Tabla de contenidos para September 2022 en SAIL

Here’s to the humble magnetic compass, without a doubt the sailor’s most reliable instrument onboard. It’s always there for you and with the rarest of exceptions, always operational. Yes, I love my chartplotter, autopilot, radar and AIS. They help me be a safer and more competent navigator. However, they rely on electricity and geostationary satellites—which don’t always work. These modern electronics are also so accurate and easy to use that some sailors neglect to ever learn how to properly utilize an old fashion magnetic compass. And that’s a frightening thing. Maybe you have an electronics blackout story. Here’s mine: on an awful night with an east wind, my brother and I left Government Cut in Miami to cross the Gulf Stream in a small sailboat. We were in a hurry,…

Our anchoring adventure took place a few years ago as my family and I were nearing the end of a weeklong bareboat charter along the west coast of Florida. With me was my wife, Diane, our son and three of his high school classmates. The boys were all age 16 and inexperienced sailors. We had scheduled the charter out of St. Petersburg during the boys’ spring vacation. Our Moorings charter boat was the Beneteau 51 monohull, Loo-sha Lady, with four berths and two heads. She was an older but clean and well-appointed boat that the Moorings was chartering out of its Florida base at the time. We had traveled south uneventfully in good weather as the boys became acclimatized to the sailing life. We sailed past Longboat Key, Sarasota, Venice…

It happened as we were nearing the entrance buoys of the Ala Wai Boat Harbor after 16 days and 2,500 miles on delivery from San Diego to Hawaii. We’d already rolled up the jib and were jogging along at just 3-4 knots. A pod of spinner dolphins showed up and began playing around up at the bow as if to escort us in. Eager to visit the friendly dolphins, I grabbed a line, tied a quick bowline to the stern, donned my dive mask and jumped overboard, line in hand. As I towed underwater near the transom, I looked up at the dolphins cavorting at the bow. Suddenly a watery cloud of brown emerged from the back end of one of the dolphins. I tried to dodge it by bodysurfing…

And don’t forget to sign up for our free eNewsletter, Under Sail, via our website sailmagazine.com Sunfish racing started Sunday, April 3 in Fairfield Harbour’s Inner Harbor (near New Bern, North Carolina). Good wind and great competition for the first afternoon of the season—John Y. Jackson, New Bern, NC A fitting reward for a day full of squalls and heavy rain in the Abacos, Bahamas, as viewed from the stern of our Jeanneau 45 DS, ABRAXAS —Jim Edenfield, Ft Worth, TX This was taken last summer on a Sunday afternoon in Three Mile Harbor. That’s our dog, Wall-E, relaxing in the sun. Once the beer glass is empty, and there’s no reason to beg for a sip, it’s time for a nap—John and Lisa Charde, via sailmail@sailmagazine.com The Bermuda 40 Glide…

Strong winds and a brutal sea state made for record-breaking conditions for a least some of this year’s Newport-Bermuda Race fleet. However, these same conditions also tragically resulted in the loss of one of the sailors taking part—a reminder that for all of today’s technology, the sea remains an inherently dangerous place. According to race officials, New Jersey sailor Colin Golder of the 42ft Morgan Marietta went overboard approximately 325 miles from Bermuda in what were described as “strong winds.” After an “extended effort,” the Morgan Marietta’s crew was able to bring Golder back aboard. But it was already too late, and he couldn’t be revived. At press time, US Sailing, at the request of Newport-Bermuda Race officials, had convened a panel to find out exactly what happened, taking into…

The more things change, they more they seem to stay the same. Some of it is timing. Some of it is just the way of the world. Either way, it can be fascinating to see the evolution of the boatbuiding industry over the years, as has been evident in SAIL magazine’s annual Best Boats contest. Recently, for example, it really looked at times as if it was becoming a “multihull world,” so to speak, with cats and tris occupying an ever-larger segment of each new Best Boats class. Same thing with the ever-increasing size of the boats coming down the ways, as the world’s production builders began inching their way into megayacht territory. The class of 2023, though, has largely turned these trends on their head. This is not to…

The old saw that the happiest day in a sailor’s life is the one on which they sell their boat is funny, of course, because of the fact that owning a boat can be both expensive and a lot of work. If you sail a boat hard, and especially if you’re in the habit of making ocean crossings, taking care of the rigging, sails, systems, engine and, of course, the hull and deck is not only crucial but ongoing. Let’s look at one of the most insidious maintenance issues: leaks. Nothing eats away at a crew’s morale like a leaking boat, whether the water is coming in from overhead or below the waterline. Over time, there’s also nothing like leaks for eating away at a boat, too. As long as…

“Speak to a human!” I shouted at my phone. “I’m sorry, I know you want to talk to a human,” the UPS Bot dismissed me, “but first I need your …” “Z2519996757,” I growled. It was our tracking number. I still know it. I still scream it sometimes waking in a cold sweat. “SPEAK…TO…A…HUUUMAN!” my partner, Phillip, and I yelled repeatedly, during those daily calls to UPS. We screamed it in front of libraries, sleeping children, cemeteries, even. But it didn’t matter how loud we were. The UPS Bot didn’t care that we had trusted it with our custom-machined engine parts, and that without them, we now sat stranded and disabled. It didn’t care that we were mere weeks away from having to spend our first cruising season on our…

In 1989, the 58ft yacht Maiden made a splash in the Whitbread Round the World Race with the first all-female team in the race’s history. Despite intense criticism and many roadblocks, then 26-year-old Tracy Edwards and her crew won two legs of the race and finished in second in their fleet—the best finish of any Britishflagged boat at the time. The crew also inspired a generation of women to find their place on the water. In recent years, the boat has enjoyed a further boost in fame due to a 2018 Alex Holmes documentary, which chronicles the eponymous Maiden’s Whitbread campaign with candor, grace and a wealth of spectacular historic footage, making it an instant sailing classic. Around the same time the movie came out, Edwards launched Maiden Factor, an…

From sailors to kayakers to swimmers, there’s one thing everyone who spends time on the ocean has in common: a stake in protecting it. For decades human activities has been taking a toll, and there’s every reason to believe the worst is yet to come. Many experts believe it is no longer a question of if it will reach a crisis point, but how soon and what we can do to head off the worst of it. The good news is there are still opportunities to mitigate the damage. In fact, a huge number of dedicated organizations are fighting back—and some have even employed really cool sailboats to do it. Here’s a glimpse into the myriad interconnected problems facing our oceans, the efforts being made to fight them and the…

Until very recently, the batteries in sailboats used some form of lead-acid chemistry to store energy. Different manufacturers used different techniques and materials, but in the end, the chemistry and the process by which the batteries charge and discharge electricity remained the same. Lithium-ion chemistry, more recently introduced, can be confusing as there are several different chemistries all called “lithium-ion.” From a chemistry perspective, the safest lithium-ion batteries are lithium iron phosphate, often seen written as LifePO4, or simply LFP. However, there is a lot more that goes into a lithium-ion battery than chemistry. Well-built batteries with theoretically more volatile chemistries, such as nickel manganese cobalt (NMC), for example, will be safer than poorly built LFP batteries. RESISTANCE The most important thing to know about any electrical system is the…