I have to confess, I’m very resistant to the daily news drip-feed. The constant drama is overwhelming. I’ve often gone offline for weeks at sea and realised that when back on land, it doesn’t take long to get back up to speed on current affairs.
But despite a natural urge to shut the world out, we can’t.

Since the days of the earliest seafarers, it has always been important for sailors to know what parts of the globe to avoid, where the safe-ish areas were, and what the pirates were up to. (Unless of course, you were the pirates…)

Except for more data, nothing has really changed. We still must educate ourselves on global epidemics, piracy, geopolitics and war – and plan accordingly. So considering the elevated risks in the Middle East, parts of South America, Africa and South East Asia, does that mean any passages in this area are too dangerous?

The question makes me think of a talk I heard from a family of four who took the Red Sea short cut from Australia back home to France last year. They had no security aboard yet deemed it ‘safe enough’. In their case, it was. I have to say I found listening uncomfortable. For me, the trip would have been too much of a risk.

In 2019 I did the reverse passage on Maiden and felt like I was threading the needle of it being a good vs an idiotic choice. And that was with four armed security personnel on board. Once was enough.

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The inside story of Greta Thunberg’s upwind Atlantic crossing on La Vagabonde

The sky flashed a blinding white light and a spark came down just a few hundred metres to port. We…

Sailors get a unique and fascinating perspective on risk. The questions people ask before you go on a trip show what your community considers dangerous at any given time.

In 2021, people were more afraid of Covid than storms. In 2019 I sailed Greta Thunberg eastbound across the Atlantic to COP25 – with climate activism trending, and people were suddenly very interested in hurricane paths. Earlier that year, as I sailed Maiden past Saudi Arabia and Somalia, pirates were the hot topic. The war zone and cholera epidemic in Yemen were not considered that relevant!

When you read this, I’ll have returned from a transpacific passage on an Outremer 52. The thing my family and friends were most concerned about ahead of this trip from the Galapagos to the Marquesas was whether my flight home went eastbound over the US or west bound via the Middle East. The latter, they considered more dangerous than 3,000 miles of ocean sailing.

Our fears are not particularly good indicators of real risk. It just shows where we are focusing our attention. One day storms are less dangerous than pirates. The next weather is more dangerous than a world war. Keeping a level head and staying informed are important, but not always easy.

Risk is inherent to sailing. Whenever we step aboard, we accept a level of risk. Calculating and considering every ‘what if’ scenario helps us make plans to keep us safe. Risk is so top of the mind, that we consider everything more diligently. But in truth, risk is no more integral to sailing than everyday life. Normal humans take just as many risks – they just don’t choose them in the same conscious way.

Looking back I can count on one hand specific moments at sea where I thought maybe I’d pushed it too far. Four hours into a hurricane in the North Pacific on the Clipper Race when a sustained 70 knots gusting 90 wasn’t abating and night was drawing in. Looking up at the shaking rig of a 40-footer as we propelled over icicle ledge waves above the Biscay Shelf in a Force 10 wondering whether it would drop, or we would capsize first.

On Maiden docked in Port Said, awaiting our Suez transit, finding myself face-to-face down below with four armed military personnel.

With all these ‘Oh s**t’ moments, the common factor was how confrontational the danger was. The nature of the situation removed the option of downplaying the reality. I was unquestionably conscious of the risk I faced.

So, if you’re considering a risky passage, reinvent these scenarios. Whether it’s putting up the bigger sail, sailing past a war zone, or anything that might be considered ‘dangerous’ – imagine yourself face-to-face with the worst-case scenario.

How does it feel? Do you have a plan? Then, run it by a fellow sailor or someone who understands what it means to be a conscious risk taker. If you can justify it to them, it’s probably a safe bet.

But remember that word ‘bet’. It’s all a gamble – not just sailing, but anything in life.

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Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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The post When is some risk too much risk? Nikki Henderson appeared first on Yachting World.

One of the biggest characters in yacht racing – and particularly the America’s Cup – Ted Turner, has died aged 87.

Robert ‘Ted’ Edward Turner III was born on November 19, 1938 in Ohio, USA, and spent his childhood sailing in Savannah, in the Southern state of Georgia, going on to win class championships in the Flying Dutchman amongst others.

After military school he headed to Brown University, where he represented the Ivy League institution in sailing, but was expelled for being caught with a female guest in his dorm room.

He joined his family business, Turner Communications, which specialised in advertising hoardings, as an account executive. But his father took his own life shortly after, and Turner III took over as the company’s president.

The young Turner swiftly proved to have an aptitude for the media business, diversifying the company into radio, television, and sports, with enormous success.

Ted Turner photographed with sailing trophies in his office at Turner Broadcasting System. Credit: Tom Hill via Getty

In 1964, aged 26, Turner trialled for the US Olympic Team in the Flying Dutchman class, but was not selected to represent USA at the Tokyo Games.

However, he won the Flying Dutchman World Championships the following year, and also won the 5.5-Metre Worlds in 1970.

He then moved into big boat racing and bought the 12-Metre American Eagle in 1969. American Eagle was designed for the 1964 America’s Cup, but Turner had it converted to IOR racing.

After competing in SORC races and the Annapolis-Newport Race, it sailed across the Atlantic on its own bottom to race in the Fastnet Race.

Officially a ‘reserve’ for the US Admiral’s Cup team that year, Turner skippered American Eagle to win line honours and set a monohull race record time in the 608-mile offshore race in 1971.

He then shipped the boat to Australia and won the 1972 Sydney Hobart Race on both line honours and handicap.

Turner went on to win both races again. He won the tragic 1979 Fastnet Race in his own 61-footer Tenacious.

He is quoted as saying during the race: “Looks like there’s some heavy weather coming. Put up all the canvas, we’ll let God take it down.”

He also won line honours in the 1983 Sydney Hobart as skipper of the Maxi yacht Condor.

His sailing successes led to him skippering the Challenger Mariner for the 1974 America’s Cup Defense Trials, but Mariner – which had a radical hull design – was swiftly knocked out, and Turner was dismissed.

Describing the boat, Turner famously noted that ‘even a turd is pointed at both ends’.

Determined to get to the Cup, Turner partnered with sailmaker Ted Hood of the rival Courageous syndicate, which had won the 1974 Cup, with Turner appointed as Courageous’s skipper for the 1977 defence.

The American yacht ‘Courageous’, captained by Ted Turner, sailing at Newport during selection trials for the America’s Cup, Rhode Island, August 9th 1977. Credit: UPI / Bettmann Archive via Getty Images

In 1977 Courageous and Turner won first the US America’s Cup trials – for which Cup reporter Bob Fisher gave him the moniker of “Captain Courageous” when he came from behind to defeat the newer 12-Metre Independence, skippered by Hood, and Lowell North on the much fancied Enterprise.

He then successfully defended the Cup in the Match against the challenger Australia, winning 4-0, and celebrated famously.

He was a four-time winner of the Rolex Yachtsman of the Year award, and is thought to have won over 500 major sailing trophies.

Turner at the official CNN Launch event at CNN Techwood Drive World Headquarters in Atlanta Georgia, June 01, 1980. Credit: Rick Diamond via Getty Images

Success on the water was mirrored in his business life, with Turner founding the CNN news network in 1980.

CNN became a leader in breaking international news, covering seismic events such as the protests in Tiananmen Square, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the Gulf War in Iraq.

Turner was named Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” for CNN’s groundbreaking coverage in 1991. He later bought the MGM film library for $1.6bn, and created the Cartoon Network, before selling his multi-billion-dollar business in the Time Warner merger.

A passionate environmentalist, Turner was a major charity donor and passionate about sustainable development – much of it on his own land, and until 2010 he was the largest private landowner in the USA.

He gave $1 billion to create the United Nations Foundation charity, and lobbied to reduce the global proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

He created the ‘Goodwill Games’, after several Olympic Games in the 1980s were impacted by political boycotts, and invested heavily in various sports including baseball and wrestling.

Turner is reported to have had a long-running feud with fellow media magnate Rupert Murdoch – which founded, not in a ratings war, but when a Murdoch-sponsored yacht collided with Condor during the 1983 Sydney to Hobart Race.

Condor ran aground but held the race line honours win after protest. At a boozy post-race dinner, Turner and Murdoch exchanged heated words – legend has it that Turner later challenged Murdoch to a televised fistfight in Las Vegas.

Outspoken and at times controversial, he was variously nicknamed ‘The Mouth of the South’ and ‘Captain Outrageous’, though the latter often applied to his ability to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat on the water.

His private life was also at times in the headlines: he married three times – the third time to actor Jane Fonda.

He is survived by his five children, 14 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

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The post Obituary: Ted Turner, America’s Cup icon and founder of CNN (1938-2026) appeared first on Yachting World.

From crushing it to make garden furniture, to sending it through a complicated process to strip the resin from the fibre, or turning it into an energy source, there’s no shortage of ideas about what to do with your boat once you and everyone else who has owned it have finished with it.

In a world focused on sustainability, the marine world has been considering for some time how to squeeze the most out of the planet’s resources.

There are plenty of good examples, not least by the French who have established a mandatory recycling system. Manufacturers pay a levy on new boats and annual taxes fund the Association pour la Plaisance Eco-Responsable to dismantle them. Boats from 2.5-24m are taken to one of the 37 authorised centres across France. For boat owners the service is free.

And yet the irony is that, in the racing scene at least, France seems to squeeze the most out of their machines already. In fact, you could argue that a recycling system for the IMOCA fleet is currently irrelevant as none of the boats seem to have reached the end of their lives – they keep bouncing back to complete yet another Vendée Globe.

It’s true of their big machines too with the latest being remarkable for the staggering new record it has set 25 years after it was first launched. As solo French sailor Guirec Soudée crossed the finishing line after around 40,000 miles around the world this spring he didn’t just better an existing record – he obliterated it, taking almost 28 days off the previous best. And he did what no one else has managed to do by taking a giant 32m Ultim trimaran non-stop, the wrong way around the world.

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Around the world record broken: Sodebo takes Jules Verne Trophy in 40d 10h 45m

Thomas Coville’s Sodebo team crossed the virtual finish line between Ushant and Lizard Point this morning at 0746 (French time),…

His boat MACSF was originally launched in 2001 for Olivier de Kersauson and named Geronimo. She was 34m overall back then, designed and built to set new trans-ocean and around the world records. In 2004 de Kersauson and his crew took the Jules Verne Trophy, lapping the planet the right way in just over 63½ days. From there she set several other records, including the Trans-Pacific and the Challenge Round Australia.

In 2013 she was bought by Sodebo to be heavily modified with the aim of winning the 2014 Route du Rhum with Thomas Coville at the helm. The design side of the refit fell to VPLP who created what was to become the precursor to the Ultim class. The work was extensive, with the central hull replaced and extended by 3m. The beams were reinforced so foils and rudders could be added to the floats, which were also rebuilt. A new mast completed a machine that was now 6 tonnes lighter.

After a tricky start to her career that began with a collision with a freighter in the Route du Rhum, Sodebo went on to break records again including a new solo round the world time, and a transatlantic record.

Sold in 2021 she became Actual for Yves le Bleve and then Mieux for Arthur le Vaillant. She was renamed MACSF when Guirec Soudée bought her last year and now has another record on her CV. And there are plenty of other French racing machines not yet ready for the scrap heap despite many thousands of miles under their hulls.

Take the 28m cat ENZA. Famous for setting the Jules Verne in 1994, today this boat is still lapping the planet, albeit at a slower pace. It started life as the 80ft Formula TAG in 1983 before becoming ENZA in 1994. Designed by Nigel Irens she was the first ocean racing cat to be built almost exclusively of carbon fibre and the first boat to break 500 miles in 24 hours. In 1994 she set a round the world fully crewed record of 74 days.

In 1997 she was bought by Tracey Edwards and renamed Royal & SunAlliance. Despite dismasting in their Jules Verne attempt in 1998 she broke seven world records.

Tony Bullimore had her next, renamed Team Legato and lengthened to 100ft for The Race in 2000. But 2010 almost spelled the end of her career after she capsized off Cape Finisterre in just 15 knots of wind. Too old, too tired and too damaged, was this the end? No. In 2015 she was converted to sport two wingmasts, acres of solar panels and more accommodation to take on a new life as a fully green, sustainable exploration vessel. Since then Energy Observer has clocked up almost 70,000 miles.

So if ever there were cases to prove how a sport that may seems excessive and wasteful could be quite the opposite, these examples prove there’s plenty of life left in race boats and that you should look elsewhere for garden furniture raw materials.

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The post Why racing machines are the ultimate recycled resource – Matt Sheahan appeared first on Yachting World.

Recently I was in Cowes for a weekend with RORC’s 2026 Griffin squad. The RORC scheme offers 30 young adults under 30 years old an opportunity to race offshore on its Sunfast 3600. This year, the most experienced team will be racing in the Round Britain and Ireland race.

Sailing has an ageing problem if you look at statistics for club membership and boat owners. Yet 300 sailors applied to the Griffin 2026 selection rounds, half of them female. There’s no shortage of younger sailors – they just need a pathway in. It was a British February weekend, pouring with rain, blowing 20+ knots, and every single one seemed excited to get out on the water.

On the Saturday evening, Shirley Robertson OBE gave an emotive talk about racing the 2022 Round Britain and Ireland with Dee Caffari on their Sun Fast 3300 RockIT. That year the race was relentless, almost entirely upwind for the smaller boats and a long, slow 14-days. ​​​​​

Shirley brought to life the brutality of two weeks at sea on a small boat. The struggle to pull off her foulies and get into bed just for a meagre 40 minutes rest – and the hallucinations that followed if she didn’t. She drew the audience’s attention to the discipline an offshore race like that demands – everything from complex coastal navigation to rubbish management and keeping the boat hygienic. “There’s just so much to think about,” was her mantra throughout the evening.

​What’s more, while Shirley’s Olympic sailing career had involved focussing on fine details for decades, Dee’s offshore sailing ‘big picture’ approach meant they had to start from scratch to find a way of communicating.
When Shirley finished, the room was wide eyed. It was a proper wake up call. ​​​​

“Now we’re really nervous,” one of the crew said to me. “We’ve just realised how cold it’s going to be. We’re going to have to figure out our kit.”

Heroic tales of big waves and storms are what tend to classify hard core sailors. We give more credibility to sailors who’ve seen big conditions. But life down below is often harder than life on deck. Sometimes the real concerns are domestic. Not ‘how big were the waves?’ but ‘how cold were your hands – and how did you cope?’

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I have haunting memories of my first transatlantic race I skippered. It was supposed to be a lush 3,000-mile tropical downwind race. Instead we started with eight consecutive days of upwind bashing and rain. I was 20, inexperienced and had very little money. So I made sub-par routing choices, and brought not quite the right clothing with me. Despite all the challenges I faced, it was the moment where I slid my arm into the damp, clammy sleeve of my now not-at-all-waterproof jacket where I hit my wall. There is just something so indescribably draining about being wet and not having a break from it.

The wrong clothing can break people faster than big conditions. I’ve seen grown men shed tears after finding their glove soaking wet in the bilge. I’ve seen people so exhausted at the prospect of having to get undressed to go to bed they simply sleep in their oilskins.

And many an expletive has been shouted from even the calmest crew when seawater finds its way down their boot on the rail, or worse, down the neck seal of an otherwise dry top.

Clothing isn’t just about preserving morale, it’s a safety topic. Being cold can stop your brain working and render you useless for decision making. Being too hot is a common cause of seasickness. Wearing too many layers makes moving around awkward and risks injury. Frozen hands can’t undo knots, or operate safety tether clips.

Taking time to source good clothing is as much about performance and seamanship as it is vanity. Which is why I think we should treat acquiring and packing kit as a critical preparation job, like tensioning the rig or downloading weather. And not to do what I always seem to – which is leave it to the very last minute, shove it all in the smallest bag I can get away with, and hope for the best.

My priority number one is always staying dry. These days I never go sailing, irrespective of the climate, without my smock with latex neck and cuff seals. My second priority is wearing clothing I like. After years of packing technical or team clothing I realised that comfortable gear that leaves me feeling good at sea is really important and makes me perform better.

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Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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The post Learning lessons from Shirley Robertson and Dee Caffari – Nikki Henderson appeared first on Yachting World.

Do you find a sense of belonging at sea? A deep intuition that it’s the right place for you? Dare I say it, but sometimes being offshore can oddly feel more emotionally comfortable than being in my own home.

Life at sea is so sensory that the experience is incredibly visceral. The wind on your face, the movement of the boat, the sounds of waves, the distinct smells of human life down below – it’s totally immersive. And that’s why the memories of sailing linger so vividly. I sometimes find I can feel the memory. During the Covid pandemic, I remember putting my head out the window on a windy day and feeling immediately comforted.

I suspect many of you will agree: sailing is healing. Even in tough conditions, its call for your presence pulls you entirely into the moment. It’s not unlike a long distance trail run or a cold plunge; your body and mind are exhausted – and at the same time invigorated. But, with big highs come big lows. Sometimes as sailors we can pay a high price. And, this is a side of sailing often overlooked.

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How do you winterise a sailor?! – Nikki Henderson

I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions. They feel as loaded with guilt as they do optimism. And by…

Do we need to rethink our relationship with electric winches – Nikki Henderson

It’s rare that emails landed in my inbox with a subject like ‘MAIB reports on fatal sailing accident’. But a…

Watching famous freeclimber Alex Honnold scale a skyscraper on television recently made me realise that our sports sit in similar territory. Sailing, climbing, alpinism, long distance hiking, biking – all carry real, inherent risk. That hit home in January with the sombre report of the crewmember on Walross 4 who was injured during the RORC Transatlantic Race and later died. I doubt anyone involved with that incident would view that voyage as healing. And the wounds left by that death far exceed just the casualty.

Yes, sailing can be deeply healing, but we also need to acknowledge its potential long-term psychological cost.

On the final day of last year’s Middle Sea Race – the day we crossed the line in first place – I experienced a harrowingly close call when the mainsheet clipped a crewmember’s neck. Thankfully, they survived without any lasting physical injury. It was a near miss and nothing ‘bad’ happened in the end. Yet, in the weeks that followed, I struggled to get over it. Once the symptoms worsened enough, I investigated and realised I was suffering from PTSD. And, not for the first time.

I recognised the emotional turmoil from earlier in my career, when I arrived in Fremantle during the Clipper Round the World Race after sailor Simon Speirs had died on another boat. Again, nothing had happened directly to me, yet the psychological impact was long lasting. In fact, after over a decade sailing professionally, I’ve now realised that rescues I’ve been involved in, the ‘close calls’, and tragedies I’ve witnessed have all left their mark.

I’ve since seen many sailors affected by experiences others might dismiss: severe seasickness, rig failures, bullying or major conflict, minor injuries that were millimetres away from lost limbs or worse… Near misses and scary moments at sea can stay with us in unexpected ways. And, we need to talk about this more.

That isn’t about being a killjoy – quite the opposite in fact. Awareness of risk does not need to diminish our love for the sport – it’s essential to sustaining our love affair with sailing.

Last year author Dave Kilmer interviewed me, as he has done with dozens of other skippers from superyachts to super-tankers, for his book The Way of the Captain. He shared with me how surprised he was at how often mental health had come up in conversations with skippers without him directly posing the question. The emotional load of command and general life at sea, it seems, is a commonly experienced but under-acknowledged challenge.

When Dave asked me how I’d dealt with my own mental and emotional struggles as captain, I realised that despite feeling a deep connection to the sea, I no longer think going to sea is always an appropriate way to heal wounds. Not when I’m the skipper, carrying the responsibility for others. Not when what I’m trying to process was caused by a sailing experience. And not if I’m in such a challenging spot that I can’t keep my emotional state in check.

Sailing gives us extraordinary highs, mental space and lasting positive effects. But, it also asks a lot of us mentally.

Loving sailing means understanding not just what it gives us but also what it can take.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

Note: We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site, at no extra cost to you. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

The post Balancing the visceral joy of sailing with its mental toll – Nikki Henderson appeared first on Yachting World.

When Francis Joyon and his crew aboard IDEC Sport set a ground-breaking record for a non-stop lap of the planet in 2017 it was clear their trip had been an exceptional one.

They hadn’t just beaten the record set five years earlier, but smashed it – taking five days off the previous best. IDEC Sport’s record stood for nine years.

This January, Thomas Coville and his crew aboard Sodebo nudged the bar up once more, taking 12 hours off Joyon’s time. And while Sodebo’s performance was impressive, it’s interesting to reflect that, since Joyon’s record, design and technology have taken a big hike and yet the winning margin was relatively small.

Today’s Ultim tris are massively more powerful and sophisticated than their predecessors, thanks largely to the fact they can fly. And yet Sodebo only managed to take hours rather than days off the record.

To be fair, they had to slow down towards the finish to avoid Storm Ingrid. If they hadn’t it’s likely they could have taken more than a day off the record.

They’d also travelled much further to search out the best conditions. In all, Sodebo sailed around 2,000 miles more than IDEC Sport.

Still, there’s no question the world of high-performance sailing is going through a revolution as foils start to show what they can do offshore and in waves.

The giant 34m Baltic 111 Raven, with its huge canting foils, set a very impressive recent new course record in the RORC Transatlantic Race, crossing in just 6 days, 22 hours.

Not only had they set a new time, but they took the record from a boat that has long been widely regarded as the fastest supermaxi in the world: Comanche.

According to some of Raven’s crew, who’d also sailed aboard Comanche, the most impressive thing was to be sitting at record-breaking pace at just 6° of heel. Aboard Comanche it would have been 23°.

For me, this is a big pointer to what might be in store for racing and perhaps cruising: fast and flat.

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Have you ever seen rudders like that before? Radical top-secret Gitana 18 Ultim unveiled

When the Rothschilds and Gitana team unveil a new boat, they do it properly – and last night the huge…

Around the world record broken: Sodebo takes Jules Verne Trophy in 40d 10h 45m

Thomas Coville’s Sodebo team crossed the virtual finish line between Ushant and Lizard Point this morning at 0746 (French time),…

But what also came across was that it had taken two years to get to the point that Raven’s crew were happy to enter the race. Two years to get to grips with the systems, the loads and the handling to understand and exploit the potential of this radical machine.

Team Gitana and skipper Charles Caudrelier have spent the last two years working to create their latest Ultim, Gitana 18, which launched as this column went to press.

It’s a beast of a machine and looks just like the kind of offshore weapon that will rip through the record books. But according to Caudrelier it will take four years before the team can fully exploit the potential of the new trimaran and make it reliable enough to attempt a new world record.

The main reason is that while we know far more about how to make big gains in performance, the modern generation of designs have become significantly more sophisticated.

Sodebo was launched in 2019 and it’s only now that it looks like it’s really finding its feet. The team had two attempts at the Jules Verne last year and both resulted in retirements after breakages.

You only have to look at the technical spec to see how complex the next generation of record-chasers is getting. The previous Gitana 17 had 18 hydraulic cylinders, the new boat will have 44.

Even more immense is the task for the Ferrari Hypersail project. Understanding how to balance a 30m monohull on an America’s Cup style foil system to fly around the world is one thing, making it robust and reliable enough to chase the clock is something else. So it will take longer than you might expect to see the big records tumble.

But that’s not to say the world of record breaking will go quiet. In the RORC Transatlantic race, Antoine Magre’s Mach 50 Palanad 4, a 50ft custom scow-bow design, took the race on corrected time, easily.

If you’re wondering where all this development might be leading for the broader sport, take a look at the new 12m-long Skaw A (skawsailing.com/skaw-a). With a set of large retractable C-foils the overall package drives home what a performance cruiser of the future might look like.

But just as it takes time for the ocean chasers to work up to record-setting pace, it might take a little while before the mainstream adopts it.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

Note: We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site, at no extra cost to you. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

The post The slow, slow road to becoming flat-out fastest – Matt Sheahan appeared first on Yachting World.

I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions. They feel as loaded with guilt as they do optimism. And by the time February rolls around it’s easy to hit a slump. This year feels particularly anti-climactic. I’ve found myself enviously following the transatlantic and Caribbean race circuits, second-guessing my decision to stay on dry land this winter.

But instead of dwelling too long on that misery it prompted a more useful question: what should we be doing with the off-season? Most of us know how to winterise a boat, but how do you winterise a sailor?

One of the most effective ways I’ve found to improve when I’m not on the water is to deliberately put myself back in the role of student. So, this winter, I’d challenge all of you who’s lines are securely fastened to the docks to do the same: learn something new.

An obvious candidate is to nerd up on your instruments. These systems are astonishingly capable, yet most of us use a fraction of their potential. Once the season starts, diving into menus and adjusting settings can feel like opening a can of worms. Everything behaves differently, you don’t know how to undo what you’ve done – and so it’s easy to conclude that it’s better to just never touch them again.

So the off-season is the perfect time to read instrument manuals properly, watch a few webinars, and understand what your setup can really offer. Even if you don’t own a boat, understanding NMEA network architecture, autopilot tuning, or how to run a proper speed calibration makes you a valuable asset on any crew.

Winter is also the time to tackle jobs that are too miserable to do once the boat is in commission. Servicing pumps is a great example – freshwater pumps, bilge pump, macerators and toilets are all deeply unpleasant to pull apart when you’re living on board or sailing regularly. Doing them now will reduce the risk of them failing later.

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Do we need to rethink our relationship with electric winches – Nikki Henderson

It’s rare that emails landed in my inbox with a subject like ‘MAIB reports on fatal sailing accident’. But a…

‘Why seamanship is more than just the mastery of sailing’ – Nikki Henderson

What is seamanship? The Oxford dictionary defines seamanship as ‘the skill, technique or practice of handling a ship at sea’.…

Alongside the onboard maintenance, there’s the question of personal maintenance. Each year I try to set myself one leadership goal, something specific that usually requires some sort of private therapeutic work. If you aren’t sure what that might be, asking crew for feedback can be informative.

About eight years ago, a crewmember told me they felt belittled because I repeated my instructions too readily. I spent the winter learning how to slow myself down in fight or flight situations and adopted a technique which I still use today: where possible moving to the person I speak to, rather than shouting across the boat. It noticeably calms me and the atmosphere on board.

And then there’s fitness. It’s hard to stay fit when you’re sailing, which means much of the work needs to happen beforehand. I recently heard fellow offshore sailor and physical therapist Hannah Diamond speak about training and her advice was to focus on pulling as well as pushing, and aim for two strength sessions and two cardiovascular sessions each week. Fitness training is often undervalued, even mocked, in sailing. But the fitter you are, the more you’ll enjoy sailing, the more energy you’ll have, and the less likely you’ll be to get injured and become a liability to your crew.

Many sailors also worry about getting rusty after time off the water. A way to counter this is to use the off-season to build or refine your playbooks for key manoeuvres. How do you reef? Who does what when recovering from a broach? What’s the plan if you lose the rudder? These can be working documents that you build up, but thinking them through when you’re shore-bound is invaluable.

One off-season job I always leave too late is testing foul weather gear. It sits in my cupboard all winter, until a few days before I fly out to a boat and I realise – too late – it’s no longer waterproof. So take advantage of the properly wet rainy days and go for a long walk in your gear. If you come home with damp patches – replace it (reproofing rarely works for me).

Finally, not all preparation is practical. It’s a chance to pause and renew your enthusiasm for our sport. I re-read favourite sailing books, watch films about early explorers and reconnect with the romance of it all.

And if you’re still really longing to get out there, don’t underestimate the restorative power of time in saltwater, no matter how cold. A dinghy sail on a crisp, frosty morning, or an afternoon surfing after a good onshore breeze can do wonders for the soul.

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The post How do you winterise a sailor?! – Nikki Henderson appeared first on Yachting World.

There was little doubt that the Ian Howlett-designed 70-footer Fly, built by the Elephant Boatyard on the River Hamble, was an innovative and impressive bluewater cruiser when launched in 1991. And while she sailed brilliantly and was ridiculously easy to handle, there was something myself and photographer Malcom White couldn’t bring ourselves to say in front of our hosts.

Elegant as the hull lines were, when you looked at the overall package she wasn’t pretty. In fact, Fly’s AeroRig was so unusual that it was difficult to imagine that this configuration would ever be accepted by the mainstream – and sadly it wasn’t.

On the other hand, the rotating mainsail and foresail combination had some significant benefits, the best being her reaching performance and the ease with which this huge rig could be handled.

Now, over 30 years later, a very similar rig configuration has appeared on a large commercial ship. The Neoliner Origin claims to be the world’s first-ever commercial sailing roll-on/roll-off (ro-ro) vessel. At 136m in length and displacing 11,000 tonnes fully loaded, Neoliner Origin is only slightly smaller than, say, the Brittany Ferries cross-channel ferry Barfleur.

Owned by the French shipping company Neoline, the ship made its maiden voyage in October 2025 from St Nazaire on the west coast of France, across the Atlantic to St Pierre et Miquelon, the small French island enclave off the coast of Newfoundland, and then on to Baltimore, Maryland, on the east coast of the USA.

Its first cargo included Renault hybrid cars, forklift trucks, an industrial quantity of brioche, and an impressive half million bottles of Hennessy cognac.

Article continues below…

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Harnessing the power of the wind to propel modern merchant vessels has been attempted with varying levels of success for decades. But where this ship is different is that it was designed from the outset to be a full-size ro-ro merchant ship powered by sail. It even has a pair of retractable daggerboards. This sets it apart from many of the sail-assisted vessels that are scattered around the world where wing sails, kites and rotating cylinders have been retrofitted, sometimes rather jarringly.

While the ship was built in Türkiye by RMK Marine, the project is very French. The twin swing-rig is designed and produced by SolidSail, a subsidiary of Chantiers de l’Atlantique, the huge state-owned shipyard at St Nazaire. The ship has an air draught of 88m, but the masts can be folded for manoeuvring in port and under bridges.

With 3,000m² sail area Neoliner Origin’s unstayed rigs rotate so they’re head to wind for hoisting and lowering and then trimmed accordingly.

With the stated aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80-90% compared to conventionally powered vessels on the same transatlantic route, SolidSail suggests that 1,000 tonnes of fuel can be saved per rig in the course of a year.

And if you fancy experiencing it for yourself, up to 12 passengers can be accommodated, with a transatlantic passage coming in at a little under £3,000.

There are plans in the works for even more ambitious projects. Already in build at St Nazaire is a 220m sailing yacht which will have three of the 1,500m² swing rigs fitted. And SolidSail have published designs for a larger truck-carrying ro-ro, and even a 300,000 tonne crude oil tanker. The world’s third-largest container ship operator CMA CGM, based in Marseille, is a major stakeholder in the project, so there’s substantial financial backing.

The decision to test the concept in the North Atlantic was a brave one, and there was a glitch on the first voyage when bad weather caused damage to one of the mainsails leaving just one of the rigs operating. The vessel’s diesel-electric powerplant took up the slack, but repairs were effected that allowed the return trip to be carried out under full sail. A second transatlantic return trip was accomplished over the Christmas period, but at the time of writing the ship was tied up in Lorient where it’s reported that modifications were being made to its sails.

With looks being less of an issue in the hard-nosed commercial world, the hope is that a 35-year-old concept has at last found its true calling and can deliver a genuine contribution to the future of cleaner commerical shipping.

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It’s rare that emails landed in my inbox with a subject like ‘MAIB reports on fatal sailing accident’. But a recent Monday was one of them.

In August this year a 74-year-old Kiwi skipper died after getting ‘entangled in a powered winch’ on his 57ft steel monohull Mollie. He was a few miles offshore from the Needles, en-route to Poole, having sailed to Europe from New Zealand.

The MAIB report detailed what happened: a 24V electric winch with an intermittently defective control switch started turning unexpectedly as the skipper was removing a rope. His right hand got caught and he was pulled violently against the winch drum. With no emergency switch close by to cut the power to the winches, the crew could not free him in time, and he died. It’s a harrowing read. But, read through it we must, without judgement or ego. Because we learn by reflecting on tragedy.

Electric winches are divisive. On one side, they make sailing dramatically more accessible, especially for those who aren’t so physically able. But they also carry serious risks. Electric winches can create an unhealthy disconnect between sailors and their boats and nature.

They mask the loads involved, they tempt people into relying on power rather than technique, and they make mistakes happen faster, with more force and with greater consequence. In Mollie’s case, these consequences were fatal.

So, how do we weigh the danger against the upside? Some might say keep it manual. But that’s unrealistic. Once you’ve used a power tool, it’s hard to even fathom going back to the arduous, by-hand method. You’re going to be hard pushed to persuade a tree surgeon to swap their chainsaw for a handsaw.

Article continues below…

‘Why seamanship is more than just the mastery of sailing’ – Nikki Henderson

What is seamanship? The Oxford dictionary defines seamanship as ‘the skill, technique or practice of handling a ship at sea’.…

Why time on the water trumps all safety gadgets and certificates – Nikki Henderson

Boat owners, future boat owners, dreamer boat owners – the most common question they ask me is: ‘What’s going to…

That comparison is useful, though. Everyone instinctively knows a chainsaw is dangerous. But electric and manual winches look almost identical. They operate in similar ways. Most have no automatic kill switch, no emergency stop beyond a fuse (which definitely won’t blow before someone is dragged into the drum). It’s too easy to underestimate the risk.

In September I was teaching a 19-year-old who’d only ever sailed with manual winches how to operate a boat equipped with electrics. She had bad habits to unlearn, and to her frustration I asked her to repeat manoeuvres until she did them safely. By the end of the day she was ready to throw the entire winch at me. She’d been using winches for years – why wasn’t that enough?

Two things struck me. First, how little distinction she made between a manual winch and an electric one. To her they were essentially the same piece of kit. And muscle memory is only useful if it’s correct. We’d save a lot of grief if our training systems taught safe winch and rope handling to a consistent standard from the very first course – with consideration for the fact that every sailor will almost certainly apply those handling skills to an electric winch one day in the future.

So, what can we learn?

First, electric winches need more obvious identification. Perhaps glow tape or red tags or warning labels would be a good start to signal danger. Manufacturers could adopt more stringent safety standards – what about emergency stop switches located right beside every winch, so an operator can kill power with a knee, hip or spare hand. Second, buttons and switches need regular servicing (and clear manufacturers’ recommendations).

Third, winch-handling education needs stronger emphasis. Even the absolute basics – like avoiding loose clothing, tying back long hair, or understanding that the winch itself is dangerous, not just the line attached to it –are often missed fundamentals.
Perhaps the most sobering detail in the report is the skipper was caught not while operating the winch, but while removing a non-working line from it. That could be any of us – training or no training.

Hopefully, this awful event will encourage reflections on the broader safety culture around electric winches. Because, as of today, it hasn’t kept pace with how widely they’re now used. Electric winch technology has outrun the training, regulation and awareness that should accompany it.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t use them – far from it. I see first-hand how electric winches open doors for new boat owners, and that’s a good thing. But, let’s step up and make the changes we need.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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Most of us are off the water and counting down the weeks to the start of the new season as the northern hemisphere delivers this season’s offering of short days, long nights and hardcore weather systems that slide across the Atlantic. But for some, the training programme continues as they focus on the road to the next Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 2028.

Many have headed to warmer locations to train where they often buddy up with some of their arch rivals to compete as if the Games were on in a few weeks. It’s a mark of just how important the summer of 2028 is. But also the importance of how one specific day could play out.

And while the Olympic medal race day is more than two and a half years away, it’s not just their performance that’s important either, the specific details as to how the competition will be run is crucially important. Not only do athletes and coaches need to know how gold, silver and bronze medals will be decided, but they also want to ensure they can maximise their chances of getting to that point.

Understanding the Olympic format may sound obvious but, as I wrote recently, the mooted plans for the next Games looked very different.

For many sailors the proposals put far too great an emphasis on a single short race that would take no account of their performance in the selection series. The worry was that, despite years of training and a string of good results, victory would come down to one extremely short race in an area that could likely have more variable conditions.

And any points buffer they’d built during the series beforehand would be scrubbed in favour of a winner-takes-all single race.

Sailors were so concerned at the little – if any – word from World Sailing as to what was on the table, that they made a fair bit of noise about it leading up to the World Sailing conference. Now it seems, things have changed.

Photo: Mark Lloyd/World Sailing

Following that conference in Dublin significant modifications to the medal races have been made and agreement reached to provide two interesting new formats: one for windsurfing and kites; the other for the dinghy, skiff and multihull classes.

For the windsurfers and kites it looks to be a fairer system than that which existed for the last Games.

After a selection series, the top 10 competitors head into quarter-, semi- and grand finals. In the quarter-final, places 6 to 10 race against each other in a single race with the winning two proceeding to the semi-final to join places 3-5. From this race the winning pair go to the grand-final to race against the top two.

The advantage of this system is that taking the top two from each stage is considered to be better than taking just the winner, as it should both change the tactics and reduce the influence of a lucky win.

In the final with four competitors, the top two start with a win apiece, the other two start on zero. From here the first competitor to achieve two wins takes gold with silver and bronze decided on the number of wins. Under this system it seems more likely the winner will be the dominant/consistent performer in the series.

The format for the sailing classes is a bolder change.

Here, the opening series of 8-9 races seeds the fleet as usual, with the top 10 going through to finals day. The difference is that once the selection series is completed the total points for the top 10 are adjusted (if required), to ensure no competitor is more than 9 points ahead of the next placed competitor. From 4th to 10th position, no competitor can be more than 18 points behind 3rd.

With this compressed points board, all 10 sailors then go into the final (which consists of two single-point races), with a chance of winning a medal. Closing the points gap should mean the racing is more exciting while also allowing a team that has been dominant to maintain a points advantage (the previous idea had been to wipe the scoreboard back to zero ahead of the medal race.)

The new formats will be trialled in a number of the major Olympic classes events this season, the first being the Trofeo Princesa Sofía regatta in Mallorca in late March.

So, while the sailors are relieved that the most important regatta in the world should still rely on a consistent performance, the chances are this coming season will be scrutinised far more than before.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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The post Olympic sailing shakeup: Breaking down the new Olympic sailing format appeared first on Yachting World.

What is seamanship? The Oxford dictionary defines seamanship as ‘the skill, technique or practice of handling a ship at sea’. But the more I’ve dug into it, I’ve realised seamanship has just about as many definitions as there are captains.

The word seamanship has been used since the 1700s. Just as the ‘ship’ in leadership implies mastery, ‘seamanship’ is about being an expert seaman. If it was thought up today, I imagine it would be ‘sailor-ship’ – but don’t panic, this column isn’t about new-age terminology.

A few centuries ago, seamanship was everything involved in getting from one port to another ‘shipshape and in Bristol fashion’ – keeping the crew alive, the decks scrubbed and the boat floating. Today the details have modernised but the basis remains. It’s about parking a boat as if you’ve done it a hundred times before, trimming sails and helming as naturally as walking, and navigating on time and safely. Seamanship, in short, is the mastery of sailing.

Yet to be considered a master of something involves more than just talent.

In October I skippered a team in the Rolex Middle Sea Race. Following the race, fellow competitor Francesco Giordano, skipper of the X-41 Adrigole II, sent me a report he’s written of his race, which described an encounter we’d had minutes after the start.

Our fleet of 21 boats were squeezing out of Valletta’s Grand Harbour towards the first mark of the course, a Rolex-branded yellow inflatable buoy. Adrigole II, with Francesco at the helm, was just ahead and to windward. On Noisy Oyster, our chartered J/122, we accelerated and gained an overlap before the three-length zone. But, with an amateur crew and 600 miles to go, I wasn’t prepared to take any risks.

So, I called over to him.

“All good to assume you are going to give us room?” My crew, thankfully, stayed quiet. I’d briefed them that if we found ourselves in this type of scenario,

I could manage the communication myself. There’s nothing more aggressive – and unclear – than nine people all screaming from the rail.

Article continues below…

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Francesco replied in agreement, and waved us through. We rounded cleanly – but of course our kite hoist didn’t go quite to plan and he pulled ahead again.

In his race report, Francesco described our brief exchange (translated loosely from Italian) as ‘a nod that demonstrated mutual trust between sailors; a moment that distilled the essence of seamanship’.

I was touched to read that he felt the respect and professionalism I’d intended. But, his report also raised the question: what is the ‘essence of seamanship’? Is it really just the technical ability to handle a boat, or does it also include the attitude with which we treat our fellow sailors?

Someone can have impeccable seamanship and never need to interact with anyone – solo ocean sailors prove that every day. So, seamanship doesn’t necessarily include leadership or even teamwork; it’s about judgement, care, and respect for the sea. But behaviour still matters.

Courtesy to other competitors avoids distraction and conflict. Yes, the core of seamanship is skill. But character is also a component.

For sailors skippering crewed boats, leading others is part of your seamanship. In the 1700s, a threat of walking the plank was persuasive enough to garner authority and obedience. There wasn’t much need for collaboration. But still, earning the respect of the crew was no less vital.

What about ashore? Is a skipper who is professional at sea but impatient in the chandlery queue or a drunken liability in the pub a ‘good seaman’? Strictly by definition, yes they are. But seamanship and conduct are entwined because seamanship is in part earned. Earned by reputation as well as by skill.

A CEO can’t have an affair at a Coldplay concert and keep their job; a politician can’t break their own rules and stay in office. The same is increasingly true in sailing. Drunken sailors could once ‘get up to no-good’ and it was just what sailors did. How much you could drink might only strengthen your reputation! Today, how we carry ourselves is scrutinised much more sharply. Those who master their craft become role models.

So, for anyone shooting for seamanship, you’re forewarned. You’ll no longer be judged by skill alone.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

Note: We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site, at no extra cost to you. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

The post ‘Why seamanship is more than just the mastery of sailing’ – Nikki Henderson appeared first on Yachting World.

Space is back in fashion, and with media interest at a level not seen since the days of the Apollo lunar missions it can be difficult to keep up. Whether it’s SpaceX’s seemingly hit-and-miss approach to flight testing, or NASA’s declared aim to return people to the moon, there’s plenty to take in.

So, when details started to appear of a rival satellite-driven internet system to Elon Musk’s Starlink from Amazon guru Jeff Bezos in the form of Project Kuiper you could be forgiven for rolling your eyes at yet another display of wealth and ego. Or could a new, deep-pocketed player in the satcom scene provide more opportunities and a better deal for those of us down at sea level?

Surely Musk has this market stitched up, with over 6,000 satellites already in orbit? Starlink already boasts having over 75,000 commercial and leisure seaborne vessels served by its system. Yet, while the headlines may have been made by SpaceX’s triumphs and sometimes spectacular failures, Project Kuiper has been quietly getting on with it.

Details are still emerging, but the pitch is that Amazon wants to provide internet connectivity to those who currently have limited or no internet access. Its emphasis is on less-developed countries and people living in remote areas – which presumably includes use at sea. Another key objective is integration with Amazon’s wider interests such as its mobile devices and the AWS (Amazon Web Services) cloud.

By contrast, it has been argued that Starlink is being used mainly to generate funds for Elon Musk’s well-publicised interplanetary ambitions – the colonisation of the moon and then Mars.

In its attempt to catch up, five satellites a day are being turned out by Amazon’s purpose-built factory near Seattle. A $140m satellite processing facility has already been established at the Kennedy Space Center that prepares them for lift-off.
Security is tight leaving experts still guessing about the design and size of the orbital units.

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What is known is that over 150 are already in orbit with new launches every few weeks boosting this number towards the level needed to roll out a viable service some time in 2026. Plans are in place to have 3,200 in low earth orbit as part of their ‘initial constellation’ – sufficient to provide near-global coverage.

But maybe the future isn’t about the number of satellites, but more about what they provide. Starlink has certainly made a dent in the use of the Iridium system that many of us have relied on for years for voice calls and simple text messaging. Supporters of that well-established system will argue this is a false comparison as Iridium’s robustness means it can be relied upon in rough weather, crossing oceans and in high latitudes – in a way that Starlink cannot.

Instead, the big difference is speed. With a stable connection, Starlink can deliver high-end broadband speeds allowing you to while away hours at the chart table, downloading complex weather data, updating charts, dealing with emails, watching the news, and whatever else takes your fancy. By comparison, Iridium works at the speed of a turn-of-the-century dial-up modem.

Before Starlink, the only viable comparable option at sea was Inmarsat, requiring a large outlay for the hardware and pricey subscription plans. The basic Starlink system means buying a flat plate antenna for not much more than the cost of a TV satellite dish, and subscription plans starting at £39 a month. But the ‘marine’ version of the hardware predictably costs a good deal more, and the plans start at a hefty £206 a month.

Boat owners are not going to be the primary market for Kuiper, but we can expect marinised versions of their equipment in fairly short order.
That Starlink is currently unavailable in Russia, Iran and China will come as no surprise, but less helpfully Turkey and South Africa also block its use, with the signal simply dropping out as you enter those countries’ 12-mile limits. There have also been reports of patchy coverage in the Caribbean. Starlink has to geo-fence its service wherever it has no licence to operate and Kuiper may be able to exploit that.

Amazon is playing catch-up, but when technology is developed in the slipstream of an early trailblazer it can often outperform and overtake it. Given how quickly and effectively Starlink changed things in our world, Kuiper has a similar feel about it.

And as for that new moonbase?

Let’s see.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

Note: We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site, at no extra cost to you. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

The post Bezos vs. Musk: Is Amazon’s Kuiper the real Starlink killer? – Matt Sheahan appeared first on Yachting World.

Boat owners, future boat owners, dreamer boat owners – the most common question they ask me is: ‘What’s going to make me and my boat safer?’ They want to know what my one piece of crew-overboard gear is that i’d recommend, my thoughts on which sea survival course is the best, or an instruction manual for emergency situations.

In other words they’re looking for a quick fix. i’ve got a bugbear here. you cannot buy safety. you cannot shortcut safety. safety has to be earned, and that takes time. gear and certificates don’t make you safer – not in isolation anyway.

You need another key ingredient. So what is that? What actually makes you a safer sailor?

It’s true that lifejackets, drogues, sea survival courses, an evacuation plan, knowing where the ‘arm’ button is on the EPIRB… all these things are important. but what is more important?

Sailing. the number one thing to up your safety game is simple: sail more, and get better at it. take performance boats. a common justification for buying the same length boat for double the price is speed: ‘by choosing the performance option we’ll be able to outrun bad weather.’

But the lightest, best-designed hull on the market won’t help you escape the storm unless you know how to handle it. i love performance boats. i also think fitting out your boat with good equipment is not only a safer choice, but more enjoyable to use.

And yes, investing time and money to take safety courses is prudent and necessary. but some owners spend hundreds of thousands on upgrading their boats – adding carbon rigs, nav systems, and 3di sails – yet hesitate to invest in a single day of professional coaching.

Just imagine how much faster and safer they’d be if they swapped the equivalent cost of one sail upgrade for top-class training. sometimes people justify an option like a carbon rig on safety grounds, because it reduces weight aloft. but then they reef early because they don’t have the sailing skills to push the boat to the edge.

Article continues below…

Thus, they probably wouldn’t escape the storm anyway, and they certainly wouldn’t see any of the slight gains of carbon vs aluminium rig (as a side note, the simple act of reefing early is a far cheaper way of achieving the same effect!). this all circles back to that old argument: qualifications versus experience.

Who’s safer, the sailor with a licence but no experience or the sailor with 10,000 miles and no certificate? the answer is neither. what matters is whether they can handle a boat efficiently and sensibly. and there’s only one way to know that – go sailing with them.

I still remember a delivery from Gosport to Liverpool for the 2017/18 Clipper Race start. On board was a full amateur crew, a few of whom had done extra training as coxswains so they could take over if anything happened to me.

So i tested them: i threw bob, our human-sized dummy, overboard and pretended it was me. they knew the theory. they’d drilled the procedure dozens of times. but when it came to turning the boat back downwind to the ‘casualty’ they couldn’t get the boat to turn.

Minutes passed and the dummy drifted out of sight, until someone finally realised easing the mainsheet might help. only after an hour of search pattern practice was bob eventually found. it was a reality check for all of us.

All the theory in the world needs to be underpinned by real sailing skills – and those skills need constant honing. for any sailor who wants to be safe, the job of learning, reflecting, and improving is never done.

So for anyone considering how to make themselves or their boat safer, i’d suggest putting as much time (and money if necessary) as you can into your actual sailing education. be picky about the sailing school you choose.

Lots of national sailing programmes do not include any practical sailing as part of their syllabuses. also remember, the quality of the education is ultimately a result of the quality of your instructor and not the sailing brand or programme endorsing them.

If you’re interested in performance sailing and short of cash, go club racing regularly to see how people don’t just sail fast, but also operate within the chaos of close quarters boat manoeuvres, and the constant stream of inevitable mistakes. because in the end, gadgets, miles, and certificates don’t make a safe sailor. time on the water does.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

Note: We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site, at no extra cost to you. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

The post Why time on the water trumps all safety gadgets and certificates – Nikki Henderson appeared first on Yachting World.

For a sailor, free diving is far more than a sport or a pastime. It’s a key skill with clear practical, mental, and economic benefits. I learned them firsthand in my first working season in the Mediterranean.

We were anchored over deep water and a notoriously rocky seabed on the East end of Lampedusa. With the wind quickly rising and nightfall approaching, every boat was making for their home berth. We pulled up the transom ladder and got set to follow.

My skipper was calmly hauling anchor, motoring lightly into the wind, when the windlass ground to a halt.

Anchor fouled, and no amount of give and take could free it. We hadn’t set a tripping line.

The Bay of Tabaccara in Lampedusa. Photo: Roberto Nistri/Alamy.

In no time, she produced a pair of fins. Soon she was in the water, breathing up to dive 20m down, shackle in hand. Within minutes we were free and heading back to our mooring.

That same year, we docked next to another commercial skipper and avid free diver who would set out at dawn nearly every morning, spear gun and net bag in hand.

By the time his guests stirred, he would have a fresh-caught amberjack filleted, marinated, and ready for lunch, any trace of its guts long washed off the sides of the floating pontoon (the spoils usually went to other sailors; guests had plenty else to put between their teeth).

Handy, I remember thinking on both occasions.

I quickly learned that for both these skippers, diving was not just a recreational part of life on board, but a practical help, and that I needed that skill in my arsenal.

Whether you’re a liveaboard or a working sailor, here’s how free diving can make your life at sea safer and more enjoyable, plus a few tips to get you started.

What is free diving?

Photo: Johner Images / Alamy.

First things first: what is free diving, exactly?

Free diving, or ‘apnea,’ is the most basic and essential form of diving, not to mention the oldest. There’s no breathing equipment or external sources of air.

Though it’s now a sport and a competitive discipline, it’s something we do quite naturally. You’re technically free diving anytime you go underwater and resurface on a single breath.

Sport free diving is a more structured, deliberate version of this basic concept. It can be practiced with or without fins (I’m partial to the mono), but across the board training is all about managing air supply.

There are distinct disciplines like constant weight, variable weight, free immersion, static, and dynamic, but you don’t have to worry about all that if you’re just getting started.

Just focus on the basics of breathing up, breath hold, and equalisation.

There are plenty of resources online for understanding what’s happening in your body when you dive and how to dive safely to avoid blackout and hyperventilation, though nothing replaces getting in the water and observing your physical sensations.

A variety of recognised certifications can help you start your free diving journey. Photo: Cavan Images / Alamy.

Additionally, various certifications are available from recognised bodies like AIDA, SSI, CMAS, PADI, and Apnea Academy. Almost any reputable dive shop will offer free diving courses alongside their SCUBA programs.

Regardless of where you are in your training, the most important thing while free diving is to respect your body’s limits, prioritise proper technique, and always, always dive with a buddy– not for nothing, it’s free diving’s number one rule.

Why free diving is an essential skill for sailors

Sailors are famously reluctant swimmers. We tend to be too busy skimming over the surface of the water to think much about what’s down below.

Yet basic free diving skills are a must when you’re spending a good portion of your life on or around the water.

Diving from a boat into the clear turquoise waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea in Cala Goloritzé, Sardinia, Italy. Photo: Pedro Ferrão Patrício / Alamy.

Whether it’s checking an anchor or un-snagging it, having an expanded diving range has saved my skin more than a few times.

It also gives you options.

Like that skilled skipper showed, anchoring over greater depth becomes less of a cause for concern when you have the option of freeing yourself from a rocky shelf by hand, or adding a tripping line shackle after the fact.

A fouled anchor is less of a crisis when you have an expanded diving range. Photo: Theo Stocker.

Even without diving deep, being comfortable in the water can take the stress out of some maintenance jobs and some emergency situations.

Whether it’s a fouled prop, a blocked water inlet, or a barnacle-encrusted hull and propeller, the stakes are instantly lower when you can do the job yourself.

You’ll save time, turmoil, and money in the long run if you don’t have to find dry work-arounds, or hire a diver.

Kirstin Jones won Yachting Monthly’s Brian Black Award for this striking image of discarded fishing gear thoroughly entangling her boat. Photo: Kirstin Jones.

A good skipper sailing in warmer regions should also know their territory inside-out and under.

Having localised knowledge of an area, its hidden pitfalls, and the types of seabed you’re dealing with can make navigating a coastline a whole lot safer. No chart marking or recommendation is more reliable than what you have been able to see firsthand.

For working skippers, fluency with the marine flora and fauna, hidden underpasses, cave entrances, fresh water outlets, and diveable wrecks also makes for a more enriching experience for your crew, whether it’s made of family, friends, or paying guests.

An additional skill can even turn into a selling point when running charters. With the number of sailing experiences on offer on the rise, many are turning to combo sailing-diving, sailing-kayaking, sailing-fishing, and sailing-climbing trips to stand out.

The free diving community

Free divers are the quintessential gente di mare, people of the sea, and have an unmatched connection to the water.

If they’ve been diving locally, they’re likely to have extra familiarity with the area’s coast and regular tides, currents, and conditions. There’s always much to be gained from consulting a diver for well-informed recommendations.

And divers are just like sailors– always keen to talk shop (even if they won’t share their secret fishing spots!).

A spear-fisher’s impressive catch off Linosa. Photo: Viveka Herzum.

While I’m not a spear-fisher myself, for many free divers the skill is a way to put food on the table.

It’s more affordable, not to mention sustainable, than buying your catch in town, and can prove to be a valuable provisioning resource in remote anchorages.

I’ve also found free diving to be an organic way of making friends at the pontoons. You might even find someone willing to take you on as a diving buddy.

Free diving to help out other sailors

Free diving skills can also make you useful to other members of the maritime community.

I’ve recovered lost sunglasses, dropped masks, and other personal items for guests, as well as picking up plenty of polluting debris.

When a 74-year-old solo navigator friend had a piece bounce off deck mid winch-service, getting it back to him was no problem. It was a good thing, too, as having a replacement shipped from the mainland could take weeks.

You’ll also be in a position to help out on those nightmarish, high-season days when the bays are tiled with boats and there’s a good chance of anchor chains crossing, a fluke wedging into a nasty crevice, or a chain slipping under a boulder.

I’ve been in this situation a handful of times, and it’s always rewarding to save another sailor some trouble, and spare your own vessel potential damage.

It doesn’t hurt, either, when being able to offer assistance leads to a good chat and free beer!

Mental benefits

Photo: Ashely Cooper / Getty.

Practical perks aside, a lot of the onboard benefits of free diving have less to do with the boat and more with your coping skills.

As many free divers will tell you, most of the sport is mental. It’s all about self control, and relaxation.

Being able to calm your nervous system and manage fear responses can prove just as useful when facing heavy weather conditions or unexpected situations at sea, particularly if you’re in a position of responsibility and need to do some quick problem solving. You’re no use to anyone if you’re panicking.

If you’re spending extended amounts of time onboard, you’re also likely living with several others in close quarters.

In a crowded environment, free diving can be a way to get some much-needed quiet and mental clarity. Even in the offseason, I’ve often used dry static tables to recenter.

What kit do you need to free dive?

One of the best parts of free diving is that you don’t have to worry about clunky, expensive compressors, warranties, technical malfunctions, or all that finicky kit you need for SCUBA.

However, having the right gear can be a huge help.

Freediver with monofin, exploring Blue Hole, Gozo, Malta. Photo: Blue Planet Archive LLC / Alamy.

In my case, it changed the way I dive by making it safer. With the right kit, meant I could dive for longer and track my progress.

If you’re just starting out, you’ll probably have most of what you need on board already.

First and foremost, you’ll want an appropriate free diving mask (frameless will be more comfortable as you descend and the pressure increases); a pair of fins, and a diving buoy for safety, particularly if you’re anywhere near marine traffic, though it goes without saying that you shouldn’t be.

You may also want a depth gauge, dive watch or computer, or rope if you’re training, as well as a wetsuit if you’re spending longer in the water. It gets chilly as soon as you hit the teens.

If you’re diving with a wetsuit, you’ll also need a dive belt and weights, as the extra layer changes your buoyancy.

Personally, I’m happiest with the least amount of kit possible on me. There’s nothing like feeling the temperature change directly on your skin, and feeling like you’re touching everything in the world just by sharing its water.

My free diving journey

Disclaimer: my early free diving days are a classic do as I say, and not as I have done.

I had a pretty lax, DIY approach when I first started.

I had always been comfortable equalising and holding my breath and figured I was essentially just playing around in the water, seeing how deep I could get. I wasn’t thinking much about proper technique, or even my own safety.

I figured, what could go wrong?

Photo: Viveka Herzum.

It turns out, a lot. I’ve seen plenty of accidents getting helicoptered out since then.

If you’re diving with a buddy, proper technique, and respecting your body’s limits, free diving should be perfectly safe, but I still wouldn’t underestimate the value of proper preparation.

Read up on hyperventilation and the risk of blackout before you even get in the water. It’s good to have an idea of what signals your body can send you that things are not looking good, and how you might miss them.

I fixed my bad habit of diving alone pretty quickly (sorry, everyone), but it would have been much safer and simpler to start with proper training, or at the very least an experienced diving bud.

Alas, I was sailing for work without a first mate and had a lot of time to kill alone at anchor.

I made do with what I had onboard: a bathing suit, a basic mask from Cressi, and a monofin.

My pair was a hand-me-down silicone training pair from Decathlon, three sizes too big. (There were plenty of regular split fins on board, but if you were the kid tying their ankles with elastic hairbands to dolphin kick, you’re probably not reaching for those.)

I was instantly obsessed with the extra agility and propulsion a monofin gave me, and never mind the nasty blisters. I only discovered the joys of neoprene swim socks much later.

My depth gauge was the boat’s depth sounder, or whatever markers I could count on the anchor chain.

Free diving over underwater kelp forest in Southern California. Photo: Cavan Images / Alamy.

Thankfully, by the time I started diving deeper I had a spear-fisher friend to dive with and had done a bit more training.

I had also borrowed a basic diving watch from another skipper to track my depth– I still remember my elation the first time it marked past thirty!

As any diver will tell you, those first deeper plunges were a revelation.

Diving meant temporary access to another universe of light, colour, tiny wonders, and life, even when all over the Mediterranean there seems to be less and less of it. It was cool down there, and beautiful, and ever so quiet.

I was hooked.

Free diver with monofin, surrounded by moon jellyfish. Photo: Connect Images / Alamy.

Five metres down, the colours start to cool. You can see every piece of plankton, every chunk of jellyfish, floating freely through a blanket of blue. Long, dragging tentacles, alien shapes and chunks of bitten membrane. It’s like being inside the plasma of a cell, or a strangely populated atmosphere.

Fifteen, the yellows flicker out. Twenty and on and any memory of green is gone. You’re deep in a bucket of indigo and a buzzing calm. You have to be, or you’ll burn right through your air supply.

I could pick up (and put back!) pen shells, spot sea turtles and schools of barracudas; spend hours playing with octopus, learning to follow their traces.

I followed lungs of damselfish into underwater cathedrals made of black basalt; got inches from the all-too-trusting groupers that hide there; and watched schools of dreamfish wrap around me in a silvery cocoon.

Swimming through a cloud of damselfish in the Mediterranean. Photo: Mikko Suonio / Alamy.

But spending a lot of time in the waters of the Med also meant witnessing its gradual devastation.

Every year, I swam over shoals emptier than the season before.

The view from down below

Overall, free diving has made my life as sea safer and more social. It has given me a leg up on maintenance and some sticky anchoring situations, as well as an extra bank of submarine knowledge to draw on.

Over time, being both a sailor and a free diver has also made me a more mindful citizen of the sea, and helped me appreciate that living, working, and playing on the water comes with a degree of responsibility.

Its not a new refrain. Firsthand knowledge often plays an role in conservation; people tend to protect what they care about, and to care about what they know. I’m no exception.

But it’s thanks to free diving that even while I’m sailing, I never forget what’s happening below.

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If you enjoyed this article about free diving….

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The post Below the surface: Why every sailor should learn to free dive and how to start appeared first on Yachting World.

You probably saw the collision between the Allagrande Mapei Racing and Team Holcim PRB IMOCAs just moments after the start of the Ocean Race Europe. In the way spectacular disasters are, it was as harrowing as it was addictive to watch. The ease at which Holcim’s foil cut through Allagrande’s headsail cloth was sickeningly impressive, and it’s lucky no one was hurt. But it was also proof of how remarkable these boats are.

The crash was a hearty reminder for us all: mistakes happen, even to the most skilled sailors. If you’re human, you make mistakes, especially in sailing. We need high-profile moments like this to change the culture around mistakes and to remind us that errors don’t make you a bad sailor.

There’s a story many new sailors tell themselves: “When I get good enough at sailing, I won’t mess up anymore.” Perfection feels like the goal, but that’s a myth: perfection is unachievable.

The reality is that mistakes are inevitable. Just consider all the factors that go hand-in-hand with sailing: fatigue, stress, appetite for risk, cognitive overload. Then combine it with the context of changeable weather, unpredictable competitors and high stakes decisions. It’s ludicrous to think otherwise.

I believe we all get allocated the same number of mistakes in life. They just scale relative to your environment and abilities.

Beginner sailors make ‘rookie’ mistakes like tying fenders wrong and dropping them overboard or putting up the wrong headsail.

Intermediate sailors make bolder mistakes, like reefing too late or making sloppy nav calls, usually just when they need a reminder to stay humble.

There was also a crash in Leg 7 of the last Ocean Race

Pros make high speed, high stakes mistakes like aggressive start line tactics or split-second miscalculations. What changes as you progress isn’t the quantity of mistakes you make, it’s the type of mistakes. And while a crash in the Ocean Race might seem bigger than a poorly tied knot, I’ve seen beginners suffer near-panic over small errors. How awful a mistake feels has more to do with you than the slip-up itself.

I hate making mistakes. I hate looking silly or messing up, or worse: being blamed. It probably stems from a fear of rejection. It’s something I have to actively work on.

Mistakes are part of learning and avoiding them means avoiding improving. And the more we fear mistakes the more likely we are to make them. Just put someone under pressure and watch them tie a knot while shouting the oh-so-tempting “hurry up” and you’ll see their hands shake, their brain fog over and voila, it will be tied wrong.

When mistakes happen, what matters most is how you manage them. My mother’s voice still rings in my ears: “I don’t care who started it. Just sort it.” She was talking to my brothers and younger self, but it’s just as relevant at sea. If mistakes are inevitable and we all suffer the same amount, then worrying about blame in the moment is useless. Just look at Kiel: both teams immediately set about repairing their boats to make the next leg. The protest will be resolved later, but the priority was getting back in the race.

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On the day the Kiel crash dominated my social news feed, I was helping friends handle a mini crisis of their own. One crew member’s passport had been packed in the wrong bag and was halfway to Hamburg on a Boeing 777. If we’d wasted time focusing on whose fault it was, we’d have missed the window to get the passport on the return flight. But we let it go, jumped into action, and two generous strangers ferried it back across the Atlantic just in time for departure. Faith in humanity, restored.

So, if you want to help make sailing more welcoming for us all, leave the blame behind. If you, or someone else makes a mistake, focus first on sorting out the problem then, second, reduce the chance of it happening again by analysing, learning and implementing better systems.

So, thank you Holcim PRB, Allagrande Mapei, and the Ocean Race team for giving us a real-life example of elite sailors learning from, not hiding from, their errors.

The goal isn’t to eliminate mistakes; it’s to handle them well. Sure, the crash was expensive, dangerous and costly in the moment. But maybe it will save others from similar fates – not by avoiding mistakes entirely, but by avoiding the catastrophic aftermath that comes when errors are buried instead of addressed.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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The post ‘The crash was a reminder for us all’ – Nikki Henderson appeared first on Yachting World.

Yet another wave slammed into our topsides. The carbon drum hull of the yacht we were racing echoed with a thunderous hum as we accelerated, surfing a wave. We were flying! And then we weren’t. SLAM. The boat crash-gybed, rounded up violently and then stalled.

The companionway was a mass of people scrambling into foulies. The boat slopped about in irons. Gong, gong, gong went the broken checkstay as it swung and clanged against the rig.

And me? I stood frozen, can opener in hand, assessing the carnage. Amazingly, the pan was still on the stove. But its contents? The ceiling had turned red. The floor resembled a murder scene of squashed meat. I put my hand to my forehead, dreading the clean up, only to feel coagulated tomato paste binding my already-matted hair into one sticky lump.

As the least experienced crew member, being relegated below decks during an emergency is a rite of passage for offshore sailors. This was one of my first.

I was 18, on a 78ft maxi, somewhere between Sicily and Gibraltar, fresh out of school, and very green. Fortunately in that moment, green in skill, rather than seasickness.

The first days after jumping aboard a new boat can feel like a return to the school playground. You want to fit in. Hopefully, a vacant task reveals itself.

The galley is a good place to start. There’s always something to do. You become popular fast – who doesn’t adore someone who feeds them? Menu planning, provisioning and preparing three meals on shore as well as at sea is full on. So it keeps you ‘out the way’ and gives you purpose.

Early in my career, it served me well. I built practical skills and learnt a vital rule: never serve meatballs in a blow.

Article continues below…

Be careful though, while ‘inside’ jobs may feel like the natural fit for less experienced crew members, this seemingly efficient role-allocation may not serve the crew well in the long term. A pattern I’ve seen again and again, especially working with new boat owners and cruising couples, is that the more experienced person ends up on deck – sailing, fixing and making decisions, while the less experienced often ends up inside cooking, cleaning and organising.

Initially, everyone is happy. The boat doesn’t crash in the marina, you get to where you’re going on time, and the boat interior stays orderly.

But as time goes on, trouble arises. The ‘captain’ gains skill and their crew feel comparatively less knowledgeable so their confidence decreases. They don’t challenge their captain or ask questions so the captain’s progression also hits a ceiling.

The crew starts to avoid deck time. Instead they take full ownership over the galley and their comfort zone deepens. One day, if the captain puts something away in the wrong place, they’re scolded for interfering. Lesson learned, the captain now stays on deck and, just like that, the gap widens.

This doesn’t just happen with couples, but also with friends, families and even professional teams. Often, the more one person or group of people grows, the more others pull back. And, without realising it, they flatline in skill and confidence.

Rotate the galley jobs too. Photo: Lumi Images

So, here’s my advice: level up early.

In the beginning, slow the growth of the more experienced sailor – just for a moment – and focus on the other. Share the throttles and parking responsibilities. Make decisions collaboratively. Practice sail changes together. Take turns fixing the heads. Give each other space to fail and learn.

And don’t stop at the helm. Rotate the galley jobs too. Share the provisioning runs, the cooking, the cleaning. Because the truth is when everyone on board can handle both the deck and the dishes, the confidence builds in both directions.

Given time to reap the rewards you’ll start to build a proper team.

Growing and learning together will strengthen your relationship. Everyone on board will have the freedom to have an ‘off-day’ knowing that someone else has the skill to take up their slack.

And, the best bit, sailing plans tend to match the least confident person on board so if you’re equally matched in skill, you’ll be able to set your sights on more ambitious sailing plans and destinations. Level up and find freedom.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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The post Why you should always aim to share all roles onboard… both above and below decks appeared first on Yachting World.

As the sun slipped below the horizon, so did the noise of the day. The thermal wind softened, the engine fan stopped whirring, and the last of the tourist boats swung into port. In that quiet moment of reflection that one takes at dusk, I was living every sailor’s dream.

We were anchored off the coast of the Hornstrandir Nature Reserve. This remote north-western tip of Iceland is only accessible by boat. Four or five waterfalls cascaded fresh glacial melt down the horseshoe of mountains and into the fjord that was our home for the night. In this isolated northern outcrop of the globe just the hardiest of sea creatures, birds and puffins went about their business on the rocky shores. Otherwise we were entirely alone.

We are living in the age of hydrofoils, carbon fibre and satellites. Our world is getting faster paced and more determined than ever to leap into the future with greater efficiency. And yet, the core components of the universal sailing experience remain the same: simplicity, stunning scenery, self-sufficiency, serenity and solitude.

Are we putting too much emphasis on cutting-edge technologies and forgetting the fundamentals of a good day on the water? Are we at risk of losing touch with our roots?

Anchoring is – literally – one of sailings’ grounding cornerstones, an ancient art that dates back millennia. Devised not long after the boat itself, anchoring began with a large rock and a rope. By Roman times the original ‘anchor rocks’ were shaped to include prongs making them more transportable and better at temporarily digging into the seabed.

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Modern anchors now have hinge points and different designs to suit boat sizes and seabeds, but they’re still basically a heavy thing attached to a warp. For sailors, anchoring marks a shift from moving to being.

As one of sailing’s most unchanged fundamentals, are we giving anchoring enough credit? It’s easy to become so focussed on optimisation, that we’re perhaps brushing over those core skills. From an educational standpoint, anchoring, like many other basic sailing principles (hoisting and dropping sails, tying knots or driving by the feel of the wind on our faces), is often undertaught and misunderstood.

Recently I hosted a webinar to explain how to deploy or weigh an anchor without a windlass. Many of the participants – regular cruisers and boat owners – hadn’t ever been formally taught how to do it. And if they had been taught, they didn’t really understand the whys and hows.

I explained: sit still counteracting effects of the wind or tidal stream, drop the hook plus two- to four-times the depth of the water in chain or warp or both, fall back against it, see if it holds, and pay about the same amount of warp again. If the electricity fails, pull or ease it by hand and use a mechanical aid like a winch or a purchase system to help you control it.

The wide eyes looking back at me were indicative of the disbelief. Is it really that simple? It’s as if, with everything in sailing becoming so complicated, it can be hard to grapple with something so basic as a pulley system or the effects of a metal hook, chain, gravity and the seabed.

This begs the question, why hasn’t anchoring evolved? Is there a better solution? Just as furling can be more effective than hoisting and dropping, is an anchor just too inefficient?

No. Anchoring is still used, because anchoring works. There’s no computer program that can beat the feel of the boat yanking back on a good set. There is no phone application that can feel as trustworthy as thousands of years worth of evidence proving that something works.

Maybe it could – like other ‘old-school’ practices – be filtered out for a ‘better way’. It’s not that crazy to imagine a future in which we keep the engines on to hold station in one spot overnight because it’s ‘safer’ and easier to fit more boats into a bay if we don’t have to deal with the unknowns of swinging, holding and wind shifts. The memory of a silent night alone will be a tale from ‘the good old days’.

So while I’m all for making sailing more accessible, I think we should tread with caution when it comes to optimisations. We often chase new ideas thinking that improvements and complexity are better, but sometimes simplicity is mastery. Anchoring is a quiet reminder that some things are better left unchanged.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

Note: We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site, at no extra cost to you. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

The post ‘Why is anchoring still such a misunderstood skill?’ – Nikki Henderson appeared first on Yachting World.

If you ride an e-bike you’ll be used to being called a cheat. You’ll also be familiar with the way opinion has polarised in the cycling world on their benefits versus downfalls, particularly where there has been criticism from walkers who blame e-powered mountain bike riders for ripping up the countryside.

But what a game-changer they are, allowing you to explore further afield while making it more fun for those who’d otherwise be at the back of the pack.

Now, think about what might happen if sailing went down a similar route? If we thought that the foiling debate had stirred things up, just wait until the issue of powered race boats gets under the sailing public’s skin.

Because the next hot topic that the racing world looks set to grapple with is arguably even bigger. How much power can you use aboard a boat before it strays beyond the definition of sailing? Should electrical assistance be allowed at all? Some will doubtless argue that we shouldn’t even be talking about how much, as any assistance from power while racing is wrong.

Years ago, I remember being told by a fellow crew member about a rather unethical racing owner who was trying to convince the skipper and crew that running the engine in gear during a drifter of a race ‘just for a little bit’ was completely okay. He argued that it was fine as it would only be for a short distance and he promised he would switch it off as soon as they reached the little bit of wind that was currently out of their reach.

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For years, ‘just a little bit’ became the running joke aboard our boat when we were faced with the same lack of breeze or adverse tide. Clearly, turning the motor on is a ridiculous thought in sailing races. Or is it?

Last year SailGP revealed it was experimenting with an electric propulsion system that could provide a performance boost for teams to get their F50 cats back up onto their foils in light winds. On the face of it, a clever idea to help to keep the racing close and fair to all when the breeze is fickle and patchy.

When you look at the self-imposed tight two-day racing schedule and a small race course placed close to the shore to entertain the spectators in the stands it’s easy to understand why SailGP finds itself struggling with light shifty breezes so often. Add to this venues that don’t always provide clear breeze and it’s clear that developing bigger wing sails and lower drag foils have been a big plus for the racing.

Yet, while the F50s will fly in ludicrously light winds, when they do fall off the foils the races often become a lottery.

So, a little boost from some small, lightweight electric motors would keep the racing alive through the sticky patches. Controversial? Yes. But if the AC75s hadn’t been allowed to be towed up onto their foils before the start in the last Cup we’d have had a whole load of scores missing off the board. In the cruising world few think they are cheating if they motor-sail.

For all the thrill of the foiling racing, SailGP is much less adrenaline inducing in ‘low rider’ mode. Photo: SailGP

The power output of some of the small electric motors today is staggering and as batteries get more efficient the prospects of being able to do this are increasing.

The boat that got me thinking about how different the future might look when it came to electric power was the new Magic Carpet-e, which some are saying is the most advanced new Maxi to have been launched in many years. I spent a couple of days aboard this 100-footer and the electrical power system that drives the boat, the winches, the hydraulics – in fact everything – is fascinating. It’s a proof of technology on a scale I’ve not seen before in the sailing world.

While this is a boat that doesn’t seek to use her engine when racing she will be used actively as a cruising yacht as well and depend on her electric system for everything. Having experienced what an all-electric boat is like at this scale and seen the technology behind the scenes, I was not only blown away, but left thinking where the lessons learned may lead us.

In the meantime, while chatting to a few of the crew in the evening we got onto cycling. They told me about their road bikes with electric gears instead of cables and how it saved weight and made the gear changes much more efficient. I appreciate I’m behind the curve on this, but it seems small electric motors are weaving their way into life wherever we look.

Sailing could be next.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

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The post Can battery powered boats really be called sailing boats? – Matt Sheahan appeared first on Yachting World.

Our defences have run out: social media has well and truly infiltrated our precious, antiquated sailing world. It’s terrifying to think that our secret passage to escapism and isolation at sea has been discovered. But, like most things that scare us, could there be a thrilling aspect to this challenge?

Decades ago, sailors could go ‘dark’ and justifiably claim the atmospheric conditions weren’t great and the SSB radio wasn’t working. Now, if we don’t live stream every part of daily life at sea, our followers feel disappointed.

As this past Vendée Globe has demonstrated, raw, unedited, and ‘real’ daily updates are now considered the norm. It’s expected – by sponsors, race organisers and content-craving supporters. And so, life at sea for any sailing professional has changed. Now we have to adapt to not one, but two higher powers: Mother Nature, and her fierce deputy: The Algorithm.

Depression in the face of a storm is never useful for a sailor. The shift has happened, and there is no going back. So we need to adjust our course and harness its power.

One upside to wide stream internet at sea is that, when used effectively, it provides a platform for lesser-known sailors to gain recognition and ‘win’ in a broader sense. Violette Dorange is a fantastic example of this. She now has 650,000 followers on Instagram and 3.1 million likes on TikTok, having come 23rd in her first Vendée Globe.

To put Violette’s online prowess into perspective, race winner Charlie Dalin has 73,000 followers on Instagram.

Starting the Vendée at all is considered the pinnacle of many a solo-sailing career. But to get noticed among a fleet of 40 incredible competitors is another feat, and one she mastered with aplomb.

Article continues below…

Online sailing communities and apps: Speaking to Sailing La Vagabonde stars

Fleeting acquaintance has always been part of sailing, particularly for bluewater cruisers. A friendship struck up over a rum cocktail…

10 women doing great things in competitive sailing right now

With a Women’s America’s Cup due to start in 2024, a gender balanced sailing event at the Paris Olympic Games,…

That impact will be a huge bonus for Violette as her career develops. There’s no doubt she will go on to achieve great things in sailing, and her social media mastery will be part of that story.

Another positive thing about social media and an increased online presence for sailing is how it casts the net wider. Participation in major sailing events around the world is decreasing and it’s a major problem. We need to attract more people back to – or new people into – the sport.

US ocean racer Cole Brauer has nearly half a million followers on Instagram, including many of those harder-to-reach audiences: women, younger people. Most of her followers were non-sailors – she told Yachting World that many followers didn’t even know she was competing in a solo race.

Maybe you think that’s silly. I think it’s brilliant. Sailing at the top of ‘normal’ people’s newsfeeds normalises the sport and will inevitably tempt more people onto the water.

But while I do have some enthusiasm for social media, I believe we need to heed caution. There is a shadowier side to the cyber influence at sea.

Professional racers are now expected to document ever moment of their race. Photo: Pip Hare Ocean Racing / Medallia

Practically, it’s really hard work. Memories of endless ‘liquid detected in charging port’ alerts, trying to work a smartphone screen with wet fingers, and having to look at myself speaking into a camera after four days at sea with minimal sleep still haunt me.

But now that demand for social media output has spiked, will it negatively impact sailing performances? Is it actually possible to sail with the exceptional superiority and focus of racers like Charlie Dalin or Yoann Richomme, and put out the quantity of social media required?

People have always followed sailing for the drama and the adventure. It’s what made Ellen MacArthur, Pete Goss and Peter Blake such household names – they had an epic story to tell. But, they told their stories with hindsight. Now we are demanding a real-time connection to the action and to the personal journey of the sailors. Will that push them to make seamanlike choices?

I could easily imagine a scenario where a skipper might feel pressured to wake up the off-watch in an ocean race for a sail change, not because they need to, but because it could make for better drama. We’re already pushing humans to the edge with the increasing speed of ocean racing boats – is a social media output quota a step too far? Guidelines are going to be needed, and soon.

Ultimately sailors are optimists and adaptable. But before we resign our fate to algorithms, we need to work out how to integrate this – possibly wonderful – tool into our sport in a healthy way.

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Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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The post ‘Has ‘social media influencer’ sailing gone too far?’ – Nikki Henderson appeared first on Yachting World.

Back in December I reminded myself what ‘too close for comfort’ feels like. After 18 days at sea, my crew and I finished an Atlantic crossing and parked up in Rodney Bay, St Lucia, with around 5lt of usable diesel left – barely a couple of hours run time for our 60hp Volvo.

You could look at that and consider it an example of exceptional seamanship and precise fuel management – a perfect plan. Barely a drop in the tanks more than needed!

Or you may judge it a reckless ‘near-miss’. Just one unexpected variable such as a messy sea state or dirty fuel, and we’d have been stuck, windless and embarrassingly fuel-less, in sight of land.

Whether you judge it good or bad; two things hold fast. 1) Cut it fine and get away with it and you have a great story in the bar. 2) Dig deeper, and there’ll be lessons to learn.

So, was it luck? Or a masterful plan that came together?

A month earlier, I joined friends of mine on their new home: a 45ft catamaran. The boat was brand new. They’d sailed her straight out of the factory to the Canaries. By the time I joined them they had a few thousand miles under their belt, and the very short list of warranty issues meant a crossing before Christmas was viable. Good news!

We prepared together for almost a week, at which point a brilliant weather window awaited us. As is my routine on joining a boat, I gathered data.

Sailing across the Atlantic into the setting sun

On the fuel specifically: the crew had been monitoring rpm and engine hours from new. From always running the engines in gear at 2,000rpm, and then cross referencing their logged engine hours with the diesel they added to the tanks on their first fill up in Tenerife, they knew the engine was burning 3.8lt/1gal per hour, which matched the fuel consumption curve as per Volvo’s manual.

So, we made an educated assumption that the graph could be used to accurately predict fuel consumption for lower rpms and assumed a 2.2lt/hr burn at 1,800rpm.

At 2,000rpm the boat made 6.2 knots in a flat sea; at 1,800rpm it was 5.4 knots. The power generation was similarly significantly more efficient at lower rpm. On a cloudy day at sea, the power draw on the batteries required five hours of running the engines at 1,800rpm to bring the batteries back up to 100%.

According to the manufacturer’s manual the boat had two diesel tanks of 250lt each and 90% of the fuel in each tank was usable in practice. So, we had 450lt of usable fuel. We then added four 20lt jerry cans as an emergency reserve – which would offer us 125 miles range at 2,000rpm or 160 miles at 1,800rpm.

Assuming a 28-day crossing in which every day was cloudy, we’d need 308lt [28x5x2.2] for charging, and would have 142lt remaining [450-308] for motoring. That would mean 40 hours, or just over 200 miles of range.

Article continues below…

Most of our life on land we spend hiding from ourselves. But at sea there is no escape – Nikki Henderson

Ahoy there, from halfway to the Caribbean! This is my third attempt at writing this column. The first go was…

‘Boat ownership is a wildly impractical love affair, and gets complicated when you’re smitten’ – Nikki Henderson

Being a professional sailor, I realise how stupid this is, and I really should know better. From working for owners…

As each day of the crossing progressed, we recalculated these figures to take into account our real-time progress, the reduction of charging time needed due to solar generation, and the future weather forecast.
But despite our meticulous planning and monitoring we encountered a few surprises. Does anything ever go completely to plan at sea?

During a bilge inspection on day 14, we discovered a stamp on each of the fuel tanks showing their capacity was 230lt and not the 250lt stated in the boat manual. Lesson: check the tanks match the manual.

On the penultimate day, our starboard engine stopped as we’d run its tank ‘dry’. So despite the manual stating that 90% of the fuel is usable, in reality it was 84%. Lesson: find out what the real-time ‘bottom’ of the tank is before you face a wind hole on day 17 of an Atlantic crossing.

We’d been running our two engines in sync, to avoid one having too many more hours than the other. So, when one tank reached bottom, the other wasn’t far off and there was no scope to change strategy. Lesson: avoid stressing all the systems at the same rate.

The jerry cans saved the day. We hadn’t expected to use them at all. Lesson: the extra weight of the odd jerry can of fuel can save a whole load of stress.

So to sum up, assumptions and ambiguity are a sailor’s worst nightmare. Test everything, never guess. And have a back-up plan.

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Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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Close to the Spinlock stand at Boot Düsseldorf earlier this year were three white plastic dogs, canine mannequins sporting three sizes of the Spinlock ‘Fido’, the company’s dog flotation vest.

Despite being featureless statues, when real dogs passed by they seemed to know exactly what they were looking at as they stopped to take a sniff. Even when there was more than one dog present, they still explored the mannequins rather than each other. It was comical to watch.

Once Fido had been inspected by each real dog, it was time for a quick drink from the strategically placed water bowl before moving on – at least they would have done had their owners not inevitably been distracted in the meantime by the Spinlock stand’s wares.

“It’s been like this all week,” said one of the Spinlock staff. “We didn’t intend this to happen, we just brought the models to exhibit our new lifejackets. But the response has been impressive and has brought all kinds of people onto our stand.”

As I strolled through the show’s 18 huge halls that provide a spectacular reminder as to just how big the watersports scene is, it was also apparent that tough times often bring out the most creative solutions. Boot Düsseldorf 2025 had plenty of examples of this.

Be it power or sail, it seems new boat sales are facing challenging times right now. Fairline Yachts’ precarious financial position was just one of several talking points on the powerboat side of the exhibition, while in the yacht halls it was the number vacant spaces that were being discussed among the regular show goers.

Article continues below…

Best Yachts of 2025: European Yacht of the Year 2025 Winners

The European Yacht of the Year 2025 winners were announced this evening, Saturday 18 January 2025 on the first night…

The Hottest Yachts and Trends for 2025

Yachting Monthly’s Theo Stocker and Yachting World’s Toby Hodges have been scouring the halls of Boot Düsseldorf 2025, and after…

In Hall 16, which has been yacht central for as long as I can remember, giant potted plants and casual seating tried to mask the areas where some of the biggest European builders would normally have been. But it takes more than a few pot plants to disguise the absence of Hanse, Bavaria, Dehler, Oyster and Elan who were among those that had chosen not to come this year.

The theories for the lack of attendance were varied, the two most popular being the costs of exhibiting at Boot and the big increases in production costs that have wiped out any profit on boats that were sold on long lead times.

Among those that were in attendance were some exciting new launches from builders who’d shown us fancy renderings last year as they explained what was in store for 2025. Now they were here for real.

X-Yachts was proudly displaying one of its most ambitious design projects to date with the launch of its ORC-focussed race boat, the XR41. For a luxury production builder that has spent so much time developing its extensive range of performance cruisers, to invest in a fully optimised production racer was an impressive display of self-confidence.

Nautor Swan has done much the same with the ClubSwan 43 and 28, two exciting new models that were also revealed 12 months ago and promised for this year.

Grand Soleil was showcasing its super-sleek, super-Italian, Grand Soleil Blue, not just good looking but claimed to be 100% recyclable.

Last year French builders Wauquiez revealed renderings that looked more like radical blue sky thinking than a boat that would become reality – and yet here it was, the all-new Wauquiez 55 (see Yachting World’s YouTube channel for Toby Hodges’s boat tours and highlights from Boot).

Saffier, best known for its range of day cruisers, had taken a similarly big leap into new territory with its SL46 Med, an elegant performance cruiser.

Contest was revelling in the success of its immaculately presented 63-footer that won the luxury cruiser category of European Yacht of the Year while J-Boats was wearing its winner’s badge with pride too after the J/40 took the award for best performance cruiser.

All were drawing attention and all were displaying new, innovative and stylish features.

But if the daily queues to get on board were a reflection of popularity, Beneteau’s new First 30 was a winner from the off. Designed as a planing 30-footer that’s as much fun to race as it is to cruise, Beneteau has gone back to basics and created a modern day version of its hugely popular First 30 from the 1970s.

So, while the world’s biggest indoor marine show provided mixed messages about the state of the industry, exhibitors prepared to follow their noses were pulling in the crowds.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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The post ‘Why it was all-change at Düsseldorf Boat Show 2025’ – Matt Sheahan appeared first on Yachting World.

Ahoy there, from halfway to the Caribbean! This is my third attempt at writing this column. The first go was interrupted by a squall. We underestimated its strength, surfed down a wave at 19 knots and then spent the rest of the watch slightly overly vigilant, as if that would make up for our previous 35-knot misjudgement.

Attempt No2 was on my 0300-0600 watch. After a coffee, several snacks, meandering down the B&G settings menu with no purpose, and two log entries made exactly to the minute on the hour, I conceded that writing was not a sufficiently ‘staying-awake’ activity – and stepped outside to stargaze.

With Starlink I quickly realised I could log in every day – and yes, write an article about sailing, for sailors, while sailing – but I could also follow the Vendée Globe tracker, and see the solo racers thrashing about in the Southern Ocean, hitting speed records, and sleeping in 20-minute intervals. Their concerns are in a different league to mine, moaning about 35 knots or struggling to write a column on a 3am watch. So, having put my ‘struggle’ into perspective (in other words, comparative luxury) I’m knuckling down.

Offshore sailing has a way of putting your life, and your ‘problems’, into perspective. A sailing friend of mine, Sophie, once told me that offshore sailing is a magnifier for your romantic relationship. It exposes the cracks and blows them up, like it does for the boat itself. You don’t go to sea to save your relationship, you go to sea to find out what needs work!

Article continues below…

‘Boat ownership is a wildly impractical love affair, and gets complicated when you’re smitten’ – Nikki Henderson

Being a professional sailor, I realise how stupid this is, and I really should know better. From working for owners…

‘Seamanship isn’t about sailing slowly’ – Nikki Henderson

The sailing world is small. But of the 350 or so passengers on board the Boeing 777 I took recently…

Going to sea magnifies your reality. My crewmate, George, and I were comparing sailing to his previous life in the US marine core. Just as on the front line, at sea problems aren’t self-manufactured, they’re real. The watermaker breaking and the risk of running out of water is real. Big winds, ferocious seas, broken sails and a broken boat are risks that require real management every day. And, as we were reminded by the tragic news from this year’s ARC, going overboard and being lost at sea is a real possibility too.

That realness pulls us into the present. The lack of convenience, security and comfort and the focus this ‘real’ life requires, the less time we have to spend worrying about all the things we normally worry about. Being caught up in being ‘busy’, social expectations, how we look, what car we drive… Once we’re separated from all of that we cannot help but ask ourselves: what is actually important to me?

What I’ve seen during my career is that we all basically have the same answer. Strip away all the luxuries and – beyond food, water, and a dry bed – the most important thing in all our lives is love. People, pets, special places, and perhaps a few meaningful trinkets; when you are out here, you realise who and what you miss. It’s who we cannot stop thinking about. Survival and connection: it’s all we really need.

But as Sophie so aptly observed, magnifying your life isn’t always comfortable. It highlights weak points and chasms. We realise how much time we’ve wasted on meaningless endeavours. Offshore we find clarity on what, or even who, we need to let go of.

But without a doubt, the most challenging part of reality to face out here is ourselves.

Most of our life on land we spend hiding from ourselves. But at sea there is no escape. Eventually your baggage, stress, uncomfortable thoughts, character traits – good and bad – will be reflected back at you. At sea the confined space, the intensity of the experience, and the sheer presence it requires, blow YOU up onto the big screen.

Even with Starlink now providing us with the greatest distraction known to humankind (the internet), there is still no avoiding the mirror that’s held out here. Because a power even greater than the internet – Mother Nature – still dominates. So eventually we have to take a long, hard look at ourselves.

As George and I discussed, not only do we have to look but we also have to work through what we see. Because some of those scars we bear, habits and personality traits, can get in the way of dealing with the ‘real’ problems at hand.

And here lies the gold mine to be found at sea: an opportunity to fundamentally change who you are and how you see the world. There’s treasure out here, come and take a look…

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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The post Most of our life on land we spend hiding from ourselves. But at sea there is no escape – Nikki Henderson appeared first on Yachting World.

Being a professional sailor, I realise how stupid this is, and I really should know better. From working for owners and using their credit cards to pay the bills, I know full well that the saying ‘owning a boat is like standing in a shower and ripping up bank notes’ rings true.

I’ve now learned that process begins right at the purchase stage, because apparently it’s a rite of passage to buy a boat that’s triple your original budget…

Like any sensible sailor, I called upon the advice of trusted friends, colleagues and clients. Should I buy the boat? Am I crazy?

Naturally, I picked my advisers carefully: all people who would say ‘YES!’ Romantics, who don’t care for details. Remortgage my house? Sure! Spend a significant proportion of my income on berthing fees? Dreams are priceless!

Boat infatuation is intoxicating. I’m coming to realise that buying a boat is like embarking on a new relationship. The first stage is the dreamy honeymoon phase. Your love can do no wrong! Even their flaws are endearing. Looking up at the deckhead, I saw some water damage. “Hmm, it looks like the deck is leaking. I’d probably enjoy replacing the teak.” Right…

What happens next? The sugar coating will wear thin. Flaws become irritating, infuriating. Lesson 1: just like people we can’t expect boats to change. Especially older ones – they really get stuck in their ways.

Article continues below…

Second hand boats: Buying a yacht to upgrade

Among brokerage listings it’s rare to see a yacht openly advertised as ‘work needed’. After an initial conversation, the potential…

Second hand boats: How to finance a yacht

If you are one of the many boat owners who buys with cash, then great – you can saunter on…

So, the second stage is one of realisation. Realising that her slow acceleration upwind wasn’t just a bad day; it’s who she fundamentally is. Understanding that she will never be as tidy as you want her to be. And, disappointingly, she will always – always – groan and creak in her sleep at anchor.

From realisation to withdrawal. After a time, all those flaws are going to feel too overwhelming to cope with. Maybe you made a bad call? You want out? You might be getting frustrated, angry even. But you’ve committed now. There’s no easy ‘out’. No-one wants to buy an unloved boat. So, defeated, you’ll resort to apathy.

“How’s the boat going?” your enthusiastic advisers will enquire, excited at the prospect of onboard sailing holidays (the real reason they all encouraged you to buy the boat).

“Don’t even ask,” you reply, as you dream of dry earth, a house far from the sea, possibly becoming a farmer…

So why go through this pain and misery? There are thousands of repeat offenders, who are into their second, third, even fourth boat marriage. There must be a good reason? Ah, the final stage: true love. To pull in another cliché: ‘stormy seas make better sailors’.

The first phase of owning a boat is the ‘honeymoon phase’

The conflict, the aggravation, possibly depression, are all a necessary and unavoidable part of the process. If you do it right, out of fury emerges an honest acceptance of one another and a sense of deep almost connection and love. Now you have the boat of your dreams.

But dreams are never quite as imagined. The final stage: heartbreak. You lie awake at night worrying about her in a storm. You feel guilty for not maintaining her better. You reluctantly have to say no to other opportunities to spend time with her. She’ll be a tether, constantly pulling on your heart strings. And for many, many people this all gets too much to handle. And the boat goes up for sale.

So, if the economics of a boat never add up. If owning a boat is painful, slow and full of bad surprises. If there is an exceptionally high neglect and divorce rate, then why buy a boat? Why risk the heartache?

If you’re reading this you probably share my dream of sailing off into the sunset – perhaps on your own yacht. But is it worth it?

In the end, to buy a boat or not comes down to the ‘why’. The ‘why’ must be greater than all the costs. And those costs are great. So identify what that reason is. What are your deep psychological needs that a boat can fulfil? For me, it’s freedom, adventure, and beauty.

I hope the boat I end up buying will align with my values, help me be my best self, and be an extension of my soul. So, ask yourself: why? And if you have an answer, if it comes from a passion that runs deep in your veins, then welcome to the club. We share the same problem!

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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Why we haven’t been matching the factory polars for our new boat? I just can’t work it out! That’s something almost every new boat owner has asked themselves at some point.

Ever felt like your boat is sluggish? Or woken up for a watch offshore, thinking you were absolutely sending it, only to find your competition or nearby boats have left you in the dust?

The speed issue is real. For racers, going faster means a trophy. For cruisers, being able to sail quickly means shorter passages, less strain on your boat, and a happier crew. And for all sailors, going fast is fun!

So how to go faster? It’s easy to get sucked into the detail. You might pick up the North U Trim book and start thinking about car positions and draught shape. Maybe you’ve made a weight saving plan, involving luggage limits or even freeze-dried food and a watermaker. Or perhaps you’ve employed a shrewd weather router for your upcoming Atlantic crossing to help pick the optimum route across.

Article continues below…

Tradewinds explained: Everything you need to know before sailing across the Atlantic

A transatlantic tradewind crossing from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean is on many a sailor’s bucket list. Endless sunny…

Sailing across the Atlantic: Bluewater veterans share top tips for your first crossing

On the afternoon before we left the Canary Islands for the Caribbean for a transatlantic with the ARC, I struck…

These are all good ideas. But when thinking about speed, there is an order of priorities to consider. And it starts with sails. Not sail trim, sail shape, traveller position, twist or foot tension… but the sail itself.

This fundamental fact is so often missed: the greatest impact the everyday sailor can make for going faster is to fly the right sails for the conditions. And once you have that nailed then the question of how to go faster is answered more elaborately. Finesse and precision such as tiny adjustments to ballast position or steering cable tension can then make a significant difference to the speed. But only once the right sail is flying.

So the typical new boat owner is likely to be making some basic errors – the same ones I’ve made so many times myself! Mistakes like flying headsails for too long without changing down; not reefing readily enough; and dropping loose-luffed sails (spinnakers and Code 0s) too early.

But why? What stops sailors flying the right sails? One factor is the crew. Are they up for it? Do you have crew keen to heave a headsail up to the bow at 0300 in 15 knots of wind, brace themselves as the boat slops over the short, broken swell, hoist up the J2, haul down the J4, and – now soaking wet – flake it, bag it and put it away all for the sake of a few knots?

That takes a certain breed of crazy. And if the wind is blowing a consistent 20 knots can the crew handle it? Can the helm keep the boat from rounding up with a building quarterly swell? Can the trimmer stay focused and keep the kite full as the boat accelerates down each wave?

Dropping a loose-luffed sail too early is just one of the many reasons we might not be hitting polars.

Another factor is you. Are you brave enough? And, bluntly, are you wealthy enough? It’s easy for a sail crossover chart to tell you the S4 will be okay up to 30 knots of wind. But have you ever flown an S4 in 29 knots when you’re 1,000 miles from the shore? Because it’s not super relaxing. Aren’t you here to have a nice time? And the urge to drop it early increases if you’re worried about the cost of the repair. Going quickly increases the risk of something breaking.

There are so many reasons why you might drop the kite at night, why you might be hesitant to shake out the reef, or why you might not want to send your crew up to the bow for the sake of speed. So how do we all go faster? The answer: nail the manoeuvres.

The greatest impact the everyday sailor can have on speed is to set the boat up well for changing sails. Some ideas: extend the sock line of your cruising chute so that it can divert from the bow back to a winch so you can drop it with mechanical assistance. Set up martin breakers to ensure a reliable de-powering of your spinnaker at any time.

Consider a top-down furling asymmetric spinnaker to avoid the need for a sock or traditional drop altogether. Upgrade or lubricate the mast track slider or car system so the mainsail drops and hoists easily. Service the sheaves in the boom for the reefing lines. Consider a furling staysail as an easy ‘power-down’ solution to your upwind sail set up so you don’t have to go splashing around on the bow at night.

In other words, set your boat up as efficiently as possible so you can get sails up and down quickly and easily. Practise the manoeuvres and build confidence. Once you have this nailed, you’ll be more likely to fly the right canvas at the right time.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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The post ‘What stops sailors flying the right sails?’ – Nikki Henderson on the power driving your boat appeared first on Yachting World.

Close reaching at a fast 60° TWA I was working out how far forward the outboard jib lead needed to move before setting up something more permanent.

“Where is a handy billy when you need one?” I said to my crew mate, who looked at me with an incredulous expression that so reminded me of my friend’s four-year-old son, Axel. Axel was learning how to speak on the radio with his grandfather, Dennis.

“Roger!” Dennis responded on the handheld VHF.

“Why are you talking about Roger?” Axel replied, confused. “My name is Axel.”

My crew mate’s face: “Er… Nik… Who the hell is Billy?”

So, who is Billy? I thought the same thing. After diving deep on Google, it turns out billy has many forms. The US Navy’s billy is an engine-powered portable water pump to empty out sinking compartments on a ship.

Down Under, a ‘billycan’, commonly known as a ‘billy’ is a name for another piece of emergency equipment: a metal can used to boil water for tea and coffee.

In Canada’s Pacific Northwest, a handy billy is a wooden motorboat with an outboard motor under a housing (for a quieter ride).

Sea shanties such as ‘Rio Grande’ and ‘Heave Away, Me Johnnies’ (British slang – Johnny interchanges for Billy) identify sailors as ‘bullies’, which said out loud with a pirate twang could well be ‘billies’.

And when the Geordies up in north-east England call someone a ‘billy’, they are referring to any good friend or close companion. (Note to self: derivatives of weird sailor-speak lead you down very long rabbit holes.)

The handy billy I was referring to was the naval term for a quick-grab general purpose block and tackle system. It’s a purchase system made up of lines and blocks to give you a mechanical advantage when lifting or pulling heavy loads.

Combine it with a quick release shackle at each end and a cam-cleat to lock off the line, and you can use it almost anywhere on a boat to pull something heavy. The more turning points the line makes, the greater the load you can pull with the same effort.

For example, in a 3:1 purchase system, a load of 90kg (the average man) will require a pulling power of just 30kg (much more attainable) to lift.

Article continues below…

‘Why it’s tough being the only woman on board’ – Nikki Henderson

For Leg 3 of the Ocean Globe Race, L’Esprit d’équipe (FR) and Neptune (FR) were granted dispensation to sail with…

The Race to Alaska: answering the call of the wild

“Nikki, give up the tiller for a second. You gotta see this.” Ev Goussev, co-owner of the yacht Gray Wolf,…

Moitessier fans might know the story of when his steel bowsprit on Joshua buckled sideways during his solo circumnavigation. He used a handy billy to bend it back into shape, and his fix stayed in place for the remainder of the voyage.

I like to think of the handy billy as a fancy tourniquet, the solution to a problem on board when there is no winch close by – a high-traffic piece of equipment that everyone should have ‘to-hand’, just like a multitool, a bucket, or a headtorch.

You won’t regret making or buying a handy billy. Use high spec line so that you can keep the rope slim, the blocks small, and the system lightweight. Remember the handy billy is all about convenience. Taper the splices well so they slide super smoothly on the blocks, and make sure the snap shackles on either end are big enough to clip onto most things. The handy billy has got to be versatile.

Need more convincing? There are plenty more uses, but here are half a dozen to give you the idea:

• Clip to headsail clew to temporarily remove the load off the sheets, perhaps to move a car or sort out a riding turn.
• Add a snatch block on one end and use it to divert the sheet leads or act as a barber-hauler.
• Hook one end onto lifejacket lifting strops and the other to a halyard to create a short-handed solution to recovering a crewmember out of the water.
• Attach it to the end of the boom or spinnaker pole and use it to lift large weights, such as a liferaft or outboard motor on and off the boat.
• Bulk up the number of pulleys and use it for precision placement of ultra-heavy things.
• A quick grab solution for deck level rigging failure such as a failed backstay hydraulic ram.

Come to think of it, all the derivatives could make sense when you consider the handy billy’s true identity: a sailor’s handiest companion on board! Some days it could rival a tea kettle in its frequency of use.

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What do you do if a halyard lock gets stuck? What if your spinnaker is wrapped? What if your mast track gets damaged and the mainsail won’t come down?

I’ve been running a webinar series based on various ‘what if’ scenarios with a community of performance catamaran sailors. Some participants were lifelong sailors, some first time boat owners, and some were preparing to start a new life as liveaboards.

Even the most experienced sailors might encounter new scenarios at sea. The best way to prepare for unexpected ‘emergencies’ is to break them down ahead of time, so it doesn’t feel entirely new in the moment. Hence the roundtable discussions.

We had been first addressing the immediate risk to the crew and boat of various ‘what ifs?’. Themes emerged. Most scenarios don’t pose imminent life-threatening danger or catastrophic boat damage, but if handled incorrectly, can quickly deteriorate.

One risk during any unforeseen situation on board is panicking crew. Most terrified people can be stabilised, if not calmed down completely, by a reassuring hand on their shoulder, looking them in the eye, calmly saying “It’s going to be OK”. Other tools include giving someone a menial task to follow so that they can regain a sense of control.

Article continues below…

How to climb a mast safely at sea – masterclass with ocean racer Pip Hare

Of all the things I have encountered over my sailing career, climbing a mast at sea is one of the…

Solo mast climb in a mid-Atlantic squall: Emma Richards’ Around Alone

In 2002, Emma Richards (now Sanderson) was the youngest person and the first British woman to finish the ‘Around Alone’…

Why waste time on a panicking crew member if your spinnaker is ripping itself to shreds? Well, you are unlikely to be able to solve that problem alone. Panicking crew don’t listen. They might pose a danger to themselves. Their mindset might be infectious.

And for the boat? Think about how to press pause and stop things worsening, eg don’t gybe or add excess side load to the track.

Figuring out how to stay safe and stabilise the situation was stage one of a three-stage framework we were using to tackle every scenario.

Stage two is to assess the situation. Collect data that you might need to take further action. We came up with questions for each scenario: did you hear a bang? Wind strength and direction? What jammers are open? Any knots in lines? Is it a forestay wrap, or is there a spare halyard in there too? Any collision risks?

Stage three is finding a solution. Ideally accompanied with a cup of tea and a biscuit to make up for the drop in blood sugar that follows a big adrenaline spike. To solve any of the three scenarios I set out at the beginning, this means figuring out how to get the sail down. And unfortunately, it might involve a mast climb.

Even for the most monkey-like riggers, going up the mast at sea is no fun. Keeping yourself stable enough to work up there is extremely physically demanding and requires engaging muscles that most of us didn’t even know existed. For short-handed crews, even just getting aloft might equate to an hour of CrossFit, either as the monkey or the ‘wincher’. It’s going to be high, exposed, and near impossible to communicate (headsets are so useful). Then add a wrapped kite, or an overpowered mainsail to the mix, and it becomes (if it wasn’t already) scary!

Initially, the horrified looks of the webinar participants didn’t phase me. Everyone has an expression like that when faced with climbing 40ft up in a 3m swell. But then I realised, this wasn’t just fear; it was a realisation that if they encountered a situation like this, they wouldn’t be able to solve it. Because none of their regular crew would have the physical or mental capacity to get up there.

When faced with an obstacle between you and your dream lifestyle, it’s tempting to brush it under the carpet. “We’ll wait until we get ashore,” or “We’re cruisers so we don’t fly spinnakers.” But things are going to get messy if you have a full main stuck up the rig with a gale on the way. Even for the most conservative cruisers there are scenarios that might require a trip aloft while offshore – rig damage, wiring issues or skyed halyards perhaps.

My closing remark to the webinar participants was straightforward. Any yacht out sailing must have someone on board who can, and is willing, to go up the rig at sea. They need to be in good physical condition for the task. There should be adequate equipment on board to go aloft and, ideally, the procedure has been practised.

If you own – or sail on – a yacht on which going aloft is not something you could currently cope with, then source the extra crew member, buy the necessary equipment, and do a ‘dry-run’ on the dock before you next slip lines.

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As a team that is much younger than the rest of the competition, what superpower does that give you? That’s the question I asked of a group of teenagers this month during a sailing podcast interview.

Francesa Dougherty (aged 17), Isa Ford (15), Anna Cezik (16), Simone Ford (17) and Henry Thomas (15) make up a Race to Alaska team named ‘Rock the Boat’. They’re borrowing a Santa Cruz 27 and competing in this year’s 750-mile human-powered race from Port Townsend, Washington to Ketchikan, Alaska. Oh, and if you were wondering, their theme song is the one you’re thinking of. And, yes, it was released before any of them (or me) were born.

Their nervous giggling made me think they didn’t quite see themselves as superheroes. ‘Energy and enthusiasm,’ just about summarises their bashful answer. As the ‘grown up’ in the room, it is now my prerogative to reflect on what else they could have said.

Something that struck me was how able and confident they were, in such a wonderfully humble way. Most adults see this race as adventurous, if not extreme. For these teens to even believe they can do it is a mark of impressive self-assuredness. To find a boat, spend their free time training offshore with mentors, and design and build pedal drive systems to fulfil the ‘human-powered’ (rather than sail-powered) element of the race by themselves is exceptionally resourceful.

Article continues below…

The Race to Alaska: answering the call of the wild

“Nikki, give up the tiller for a second. You gotta see this.” Ev Goussev, co-owner of the yacht Gray Wolf,…

‘Why it’s tough being the only woman on board’ – Nikki Henderson

For Leg 3 of the Ocean Globe Race, L’Esprit d’équipe (FR) and Neptune (FR) were granted dispensation to sail with…

But as they detailed their ambitious plan, there was no arrogance, no cockiness, no overconfidence. Instead there was a lot of “No, you speak first!” giving each other space to talk, coupled with a lot of the aforementioned giggling. I’d be fascinated to watch their future sailing journeys unfold.

As we dug deeper into what ‘being young’ meant, they opened up. They feel an innate sense of responsibility as a young team. They have a sense of duty to be safe, make good decisions and compete at a high level, in order to set an example for other young teams, other young women, and other people of colour.

They hope to become role models in sailing for anyone else ‘who looks like them’ and lay a path that others can follow. Half an hour of talking later, I was feeling inspired – how brave, ambitious and optimistic adolescent energy is!

A true passion for something greater than the race itself – that’s their superpower. It’s that extra surge of energy they needed to go overnight training in the pouring rain last weekend. It’s the thing that will fire them up at 3am when they haven’t slept, and someone wakes them early to help with a sail change.

Team ‘Rock the Boat’. Photo: c/o Race 2 Alaska

It’s what will keep their frustration in check when someone inevitably doesn’t rehydrate dinner properly or forgets to flake the spinnaker sheet during a gybe. It will turn whatever result they have, even if they don’t make it to the finish line, into something that feels good for them.

I left the call with more questions than answers: always a sign of a thought-provoking conversation. Should we all be identifying more closely with our youthful selves, and embracing those ambitions that as adults we cast aside as naïve or inconsequential? I wonder if we are forgetting how powerful it is to go into a race, not to win, but ‘because it’s just so cool.’ Or even, ‘because we could affect the future’.

It’s easy to think that a relentless drive for first place is what elevates you to success. But the problem with the podium being the main motivator, is that if you fall back in the fleet so far that is no longer a realistic aim, your motivation disintegrates. Is success for you actually even winning? To me, they felt like winners because they wanted to inspire others, and I was inspired just talking to them. The race is still two months out.

The time has probably passed for any of us to believe we can change the world by racing to St Malo one weekend. But perhaps we could still find a golden thread – a deeper driver than just results – to weave into our upcoming season. (Cole Brauer making history in a hat emblazoned with the words WILD FEMINIST comes to mind, and remember, she didn’t win).

What would my greater motivation be for the summer? What would be yours? What difference could that make to us all if we flipped what ‘winning’ looks like on its head?

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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Rushing to wean ourselves off fossil fuels it seems we’re building another problem for the future. What do we do with the new batteries we’re now installing once they’ve reached the end of their life?

The growth in popularity of electric cars is evident on our roads – but how many old ones do you see? Sure, there are those that have been around for a while and may have had their battery replaced, but old electric cars are still in the minority, suggesting that we haven’t yet got to the point of mass battery replacements.

The RAC Foundation reckons there’ll eventually be around 33 million electric vehicles on UK roads. At present there are around 1.6 million plug-in electric cars in the UK, so there’s a long way to go and ultimately a lot of batteries to be replaced at some point. As well as being an environmental headache it’s set to be an expensive one too. Although Tesla batteries are believed to last 10-20 years, the cost of replacement is said to be $5,000-$20,000 per car.

So while emissions are coming down, it does look like we’re pushing a ruck in the carpet in the hope that new technology will come along to help solve the problem.

I use cars as an example as it’s much harder to establish figures for the marine world, but if we continue to progress towards electric power then clearly we’ll end up with a similar issue when it comes to battery replacement.

However, recently there have been some interesting technology stories that could provide solutions. Toyota believes it may have found a way of extending the life of a lithium-ion battery with a simple injection, while it is in situ.

Article continues below…

‘Electric yacht propulsion opens doors to a completely different way of thinking about sailing’

Electric propulsion is rapidly becoming established in the mainstream yacht market. This is increasingly driven by customer demand, often by…

Grand Soleil Blue first look: new recyclable yacht concept

It wasn’t until the end of a lengthy press conference in Düsseldorf that Grand Soleil’s management team dropped what was,…

Batteries become less efficient with age as they lose some of the charged particles that store the energy. Toyota’s proposed solution is to stimulate the production of new lithium ions and electrons as a result of the injection. During tests the research team claimed they were able to restore batteries to around 80% of their original capacity, a performance they could maintain for more than 100 charging cycles.

The ability to perform this restorative process in situ is also significant in helping to keep costs down, something that could be particularly important aboard boats.

There’s more testing to be done but the news has attracted a great deal of interest in the EV world.

Meanwhile, another exciting development is that of solid state batteries. Broadly speaking, existing lithium batteries consist of three key parts: an anode (negative) and cathode (positive) physically separated by a polymer layer, and these are immersed in a liquid electrolyte that allows the ions to transfer.

Photo: Andreas Lindlahr/EYOTY

In a solid state battery the separating material is a solid layer that is also the electrolyte allowing the transfer of ions between the anode and cathode. The benefits of this are said to be greater energy density (more than double that of lithium-ion batteries), and much faster charge times (by around six times).

As a result of their increased capacity solid state batteries can be smaller and lighter and are considered to be safer too.

Aside from the advantages of a more efficient cell, the issue of safety is an important one given the number of serious fires on board boats that have been attributed to battery problems. The liquid electrolyte is volatile and flammable.

A solid state battery has a thicker separating layer that is more resistant to high temperatures which helps to prevent short circuits within the battery. The thicker separator also helps to protect against the growth of spike shaped lithium formations on the anode, dendrites that can pierce the separator in a Li-ion battery and cause a short circuit. And perhaps most important of all, a solid state battery won’t catch fire even when punctured or damaged in impact.

It’s early days for the technology, though. Dealing with how the materials expand and contract when they are charged and discharged is one key issue. Another is that the separator only works at high temperatures, plus life cycles are short by comparison.

Still, the future for electric power – be it ashore or afloat – looks very encouraging.

And while ultimately the solutions are still pushing the problem further down the line, solid state batteries could provide one of the biggest steps forward to more sustainable green power.

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Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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The post The switch to electric will reduce emissions, but what will we do with all the old batteries? appeared first on Yachting World.

For Leg 3 of the Ocean Globe Race, L’Esprit d’équipe (FR) and Neptune (FR) were granted dispensation to sail with an all-male crew. The Notice of Race stipulates that every yacht must sail with a mixed crew, which is defined as a crew where there is at least one woman. In the Ocean Globe Race (OGR) newsletter, race organisers explained that the teams had found it ‘too difficult to find crew members at such short notice during the festive season’.

The Race Committee found this a valid enough reason to permit both yachts to compete without suffering a penalty.

For context, there are time and financial penalties outlined throughout the Notice of Race for not complying with the rules of safety equipment inspections, not attending media photo shoots, or not conforming to Ocean Globe Race branding. It’s interesting the OGR does not regard having a mixed team as critical to its brand.

This news was highlighted to me via the Women who Sail Facebook group. As you can imagine, the story inspired the voicing of some strong opinions. But you might be assuming that the response was negative, criticising the OGR management or full of disparaging comments about all-male crews.

That assumption would be wrong.

The major theme that caught the attention of over 100 women on this group was about how hard it is to be the ‘only’ woman on board.

Article continues below…

Maiden refit: How Tracy Edwards’ sailing legend was brought back to life

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The ‘motherhood penalty’? Controversy as Vendée Globe skipper Clarisse Cremer loses sponsor

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In an interview quoted in the OGR’s own press release, Capucine Treffot – who transferred from L’Esprit d’équipe after two legs – said: “It’s tough being the only woman on board. There is some stuff you can’t share and sometimes you feel really alone.

“I’d made very good friends on the boat, so I’m not missing friends, I’m missing another woman on board. A mixed crew should mean more than just one woman. It should actually be really mixed.”

Finding a woman who can sail is not that difficult. Every year the Magenta Project is inundated with applications from women to join its mentoring scheme. There are over 20,000 members of the Women who Sail Facebook group.

In the context of the OGR, Maiden is evidence that bolstering a crew with women is possible; they have managed to fill their entire boat with women. What’s more, both boats lost their sole woman not because they didn’t enjoy the race but because they too wanted to join the Maiden crew.

Therefore, the conclusion is that the real challenge if we want to diversify our sport is not to find women but to retain them.

Team SCA was an all-female entry into the Volvo Ocean Race

The OGR has proven that requiring a minimum of one woman on a crew is a way to bolster numbers getting involved, but it doesn’t address how long women stay on board. Perhaps those who are making and enforcing the rules do not fully understand women; I wonder how many of them are women?

The rule that there must be a woman on board is not diversifying this sport – you could argue it’s doing the opposite. Maiden is repeating history in more ways than one – just as in the Whitbread race of 1989, a women’s team in 2023 was again competing against all-male teams in what is classed as a ‘mixed sport’.

From my experience, the culture aboard a yacht becomes more inclusive the more diverse the team becomes, making 50:50 male-to-female crews more attractive to everyone. Adventure charter company 59° North has recently reserved two spots for women on its trips to avoid there being just one, and reported an increase in women signing up to over 30% of their overall crew numbers.

A Harvard Business Review also supports this theory. On investigating how to boost the proportion of women in boardrooms, they concluded that: ‘Solo women feel isolated and marginalised. Adding a second woman helps reduce the sense of isolation, [but] two women may be perceived as a separate group. A clear shift occurs when boards have three or more women. At that critical mass, women tend to be regarded not as “female directors” but as directors.’

The lesson I see for anyone hoping to sail with a mixed gender crew this season is to make sure you recruit more than just one woman. Ideally look to build a crew made up of at least three women. In theory, this should be all you need to retain women crew and avoid drop-outs.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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It is so notorious among sailors that you could say the Fastnet Rock is the northern hemisphere’s Cape Horn. Legends have formed around this famous landmark: of storms, and shipwrecks and the terrible events of the RORC Fastnet Race in 1979.

So you may find it surprising if you’ve never sailed there yourself, or if you’ve raced there only to turn round and sail 250 miles back to Plymouth, to discover that the Fastnet Rock is just six miles from the Irish mainland and four miles from the closest island. With a fair wind you can be grasping your first pint of Murphy’s within the hour at Ciarán Danny Mike’s on Cape Clear or O’Sullivan’s in Crookhaven.

It is geography that has made it so feared by mariners over the centuries. The Fastnet lighthouse stands on small outcrop of rock, off the first land that would have been seen for weeks for those sailing across the Atlantic in years gone by. If their navigation was even slightly out…

Often shrouded in low cloud and beset by strong winds and seas from a succession of Atlantic lows, it was a place where ships could – and did – come to grief.

Even today, with metres-accurate GPS positioning and radar to ascertain its position, crews are wary of ‘the Rock’. The weather is still as unpredictable as it ever was.

As recently as 2011, the iconic lighthouse silhouette was the backdrop the dramatic rescue of Rambler 100’s crew after the maxi yacht lost its keel and suddenly capsized shortly after rounding the lighthouse.

A reassuring light

The Fastnet Rock lighthouse was built to supercede an earlier light built on a clifftop on Cape Clear Island in the early 1800s. It could, in certain conditions, be obscured by a stratum of fog. An inquiry found this to a factor in the loss of an American packet on nearby West Calf Island in 1847, in which 92 of the 110 passengers and crew were drowned. After that, plans for a lighthouse on the Fastnet rock were drawn up.

The lighthouse on Cape Clear island that preceded the Fastnet Rock light

The tower you see today was started in 1897. There’s a bit of a myth that the rock for it was quarried locally at Crookhaven – not so. Most of the south-west coast is formed of old red sandstone (which actually ranges in colour here from dark grey to green). This is sedimentary rock prone to marine erosion, hence the characteristic striated appearance of the headlands of West Cork.

The elegant and beautifully waisted tower structure was designed by William Douglass, an engineer with Irish Lights, and built from coarse-grained Cornish granite that I believe came from the Cheeseswring quarry in Bodmin Moor.

Over 2,000 blocks were cut and shaped to interlock one into another. Each course is said to have been assembled in Cornwall before the granite blocks were shipped to Crookhaven and Cape Clear Islands, from which two teams of builders worked over five years.

Today, the only visitors to the lighthouse are maintenance teams and inspection tours. Once every two years, the Royal Ocean Racing Club’s Fastnet Race rounds the rock, but no longer does it send a delegation to keep watch in the lighthouse. Today, it stands empty, but its light is still a reassuring beacon.

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