Yachts & Yachting magazine August 2022

A FEW YEARS BACK, after a particularly hallucinatory singlehanded trip across the English Channel, I decided I wouldn't be making another crossing: the shipping lane, the wild weather, suddenly it all seemed a bit much. However, this month I was tempted back in order to help a friend move a 22' Hillyard to St Valery sur Somme so he could enter the canal system there. I reckoned he could do with a hand given the size of the boat. Anyway, the trip was, both eventful and enjoyable but I'm not here to bore you with tales of this jaunt - perhaps I'll leave that to a later issue. No, my reasons for mentioning it are that I have received a number of letters from confused sailors wondering what on earth…

IRC Nationals won by 0.005 of a point The IRC National Championship was won by 0.005 of a point by Niklas Zennström’s FAST40+ Rán, a nail-biting finish to a weekend of perfect sailing conditions in the Solent, the event organised by the Royal Ocean Racing Club. Rán’s mixed crew nearly let the title slip when they posted a third in the first race of the final day, the only blemish on their otherwise perfect scoreline. Over in IRC Three, Rán’s rival for the overall win, Adam Gosling’s JPK 10.80 Yes!, scored a fourth in the same race. In the longer, round the cans racing that concluded the event, both scored bullets, meaning the title went to Rán by the tiniest margin. “It is fantastic!” said Zennström. “We’ve won our class before [at this event]…

Southerly 48 completed Ocean Shipyard Limited was preparing to launch its first new build, the Southerly 48, as we went to press. The company, which took over the Discovery Shipyard site earlier this year, has another Southerly 48 and the first ever Southerly 42 still in build. Pay by the day Burnham Week 2022 (above) is hoping to encourage entries after introducing a pay-by-the-day system. The popular English east coast regatta runs from 27 August to 3 September. burnhamweek.com 11th Hour Racing film Under the Hull, a documentary following the journey of the 11th Hour Racing Team in the Transat Jacques Vabre last year, was set to be released on the team’s YouTube channel on 15 June. Medals for RNLI volunteers RNLI volunteers Alan Forrester (71) and David Leslie (77) received the Platinum Jubilee Medal, having completed…

“I was refused by my local club because I didn’t look disabled” World Sailing is in the midst of submitting its bid to have sailing reinstated to the Paralympics, a process which CEO David Graham is happy to say, in our article on page 11, is involving almost everybody in the organisation. World Sailing is well aware that the significance of the bid, for the sport and disabled sailing in general, could hardly be overstated. That’s not to say that disabled sailing is in a shabby state. Far from it. In the UK, there are charities all around the coast offering places on sailboats for people with varying disabilities. Volunteers do sterling work at hundreds of sailing clubs, offering dinghy rides every weekend to those who would otherwise not be able to…

Punch 1270 Speaking of obscure French boatbuilders, anyone out there remember Punch? No, I’m not talking about the long running British satirical magazine but the rather rugged multihull boatbuilder based on the Caribbean island of Martinique. They built fast Alain Mortain designed catamarans out of epoxy ply with, ahem, a certain lack of finesse. Anyway, many models have stood the test of time and are still out there making fast passages. Now the company is back and first off the line will be a Punch 1270, a modernisation of the 1250. To improve the hull bottoms the 1270 will be strip planked, which allows rounded hulls and PET foam and biosourced resin will also be used. multicap-algarve.com Ovnicat 48 French boatbuilder Alubat is best known for its rugged Ovni range of aluminium swing keel…

Ah, the Ionian! Beloved of Brits since the time of Lord Byron. From the bustle of Fiscardo to the tranquility of Kastos, the Inland Sea is as familiar as the Solent to many sailors. And there lies the bane of the local charter skipper’s life! Returning guests at Sail Ionian, where I work as a charter skipper, are always asking for new ideas on where to go. Route plans can be challenging when a guest has sailed in the area every summer for the past ten years! However, if you’re willing to put in a little effort and sail a little further, then a raft of new options opens to you. Mainland Greece is an unexplored paradise compared with the Ionian islands circuit. Quiet harbours and amazing archaeological sites await,…