Posted by: blmyachtsales
Boat Loans By Excel Credit  read more »

Posted by: blmyachtsales
Boat Loans By Excel Credit  read more »

[Source: Volvo Ocean Race] Just when everything seemed to be going right for Bouwe Bekking and his men on Telefnica Blue, it all went wrong again. The boat was loving the conditions, the crew were pushing hard, and slowly, but surely, climbing back up the leaderboard, when the crew heard a big bang, and everything changed. We snapped one of our daggerboards, the boards which prevent the boat from slipping sideways, explained skipper Bouwe Bekking. We destroyed it and had to stop the boat for 45 minutes, he said. Even worse for the crew, the little speed they were able to do, was on the wrong tack and sailing away from the finish in India and they lost 10 precious miles.  read more »

4 days into leg 2 and the Southern Ocean is living up to its name. 1 broken steering system, 1 Chinese gybe, 1 broken boom and now 3 knock downs but we are still charging along for the scoring gate at longitude 58 East. I have to confess to being slightly nervous about our predicament but the forecast is good and we will soon be heading North (ish). We seem to have the boat going pretty well but we are vulnerable to being knocked down in the frequent squalls as we are fairly committed to carrying a full main and there is no easy way to ease it. It is also setting very full and this affects the balance of the boat. It wasnt an easy night for the guys on deck - and the temperature is falling fast.  read more »

Posted by: yh4o
Boat Loans By Excel Credit  read more »

A readers Q&A from Joep Straus, who's currently hard at work preparing for the Seminar in Ghent. He's posing a question about an off-shore race.

Place: on the sea , two miles from the harbor. Windward finish, current 1,5 knots in the same direction as the wind.
At the finish line following incident took place: Boat F crossed the finish line laying over port tack, close hauled. Then she tacked to starboard, drifted with the current 25 meters below the finish line. She tacked again and crossed the finish line for a second time. While doing this, she made contact with her hull and rig on the finishing yacht which was situated as the starboard end of the line and had her anchor ball hoisted. There was damage, her boom made scratches on the hull and deck of the finishing vessel. The R.C. members on the finishing vessel had to seek shelter behind the cockpit.  read more »

There is a Pearson 424 owner's organization - Of course I belong to it - that has such a tremendous wealth of information and opinion from people who have sailed the 424 all over the world. All of us have had similarly different experiences (that's not double-speak - your right hand is like your left hand only different, if you get my drift) and have come up with some pretty spectacular solutions.  read more »

When I was young, say, last year or so, I never had a use for mast rails. I could prance about the deck with nary a worry in the worst of the worst weather. I was, for all practical purposes, the mountain goat of deckdom. I'm sure you'll believe that.

My efforts since purchasing Pelican (nee Pelicano) have been to make her an ocean going vessel that I can single hand.

Towards that end, I decided that since I couldn't run all my sail control lines to the cockpit, that I'd keep them at the mast. These lines include the main and jib halyards and the main reefing lines. It doesn't make sense to have to run back and forth from the cockpit to manage sails, especially if you're trying to get it down quickly.

I know you'll say, "Hey, wait! Didn't you move all your lines aft to the cabin roof on Inertia? I mean, you went to such trouble!" You'd be correct - the difference was that Inertia had a clear route for all the lines that wouldn't result in me tripping every time I went forward. Pelican's layout is not the same and since I can't run that many lines, I won't - actually, the only three will be the staysail sheet, the boom vang, and the main sheet. Everything else is at the mast.  read more »