Yachting Monthly

Persuading friends and family to spend a weekend in cramped and damp conditions while travelling slowly is never going to be an easy sell. It can take a while for newbies to catch the magic of ghosting along in a warm breeze, or the beauty of a misty dawn and the oystercatcher’s cry. Every encouragement is needed to keep them going until they get it (p32). Shouting must be one of the major reasons that novices decide that sailing isn’t for them. The bellowing yacht skipper glued to the helm and exasperated crew dashing about on deck is such a well-worn trope that one could assume this is the inescapable order of the universe. It isn’t, of course, and it’s easy to scoff at said skipper while asserting that, ‘I never…

Orca interactions with boats off the coast of Spain and Portugal are expected to stop as the mammals mature, according to a marine scientist studying the cetaceans’ behaviour. Alfredo Lopez says the orca are displaying learnt behaviour but ‘it is a behaviour that should tend to become extinct as orcas assume different roles than they currently do, given that most of them are juveniles.’ Lopez is part of Groupo Trabajo Orca Atlantica (GTOA), a group of Portuguese and Spanish marine scientists studying the orca interactions since they began in 2020. He said there are at least 16 orcas belonging to various groups of the same sub-population, which are interacting with boats, many of them young, and it was ‘unlikely’ that their behaviour could spread to other groups of orca, but not ‘impossible’. The…

The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) is taking legal action against the UK Government for failing to protect the majority of England’s coastline from sewage spills. The legal case seeks to compel the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to rewrite its Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan 2022, impose tighter deadlines on water companies and redevelop the plan to apply to all coastal waters. Currently the plan to limit the release of untreated sewage only covers bathing areas in England’s seas. Some Marine Protected Areas and shellfish waters are totally excluded from the plan. MCS data shows raw sewage was discharged within 1km of marine protected areas in England for more than 260,000 hours in 2021. According to DEFRA’s own figures, less than half of England’s coastal waters achieved ‘good ecological…

The Broads Authority is encouraging boat owners to consider switching to cleaner forms of propulsion, rather than petrol and diesel, as part of efforts to cut carbon emissions. It said that while a ban on fossil fuel-powered boats is not currently envisaged, it wants to support people making the transition to electric, especially as components for petrol- and diesel-powered vessels are expected to become harder to source in the future. The plan is part of The Broads Authority’s pledge to make its operations carbon neutral by 2030 and carbon zero by 2040. The majority of boat traffic along the Broads is from charter, and the authority has started looking at increasing the number of charging points along the waterway network to help the Broads boating industry transition to electric, and achieve zero emissions. ‘We…

Plans for an offshore floating wind farm in the Celtic Sea are moving forward, following the signing of an agreement between Gwynt Glas and Associated British Ports. Gwynt Glas, a joint venture between EDF Renewables UK and DP Energy, wants to install a 1GW wind farm 45 miles off the Pembrokeshire coast. The Memorandum of Understanding between Gwynt Glas and Associated British Ports will look at opportunities to manufacture and service the farm from Port Talbot and Milford Haven.…

There are warnings that skippers who visit Portugal after sailing from outside the EU could face a demand to pay VAT on their boats, even if EU VAT has been paid on their vessel. David Varley, who has been a Portuguese tax resident since March 2020, has been presented with a €155,000 IVA bill and a €10,000 fine by Portuguese Customs for his Oyster 62, Dalliance. IVA is the Portuguese equivalent to VAT. The boat is owned by a New Zealand limited company; Varley and his partner, Peter McLean, who is a New Zealand resident, are equal company shareholders. Dalliance was purchased by the company EU VAT paid in Malta in 2019; she has been kept in the EU ever since. Varley said in the summer of 2021, he sailed Dalliance from Vilamoura…