Tabla de contenidos para April 2019 en SAIL

SUPER-LIGHT SNATCH BLOCK Never mind the novel way in which this bit of gear is manufactured: from a purely functional standpoint Born To Rock’s 3D printed snatch block is also nicely configured, so that it fits easily in your hand when clipping it on to, say, a genoa sheet while bearing off onto a reach. It’s also so light as to be buoyant, not a bad feature if it should happen to go over the side at the dock or in a drifter. The key to the block’s strength is the soft lashing that not only serves as an attachment point, but helps bind the block together under load, thanks to the way it wends its way through a number of channels in the block's cheeks. Easy to open and…

In a time when most new cruising boats are coming from Europe, it is refreshing to meet the Tartan 395, a brand-new design from a respected American builder. Not only that, but this is a proper yacht in the traditional American sense of the term that it is also entirely modern in construction and performance, providing a distinct contrast to the large fleet of Euro vessels out there. DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION Designed by long-time Tartan naval architect Tim Jackett, the 395 comes out of the Tartan factory in Fairport Harbor, Ohio. As it has been with Tartan for decades, construction quality is excellent, with the boat built to ABS standards and excellent finish detailing evident throughout, including in those deep recesses where many builders don’t bother cleaning up their work.…

As recently as the late 1980s, the idea of an all-female sailing team in the Whitbread Round the World Race (the predecessor to the Volvo Ocean Race) seemed laughable to many. How could women handle the competition? They weren’t strong enough. They wouldn’t be able to take the mental challenges of the race. They’d never get along. And who would finance such a project? After begging her way to a spot as cook on Atlantic Privateer, one of the maxis competing in the 1985-86 race, 23-year-old Tracy Edwards was hooked. Though the male crew barely let her on deck, she absorbed as much as possible and soon began dreaming up improvements for the boat design. She set her sights on the 1989 race, but next time she wanted to be…

LAZYJACK CONCERNS Q: I’m thinking of installing lazyjacks on my main, but am worried about chafe. Is that something to be concerned about, and what can I do to make sure it doesn’t become a problem? — Connor Simpson, Charleston, SC BRIAN HANCOCK REPLIES Lazyjacks are always a good addition to a mainsail. They really do help manage the sail, especially if you have all or partial fulllength battens. I would not worry about chafe. Instead, I would make sure that your lazyjacks have enough length to them that they can be pulled forward to the mast and stowed there away from the mainsail. You can then rig up some kind of bungee system to hold them in place until you need to raise or lower the sail. The short…

Are you really safer tethered to your boat? It’s something I’ve wondered about ever since I first started sailing offshore. The received wisdom is you should always wear a harness, preferably one with an inflatable lifevest, and always be clipped in while underway. I’ve always imagined, however, that being dragged through the water beside a boat at the end of a tether must in itself be life-threatening. In at least two instances this has proved to be the case. Christopher Reddish, age 47, was clipped in with a harness when he fell overboard while sailing his boat off the British coast in 2011. He’d been working at the bow handling sails. He was dragged in his harness alongside the boat and unfortunately died before his crew could stop and recover…

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THE DOUBLE RANGE Every skipper knows about ranging two objects in line to keep the boat on track in a cross-current. What’s less obvious is monitoring both sides of a gap such as a harbor entrance. Where there’s a stream running athwart the direct route in, it’s important to steer so that the boat hits that entrance around dead center. If there’s no leading line to follow, the answer is to watch both pier heads and make sure that the background is “opening” from each of them at the same sort of rate. If one starts revealing less behind it while the other shows more, you’re on the slippery sideways slope. TOWING SPEED Sooner or later most sailboats need a tow, and this is the time to watch out for…

In the 50 years since its inception, Boot Düsseldorf, the indoor extravaganza held each January on the banks of Germany’s Rhine River, has grown to become the 1,000lb gorilla of boat shows. The demise this year of the competing London Boat show and the slow slide into obscurity of December’s Paris show has further cemented its status. If you’re serious about building and selling boats, you have to be at Düsseldorf, period. The 17 halls in this massive complex hold not just boats, but everything from kayaks to 100ft motor yachts, swimming goggles to submarines, fishhooks to sport fishing boats and everything in between. It’s not just the world’s biggest boat show, it’s the world’s biggest watersports show. As always, the sailing halls were dominated by the big production builders…

We had left San Diego in early November and spent a month sailing down the west coast of Baja California on board Distant Drummer, our Liberty 458 sloop. After a week in Cabo San Lucas, a brash and brassy town at the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula where we provisioned the boat, topped up the fuel tanks and enjoyed the many delights the town had to offer, my husband, Neil, and I were looking forward to a couple of months exploring “the Sea” as the locals call the Sea of Cortez. The Gulf of California, as it is also known, is bounded by the Baja Peninsula to the west and the Sonora and Sinaloa coasts of mainland Mexico to the east. Cabo is the starting point for cruisers looking…

It was the summer of 1952. The Eisenhower/Stevenson race was in full swing. I was in my junior year, studying naval architecture at the University of Michigan and had been offered a summer job at Jakobson Shipyard in Oyster Bay, Long Island. Practical experience is very useful to a designer. It helps prevent you from designing something that can’t be built. I decided to get there from Detroit by sea. My boat was the Owl, a Luedtke Interlake catboat, a 22ft-by-8ft marconirigged centerboarder designed by Charles D. Mower and built in 1918. Auxiliary power was a 7hp Scott-Atwater outboard, which never failed to start. This turned out to be fortunate. Cooking was on a charcoal grill in the cockpit, and berthing was on two Army-surplus canvas stretchers upon which you…

As with so many other things on our 1987 Pearson 39-2 project boat, the lifelines looked to be original equipment. Made of vinyl-coated 3/16in 7x7 stainless steel wire, they were bleeding rust where the sheathing had cracked, and it was obvious they needed to be replaced. The only question was, with what? For years sailors only had to choose between coated and uncoated wire for lifelines. Now, the increasing uses on board of the low-stretch, superstrong fiber Dyneema have spread to the humble lifeline. I’d replaced the rusted-out lifelines on our previous boat with coated wire, but now I wasn’t sure which way to go. I began by summarizing the pros and cons of each approach. COATED STAINLESS STEEL WIRE Pros: looks good, comfortable to hold, low chafe potential where…

Whatever is in the water in Brittany, it must be powerful stuff. Followers of the singlehanded sailing game are used to pretty heroic performances by Breton sailors, but none of them have come anywhere near the recent achievements of a 74-year-old former math teacher named Jean Luc Van den Heede. This redoubtable senior citizen not only won the 2018-19 Golden Globe Race (GGR)—a singlehanded “sprint” around the world in the spirit of the original 1968 event, sailed in small production boats without benefit of electronic navigation—in doing so, he also completed his sixth solo circumnavigation. The original Golden Globe Race was sponsored by the Times of London, which offered a £5,000 prize for the first person to circumnavigate the globe alone, without stopping. This drama-packed first edition was won by…

The Danish builder X-Yachts, founded in 1979 by brothers Lars and Niels Jeppensen, has focused on creating high-quality cruiser-racers for many years now. Mixing lightweight construction techniques with no-nonsense structural integrity, the company has a well deserved reputation for putting out boats that are both fast and sturdy, and the Xp 55 model (the “p” is for performance!) is no exception. Recently introduced to the U.S. market, this sexy but practical Euro speedster has also been recognized as the “Best Flagship Monohull” in SAIL’s 2019 Best Boats competition. DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION The hull structure is a mix of fiberglass and carbon fiber, with a Corecell foam core and set in vacuum-infused epoxy resin. The entire structure is post-cured in an oven to ensure the integrity of the resin matrix. The…

What is it that makes someone want to sail alone and nonstop around the world? I’m just an average guy from Petosky, Michigan, who learned to sail on his dad’s Hobie 16. When I first started sailing offshore in my 20s, mostly working as crew on delivery trips, I found the same books aboard many of the boats, written by such great sailors as Bernard Moitessier, Francis Chichester, Robin Knox-Johnston, Joshua Slocum and Miles Smeeton. I was spellbound by what I considered these truly great sailors and the adventures they’d had. They set my imagination ablaze with thoughts of sailing in the high latitudes and in the Southern Ocean. I was hooked from the first time I read about the 1968 Golden Globe Race, and as most sailors do, I…

It’s easy to look at long-distance racing yachts of 60ft and above with multiple downwind sails set on roller furling gear and assume similar setups are ideal for cruising yachts. To some extent this is true, and much of the excellent gear now used on cruisers was first developed aboard such craft. However, there can also be problems with applying the same principles to smaller boats and different sails. It’s therefore important to understand the pros and cons of each system. SNUFFERS Little more than a decade ago a snuffer—basically, a long, cloth tube with a line, or lines for pulling it down over a deployed sail—was the only device a cruising sailboat was likely to carry for handling light-air downwind sails, and these still have their place, in particular…

So, you’re going on a charter vacation. There’s so much to plan, pack and ponder, but who has the time when all you can think of is umbrella drinks under a swaying palm tree? The boat, the sun and the sailing should be enough, right? It is for some. For others, though, additional toys will make the trip better, which means you need to think ahead about what your group likes to do and add a line item for toys to the overall budget. KAYAKS Single or tandem kayaks can generally be rented from your charter company. Some companies will bring them onto the boat and secure them for you. Kayaks are great for kids engaged in endless hours of water play, and they’re fun for adults too. Kayaks also…