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Atlantic 57

• By Tom Linskey
• Updated: June 4, 2008

Go sailing with one of the world’s top cruising-multihull designers on his brand-new creation and you learn a few things. Such as why the state of cruising-cat design is where it is today. And why a cruising multi has to be built light-but not too light. And why a cruising cat can shine as a fuel-efficient “powerboat” as well. And why a successful cruising catamaran is all about balancing design elements-making the right compromises in the right places and in the right amounts. And, as I discovered during a day with cat designer and advocate Chris White, you’ll learn about not only yacht design but also the designer.

In a building sea breeze, we’re short-tacking Lely, a cutter-rigged, composite-built Atlantic 57, through East Passage, in Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay. Chris White is at the carbon-fiber wheel, steering with two fingers and looking up to check the mainsail trim. During the tacks, I pop the daggerboards up and down as the self-tacking staysail flips across and the battens of the big, high-aspect mainsail rumble over. When the sails fill, Lely, unburdened by the 15,000-or-so pounds of ballast of a similarly sized monohull, jumps forward. The sudden acceleration, a signature move of performance cats, rocks each of us back on our heels for a second. For most single-hulled sailors, this sensation is unsettling, if not downright subversive. I glance over at White. For the first time during a day of sea-trialing, he’s allowed a thin smile to play over his face, the kind of look that says: I’m satisfied. Almost.

For the 52-year-old White, who for 28 years has been drawing performance-cruising multihulls that not only reach and run fast but also sail to windward, being almost satisfied is part of the balancing act of designing a modern cruising cat. Lely, an evolution of White’s Atlantic 55 (half-a-dozen 55s have been built, including White’s own boat, Javelin), embodies that balance. Lely is light and stiff, strong where she needs to be, and beautiful where you’d like her to be. On deck, she bristles with raceboat-worthy sailhandling gear. Belowdecks, she is, unmistakably, a luxury yacht-the vertical-grain and plain-sawn cherry joiner work gleams under coats of high-gloss varnish. So, you might wonder, where are all the compromises in Lely’s balancing act?

A large cruising cat such as Lely is a seemingly unlimited canvas for all your cruising dreams: a sailhandling cockpit, a wide “back porch” for lounging, the enticing layout possibilities of two hulls, and enough deck space for your fleet of water toys. Lely boasts a whopping 1,052 square feet of usable living space, which is about a 68-percent increase over the 625 square feet you’ll find in a contemporary 57-foot, center-cockpit monohull. Still, in terms of systems, Lely seems to have it all: separate 12-volt-DC and 24-volt-DC electrical circuits and 120-volt and 220-volt shore power (220-volt AC makes for easy plug-in while cruising in the Med, among other places); a 920-amp-hour battery bank; a Fischer Panda ACG 4000 genset; air-conditioning and diesel-fired forced-air heat; a Spectra Newport 400 watermaker (it makes 17 gallons per hour); and a large fridge/freezer, freshwater electric toilets, saltwater deck-washdown gear, and a full suite of navigation and communication electronics. The only modern convenience “missing” is a washer/dryer-and, yes, there’s plenty of room to add one. But in the interests of saving weight and reducing complication-two areas over which Chris White agonizes-a washer/dryer may be one of those temptations you should do your best to resist. As Chris will be the first to tell you, if you fill up a cat’s spaces with endless amounts of “stuff,” you’ll sink the performance to that of an ordinary monohull.

The first step toward making sure that the finished Lely would stay cat fast came with her construction: epoxy resin, triaxial E-glass, and Core-Cell and AirLite foams. But even with weight-efficient building materials, given Lely’s nearly 3,000 square feet of hull, deck, bridgedeck, and cabin-house panels, plus numerous bulkheads and three main crossbeams, incremental increases in weight can add up quickly. Builder Aquidneck Custom Composites used vacuum bagging and an impregnator to control the resin-to-glass ratio and keep the weight down (at 25,500 pounds, the boat is lighter than many 44-foot production cats). Aquidneck Custom Composites’ Bill Koffler and Scott O’Donnell, drawing on 30 years of high-end composite raceboat-construction experience between them, made Lely’s laminate not only light and strong but also, in places, elegant. “We try to eliminate metal wherever we can,” says Koffler. “Metal is heavy, and it’s prone to rust and corrosion and to leaks at attachment points.” Thus Lely sports curving, translucent, bonded-in engine mounts; fuel-filter and steering-cable brackets; and even dorade vents made of biaxial E-glass and formed from male molds-cool!

The construction also features carbon-fiber crossbeam flanges and longitudinal bands of carbon in the hulls. So rather than winding up an overweight, overstuffed creature, a cat in name only, Lely exemplifies the new breed of cruising cat: light, powered up, yet lacking nothing in the way of bells and whistles. “In the 1970s and 1980s, the yachting establishment considered multihullers to be the ‘bad boys,'” notes Chris White. “Those guys didn’t want to pay attention, they didn’t want to try new things. It’s taken many years to overcome the ‘multis break, multis turn over’ mindset.” The shift to grudging acceptance began with cats designed and built for the charterboat industry-boats that traded performance for sleeps-and-drinks-a-crowd appeal. White dismisses such boats as, well-let’s just call them “chartermarans,” and he makes the point that cats that are truly designed and built for cruising have moved beyond the charter-cat formula. White’s Atlantic series of cruising cats (measuring 42, 48, and 55 feet LOA) are notable for holding steadfastly to his long-held design tenets. The hulls are slender instead of plump (Lely, for example, has a 12:1 waterline length-to-beam ratio; many charter cats are around 9:1). No hull bump outs, steps, chines, or bulges make an appearance to indulge the accommodations. And the height of the bridgedeck, crucial to minimize wave slap in a seaway, is generous: Lely has a whopping three and one-half feet of above-water clearance.

And, of course, there’s weight. The immutable law of multihull design? Lighter is faster. But isn’t it possible to build a cruising cat too light? “There is such a thing as too light,” says White. “Extremely light racing multis are less stable and less durable, and their motion can be violent. A cruising cat, by nature, is in a different category. By the time you get all the machinery and cruising payload aboard, you’re set up for comfortable ocean cruising. But if the boat is built heavy or overloaded, at some point the top end-the ability to surge beyond 12 knots and sail consistently at 14, 16, 18 knots-will disappear. The sail area-to-displacement ratio of a cat is critical. If you cram more and more stuff into the boat without regard for weight, you’ll pay a performance penalty.”

These are things that White knows from experience, because he’s not only drawn his own boats but also built a few of them. In 1972, at the age of 18, he designed his first multihull, a 31-foot trimaran named Shadowfax, and built it himself-right there in his parents’ driveway. For the next two years, White cruised his engineless tri in Caribbean and South American waters, all the while pondering how to design a trimaran that would be better suited to ocean sailing. Upon returning to the States, he began studying yacht design in earnest, first through mail-order courses, then by working for other designers. In 1981, he and his wife, Katie, put together Juniper, a 52-foot ketch-rigged, cedar/epoxy trimaran, and with their growing family sailed the boat from Nova Scotia to the Caribbean. More recently, White has cruised aboard Javelin, his Atlantic 55, from South Africa to Guatemala, then home to Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts. Firsthand liveaboard and bluewater experience-when it starts to blow and it’s just you and your wife and two boys crossing an ocean-has a way of bringing a dose of reality to the drawing board.

Under sail, Lely feels right: The boat reacts quickly to puffs, and the steering is sensitive and light. The biggest departure from other cats is, of course, the forward cockpit, which White first developed in 1983 for one of his 50-footers. “The awkwardness of trying to sail a boat from behind a 7-foot-high bulkhead just felt wrong to me,” White explains. So he placed the wheel and sailhandling zone forward of the house, right behind the mast, and he hasn’t looked back. In 10 knots of wind, Lely sails to windward under staysail and mainsail at 7.2 knots; with the masthead genoa rolled out, she reaches at 10 to 11 knots in about 14 knots of wind. White has subsequently taken the boat upwind in 30 knots of breeze; under staysail and single-reefed mainsail, he reports that the boat sailed at 13.5 knots. For shorthanded cruisers, the cutter rig is a natural; unroll the genoa in light air and off the wind, drop down to the staysail when the breeze picks up.

Lely sports “belly fins” that are 9 feet long by 1 foot deep (measured from the hull body); these spare the hull from damage during a grounding, and they’ll also support the boat’s weight on the beach or at the boatyard. Unlike many other cruising catamarans, Lely has deep, foam-filled, asymmetric daggerboards that provide lift when sailing upwind. Deep daggerboards (or centerboards) are central to White’s insistence that a multihull should sail to windward as well as or better than a monohull.

For downwind work, Lely has an asymmetric cruising spinnaker; other cruising cats, including many Atlantic 55s, use a screecher flown from a bowsprit prod. Harken electric-powered main halyard/mainsheet and traveler/runner winches and a plethora of sailhandling gear will help tame the large sail loads; the 933-square-foot mainsail, for example, demands respect.

Lely’s cockpit-forward steering and sailhandling layout is closely linked to the 16-foot-wide bridgedeck pilothouse. Accessible through a weatherproof cockpit door and a sliding door aft, the bridgedeck combines an inside steering station with 360-degree visibility, a navigation/computer workstation area, and a saloon with a dinette table and a lounging area laid around a jazzy little cocktail table. The pilothouse zone, in addition to keeping the person on the helm warm and dry when it’s cold and wet outside, allows Lely to function rather nicely as a powerboat. With the twin 54-horsepower Yanmar diesels turning over at 2,500 rpm and burning about a gallon an hour, Lely moves along at 10 knots; the boat cruises at 8 knots on one engine alone. Compare that with, say, a 47-foot trawler, which needs a 174-horsepower diesel burning 6 gallons an hour just to make 8 knots. Now, which boat is the better powerboat? Need we even mention that, with its wide wheelbase, a cat doesn’t roll under power?

Lely’s accommodation plan, with identical master cabins each having a roomy vanity, head, and toilet area amidships in each hull, maximizes privacy. The galley, with a 9.3-cubic-foot fridge and 7-cubic-foot freezer, stretches for 9 feet in the starboard hull, adjacent to the bridgedeck stairway. In the same location in the port hull, the owner’s pride and joy: a stainless-steel workbench, vise, lots of tool drawers, and a slide-out toolbox. Aft, both hulls feature a double berth with a dresser, seat, and hanging locker. The forward 16 feet of each hull (with two collision bulkheads) is largely empty-the right place to stow such bulky, sometimes-damp gear as sails and fenders.

The bridgedeck’s saloon area, flooded with light by large, bronze-tinted, tempered-glass pilothouse windows all around, forms a natural meeting place. I suspect that, given the views and the easy connection with the world outside, it will be a favored hangout when Lely is under way as well as at anchor. The 16-foot-wide by 8-foot-long “back porch,” with seating built into the back of the cabin bulkhead, at first glance seems underutilized. But then the dinette table, with its clever fold-down legs, is lifted off the cocktail table underneath and set up on the porch-instant alfresco, if you will. Pull up a few deck chairs and you’ve got a movable feast. The back porch also sports dinghy davits (the tender can be swung inboard and lashed to the deck if desired) and a vinyl-coated bimini/water-catchment arrangement.

What really matters, in the end, is how a cruising boat fulfills the wishes of its owner and how well it does the bidding of its builder and designer.

Cruising boats have gotten bigger. In the second edition of The Voyager’s Handbook, author Beth A. Leonard notes that boats between 40 and 50 feet make up two-thirds of most cruising fleets-that’s an increase in average size of about 10 feet over the past decade. So where does Lely-at 57 feet and packing more than 28 feet of beam, able to knock off 350-mile days while accommodating a host family and a guest family in comfort-fit into the world of cruising? There’s no doubt that Lely is in the “dream-dream big” category. But if your cruising fantasies are big and you can make them come true, why not go for it?

“A cruising boat is a tool,” says White. “As sailors, we can only do what our tools allow us to do. If a cruising boat allows us to go places fast and in comfort and have fun doing it, we’re going to go.” Lely, a successful balancing act, was definitely born to go places.

Tom Linskey and his wife, Harriet, are preparing to head south to Brazil, where they’ll begin cruising on their own new catamaran, a Dolphin 460.

• More: 2001 - 2010 , 50+ ft , atlantic , blue water , Bluewater Cruising , catamaran , multihull , Sailboat Reviews , Sailboats , yacht style
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Review: Silent 55, the extraordinary solar powered yacht

• January 18, 2019

Silent Yachts is tapping into the solar zeitgeist and creating a new meaning for the term ‘powercat’.  Sam Fortescue reports

There is a slow, silent revolution under way in the yachting world. It is a revolution that is introducing tonnes of lithium and a sprinkling of silicon to the spec list of new boats. Holding out the promise of silent mobility, plus limitless domestic power on board, it made a big splash at the last Cannes Festival of Yachting – not least thanks to the new Silent 55 catamaran which debuted there.

From the pontoon side, the Silent 55 looks like a typical modern catamaran, with a big coachroof studded with windows and a flybridge helm. Except there’s no mast. Now, bear with me here. I realise that this is a sailing magazine, but we will shortly get back to more familiar territory. The unique qualities of this catamaran only become apparent from up top, where an expanse of solar panels stretches away fore and aft, embedded into the coachroof. The hard top itself carries yet more panels, and can be folded down flush to give an unshaded solar array of 49m2. During the heat of a summer day in the Med, this is capable of generating 10kW of power and up to around 60kWh in the course of the day.

But to make a solar system work in reality, Köhler had to go back to the drawing board on yacht design. The saloon and hulls have extra thermal insulation to keep air-con losses down, and the use of carbon and aramid in key areas helps reduce the overall weight to a decent 17 tonnes (a Lagoon 52 weighs 22.5 tonnes). He has tried to keep windows out of the direct sun with long overhangs and in contrast to the Lagoon’s 12 deck hatches, the Silent 55 has just two.

Holistic design

On the other hand, it has lots of opening windows, to allow a natural draught to do its job. “It’s a holistic approach – you can’t take the batteries and the drivetrain and drop it into another boat.”

Of course, using the propulsion system quickly takes its toll of the boat’s 140kW battery bank. The model on display at Cannes had two 135kW motors, giving you just half an hour of silent motoring flat-out, albeit at a top speed of over 20 knots. More reasonable 30kW engines and a single-digit speed give you greater range. Nonetheless, the electric drive alone isn’t going to allow you to outrun a storm, or race home after a day at anchor, so the boat is designed to work with a generator hidden in the heavily insulated transom of its starboard hull. At cruising speed of around 5-6 knots, Köhler says there is rarely any need to use the generator, citing an owner who has just emailed him triumphantly about a second year totally generator-free. “In the end, you have to compare it to the performance of a sailing boat,” Köhler says. “It is as fast as a sailing boat in similar conditions – after all, there is no wind without sun.” He went so far as to tell me during the sea trial in Palma, Mallorca, that he believed the majority of sailors would happily dispense with the hassle of sails and a rig if only they could enjoy silent motoring and anchoring. “As soon as people realise the incredible concept of this boat, they won’t understand why they ever did anything else.”

The market does not seem to agree with him – yet. Sales of the boat have been good – they have already sold six, five of which are already in the water. But of those, four customers have taken the sail option, which means planting a 19.7m tall mast complete with boom and rigging slap bang in the middle of the coachroof solar array. “I was a bit amazed,” Köhler admits. “The shade from the rig reduces the energy generated by the solar area, while it costs more and is heavier, so consumes more fuel. Maybe it is for optical reasons.” In fact, the shade of the rig slashes the average yield of the solar panels in half. In the Med, that means around 30kWh per day. But perhaps it figures. The typical profile of buyers is an environmentalist who has a Tesla electric car and is “an early adopter who likes to have things before others”. And at low speeds, with modest use of the air-con, the reduced energy generation should still cover daily consumption.

The performance under sail should be reasonable because of the lightweight build of the boat, its broad 8.47m beam and stub keels added to each hull. Control lines are led back via conduits in the coachroof to the flybridge helm station, to make single-handing under sail a possibility.

More interesting, I think, is a sort of halfway-house option using a kite rig. This optimises the performance of the solar panels and gives plenty of propulsion. On the smaller 55 and the 64, Silent Yachts currently recommends a 19m2 kite that costs around €25,000 – a fraction of the cost of a new mast, boom, shrouds and sails. “The sail automatically makes a figure of eight above the boat, and you can steer it with a joystick or an app on an android phone,” Köhler explains. “It can propel the 55 at up to 6 knots, even in light winds.” Perfect for an Atlantic crossing, then.

For the bigger Silent 79, which will hit the water in the summer, a commercial grade Sky Sail system needs to be used – a smaller version of the ones used on cargo ships. This kite can propel the boat at ten knots, but it costs more than ten times as much as its smaller cousin. Both are capable of pulling the boat upwind. So far, so new. But outside the novel energy and propulsion system, the Silent 55 aims to do what many other cruising catamarans are trying to achieve. “Most of our clients order for circumnavigation and long-term cruising,” Köhler says. So the boat is aimed to be as comfortable and capable as possible with watermakers, TVs and an induction hob that all capitalise on the boat’s abundant energy. A flexible configuration allows owners the choice 
of between three and six cabins – the latter designed for charter. The owner’s cabin lies forward of the saloon, under the windows of the coachroof, which provide magnificent views and abundant natural light. There’s a walk-around bed and steps down into the starboard hull give access to an en-suite shower room and heads.

In my view, the best cabin lies aft of this, accessed in the traditional manner down steps out of the saloon. The king-sized bed lies athwartships and the shower is larger than that of the master cabin. There’s more space down here, better headroom and still plenty of light courtesy of the many hull lights.

When I had the chance to sea trial the Silent 55, albeit in motorboat format, I jumped at it. It was a contrary autumn day on Mallorca with 15 knots breeze – just a shame, then, that this wasn’t one of the sailing configured versions.

To start with, getting on board is made really easy courtesy of deep boarding platforms on the skirts. She feels rather square because of that vast, glazed saloon with its deep overhang, and perhaps because of the utilitarian nature of the hard top, which is really about supporting more solar panels. Nevertheless, the side decks are broad and uncluttered. The space up top is designed to concertina down flat, hence the hydraulic rams, fold-down seat back and lowering console. It makes a great sailing position, though, with all round visibility, and is also perfect for sundowners at anchor. When the rain comes down, this feels quite exposed, but there is a fully sheltered helm at the front of the saloon, and it is also possible to drive the boat from anywhere using a tablet thanks to smart electronics. Under power, the handling is superb. The quietness of the motors is astonishing, and I gather they’ll be inaudible on the next boat, which will do away with the gearbox. Even in the aft cabins, directly above the motors, there is no more than a distant hum. The boat responds instantly to the power and the wind seemed to have no impact at all. As with any propulsion system, the power consumption jumps as you pile on the speed – it was sobering to see. At 6 knots, both motors drew 10kW but at 8 knots it was closer to 30kW. I liked the huge saloon with its raised table for 360º views. And the sliding door and window gives great access aft, connecting the saloon and cockpit in fine conditions. The finish was smart and in muted tones, feeling more Scandinavian than German.

Intriguingly, at least it seems to me, Köhler has tapped into something with the concept behind Silent Yachts – but not entirely for the reasons that he expected. Buyers are opting for the sail or kite versions of the boat because they want a comfortable wind-powered craft with abundant, quiet energy on tap. It brings a whole new meaning to the 
term ‘powercat’

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Yachting Monthly

• Digital edition

Atlantic Rally for Cruisers: Ocean crossing lessons

• Alison Wood
• July 26, 2021

From sail plans to nav software, rig failure and SSB, there's plenty you can learn from the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers, as Ali Wood discovers

The Atlantic Rally for Cruisers sees sailors cross the Atlantic from Gran Canaria to St Lucia. Credit: WCC/James Mitchell

Atlantic Rally for Cruisers: lessons from an ocean crossing

A huge cheer breaks out across Rodney Bay marina as Garuda , a Beneteau First 50, motors in.

Boats sound their horns, the steel drums play loudly, and crews put down their morning coffees and dash bare-footed across the pontoons to take their lines.

Everybody’s looking at the rig, for where there should be a mast, is a spinnaker pole. The crew are exhausted.

‘Thank goodness for help,’ says Russian skipper Slava Gromov, as he takes a longed-for sip of rum punch.

The mast of Garuda was cracked in two parts

Five days ago, Garuda has dismasted , and two boats had to turn back to help her.

It’s certainly the most dramatic story from the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers 2018, but every skipper has a tale to tell.

The 2,700-mile sail across the Atlantic puts yachts under strains you might never encounter in a decade of coastal cruising.

Kit and crew are tested to their limits, and from rig failure to autohelms, power issues and nav equipment, there’s a whole host of lessons to be learned from sailing offshore .

You can’t have too many spares

‘When you leave with minor niggling concerns, they come back to haunt you at 0200, when the wind’s blowing 30 knots,’ confides the skipper of Gitana , James Fiske, a superyacht captain.

James bought the Gitana 43 for the crossing and spent two years restoring her.

All this time, she’d been a floating workshop, but the weekend prior to leaving Plymouth he emptied the lockers, and didn’t put everything back.

It wasn’t until they needed the pop rivet gun that he realised he hadn’t got any rivets.

‘You don’t buy spares, you build them up – nuts, bolts, washers, shackles and split pins,’ he says. ‘Keep everything on board.’

Don’t empty your spares locker. You never know which bit of old kit you’re going to need half way across the Atlantic

Fortunately, they did have some spares that came in handy – some piping from the marina mooring line helped curb noisy sheets, and sail repair tape and patches were used to strengthen chafe points on the genoa.

Sailing downwind for 18 days puts a lot of strain on the sails.

‘The shock loading on the genoa as you come out of the roll and it collapses and fills is huge, and it’s repetitive,’ warns James.

For some yachts, such as X-Yachts X-50 SeaGoddess , this strain proved too much, in spite of the ‘perfect 15-20-knot winds.’

Sea Goddess leaves Les Palmas. Credit: WCC/James Mitchell

The crew woke one morning to find their mainsail ripped.

The new high-tech fibre laminate sail – a brand used by global racing yachts – is not the type you can simply patch once the fibres have broken as it can’t be stitched.

‘We had to sail the rest of the way reefed and with a storm jib – we were bored out of our minds,’ says co-owner Pip Zee.

‘The dealer thinks it’s a production error, and as the sailmaker here doesn’t dare touch it, and there’s none in Martinique with the experience, we now have to motor 200 miles to Antigua.’

Still, Pip is philosophical.

‘It happens, right? It’s a part of sailing. In six months’ time we’ll be crossing back and we’ll have a second chance.’

New sails or old?

New sails are a big investment, but it was a wise choice for James Dean, skipper of Nina , an X-Yacht Xc 45, who came second in her class.

‘I was hoping to run with the old sail and knacker it out, but with hindsight I’m glad we bought a new one in Gibraltar as it took a lot of punishment,’ says James.

‘We did damage our mainsail a bit. We glued patches to where the sail touches the spreader but the glue didn’t bond well to the new sail and it fell off. A cruising main, to me, should come with spreader patches built in.’

Chafe is a big problem – not just with sails, but ropes, too.

A skipper does some last-minute sail repairs in Gran Canaria before the start of the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers

James strongly recommends having a Dyneema sheath made and stitching it to the headsail halyards and foresail sheets – a process known as parcelling – though he warns it can eventually slip down.

A sensible idea, according to crewmate Stephen, is that James had a new headsail made with a high- clewed yankee cut, so it set off a pole really well.

‘Someone with the same boat did the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers last year and had it made especially. I copied him!’ admits James.

‘A lot of yachts have headsails around 106%. This is 135% so it’s more of a genoa than a jib.’

Which sail plan?

Nina ’s tactic was to run downwind goose-winged.

‘The yachts with spinnakers would get a few miles ahead, but when they had to take them down we’d overtake them,’ says Stephen.

‘One yacht blew three spinnakers and sailed 600 miles more than us. But the problem with sailing big angles on the wind is that there’s so much slop in terms of sea state that whenever the wind drops to the low teens you have to sail higher for it not to collapse.’

Some boats, such as Aurora B , a Hallberg-Rassy 42F, ran twin headsails: ‘We basically went over the start line and didn’t change them for two-and-a-half weeks,’ says co-owner Gemma Simmonds.

Others, such as Nina , Gitana and Gauntlet , went for an even simpler rig of a mainsail and poled-out genoa, which was reefed at various stages.

‘We sailed defensively,’ says Yachtmaster instructor Stef Weilgart-Whitehead of Sigma 38 Gauntlet .

‘We had lots of reefs at night to give the boat and the crew a rest. It’s much more dangerous to reef at night and it’s harder to see squalls coming. The last thing you want to do is wake up crew in heavy wind and rain.’

The Atlantic Rally for Cruisers routes

She preferred to put the reefs in before darkness fell and to shake them out in the morning.

Indeed, Jack Rowland Smith, a Hanse 531, suffered a crash gybe at night whilst putting in a second reef in the main.

They managed to sail with a bent boom but kept the main double-reefed the whole way to avoid breaking it completely.

‘We were really down on power,’ says skipper John Hardy. ‘If I did this again I’d have an inner forestay with two jibs. On a monohull the main is a worry because of the risk of an accidental gybe.’

Mark Thurlow, skipper of Moody 49 Rum Truffle , had hoped to use their Parasailor, but the winds were stronger than expected.

‘It’s good between 8 and 25 knots, though if you need to douse at 25 knots, that’s quite a job,’ he says.

Instead, Mark, Gina and crewmate Sean sailed goose-winged with the main and poled-out genoa until the spinnaker pole broke.

‘I think it was just metal fatigue: too much wind, too much pressure,’ says Mark. ‘We jumped off a wave and it went crack’.

After losing the spinnaker pole, they sailed with a staysail and genoa, which though looking ‘strange’ worked very well.

Autopilot issues

An accidental gybe is one of the biggest fears of Atlantic sailors, and in at least three instances this happened due to steering errors or malfunctions.

The most dramatic gybe happened to Garuda  but the implications for double-handed sailors Suzanne and Joachim Nordqvist on Mo Chara , were also challenging.

‘We’ve never spent so little time together!’ says Suzanne, after their autopilot went into standby, and their Bavaria Ocean 40 gybed causing the jib sheet to part.

Setting your autopilot to wind angle can help avoid gybes

‘We got the autopilot working again but once in 24 hours it went into standby. We couldn’t trust it after that; someone always had to be on deck all the time.’

As well as having thicker sheets next time, Suzanne and Joachim say they’d also have windvane steering for backup, and take more crew to help with helming.

The crew of Hanse 531 Jack Rowland Smith also experienced their autopilot turning itself off.

However, as a crew of six, they were comfortable with keeping a constant watch.

‘We had a big repeater panel down below – perhaps it was too much of a power drain,’ suggests skipper John.

Rudder bearings

For Stephen Heap on Nina , the 10-year-old autopilot was helpful, but in the end they hand-steered.

‘We had something wrong with the rudder bearings. It seemed the more we steered the hotter they got and the stiffer the helm. The autopilot was quite energetic,’ he explained.

They found that it over-corrected and moved the helm excessively (though this could have been to do with calibrating the autopilot response settings).

Continues below…

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According to marine surveyor Ben Sutcliffe Davies, rudder bearings often suffer from wear. There are reports that certain materials such as nylon can swell, causing this kind of problem.

Other common rudder problems include water ingress and crevice corrosion in stainless steel rudder stocks. Before an ocean crossing, thoroughly check your rudder for play and moisture.

Steering to the wind

Another option – one that reduces the risk of an accidental gybe – is to sail to an angle fixed to the wind, rather than a compass course.

While most electronic autopilots can be set to steer to a wind angle, for Mark Thurlow on Rum Truffle , windvane steering was a great investment.

His Hydrovane system has a fixed auxiliary rudder, unlike servo pendulum systems, which have a smaller servo paddle.

Windvane steering sails to an angle fixed to the wind

‘We wanted a backup steering system. If anything happens to your rudder, the Hydrovane is your emergency steering. It doesn’t require power, and is silent – unlike the “ee-aw” of the autopilot.’

‘The Hydrovane has various gear settings,’ explains Mark. ‘You can set it to be on course all the time, or set it to 5,’ making it less twitchy in strong winds, but not as accurate in lighter winds.

‘I set it at 3; for long passages you don’t need that degree of accuracy.’

Unfortunately, under heavy cross-seas one of the bolts of the vane’s lower transom mounting sheared. In a sterling team effort, Mark cut a spare threaded rod to length, which crewmate Sean – whilst hanging off the bathing platform at 20 knots – banged into place.

Squashed in the lazarette, meanwhile, was Mark’s wife Gina, who tightened it.

The fitting worked for another two days, but then both bolts sheared and Mark threw in the towel and switched to the electronic autopilot.

In spite of the setback, Mark’s still very positive about the Hydrovane, and is working with the manufacturers to determine the problem.

An advantage of windvane steering is that it doesn’t use any power. Conserving and generating power was a high priority for all skippers on the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers, with boat crews varying in their needs, from some who powered washing machines, TVs and freezers to those – such as Gitana – who got by without a generator.

Gitana has two domestic batteries with a combined capacity of 240Ah, charged by a wind generator and solar panel, but power was still an issue.

The crew would have liked more.

‘The deeper into the trip, the more we used the autopilot,’ says James.

Jeremy Paterson needed a generator for his family’s power demands on Banyu Aman . Credit: WCC/James Mitchell

‘The AIS drew 3.5 amps and the fridge started working harder because it was hot. We had to run the engine earlier each time to charge the batteries. It went from one hour a day to four.’

For boats with children, power consumption was also a big concern.

‘I had a dream of running off solar and wind, and keeping energy outputs low,’ says Jeremy Paterson, skipper of Banyu Aman , a Moody 471, ‘but when I did all the calculations and fudge factor for having kids onboard, I realised we needed a generator.’

Ed Simmonds, skipper of Aurora B agrees: ‘More battery capacity would be nice so we didn’t have to charge so frequently. We’ve got 550Ah of domestic capacity, which is definitely enough, but when the kids are on iPads, the phones are playing audiobooks, and you have two chartplotters, an autopilot and the radar on for half the time, you use a lot more power than usual.’

The Watt & Sea hydrogenerator worked well

As well as relying on the engine and generator to top up the batteries, crews used solar, wind and hydro-power.

Torbjörn Holm, skipper of RiRi , a Garcia Exploration 45 , found the solar panels worked well but the D400 wind generator was ineffective when sailing downwind due to the relatively low wind speed across the deck.

It proved much more useful, however, when stationary at anchor.

Nina towed a Watt&Sea hydrogenerator, which slowed them down by half a knot but they found it worked well at speeds over 7.5 knots (though Watt&Sea offer different propeller blades to suit speeds down to 5 knots).

The Duogen worked well and was more effective in water than as a wind generator

It frequently picked up sargassum weed, a growing problem in the Caribbean, but could be flipped up for cleaning.

Oran Mor had the same problem with the Duogen (combined wind and water generator) picking up weed, but were otherwise pleased with its performance.

Until it collected weed it kept the batteries topped up.

During the 19 days at sea the crew only ran the engine for 15 hours in total.

‘You have to make reliable electricity,’ says John Hardy, skipper of Jack Rowland Smith . ‘I’ve got to run it for the hot water, electronics on board, to make water, drive the autopilot, Sue’s hairdryer and the washing machine…’

John, an engineer, made his own watermaker, which turned out to be very successful.

‘It’s a prototype. It’s quarter the size of the competition and makes 120 litres an hour. I might put it on the market, but I’m supposed to be retired!’

A lot of skippers cited the watermaker as a major draw on power (20 to 40 amps), but wouldn’t have done the trip without them.

Solar panels helped keep the batteries topped up

RiRi carried a Dessalator, which made 60 litres an hour and allowed crew to shower every other day.

Gitana ’s watermaker took 40Ah hours to produce 40 litres of water.

‘That was a lot,’ says James. ‘I didn’t fully appreciate the impact, though we didn’t restrict our water intake and showered ever other day.’

According to Jim MacDonald of Mactra Marine, traditional watermakers use a lot of power but newer models such as Schenker and Spectra can produce the same amount of water for 19/20 amps at 12V.

Most yachts taking part in the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers used chartplotters, though a couple – such as Gitana – relied on paper charts and GPS.

‘For 99% of the time a chartplotter on deck would have been obsolete and demoralising,’ says James Fiske. ‘I preferred to do a noon plot and announce the 24-hour run – usually 150 miles.’

James’s dad, Des, agrees. ‘With these things you can spend so much time analyzing the data; it’s better to look for fish and enjoy the sailing!’

Each Atlantic Rally for Cruisers boat is fitted with a YB Tracker so friends and family can follow their progress. Crew can buy credits and use it to text people, as well as set up a Facebook page for people at home

All the yachts we spoke to had AIS and radar, both for spotting shipping and weather.

‘There were lots of non-AIS fishing boats off the coast of Africa,’ says James Dean on Nina . We also found radar particularly useful for squalls. You could tell how big the squall was – especially in the dark– by the size of the big yellow blob.’

Though some boats went for days – and even the whole crossing – without seeing shipping, Nina found herself unexpectedly on a collision course.

‘It’s quite a surprising when you’ve been hand- steering for three days and suddenly there’s a ship on the AIS,’ says Stephen. ‘We got him on the radio: he was American and he changed course. It was helpful, because when you’ve got a gybe preventer and are goosewinged it takes up to 10 minutes to gybe.’

Communications

The IridiumGo, a portable hotspot device, was a popular choice for satellite communications.

It works with a prepaid simcard or contract which allows skippers to connect up to five devices (laptop, smartphone or tablet) with voice and data. A lot of people used it to download GRIB files (highly compressed weather data) and for calls and emails.

‘The GRIB files were great,’ says Mark Thurlow. ‘There was a band of wind forecast which was 13 to 28 knots. We made sure we sat in the middle band and wind-wise the course and route worked out fine.’

Yachts leave Las Palmas, Gran Canaria for the 2,700 mile voyage to St Lucia. Some sailed with twin headsails; others flew spinnakers and mainsails. Credit: WCC/James Mitchell

Torbjörn Holm of RiRi was satisfied with the Iridium Go and external antenna, which he used with PredictWind forecasts.

However, he warns that it’s slow, taking 10 minutes and using 40MB to download four days of large-scale weather.

It’s better to download smaller files of 200 KB at a time, he says. Torbjörn even called his mum and daughters.

‘It was emotional. It was awesome, but we had to have a quick 3 minutes,’ he says. Torbjörn’s package is €1,600 a year, and includes 75 minutes a month.

Whilst communicating with friends and family was important, staying in touch with other Atlantic Rally for Cruisers yachts was more so.

A small contingent (39 of the 173 Atlantic Rally for Cruisers entries) had SSB high-frequency radio, allowing them to talk to others hundreds of miles away.

The five controllers would do a daily roll-call to check everyone was ok.

The Atlantic Rally for Cruisers spirit

It seems that from cruising couples to family liveaboards, 30ft monohulls to 50ft cats, there are many ways to cross the Atlantic.

For some, budget is a priority, for others it’s performance.

Whilst skippers might vary in their choice of kit and strategy, the one thing everyone agreed on was the joy of sharing the experience.

‘There’s a tremendous community spirit to the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers,’ says Ed Simmonds.

‘We talked about it before we joined, but now we realise what that actually means – how powerful it is, both practically and emotionally, to cross an ocean with other boats.’

The things the ARC crews loved

My flannel . It kept me cool. Des, Gitana

Spinlock lifejacket . I didn’t even know I was wearing it. Dave, Gitana

GoPro on a stick . We could see the weed on the propeller. James, Gitana

Thermal Cooker. Heat it up, stick the food in, and it cooks for a few hours. Fiona, Oran Mor

Audiobooks. Jane Austen was my friend! Gina, Rum Truffle

Children’s seasickness tablets. We would have been stuck without them. Maxine, MR

Treat cupboard. Because a bar of Cadbury’s costs $10 in St Lucia! Roy, MR

Solar shower. 40 litres gave us 10 showers. Kim, Oran Mor

Fishing lures . To catch tuna and dorado. Andras, EH01

Advent calendar. So I can start my countdown to Christmas, Harry, 7, Aurora B