Tabla de contenidos para June 2021 en SAIL

“Why would you ever want a boat with a 14ft draft?” It’s a phrase my partner, Timo, and I have heard often, ever since we purchased NV, a former Open 60 raceboat originally built for the Vendée Globe, but which we now cruise. And to be honest, it was also my least favorite thing about the boat in the beginning. I feel differently now. I’ve grown to love our keel and how impressive it looks when you poke your head underwater. I’ve gotten used to anchoring farther away from shore and living without the many marina berths and pontoons lacking sufficient water for us to tie up to. There is one issue, though, that there’s just no getting around: finding yards capable of hauling us out for things like applying…

As part of its continuing commitment to both smaller boats and boats expressly designed for the racecourse, France’s Beneteau recently recast its “First” line, so that it is now composed of two distinct subcategories, the better to meet the needs of the widest variety of sailors possible. On the one hand, there are the boats making up what the company is continuing to call its “First” line—the First 27, First 24 and First 14—all optimized for things like weekend cruising or simply getting in a spirited daysail. On the other, there’s the company’s new “First SE” line (short for Seascape Edition), which includes the 27SE, 24SE, 18SE and 14SE, all expressly configured to “bring modern one-design racing and adventure into the hands of everyone,” in the spirit of the original…

I’m not sure what I expected from my daysail on the Happy Cat Hurricane. One thing I do know is that the day didn’t go as planned. The SAIL staff was invited by Alex Caslow from Redbeard Sailing to Gunpowder State Park on Chesapeake Bay near Baltimore. We were to test several models of inflatable catamarans, so I figured I’d get wet, maybe even go for a swim. I also figured the experience would be resonant of the resort craft I’ve sailed in the past: slow, timid and possibly uncomfortable. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The 16ft Hurricane is the flagship of the Happy Cat line built by Grabner of Austria. She’s the Cadillac of the three-boat series, and as I checked her out on the beach, it became…

When you talk to Beetle Cat sailors, it’s immediately apparent you’re talking about more than just a 12ft 4in catboat. “It began with my great-grandmother, who bought a boat for her four sons in 1928. They named it after her, called it the Queen Mary,” says New England Beetle Cat Boat Association Chairman, Bob Hawes. “My grandfather sailed it with his brothers on [Massachusetts’s] Westport River, and then when he came back from the war, he married his best friend’s sister, my mother, and immediately bought a Beetle Cat. My mother’s name was Ann, so he named it the Queen Ann.” Bob also brought his daughters, Heather and Jillian, up in Beetle Cats, and Heather now has three children of her own, all of who will someday skipper the family…

By the time I awoke it was already too late. I knew something was wrong before I’d even fully struggled out of my sleeping bag, before I’d unzipped the tent and was standing out on the wet sand of the beach. In front of me there was only one boat where there should have been two. Sundog, the other the two 18ft beach cats the four of us planned on using to circumnavigate Lake Superior, had disappeared. Only Lunacy, the other half of the team, remained, white hulls gleaming. A thunderstorm was gathering to the south, the gentle breeze increasing to a steady wind, as I charged down the shore looking for a boat I already knew was long gone. Dead and gone, eaten like so many others by the…

Shirley Rose, a well-worn Santana 27, sorely needed refurbishing. When I took ownership, she was on stands in a sorry state looking for someone to bring her back to life. Since then, I’ve replaced or repaired most of her major systems and also done a fair bit of cosmetic work. After poking my nose into pretty much every nook and cranny you can think of I realized that while the previous owner may have fixed things when they broke, he didn’t do much in the way of preventative maintenance. Corrosion was rampant. The batteries could barely hold a charge. I often found myself thinking how much easier all this would have been if he had just taken a little bit better care of the boat in the first place. That…

For once the forecast had been correct: 20 knots southwest, with waves 4 to 6 ft. Around 0300, I rolled over in my bunk unable to sleep with the sound of the wind in the rigging and the occasional groan of the fenders against the hull. “Just sleep. There’s no way you’re returning home tomorrow in these kinds of conditions,” I told myself. With the arrival of morning, though, and with the wind still blowing 20 knots out of the southwest, I cast off lines a few minutes after sunrise in hopes of making the return trip before the predicted late-afternoon thunder-storms had a chance to come rolling across the open waters of Lake Erie. As a child growing up in the upper Midwest there was always this presence: a…

CREWSAVER INFLATABLE BOATS Crewsaver, long known for its safety and survival equipment, is now making a foray into the inflatable dinghy business with three new models ranging in length from 6 to 8.5ft. According to Crewsaver, which in addition to life jackets also manufactures a range of offshore liferafts, the new boats are designed to meet “market demand for a lightweight and easy-to-deploy inflatable.” The boats are available with either slatted or inflatable air decks and can be used as tenders or fun little dinghies on their own. Every Crewsaver inflatable is kitted out with a high-capacity pump, repair kit, paddles, mooring lines and an alloy bench-seat. The rafts can be packed down to fit into a carrying valise, and inflate and deflate via a set of one-touch valves. They…

I’ve long believed that while they may not be as much fun, the best sail trials are the ones that take place in drifters, since it’s then that a boat’s performance—or lack thereof—really becomes evident. Pretty much any boat is fun to sail in 15 knots of wind. That said, there’s fun, and then there’s fun of the kind I had aboard the Dehler 30 One Design, winner of the 30ft and over performance boat category in SAIL’s 2021 Best Boats contest. DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION One look at the 30 OD and you know this boat means business. The hull is vacuum-infused with a PVC foam core, and a propriety “Dehler carbon cage” is incorporated into its bottom structure to ensure strength and rigidity. The deck is also vacuum-infused with…

I lost a third of my crew the moment we arrived at the boatyard. My middle son and second mate, Julian, took one look at the dark sky overhead and hid behind his mother’s skirt. I glanced at my oldest son and first mate, 10-year-old Emil, and said, “I’ll understand if you want to back out.” The previous month’s sinking of our other dinghy in these same waters had shaken up these two young but seasoned sailors—me as well. My wife said I had never looked paler than when I returned from that rotten day out on the water. Still, we had talked of this summer adventure—dinghy-sailing Vancouver’s Indian Arm—for years. Sergeant Dan (U.S. Air Force, Retired) had arrived to join us from Minnesota, and our gear (minus Julian’s backpack)…

Baking at the helm, watching a newly arrived bird eyeing me suspiciously—as if this was his ship, and I was the one who’d just flown in—I knew I was unraveling. For two days now we’d been becalmed, sails flogging on the open Atlantic, and in a snap moment I saw—all too clearly—how easily this could end with a flare gun to the face. As with so many of our triumphs and terrifying moments afloat, this one seemed to come with a theme song. Stranger still, in that same moment it was as if the bird understood and, in response, had cocked his head and started singing: “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear…” Five days earlier, Phillip and I had been sane, joyous even, at the prospect…

BRIAN HANCOCK IS A SAILMAKER, WHITBREAD RACE VETERAN AND CREATOR OF GREATCIRCLESAILS.COM DON CASEY HAS WRITTEN MANY BOOKS AND ARTICLES ON MARINE MAINTENANCE AND REPAIRS NIGEL CALDER IS AN AUTHOR AND EXPERT ON BOAT SYSTEMS AND DIESEL ENGINES GORDON WEST IS AN ELECTRONICS EXPERT WHO SPECIALIZES IN RADIO COMMUNICATIONS IT’S HIP TO BE SQUARE Q: I’ve been watching the most recent America’s Cup down in Auckland, which has got me thinking about technology and sails. My question is, how much difference do square-top mains, like those used aboard the AC75 mononulls, really make? In the America’s Cup, obviously every fraction of boat speed counts. But what about on a cruising monohull or Wednesday night beer-can racer? Would that little bit of extra sail area up high be even noticeable? —Mike…

This past spring my family and I were at anchor aboard our 50ft steel-hulled cutter, Atea, off Bequia, a small island five miles south of St. Vincent in the Southern Antilles. Bequia’s large, protected bay is lined by a collection of beach bars, restaurants and hotels, and is a popular cruising destination, albeit a quieter one this year due to reduced tourism as a result of Covid-19. Nonetheless, while the steel bands weren’t playing into the wee hours of the morning as they typically do, the happy hour specials still served to draw in crews from the few dozen yachts there. As late as Friday morning, April 9, that relaxed atmosphere continued, even as residents of nearby St. Vincent were being evacuated from the red zone surrounding La Soufrière, the…

This year’s annual Ida Lewis Distance Race on Narragansett Bay will offer something for everyone. In addition to ORC and PHRF, there will be sections for doublehanded, youth and collegiate racing. Racers will also have a choice between the event’s traditional offshore distance race and a shorter “In Bay” race similar to the one organized in 2020 at the height of Covid-19 pandemic. The regatta is scheduled for August 19-21. For details, visit ilyc.org/distancerace.…

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, local racing had resumed with household crews only. My wife, though, while always up for a pleasure sail, was not up for this kind of thing, so, for the fifth time in what was any measure an unusual sailing season, I found myself singlehanding my J/29, Rhumb Runner. It was a beautiful warm Saturday morning, and I was feeling confident that with the predicted light winds I could handle the 155 percent #1 genoa and not the smaller #3, which I had used in all but one of the previous races. As I cleared the harbor under outboard power and with the main up, I noticed there was more breeze than had been predicted and started to doubt my ability to handle the #1 racing…

Sportscar builders say, “Speed costs, how fast do you want to go?” This is also true of boats, and if you can foot the bill, Hudson Yacht Group will be more than happy to provide you with all the speed, luxurious accommodations and outstanding construction quality you could ever want in its new HH50. DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION The HH50 is the smallest boat in the Hudson Yacht Group line, but it remains very much on par with the company’s larger boats, which include an 88-footer. The entire HH line is produced in a new 1.2 million-ft2 factory in Xiamen, China, that is well equipped with CNC cutting machines, resin-infusion facilities, woodworking shops and testing facilities. The design comes from Morelli & Melvin, and the hull and deck consist of post-cured…

Florida Bay is located between the southern tip of mainland Florida and the Florida Keys. The Backcountry, as it’s called, consists of a triangular area generally north of the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), south of the mainland and east of a line from Flamingo to Lower Matacumbe Key, within the boundaries of Everglades National Park (ENP). It is a unique area of open water basins fringed by shoals and keys. To get from one basin to another one must cross a shoal or go through a pass. has patches of dark green and prop trails. Prop trails are light colored strips where a motorboat has denuded the bank vegetation. Prop trails Flamingo and the Backcountry were first settled by non-native people around 1885. The early settlers were plume hunters, charcoal burners,…

Sailing is a remarkably safe activity, despite the potentially dangerous environment in which it takes place. This is undoubtedly due to the safety-conscious attitude of most skippers and their crews. Nonetheless, even the best sailors can still get in trouble when and where they least expect it. When I was a young Royal Yachting Association (RYA) Yachtmaster instructor, one of the standing orders for all the sea school’s staff was to either have a preventer rigged or the mainsail furled, or be sure and sit next to whoever was at the helm when sailing downwind. My employer clearly recognized the danger of an accidental jibe, both to his reputation and livelihood. It’s an approach that has served me well over the years and one none of us should ever forget.…