Short Tacks - Ocean Navigator

A sustainable future for shipping?

A hundred and fifty years ago big ships under sail crisscrossed the Atlantic Ocean, sailing south from Europe to cross on the trade winds then up the coast of the Americas to return on the westerlies. With current concerns over climate change driving the need to cut carbon from using fossil fuels, will we once again see fleets of ocean-going trading boats loaded down with flying canvas and no engines? A recent book, Trade Winds: A voyage to a sustainable future for shipping, by Christiaan de Beukelaer looks at the complex journey the shipping industry is on to cut its…

Kirsten Neuschafer wins the Golden Globe

On the evening of April 27, Kirsten Neuschafer crossed the finish line at Sables-d’Olonne to win the 2022-23 Golden Globe Race. Of 16 sailors who began the round-the-world singlehanded race, only three were still in the running for the prize: Kirsten, Michael Guggenberger who was still well back in the Atlantic, and Abhilash Tomy, who finished a day and a half after Kirsten, a remarkable almost-photo finish after more than 235 days at sea. It’s been a busy year for circumnavigating races, beginning with the Ocean Race which, having dropped “Volvo” from its title, started off in January. Its seven…

Boat inspections for Transpac Race

For any offshore voyage, making sure you have a seaworthy vessel and a safe crew before departure is paramount. The Transpac Race to Hawaii, a 2,225-mile ocean passage, is no different. The Transpac race committee takes this need for seaworthiness and safety seriously with a rigorous protocol to ensure boats and crews are ready. The race has a full complement of 21 inspectors on the west coast, from San Diego in the south to Seattle in the north, that conduct inspections to ensure that competing boats are in compliance with US Sailing’s Safety Equipment Requirements (SER) for ocean races. Though…

Rescue communications

On March 13, on a South Pacific crossing midway between Galapagos and the Marquesas, s/v Raindancer with four people on board sank after an encounter with a whale. It was lunchtime and they had been in the cockpit eating pizza. In 15 minutes the boat, a Peterson 44, had slipped beneath the surface and the crew were surveying a sunny sea from the slim shelter of a liferaft and inflatable dinghy tied together. Before abandoning ship the crew gathered supplies and the captain, Rick Rodriguez, activated an EPIRB and sent out a mayday on VHF. Once in the liferaft they…

A tight spot to lose your bearings

Editor’s note: This experience of two cruisers shows the importance of having spares aboard if at all possible. We left Titusville, Florida bound for Vero Beach via the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). There wasn’t a breath of wind, so we were motoring. After about three hours into our expected six-hour trip, we noticed a subtle change in the sound of the engine. Janet was at the helm, so I got up to check. Before I even reached the bottom of the companionway ladder, there was a horrible shrieking and the sound of metal grinding, then the engine’s overheat alarm sounded.…

Careened in Greenland

Summertime, north of the Arctic Circle, and the expedition vessel ArcticEarth is sailing in coastal waters where the charts do not show depths. With vigilance, Captain Magnus Day and Mate Julia Prinselaar are moving the boat northward. Their goal is to be fully ready, provisioned, and in position next week for two upcoming charters in Disko Bay, on the west coast of Greenland. Disko has the reputation of an exciting place with lots of ice (one glacier dumps 35 billion tons of ice into the sea each year at a flow rate that can exceed 150 feet per day… that’s…

What to do with a run-down outboard?

Early in the morning, on a calm and beautiful Saturday I pushed off from a dock on a friend’s Catalina 25, bound for a distant race on the St. Johns River. But it was not to be: before the Ortega Bridge had even opened the 1996 four-stroke outboard engine began to shudder. It stopped, and after a check of the gas tank and several impassioned pulls the best it would do was to run at idle, wheezing and coughing — protesting that we had awakened it so early. I looked at Richie, then pushed the tiller hard over and we…

Currents and obstacles off Hatteras

The waters around Cape Hatteras are the subject of much research with the most interesting —from a cruiser’s point of view — being a study of currents. Recent research from a collaboration between the U.S. National Science Foundation and researchers from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, provides some of the best insights available for this complicated area. A study called Processes driving Exchange At Cape Hatteras Program (PEACH) just completed, with additional research to follow. Figure 1 is a PEACH graphic showing the complicated systems of currents impacting boats transitioning through the area. The purple arrow denotes…

Changing conditions in Chesapeake schooner race

by Rob Laymon Strong winds and cold rain, the sailor’s delight. Four days of it came from a nor’easter spawned by Hurricane Ian, jumbling the plans for the Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race, held October 6 through 8. This annual event attracts schooners of all sizes to race in four classes between Annapolis and Norfolk. I sailed aboard Prom Queen, a 50-foot Campanella owned by Roger Worthington, an intermittent participant and a past winner of the race. In this year’s race, the schooner Virginia, the current record holder, had made it as far as Smith Point before turning back to…

Battling the Bay of Biscay late in the season

There are many horror stories of yachtsmen running into trouble in the Bay of Biscay. If you want to do a good crossing heading south or are coming north particularly during the latter part of the year, there are some things about the bay you need to know. There are many fine pilot books available nowadays about these passages south. They don’t much talk about it during the colder months, however. But Ocean Passages for the World, particularly the second blue-paged part written by professional sea captains from the days of sail, still has, in my opinion, some of the…