We didn’t get off on the right foot sailing into Hawaii. It was our own fault, of course. We should have known better. It’s never a good idea to assume that just because procedures were a certain way one year, they will be the same the next. It was an especially bad idea given the world was still in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic. Nonetheless, “Go away!” shouted through a megaphone, didn’t seem like the most constructive way of handling the situation.

Not to say my husband, Seth, and I was entirely surprised. Having lived in the islands for a number of years now, we knew sailors often don’t get much of an aloha from the authorities in this part of the world. We also knew the reasons for this attitude, having heard the stories of sailors being polluters, creating eyesores both above the surface and sewage below, as well as sailors who contribute nothing to the economy while making use of the state’s infrastructure and paying no taxes. Then there are that handful of entitled cruisers who have behaved rudely to local officials over the years, sealing the deal, as it were. The result is a kind of official obstruction to sailing here, as well as poor services for boaters, both local and transient, which is a shame. Hawaii has one of the greatest seafaring histories in the world, and yet it’s very difficult even for locals to cruise the islands. One of our good friends—a Native Hawaiian, no less—was recently run out of an anchorage on the island of Lana`i with no reason given. The official antagonism toward cruisers is all the more bizarre because the rest of the people who live here don’t seem hostile to sailors at all.

Knowing all this, and despite being Hawaiian residents, Seth and I had decided against sailing directly home when we’d left North America aboard our cold-molded sloop, Celeste, deciding instead to sail to French Polynesia—an area we had both wanted to go back to ever since our circumnavigation a dozen years earlier…

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The keel block for the second of five new purpose-built, state-of-the-art training vessels for America’s state maritime academies was set into place today at the Philly Shipyard marking the next milestone in the project. The start of the assembly of the second vessel, which will be named Patriot State, comes just days after the first vessel, Empire State VII, left the dry dock for her final stage of outfitting.

Work on the second of the vessels began in March 2021 with the first steel cut. Today’s keel laying was a ceremonial recognition in which the first grand block of the vessel is loaded into the building dock. The second NSMV (National Security Multi-Mission Vessel) is scheduled to be delivered to Massachusetts Maritime Academy in 2024. Read on.

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Not Sailing

Crimes like this don’t often happen on land. A 10-minute slow-motion slaughter captured by a cell phone camera shows a group of unarmed men at sea in an undisclosed location, possibly 15 of them, killed one by one by a semiautomatic weapon, after which the culprits pose for celebratory selfies.

This case shows the challenge of prosecuting crimes on the high seas. There were at least four ships on the scene, but no law required any of the dozens of witnesses to report the killings — and no one did. Law enforcement in the open ocean is limited, and jurisdiction is complicated. Authorities learned of the killings only when the video turned up on a cell phone left in a taxi in Fiji in 2014.

It’s still unclear who the victims were or why they were shot. An unknown number of similar killings take place each year — deckhands on the ship from which the video was shot later said they’d witnessed a similar slaughter a week before. Read on.

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There’s so much going on in the news that you would be in good company if you didn’t realize the first major storm to hit the Caribbean was in full force. Hurricane Fiona is currently raging over the Turks and Caicos and is projected to make its way north in the coming three days.

Puerto Rico was hit particularly hard, with a near-total power blackout and more than one million people without running water. National Guard troops have rescued hundreds of people stranded by mudslides and flooding, but the crisis continues. The US territory hadn’t fully recovered from the last direct hurricane hit which destroyed the power grid, exacerbating Fiona’s power and infrastructural damage…

For more information, click here for NOAA’s forecast maps and here for the NHC’s public advisory.

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The 2022 Star Worlds featured six days of intense racing where the final and deciding gold medal win went to Diego Negri and Sergio Lambertenghi of Italy.

During some of the toughest sailing conditions in the race’s recent history, sailors and race management overcame daily challenges ranging from light air and very choppy seas to strong, gusty, and cold winds. The epic battle took place in Marblehead waters and featured 85 boats from 13 countries, many who were former World Champions, Olympians and among the best sailors in the world today.

For the Italians, a third-place finish on the final day sealed their win. “It was really a tough Championship,” said Negri who defended his 2021 Worlds title and won the 100th-anniversary championship. “We played this way from the beginning… stay calm and we are going to win the Championship. It was great fun, a lot of intensity. I thank Sergio who was with me the last few years, always supporting me. He has been great, today especially, so I am very, very happy.”

The final race was on Saturday and featured a large spectator fleet, no surprise given a number of Marblehead sailors, including Jud Smith and Tomas Hornos who placed ninth, on the course. The battle of the Star worlds came down to the final race with Mateusz Kusznierewicz (POL) and Bruno Prada (USA) leading to the first mark, chased by Negri/Lambertenghi, and Croatia’s Tonci Stipanovic and Tudor Bilic, who had their work cut out to close the points needed for a podium finish.

For more results, click here.

Photo by Mattias Capizzano

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Although they don’t generally make it into print, there’s often a backstory to the boat tests we do at SAIL: case in point my sail trial of the J/9, winner in the “daysailer” category of SAIL’s 2022 Best Boats” awards. Checking the forecast before setting out from Boston for Newport, Rhode Island, it looked like we’d be in for a pretty spirited sail with windspeeds in the mid-20s. Sure enough, crossing the Sakonnet River Bridge it was blowing stink. Great! I thought, the perfect day to put a boat like the 28ft J/9—the first in a planned series of daysailers from J/Boats—through its paces.

The reason I was so happy to discover we were going to have a hatful of wind is that I was curious how the boat was going to fare in less-than-ideal conditions. Obviously, there are plenty of boats out there that can be used for “daysailing.” However, I would argue a true “daysailer” is not just a boat that can be used for the occasional afternoon jaunt, but a boat that takes care of its crew (including guests who might not be as thrilled about sailing with the boat on its ear as their host), in the same way a seakindly, bluewater passagemaker will take care of its crew in the rough stuff off soundings.

Sure enough, coming around Fort Adams with long-time J/boats designer Al Johnstone and SAIL’s managing editor, Lydia Mullan, aboard we immediately started rocketing across Narragansett Bay with a solid 20 knots of wind gusting to 25 and more. The J/9, though, couldn’t have been happier.

Better still, Al expressly designed the boat to handle as well under main alone as under main and jib, and while this works in terms of convenience, say, when sailing singlehanded on and off a mooring, it’s also a great way to de-power the rig. With this in mind, after tacking back and forth under full sail a bit, we rolled up the headsail and continued on pretty as you please, gossiping to our heart’s content without a care in the world. The boat’s helm, moderately proportioned hull and 4ft 11in keel remained admirably well-balanced throughout, making the boat a joy to sail. A 3ft 11in shoal-draft keel is also available for thin-water sailing.

Complementing the boat’s easy sailing qualities is an expansive cockpit, easy-to-board open transom and comfy cockpit benches with equally comfy, practical wraparound cushions and electrical auxiliary inboard power. (Inboard diesel power or outboard power are also available as options.) Belowdecks, there’s a cozy little cabin, complete with opening ports for ventilation, storage compartments bench seating and even a proper marine head forward. With its sharp, slightly tumblehome bow, truncated transom and nicely modeled cabintrunk, the boat is also darn good looking. In short, no matter what the weather, it would be hard to find a better “daysailer” than the new J/9…

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The Active Interest Marine Group has announced the appointment of Wendy Mitman Clarke as editor-in-chief of SAIL magazine.

A lifelong sailor and marine-industry veteran, Clarke is an award-winning writer and editor whose marine writing career began when she left her position as an Associated Press journalist to become the mid-Atlantic bureau chief for Soundings—a magazine she has recently returned to as a freelance writer. After Soundings, she rose from writer to executive editor at Chesapeake Bay Magazine. When she and her family left Annapolis to cruise fulltime aboard their 45-foot Adams sloop for four-and-a-half years, her monthly column in Cruising World documented the journey. Most recently she has been senior editor of Good Old Boat, as well as a science writer for Maryland Sea Grant College. She has been a consistent winner at the Boating Writers International annual writing contest, and in 2002 she won the BoatUS Monk Farnum Award for Excellence in Editorial Commentary.

“Sailors, by nature, are a tight-knit community with a language and culture all their own. To lead a brand like SAIL we needed to find someone who is both a media professional and someone who lives and breathes that pastime,” says AIM Marine Group Editorial Director Dan Harding. “Wendy checks those boxes and then some. I can’t wait to see where she steers the SAIL brand.”

“I’m thrilled that Active Interest Media has asked me to take the helm of SAIL,” Clarke says. “I grew up reading this magazine, it has always been inspirational, and it’s a real honor to become part of this team and this magazine’s legacy.”

Clarke is based on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, with the Chesapeake Bay as her home sailing waters…

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After some disillusionment with the capabilities of his trimaran – little prepared to participate in major races – Éric, Tabarly decides to undertake a campaign in the United States to prove the seaworthiness of his trimaran. The first records follow one another and it’s a second “life” that awaits the trimaran in the hands of Alain Colas.

Read on.

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