and cruise the islands of the Broken Group, but we decided to continue down through the Strait of Juan de Fuca and on to Victoria.

The strait has a bad reputation for short, rough seas due to an evil combination of a narrow entrance, large ebb tidal flows and strong summer onshore winds. Add fog and a rocky coastline into the mix and it’s party time!

Khutze Inlet in the fog – Distant Drummer anchored on the sand bar. Photo: Suzy Carmody

We covered the 90-mile stretch from Ucluelet to the southern point of Vancouver Island in two days. Fitting favourable tides within daylight hours was becoming harder.

We stopped overnight in the conveniently located San Juan Bay, then reached Beecher Bay at sundown the following day. We managed to find a space between the crab pots to drop the pick and enjoyed an icy beer.

It was an early morning start the next day for the last 15-mile hop up to Victoria. We had thick fog as we navigated through Race Rocks at Vancouver Island’s southern tip.

We tracked our course very carefully on the electronic charts and followed it diligently, while keeping a close eye on the radar. We posted a look-out (me) clutching a pair of aerosol fog horns and which I blew vigorously every two minutes.

It was a hair-raising few miles but we managed to avoid the rocks, fishing boats and container ships and arrived safely in Victoria inner harbour for lunch.

Distant Drummer alongside at the Causeway Marina, Victoria. Photo: Suzy Carmody

The scenery we sailed through and the bays we anchored in revealed the breadth of the beauty and culture of British Columbia. Our voyage left hundreds of serene anchorages yet to visit and we are already planning our return trip.

About the author

Suzy, 53, and Neil Carmody, 62, live on board Distant Drummer, a Liberty 458 cutter-rigged sloop, which they bought in Thailand in 2006. They are currently in the Pacific Northwest and blogging at: carmody-clan.com

First published in the March 2018 edition of Yachting World.

The post Cruising British Columbia: Exploring Canada’s Wild West coast by boat appeared first on Yachting World.

Pro navigator Mike Broughton explains how tidal streams can give racing sailors a lot of free information

Navigators need to have a close knowledge of tidal streams and currents. The latest studies show just how multifarious even mid-ocean currents are. Closer to the coast, matters of fluid dynamics get more complex and it is important to be able to simplify what is happening and use tidal streams to our advantage.

When on the water, knowing what the tidal stream is doing right now is a start and it is easy for people to miss basic clues. Every single time you see a buoy or lobster pot, take in the ‘free info’ it is offering on tidal stream. Even if the tide is slack, it is useful to know.

It takes a little time, but it’s useful to calibrate your eye to be able to look at the tidal stream flowing past a buoy and know the difference between, say, 1.5 knots and 2.5 knots of flow. For racers, every time you go to get your start transits next to the committee boat, remember to look down at the flow of water next to the anchored vessel.

Another way of gauging the tidal stream is to look at the way other boats are moving in comparison to their background. Watching how another yacht is sailing upwind relative to a distant shoreline can give you a vital clue. If she is seemingly crabbing sideways to windward when beating, then we have a windward-going tidal stream.

Prior to departing a mooring or marina it helps to always look down and see what the flow of water is doing. If at anchor look at the way other yachts are lying, remembering that the bigger the vessel the more likely it is lying to the tidal stream (unless you are at slack tide). You can see the direction of tide very clearly in some locations, for example by looking at vessels at anchor in the eastern Solent whilst sailing off Cowes in the central Solent.

Tide plotting software

Navigation software can be a great help, particularly when sailing with no land around. Some programmes allow you to plot a useful graph of tide set and direction. You can also get a read-out on a ‘data bar’, which is best used when the tide or current data is averaged over, for example, the previous five minutes.

Even just comparing boat speed and SOG, and heading and COG gives you a clear indication; though remember the information is only as good as your instruments are calibrated.

Just looking at the waves can reveal the presence of tidal streams. Clues come from the angle of the wavelets or whole waves relative to the wind, or by looking at a wider patch of water, most obvious when it appears as a ‘moving carpet’. Looking at the way bubbles or spume move relative to the wind also helps identify current or tidal stream.

Waves tend to be steeper and sharper with wind against tide and you only need about three knots of current against 25 knots of wind to kick up very nasty waves.

Most of the rogue wave areas are due to wind against current. Some of the worst are the waves off South Africa with a strong westerly wind blowing against the notorious Agulhas Current, which flows like a river from Madagascar around the south of South Africa and into the teeth of Southern ocean winds.

In 2015 an Agulhas array was set up off Port Elizabeth to monitor the effects of this fast moving current, which gets totally redirected eastwards in the Southern ocean while some of its eddies spin off north west into the Atlantic ocean and have recently been shown to eventually combine and modulate with the Gulf Stream.

Strong currents against gale force winds create very steep waves and even help create ‘rogue waves’. Rogue waves have smashed the bridge windows of two cruise ships off Cape Horn in recent years and have been the subject of several studies to try and determine their formation and frequency.

Article continues below…

Agulhas Current explained: What it is and how it affects Indian Ocean sailors

On any round-the-world cruise by the sunny route, there is the dilemma of how to cross the Indian Ocean. For…

What is a rogue wave and is it possible to predict where and when one will strike a yacht?

The first oceanographer to define a wave as ‘freak’ was Laurence Draper, a man who preferred to do his science…

Wind-over-tide waves

In years with a strong east Australian Current flowing south into strong south-westerly winds in the Bass Strait, waves can be very steep indeed on the Sydney Hobart race. Even close inshore, tidal streams can create very nasty waves and should not be underestimated. Off the south coast of England, south-westerly winds of ‘only’ 25 knots in the needles Fairway can kick up dangerous steep waves of over 5m when a spring ebb tide is running.

It is also useful to know where we are likely to encounter weaker currents, such as in shallow water where the seabed causes extra friction to slow the flow. Less obvious are areas that create a current or tidal shadow. One area is illustrated in the above picture of the tidal flow past the Needles.

Here we can see a spring flood tidal stream, showing acceleration past the lighthouse and in between the chalk needles, but slack tide in the lee of the first needle where there is even an eddy running against the strong flood tide.

About the author

Mike Broughton has been a pro navigator for 25 years and currently races on yachts such as the 107ft superyacht WinWin. He also races and cruises on his own Swan 48, Assuage, and carries out race tuition and navigation masterclasses.

The post Tidal streams: How to read the waves to gain a sailing advantage appeared first on Yachting World.

Alex Thomson’s bold new Hugo Boss will change how the solo skipper sails, but will it win the 2020 Vendée Globe? Helen Fretter got on board to find out more

“What’s my speed? What’s the speed? What’s the boatspeed now?!” Alex Thomson hollers into a microphone. Thomson, at the helm of his brand new Hugo Boss, is pumped. As we headed out for today’s photoshoot he said they weren’t going to push the boat too hard. After all, they’re still getting to know her. Instead the aim of the day is mainly to get some drone shots of this futuristic yacht flying high.

But with 18-20 knot westerlies as we thunder out and back from Gosport, it quickly becomes all about the numbers. “32 knots boatspeed in 18 knots of wind with a… a… storm jib up!” Alex gesticulates at the rig, “That’s amazing isn’t it?”

It’s not really a storm jib, it’s a J3 with a single-reefed main, although it’s definitely not all the sail area this machine of a yacht can carry on a moderate inshore day. And we haven’t even opened a valve for the water ballast. But Thomson’s enthusiasm is infectious, and the boat truly is amazing.

Yachting World deputy editor Helen Fretter at the helm of Hugo Boss

At one point Thomson is so buzzed he does a little happy dance, then wiggles the tiller mischievously from side to side. He’s clearly having a whole lot of fun.

He’s not the only one. The sensation of speed is astonishing – a foiling IMOCA does not scoot forwards like a dinghy being hit by a big puff of wind, nor does it have the thundering momentum of a Maxi powering up, or even the screaming white-knuckle ride of a foiling catamaran. Instead it is like a jet plane taking off, or a turbo kicking in – a relentless acceleration that makes you involuntarily hold your breath. It feels as if it will simply get faster and faster forever.

It doesn’t, of course. The IMOCA 60s don’t have T-foil rudders for constant flight, so some of that fighter jet surge of speed levels out, until you are simply hammering along at 30-plus knots.

“The hot pink coachroof rises in a curve like a classic Buick”

It is tricky to judge how high you are flying until the boat crashes down again. On our Solent sail, those plunges back to sea level are not particularly violent, although the next day my legs ache from bracing. It’s impossible to comprehend how bone-shattering and relentless the motion would become in a big Southern sea.

The reason Thomson is shouting into a headset to ask for his windspeed and boatspeed is because he can’t see them. The radical design of his seventh Hugo Boss means there is no outside cockpit. There are no number displays on the mast or anywhere else. Thomson is perched, temporary tiller in hand, on the scooped transom, one foot on a small brace point on deck, the other balanced on some taut lines. Clearly this is not a helming position designed for trans-ocean racing.

In front of him the hot pink coachroof rises in a curve like a beautiful 1940s Buick. But this is the wacky races cartoon car version, because Thomson is standing on the equivalent of the rear bumper to steer, while invisible accomplices control his accelerator and gears inside.

Article continues below…

Charal: On board the radical IMOCA 60 that takes foiling to the next level

In St Malo for the start of the Route du Rhum in early November, every inch of the IMOCA 60…

Alex Thomson profile: Understanding the man behind the suit

Everyone knows Alex Thomson. He’s not only one of the most immediately recognisable IMOCA 60 skippers, but one of the…

Immediately aft of the mast is the cockpit, quite unlike any other I’ve seen on a monohull – a closer comparison is the enclosed cuddy of an Ultime maxi trimaran. If you stand at the mast base you see a bank of winches and clutches in front of you, and above them four screens.

But over your head is a solid coachroof, and at your back a solid bulkhead. And coming through that bulkhead are two tiller extensions. It is a room, and it is in here that Alex will navigate, trim, play the keel and minutely adjust foils – and helm – for 28,000 miles around the globe.

For the drone shoot, two or three crew toil in this engine room, grinding the main on, constantly shifting the keel cant and angle of the enormous curved foils to power us ever higher. Through the closed comms headsets Alex’s questions and instructions come thick and fast “What’s my angle of attack? Keel up. Main on. Let’s go!”

It’s not just about producing spectacular photographs, every time Alex takes out the yacht he calls his ‘crazy science project’ he wants to see what it can do. And the first impressions are very good indeed.

£6 million machine

The ‘science project’ is a £6 million gamble. The latest Hugo Boss is designed to win the 2020 Vendée Globe, that’s it. All of Thomson’s yachts have been built, or optimised, to win the solo round the world race. But this time around the boat has literally one job.

The result of the Transat Jacques Vabre is irrelevant. There is no double-handed Barcelona World Race or multi-stage Velux 5 Oceans on the calendar any more. Any notion of building a boat that could also work for the crewed Ocean Race IMOCA class was dismissed at a very early stage.

After retiring from the 2004 Vendée, and abandoning ship in the 2006 Velux 5 Oceans, and being crashed into by a fishing boat in 2008, there was a time in Alex’s career when he simply needed to get around, to finish a solo round the world race. But with a 3rd (2012) and a 2nd (2016) place under his belt, that time is over. Now he only wants to go one better.

For the 2016 Vendée, his last Hugo Boss was already one of the most foil-reliant IMOCA designs of that generation. Thomson, famously, broke a foil during the race, but managed to push ferociously hard despite it to remain in touch with winner Armel Le Cléac’h and finish 2nd.

This time around all the new IMOCA launches (eight for 2020) have committed further to using foils for lift and stability. But whilst there are big variations among the different designs, Hugo Boss is arguably again the most radical of all.

There are rotating cameras on the mast, stanchions and rudders

There are a few reasons that led them to this point. One was the central cockpit. “This was my idea. I wanted to stop being wet and I wanted to see more of what is going on,” Thomson recalls.

He suggested the concept to his design manager, Pete Hobson. Hobson in turn discussed it with the yacht’s structural engineers and designers, who worked out that it could bring big weight savings.

Class rules define how much structure is required around the keel, Thomson explains. “By moving the cockpit here, the sides of the cockpit become the structure. So it’s free, essentially it’s cost us nothing in terms of weight.”

The hull shape is designed to be low drag for foiling

There are other benefits – by moving the pit to the mast base, it reduces the need for heavy line tunnels and reduces friction. Although it feels restrictive, Alex is adamant that the visibility is, if anything, improved.

The cockpit roof just skims the top of Thomson’s head at 5ft 10ins; for anyone shorter the visibility is obscured, but for Alex it’s a panoramic view. There are portholes looking forwards and to each side as well as directly upwards, and there are rotatable onboard cameras – seven at last count – which can be viewed on the nav station tablet screens.

“Most people assume you’ve got no visibility but actually it’s more than what you had before,” Thomson explains. “The cockpit was at the back of the boat, you could never see past the mainsail or the boom, whereas now you can see everything.

The enclosed cockpit includes the nav area

“What if you want to see the jib? On the old boats you’d have to come out, and then walk up the side of the boat, look, then come back in, do a bit of winding, then go back out and look again. It’s unsafe. It’s a big use of energy. Whereas now you can just look up.”

The team was able to make other gains from the set up – the roof over the forward cockpit is solid, but it doesn’t have to be. The coachroof, further aft, provides all the stability the boat needs to right in the event of a capsize, which also saves keel weight.

By lowering the boom to the coachroof there is an end-plating effect on the mainsail, and it also generates a vast space for solar panels – some 19m², all part of Thomson’s plan to rely on electric power rather than carry diesel.

The new Hugo Boss has an electric motor. Thomson plans to reduce the amount of diesel carried from over 220 litres to just 80.

To make every design decision work on so many multiple levels meant that Thomson’s team had to have a very complete vision of what they wanted to achieve before the design was finalised. Besides working closely with VPLP again, for their newest yacht they also took a huge amount of the development in-house, with Hobson, who Thomson introduced as a ‘genius’ at the boat’s official launch in London, working relentlessly on the design.

Hobson was able to invest near-limitless amounts of time and energy in trying different iterations of each design, looking to find the neatest, lightest solution to every requirement. It was, he admits, a true passion project. The hull shape is by VPLP and, with its low freeboard and reverse sheer, clearly shares some genetics with Jérémie Beyou’s Charal.

“Basically you chop stuff off the bow until structurally it makes no more sense,” explains Hobson. “What you’re doing is taking panel weight out of the corners, and as you take that structure off the boat gets lighter, you give up some form stability at high angles of heel that make your Angle of Vanishing Stabiilty (AVS) worse, which would eventually involve adding weight to the bulb. So what you do is you keep cutting it away until the point where it starts to penalise you in other ways.”

The tiller extension is visible at Alex’s shoulder

A recurring theme in the design and build was an obsessive control of weight. Thomson says Hugo Boss weighs 7.6 tonnes, of which the hull structure itself is just 2 tonnes (the keel accounts for around 4 tonnes, with everything else – mast, engine, winches – another 2).

Some of the cleverest details of the yacht are almost invisible. “That little tube in the cockpit that you can hold onto is actually a tension bar that takes the structural load of the sheets,” explains Hobson. “That saves 4kg on a bulkhead. It’s a step, and Alex’s seat will sit on it. So that little thing that weighs 0.3kg replaces something that weighs 4kg, but then how much else has it saved? Those are the coolest little bits around the boat that nobody knows about.”

Everywhere you look there are custom modifications. The pedestal winch in the cockpit is actually a structure that supports the winch deck. The winches themselves tilt 12% forward, which means the lines at the mast base don’t need to be deflected for the most efficient lead angle.

But the most visible innovation on this IMOCA 60 is the foils. Whereas the other IMOCAs sport foils with angular ‘elbows’, Hugo Boss’s enormous 7m foils are drawn in a near constant curve.

Drawn in a foggy car window

The curved concept was originally doodled by Alex and Hobson in the condensation of a car windscreen. “The minute we sketched it out we knew what we wanted to do. We ran it past VPLP, and they ran it through their first VPP programme and it immediately came out percentages faster than what they were calling the VPLP 2018 foil, which we knew was Charal,” explains Hobson.

The design is a response to the IMOCA rule change, which now allows skippers to adjust the angle of attack of the foiling daggerboards.

“We’re focusing on control,” explains Hobson. “And what I mean by that is this translation in the top bearing allows you to control directly the angle of attack of the foil, so as you push that by 2° you get 2° of angle of attack. If that was a straight shaft with a tip on it, you might change 3° there and sort of change that by 1°. The curve is a trick to get control within class rules.”

Seven moveable cameras can be controlled from inside the cockpit

Again, there is other sorcery going on here. The structural spar inside is constructed in such a way that as it flexes under load it has a self-dampening effect. The additional depth of the foils also means that they don’t aspirate as quickly.

“On a lot of the boats their foil is basically a flat lifting surface, and when it comes out of the water you lose all your lift, and you drop back down again. On our foil as you lift you proportionally lose the foil area so it’s a dampened lift and loss of flight. And when we get it set up right the boat starts regulating it’s own flight when we get it just right,” Hobson explains. So why is no one else doing it? “I don’t know, that’s the worrying thing!”

The main reason no one else is doing it is probably because the Hugo Boss design and build (at Jason Carrington’s yard in Hythe, UK) was a very closely guarded secret. The team decided from the outset that they wanted to be the last to come from the VPLP drawing boards in this cycle, and they are one of the latest to launch ahead of the Transat Jaques Vabre [Hugo Boss was to retire after hitting a submerged object 380 miles west-north-west of the Canary Islands.]

That’s not to say that the Hugo Boss development is finished. Thomson will be building a second set of foils (each set costs around £500,000) after the TJV. The final decisions will need to be made quickly – designer Vincent Lauriot Prévost tells me that he thinks teams need to have committed to any foil design changes by November in order to build and test in time for next year’s Vendée.

There are still plenty of other details that haven’t been finalised. As yet Thomson has no bunk, or even a chair. “We’re not really that bothered about where I’ll sleep, maybe I’ll have a nice comfy seat. We need to start thinking about suspension. On the Route du Rhum I felt like I nearly broke my coccyx.”

The access hatches (open, aft) and windows of the enclosed cockpit

More important is avoiding impact injuries. One of the advantages of the small cockpit area is literally not being able to fall very far. “I took a rugby scrum helmet on the last two Vendées already. I think we’re getting close to being in body armour now,” he muses.

Certainly Thomson will be able to trim without putting on oilskins, or even sunscreen. More problematic will be the heat. “My concern is the tropics, in could be 50°C in here,” he admits. Hugo Boss’s black livery uses a specially designed light reflective paint to – theoretically – reduce the amount of heat absorbed.

Other elements have been kept the same where possible. The sail programme is very much a development from the previous Hugo Boss. Even the lines running into the cockpit are in identical colours as on the last boat.

Eliminating errors remains a huge part of any successful Vendée campaign. Alex has, famously, had some of the worst luck in sailing. He came down with appendicitis days before the start of the 2010 Barcelona World Race. Before that his 2008 boat was dismasted and ruined by a French fishing boat days ahead of the Vendée Globe.

At the time, that collision felt like the cruellest luck ever. Afterwards, Alex says, they examined their own failings and did everything they can to ensure something similar can never happen again. They took a similar long hard look at the decisions that led up to his previous boat being rolled, dismasted, and nearly sunk in the TJV four years ago.

But yet, stuff just keeps on happening to him. Having never won any of the IMOCA transatlantics, last year he was on course to take 1st in the Route du Rhum when he went for one last power nap before the finish. Exhausted, after averaging 21⁄2 hours of sleep in 24 over the course of the race, he set his infamous electric ‘shock’ watch to wake him up. The watch ran out of charge and Thomson overslept, Hugo Boss crashing into the island of Guadaloupe on autopilot.

The keel cant controls

So does it feel like a risk to go to such a radical place? As Thomson will use cameras to help him trim and keep watch, is the chance of some technical glitch causing a knock-on problem something that concerns them?

“Actually it wasn’t the tech that failed,” Thomson says of the Route du Rhum grounding. “I failed to make sure that the tech was fully charged. So we’re putting a lot of effort and energy into making sure that’s not going to happen.”

Thomson even plans to start from his indoors helming position – be prepared for the surreal image of an apparently pilotless Hugo Boss lining up with 30 other yachts on the start line for the 2020 Vendée Globe.

The whole point of this latest Hugo Boss, and of Thomson’s entire 2020 Vendée Globe campaign, is that it is genuinely uncompromising. “This whole campaign can only be measured on whether I win or not. Whether I like it or not, there is only one place we can go.

“What that means is I didn’t feel like I had to compromise in any way with this. Normally you look at what the other boats are doing. Whereas we just said ‘**** it, let’s go as far as we possibly dare’, and that’s what we did.”

First published in the November 2019 edition of Yachting World.

The post Hugo Boss: Sailing on board Alex Thomson’s £6million foiling machine appeared first on Yachting World.

Round the world racer Pete Goss dreamed of cruising with his wife, Tracey, and bought a yacht to sail the world. He looks back at the delicious unfurling of life at a gentler pace

Out of the blackness a breaking crest makes itself known with an alien glow of tumbled phosphorescence and roars past. This is not what we expected when we set off on the glamour leg of our circumnavigation from Lanzarote to Antigua. Friends of ours set sail a month earlier and all their pictures are of the bimini up, sundowners being enjoyed, and fishing.

Be clear about this, I’m not complaining. As an army sergeant once said to me: “If you’re looking for sympathy you’ll find it somewhere in the dictionary between shit and syphilis – get on with it, son.”

I’m very conscious, as I write, that we’re on a dream trip, sailing an amazing yacht called Pearl in celebration of our 30th wedding anniversary. The kids have left home and we want to grab this window, before grandchildren arrive, to explore the world. Having hung up my competitive boots it’s time to have a look at those amazing places I have rushed past while racing.

“Pearl just runs with the wave, straight and true”

Another wave lifts the stern. I can sense the bow is buried deep. It’s that pregnant pause when all sorts of forces compete for control of the boat and the outcome is out of your hands. Your fate lies in the past, a designer’s pen scratching out a concept, a build team that decided to make something to be proud of. A boat that, when a stranger walks past, their natural inclination is to run their hand along it in appreciation of the curves.

All the elements and bits of equipment that make up our new yacht, a Garcia Exploration 45, just seem to sit together in harmony. There isn’t that one angle or bolted bit of equipment that jars. She stops people in their tracks.

The moment is upon us and Pearl, seemingly docile, just runs with the wave, straight and true. The B&G autopilot doesn’t need to labour as we surf off at 17 knots. The glow of the instruments gives me a sense of the cockpit and I feel safe but not lulled.

I have done enough sailing to know these to be dangerous conditions but I also revel in the transformation in Pearl once the centreboard is up. All lateral resistance moves aft to the rudders and there is no keel to trip us up. As we race down that treacherous liquid slope, a broach couldn’t be further from my mind. A smile spreads across my face, but then I hear a phone ring.

Article continues below…

Garcia Exploration 52 test: The sailing equivalent of a 4×4 off-roader

If you were to take your partner or family to some of the world’s most remote waters, exploring the oceans…

£644,100.00

How this family made their two-year round the world sailing dream happen

Surreal. Not a breath of wind tonight. The sea’s surface is flat and unbroken. The sky is utterly cloudless and…

Coastguard calling

It’s the Iridium Pilot and MRCC Falmouth calling. My immediate thought is that one of our EPIRBs has gone off. I glance at the main one but it’s secure in its mount waiting patiently for that moment that we all hope will never come. Is it one of our lifejackets?

But this thought is swept away as the Coastguard officer explains that one of the Atlantic Rowing boats is in trouble. I give our position, explain that we have all the medical support they might wish for and they put us on standby as they explore options.

I finish by saying that if the casualties are to windward they shouldn’t tarry, for to fight back in this will be tough and take a long time. It brings back memories of the time when I rescued Raphael Dinelli during the 1996 Vendée Globe – it’s a similar time of the year. I feel for those poor souls in a small rowing boat out in this night of nights.

When you’re in no particular hurry the sun is bound to come out sooner or later

Tracey and I feel confident as we brace ourselves mentally. We spent a long time choosing Pearl. She is what we think of as a ‘Land Rover of the Sea with a BMW interior’, a blend of our differing expectations.

Tracey has done little sailing: when we set sail across the Bay of Biscay in December she had only done two separate night sails. People ask if she is afraid, to which she answers: “I don’t really know what to be afraid of so, no, I’ll keep an open mind and deal with things as they come along.”

Given this lack of experience, her priority is for our yacht to be a home, whereas mine is for a safe, functional platform. With Pearl I can sit with a glass of red in one hand and an inflatable globe in the other and know there is nowhere we can’t go.

Pete’s new office space aboard his Garcia Exploration 45

We want to sweep up the tropical gems of the Caribbean and Pacific but we are also drawn to the rough diamonds of the extreme north and south. Places such as Alaska, the Chilean fjords and South Georgia all call in their own way.

Tracey loves wildlife and is excited by the opportunity of being able to see these places in the flesh as opposed to on an electronic box in the living room. We have a loose time frame of five years so Pearl really is to be our home; she has to do more than offer utilitarian function.

She must be warm, pleasing to the eye below, have a double bed, a good galley and, above all, she mustn’t be a ‘cave’, as Tracey describes most boats. Tracey just doesn’t understand why you would design something to transport you to an exotic bay and then live down below.

Pete and Tracey at home in Pearl’s saloon, which proves ideal both for day to day living and world cruising

Ours must have an all-round view, much like a catamaran. I was looking for a strong, safe platform about 45ft LOA: big enough to go anywhere but small enough for us to sail two-handed with ease. We both wanted the layout to give us a private cabin with en-suite – we have done with camping on a boat. For privacy, this should be separated from a double guest cabin and separate heads by the saloon and galley.

I wanted a robust aluminium hull with watertight bulkheads, twin rudders, and a centreboard to reduce draught and open up shallow areas, but give directional stability off the wind. Drying out should be easy. She should have lots of stowage, a big capacity for fuel and water, and be well insulated.

Nothing quite fitted the bill and so I started a detailed design brief knowing that we were, once again, going to have to build our own boat. That was exciting on the one hand but from experience it’s a much bigger undertaking than most people realise, so we started to steel ourselves for a lot of work and stress.

Pearl offers plenty of comfortable aft cockpit space for relaxation

Until, in Dubai of all places, Yachting World came to the rescue. I was delayed on return from a job in Australia, and treated myself to a copy of the magazine – and there was a Garcia on the front cover. She had something that immediately drew me in.

Here was the culmination of Jimmy Cornell’s lifetime of long distance cruising and 15,000 detailed surveys of others’ bluewater lessons. Her DNA was impeccable and she fitted the picture in my mind. It was so exciting; I called Tracey to say that I had stumbled across the yacht of our dreams.

All this offered us comfort as I started to visualise the possible outcomes of a rescue. How would we pick the rowing team up? What if there was serious injury? Where would we make the sick bay? Would we have to divert to Cape Verde, and if we did it’d be a very rough ride. It might it be better to keep going to Antigua, trading time for stability.

And the pickup would be difficult. Hope we can wait for dawn. I wonder what experience the casualties have? They’re amazing people, many launching themselves into the Atlantic with very little knowledge, but naivety can be both an asset and a threat.

It reminded me of my early days of learning the ropes through lessons that no experienced sailor would countenance. Bravo to them and their zest for life.

But it transpired we were not called upon so we surge off into the night, relieved yet in some way disappointed at the same time. There must be help closer to hand than us, but you can’t help thinking that it would have been good to help.

A grey crossing of Biscay

In at the deep end

We have a week of strong winds, big seas and thermals. I can’t believe it, this isn’t what I sold Tracey after the ordeal of the Bay of Biscay in December. We left Guernsey – had to – at a time when most boats are laid up and sensible heads are below the parapet. Production schedules dictated our launch.

A grim night saw us off Ushant pushing spring tides, 30 knots of wind and rain. It was one of those forecasts you know will be a challenge but won’t get out of hand. If we didn’t bite the bullet we would be trapped by a fortnight of gales.

We, or more to the point Tracey, would just have to suck it up in the interests of the overall plan. That was all well and good in the marina but it broke my heart to find her ill and in tears as I came below for a moment’s respite in the early hours. This was going to be a single-handed night. I’m happy to carry the weight as she adapts.

The weather improves and we find ourselves able to have breakfast in the cockpit as we close Finisterre, albeit in thermals. Suddenly, it dawns on us that we have done the right thing, this leap of faith with no return.

It takes us nine days to make Lanzarote and it’s with some pride that we moor up and I initiate Tracey into the traditional ending of a long passage, namely a bar and a steak.

On reflection, it’s been good and we look forward to sailing to Antigua. It takes five days to feel ready for the off and we sail into conditions that exceed the forecast until Christmas Day when it suddenly turns. Yet I hesitate to say we have hit the Trades.

We’re in shorts and M&S have offered up a shockingly good Christmas dinner with all the trimmings. We open presents from the kids and have a lovely day, which ends with a sundowner in the cockpit.

Old Father Christmas knew what we were wishing for. We have made it through the rough stuff, we feel blooded, the three of us. Cheers Pearl; proud of you, Tracey.

Pearl’s maiden Atlantic voyage: Guernsey to Antigua

It takes a while for a novice to settle into a long spell at sea. There’s a key moment when they stop focusing on the destination and realise that it’s all about enjoying the moment. Making the most of the little things that a simple life has to offer, real things. It’s a truth that the rat race is keen to stifle with its insatiable hunger for consumption.

We are out here to see the world but also to escape the madness of modern life. We want to spend our money on memories not things. But the transition takes time and at times feels alien. This is our life now. We’re not flying home from Antigua.

My diary isn’t booked up years ahead. I have some writing and the odd job but it’s enough to be fun and adequate to help us along our way. As my Dad used to say: “You might think you own things but you don’t. The only thing you truly own is time. Now spend it wisely.”

And so the days settle into an easy routine that makes the best of our strengths. Tracey still doesn’t like the nights. She gives me a few hours’ sleep after supper and I’m happy to cover until dawn with the odd catnap. We always sit together with a cuppa for the sunrise and, of course, a sundowner at dusk.

This is the life: sundowners for Pete and Tracey

Tracey’s knowledge grows as I revel in the liberation of cruising. I don’t have to keep the boat on the edge or drive myself to the limits. I can sit back, read, write, play Scrabble, chill out to music, have a hot shower. And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I can have an ice cream too!

A week out from Antigua the wind eases at 0400. It’s time for a spinnaker. I leap into action and am about to give Tracey a shout when it strikes me that it can wait until dawn. Those last couple of hours’ sleep for Tracey are worth more than the couple of miles we might gain. It really doesn’t matter when we get to Antigua.

Restorative powers of the sea

I grab a coffee and watch the sun push the stars aside, feeling completely relaxed and at one with the world again. The ocean has restored me. It’s taken a while to shake the exhaustion that comes with depleted batteries. You know that feeling: when you wake up more tired after a night’s sleep than when you went to bed.

Pearl’s galley

That was the reality when we set out, for leaving took more out of us than we could have imagined. Breaking away from a life is tough; many things need addressing that you couldn’t foresee. They’re often small things, but when added up they’re significant and draining.

Like Gulliver tied down in Lilliput, we are bound by thousands of unseen ties and they all need severing, emotionally and practically.

The kids, parents and close friends are the fabric of our life. Are we being selfish? Our house needs to be sold. It all needs thinking about and squaring away.

Although this is our trip it’s also a family event, with the kids queuing up to parachute in. They can join this five-year adventure whenever and wherever they fancy. We will pop home for at least a month a year and, modern communications mean that it’s not quite like my parents had to endure when our family emigrated to Australia when I was a child.

It’s another lovely day. Dolphins welcome the dawn and we have had a tern circling the boat as it eyes up a perch but can’t quite build up the courage to go for it. It has an aerodynamic beauty enhanced by a delicate streamer tail – we have a book on ocean birds and the time to read it.

Lunch is served and suddenly there’s a big spout in our wake, close enough to hear. The thrill is off the scale and we dance about in excitement. It’s a couple of 30ft minke whales. They’re known to be inquisitive and are very nosey. They stay with us for a couple of days, coming to within feet of the hull and at times swimming with their heads out of the water as if checking out the topsides. The ocean isn’t as lonely as you might think.

Pearl at anchor in Falmouth Harbour, Antigua

But come the end we’re ready to stop, so I shout “Land ho!” with great gusto as Antigua rises ahead of us out of the haze.

We’ve timed it perfectly. We arrive late afternoon and as we turn towards Falmouth Harbour we can smell the scent of an exotic island like perfume after so long at sea. We pick up a mooring, crack open a bottle of champagne, revel in the companionable silence, the stillness, the lifting of 24-hour responsibility. It’s a magic moment as the sun sets behind the bay.

Special things in life must be earned and the toil has been a pleasure. Not a single cross word has been spoken. I think we’ll take to this new life. And lying ahead of us now there is so much to see.

About the author

First published in the April 2018 edition of Yachting World.

The post Pete Goss transatlantic: Vendee Globe racer embraces life in the slow lane appeared first on Yachting World.

Enterprise is a 1977 S&S-designed 12 Metre, originally built to defend the America’s Cup, and fully restored in time for this year’s 12 Metre World Championships in Rhode Island. Dave Powlison reports

Among the 21 elegant Twelves lining the docks at Rhode Island’s Fort Adams for this summer’s 12 Metre World Championship, sat a yacht that for many was a huge disappointment. Enterprise, built for the 1977 America’s Cup, had everything going for her, but never got the invitation to the Cup she seemed destined to receive. Today, she’s arguably the best set-up 12 Metre in the world.

Designed by Olin Stephens and David Pedrick at Sparkman & Stephens, and built of aluminium at the Minneford Yacht Yard, Enterprise boasted a number of firsts. She was the first design to be tank-tested on a large scale, with a handful of models measuring roughly 7m each, in tanks designed for the aerospace and military industries.

Results from those tests suggested that over a typical 24-mile America’s Cup course in an average 10-knot wind, Enterprise would be a minute faster than her rivals. Enterprise was also the first yacht to pioneer laminate sails, using plastic films to stabilise the more conventional Dacron. Her sails included the ‘garbage bag’, a light airs genoa that (in colour, at least) suggested its moniker.

Enterprise posted two race wins in the 2019 12 Metre World Championships. Photo: Ian Roman

The 1977 Challenger matches were a rematch of the 1974 Courageous v Intrepid rivalry between upstart west coaster Lowell North and eastern establishment sailor Ted Hood.

At North’s right hand was sailmaking wunderkind John Marshall, who would be a dominant presence in Cup competitions for years to come. Many of Enterprise’s crew had cut their 12 Metre teeth on Intrepid’s successful 1970 Cup defence. In fact, Intrepid was brought out of retirement and trucked to San Diego to spar with the new design.

Yet it was Courageous, a 1974 design, that secured the spot to defend the Cup (Courageous successfully saw off Alan Bond’s Australia in the Cup match). So what went wrong for Enterprise? Anyone who knows the boat well won’t hesitate to respond. “Enterprise had a foretriangle dimension that was about three feet shorter than what was conventional,” Marshall explained to me recently.

Enterprise hull is now painted battleship grey – the original colour was white

Most 12s have a 24ft foretriangle, give or take a bit. Enterprise’s was 21ft. “Computer predictions that evaluated flow over surfaces suggested this would give us an edge,” Marshall recalled. But when it came to tacking, getting the stiff headsails quickly across was a challenge, as there was now 3ft more sail that had to pass around the front of the mast.

“The jib didn’t fill quite as quickly, and we didn’t accelerate quite as quickly coming out of tacks,” Marshall adds. In the early challenger races, Enterprise performed well. But as the summer progressed, Courageous got distinctly better. “Once the difference got down to being pretty small, and the boats were always close together, tacking performance became much more important.”

Consider that it wasn’t unheard of for 12 Metres to do over 50 tacks on a four-mile beat, and it’s clear why the writing was on the wall.

Article continues below…

Maiden refit: How Tracy Edwards’ sailing legend was brought back to life

Few yachts, and fewer skippers, become truly famous – famous in the sense that the everyman on the street would…

Fujin: The inside story of this carbon catamaran’s Caribbean refit

After Fujin capsized during the 2018 RORC Caribbean 600 race it would have been understandable if owner Greg Slyngstad had…

Back to her best

Fast-forward to 2019 and Enterprise is back in fighting form. After stints in the Med she had been donated to the US Merchant Marine Academy Sailing Foundation.

With the impetus of the forthcoming 2019 Worlds in Newport, a major refit was begun in earnest. Tommy Rich, from New England Boatworks, which carried out the refit, recalls: “The boat had been bastardised. They had put a flush deck on it and a bogus interior, and it was basically in a state of disrepair.”

The refit was done over roughly two years, and in that time virtually everything on the boat was upgraded or replaced, except the hull and framework.

The hull structure is one of the few parts of the boat that remains original

Rich explains: “S&S, along with David Pedrick, designed a new keel. The boat got a more modern spade rudder to replace the old, barn-door type, and a more modern deck. That included new cockpits and a spinnaker pole trough – basically all the working deck – as well as a new chainplate structure.”

The boat received a new rig: an aluminium mast, as per the class rules, but with carbon used everywhere else, as well as all-new Harken hydraulics. And, of course, the ‘J’ foretriangle dimension is at 24ft once again.

For this level of investment in time and money, there was just one goal: to win the World Championship. Enterprise was chartered by Clay Deutsch for the summer, but the race started even before she had hit the water. “The challenge for us has been the calendar,” says Deutsch. “We didn’t have the boat in a position to go sailing until the end of May. And it’s pretty humbling how long it takes to get these boats dialed in.”

Double wheels: outer one for steering; inner one for trim tab control

Nevertheless, her pedigree showed quickly. In her first competition in Newport this summer, Enterprise posted a pair of 1sts in the two final races. In the 2019 World Championship in Newport she finished a solid 2nd overall in the Modern Division to the more seasoned Challenge XII.

For Deutsch, the 12 Metre seed was planted long ago. “When I was a kid, while other kids had baseball and football cards, I had an Intrepid scrapbook, and I have always fantasised about 12 Metres. Then, out of the blue this past winter, North Sails’ Mike Toppa came to me with, ‘What about Enterprise?’ It was the furthest thing from my mind, and I just figured we wouldn’t be there.”

But Deutsch was persuaded, and work shifted into a frenzied pitch at New England Boatworks. “I remember when I first looked at it, and it was in a million pieces, and I said: ‘I’m not a professional, but my amateur opinion is that this boat has no chance of being ready.’

Asymmetric foredeck hatches – the port hatch has a roller on the aft side for spinnaker take downs

“But Ben Quatromoni, the project manager, and his team jumped on it, working around the clock, and we made it to the starting line.” Today Enterprise’s decks today are remarkably spartan for a 12 Metre: it’s 1977 meets 2019 technology, with lots of carbon. “The boat setup is complicated,” says Quatromoni, “but it’s very user-friendly.”

The port foredeck hatch has a roller on the aft side, TP52-style, for the string take down spinnaker system. Once around the roller, the chute is pulled through a Dacron tube that runs to the stern. With the grinders working in unison, the sail disappears in five seconds.

Control lines run through custom-made carbon ‘trumpets’, allowing them move effortlessly out of sight. Carbon reels take up the halyards. These are ratchet system reels, where one control line spins the reel, bringing the halyard in, and another control line releases it. Unlike those reels, the spinnaker take-down reel is powered off the pedestals.

The spinnaker take down bag; the spinnaker comes down through the forward deck hatch and is pulled through this long Dacron bag

The aluminium cockpit has been lowered to get the grinders down and allow the boom to just avoid grazing the deck when fully sheeted in. But the boom is low. “Man, is it crowded,” says Deutsch. “I can barely fit under the boom – when we’re tacking, I’m literally down on all fours.”

The port and starboard jib trimmer pits have hydraulic controls for the jib tack and jib leads, which is standard for the Twelves. As on most 12 Metres, below decks is anything but simple.

The 150ft of mainsheet runs from the traveller car up into the boom, forward to the gooseneck, below deck, then aft to a turning block where it goes up into the mainsheet pod. Rather than using a winch for the traveller, the car is controlled by a Harken magic wheel below decks, with a 17:1 purchase.

With so many hydraulic systems, continual pumping is required to keep them pressurised, and the aft cockpit pedestal is set up to run a rotary pump, mounted below, for that purpose. For trimmers, there’s no downtime. Once they’ve finished trimming, it’s back to pumping to keep the hydraulics powered up.

The workmanship on many of the systems is truly extraordinary. The turning blocks for the spinnaker sheet and guy are so inconspicuous as to be barely noticeable. The traveller control line looks as if it has been simply laid on deck. Enterprise’s original white hull is now battleship grey. Coupled with black spars, the effect is stunning.

Specification

LOA: 20.15m (66ft 1in)
LWL: 13.41m (44ft 0in)
Beam: 3.78m  (12ft 5in)
Draught: 3.78m  (12ft 5in)
Displacement: 25.7 tonnes
Sail area: 168m² (1,808ft²)
Design: Sparkman & Stephens
Year: 1977
Builder: Minneford Yacht Yard, Inc.

About the author

Dave Powlison has been writing about sailing since the late 1970s and is currently an editor-at-large for Sailing World magazine. When not writing, he races Etchells and an RS Aeros in Vermont, USA.

First published in the November 2019 edition of Yachting World.

The post Enterprise: Is this restored 12 Metre the best yacht to never contest the America’s Cup? appeared first on Yachting World.

One of the biggest innovations for the new AC75 America’s Cup boat is the soft wingsail: a double-sided mainsail where each of the two ‘skins’ are attached to the back edges of the D-section wing mast. Sir Ben Ainslie explains all

It’s not a completely original idea – it has been tried in the past, but never with the resources that four big, well-funded America’s Cup teams can bring to the development. So if it’s ever going to work, it will be now.

The AC75’s 26.5m mast is stepped on a ball so that it rotates, and it has a single set of spreaders and running backstays. It’s a one-design section with the mast surface defined by the rule, along with a minimum laminate specification; so teams can further stiffen or strengthen sections if they wish.

The rigging is supplied and there are also rules defining the mast fittings, spreaders and so on. The boat is allowed up to six full-length battens and another six battens shorter than 1m that must all finish at the leech. The rules say they can’t be inflatable or hinged.

That is what is controlled. But there are other areas where designers have been given a lot of scope, with the goal of making this new soft wingsail as effective as possible. This is important because it has to generate the speed to lift a 7.5 tonne monohull out of the water.

The more efficient hard wing used on the AC50 multihull had to elevate a boat that was five tonnes lighter, shorter and with less wetted surface – albeit with a completely different and less efficient foil system.

“The class rule identifies two areas, one at the top and one at the bottom of the mast, called the upper mast and lower mast zones,” Ben Ainslie explained. “And in these areas the teams are allowed to develop whatever systems they think are going to control the sail the best.”

The laws of physics, practicality and the cost of the engineering are the limiting factors here, not the rules. So what are the INEOS team trying to achieve in the lower zone?

“The intent in the rules is to allow the teams to have the mainsail sweeping across the deck to create an effective end plate,” explained Ainslie. “And that has massive aerodynamic advantages, so the designers are really pushing for it.”

The end plate effect is a well-established fluid dynamics phenomenon, where the aero- or hydrofoil ends in a perpendicular surface. This reduces the loss of the pressure difference between the windward and leeward sides of the foil, and reduces the formation of a tip vortex. Both improve the efficiency.

The other area is the upper control zone – the top four metres of the sail, so it’s a big sail area. “We saw in the last Cup, particularly with the Kiwis, that sail twist was becoming a really effective power control. And so opening up the top of the rig here in this class of boat allows control of that twist,” said Ainslie.

“Then it’s really a balance of twist control over traveller control, again having that openness in the rule so you can control both effectively. It’s down to the teams to decide which one they think is more effective to give you control of the boat… and the greatest straight-line performance.”

Article continues below…

Road to the America’s Cup podcast episode 1: Imagining the AC75

There is no doubt that the AC75 is a remarkable boat; a monohull designed to fly, engineered to reach speeds…

Road to the America’s Cup podcast episode 2: How the AC75 will fly

America’s Cup teams first flew in San Francisco in 2013. The use of hydrofoils to lift the AC72 catamarans out…

Headsail cross-overs

Forward of the mast the AC75 rule also allows both a jib and a Code Zero, and there has already been plenty of discussion about if and when we will see both sails used.

It’s possible to imagine a situation where the Code Zero is the right sail to accelerate the boat to take-off speed, but once the boat is foiling the apparent wind speed and angle will change dramatically, and the headsail might be the right sail. Is it possible to change sails while foiling, and even if it is possible, is it fast?

“How do you handle that sail, how do you hoist it, drop it, trim it? All of that obviously is going to take power,” said Ainslie. “And once you’re going through that hoisting and dropping process, you’re going to be losing power in terms of guys on the handles trimming the sails… they’re all interesting trade-offs that the teams have got to go through and work out.

“We spend a lot of time monitoring and observing the other teams to learn from them as much as we’re developing from our own work. That’s part of the game really. And frankly, it’ll be the team that develops the fastest that will probably come out on top.”

About the author

Ben Ainslie is the most successful Olympic sailor of all time, and Team Principal of the British America’s Cup challenger. INEOS Team UK will be challenging for the 36th America’s Cup in New Zealand in 2021. Each month he’ll be talking to Mark Chisnell about the innovations and technology behind the new AC75 foiling monohulls.

First published in the December 2019 edition of Yachting World.

The post Road to the America’s Cup podcast episode 3: How the AC75’s soft wingsails work appeared first on Yachting World.

Pip Hare argues that AIS is one of sailing’s biggest technological developments of the past decade, but what exactly is it and how can sailors use it to their advantage?

If I were to pick one development that has revolutionised my own sailing over the past 10 years it would undoubtedly be AIS. Not only has it brought an enhanced level of situational awareness to yachtsmen, but it’s also making huge advances in search and rescue applications. As much as we rely on this system it is sometimes easy to forget its limitations.

A quick recap

AIS uses VHF radio to transmit data gathered from a vessel’s GPS and other navigational sources. Message types are predefined and the number and type of messages received and transmitted depends on the class of AIS fitted.

Class A systems are fitted on all vessels over 300 gross tonnes, all commercial passenger ferries regardless of size and fishing vessels over 15m. Most leisure sailors and smaller vessels choose a Class B system, which transmits a reduced amount of information and can also be receive only.

Article continues below…

Forward-facing sonar: Everything you need to know

Yachting is usually pretty fast to embrace useful new technology, particularly if it helps win a race or if it…

Can augmented reality really give us a vision of the future of sailing?

Google’s mission statement is ‘to organise the world’s information.’ This almost impossibly ambitious declaration of intent underpins the technology giant’s…

Who can see you?

Because AIS is transmitted via VHF, its range is limited to ‘line of sight’. Transmissions can be relayed via base stations (and sometimes satellite for Class A), but topography can still be a barrier so if you are under cliffs or large obstructions it’s possible your AIS signal will be masked to vessels in relatively close proximity.

AIS is not compulsory for leisure vessels, or small fishing vessels, so never assume you have the complete picture – especially when coastal sailing. In busy areas, there’s the perennial question of whether some commercial vessels opt to filter out Class B AIS signals. Regardless of whether this is truth or myth; you should never assume you have been seen. If in any doubt take avoiding action early.

Finally, consider whether you always want to be seen. If passage making in waters where broadcasting your position may be a security risk chose a set with ‘silent mode’. In particular remember this feature when at anchor: if using a GPS alarm that’s part of an integrated system your AIS could be forgotten in the background, broadcasting your position to the world.

How we view information

I prefer viewing AIS data on a plotter when in coastal waters, allowing me to make complete navigational decisions. At sea, I’m happy with a course-up display; with no plotter to distract me I can keep my eyes out of the boat.

Don’t let your current system restrict how you view the data; systems can be adapted and linked to additional repeaters and laptops, while developments in NMEA Wi-Fi now allow AIS data to be viewed on mobile apps. If sailing short-handed or with inexperienced crew, audible alarms can also be retrofitted for peace of mind.

Limitations and useful tools

Proximity alarms

Get into the practice of ‘trimming’ your proximity alarm to fit situations. When setting a range, consider your speed as well as the potential speed of a closing vessel, the experience level of your ‘on watch’ crew, visibility and environment. Get into the habit of checking your proximity alarm setting regularly, especially if you tend to silence it in busy waters when everyone is on deck.

Look beyond the icon

Remember that the icon you see on a screen is your plotter’s interpretation of a situation. Always interrogate the information behind an icon to understand how reliable it is.

Time of last transmission

Class A vessels transmit every 2-10 seconds depending on their speed. Class B vessels are set to a nominal rate of every 30 seconds, however it could be longer depending on speed and the amount of priority traffic in the area (Class B does not have priority transmission).

Some plotters will continue to show ‘echoes’ of vessels for a number of minutes after their last transmission, and these plots in particular can lead to a false confidence in your situation.

Course, trajectory and CPA

The closest point of approach (CPA) is calculated by your own AIS plotter interpolating each burst of information it receives. The CPA is likely to change with every new burst of information. Always back up with radar, if available, and a confirmed visual identification and relative bearing using a hand bearing compass.

In reduced visibility beware that if a Class B vessel is moving at less than 2 knots the nominal reporting rate drops to 3 minutes. This can make calculating a reliable CPA impossible. It’s also worth checking the rate of turn (ROT) data from Class A vessels: if available it can indicate if a vessel is starting to alter course before the plotter calculation.

MMSI identification

One of the most useful features of AIS, this gives a direct line of communication to another vessel and the ability to clarify you have been seen. Although COLREGS are not keen on the use of VHF for collision avoidance, I’ve found that placing a DSC call using the MMSI and opening a dialogue with the bridge of a ship really helps.

Receivers only

Not all AIS receive-only sets are equal. Some receivers are not able to receive Class B vessel name and call sign, while older sets may not be configured for MOB or SART devices.

Search and rescue AIS is now being integrated into personal MOB beacons and as an additional homing signal for EPIRBs. These applications allow any vessel equipped with AIS to join in search operations, greatly increasing the chances of rescue. When using AIS MOB devices ensure you have tested each one against your mothership’s plotter, so all crew are aware of what an MOB symbol looks like.

First published in the May 2018 edition of Yachting World.

The post Sailor’s essential guide to AIS: Everything you need to know appeared first on Yachting World.