The HopYacht 30 is built in Cape Town, South Africa, with naval architecture by Du Toit Yacht Design. The boat is imported to the United States through HopYacht USA in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and is being marketed as an entry-level vessel.

This catamaran is primarily designed for couples or families with young children—who may or may not yet be active members of the crew—and is ideal for sailing itineraries that include bay, coastal or short island hops. Ease of handling is part of the design brief.

For cruisers who want to head farther afield, the HopYacht 30 has demountable hulls and will fit into two standard 40-foot containers for shipping.

To make life on board easier, the HopYacht 30 has just one sail to manage. The genoa sheets are led to one winch at the helm station, so single-handed sailing is an option. An asymmetrical spinnaker can be added as an option.

Power is all electric, with electric sail drives as well as electric water heating and induction cooking. Cruising is whisper-quiet, and recharging is accomplished by way of four solar panels. According to HopYacht, the boat can cruise at a full-throttle speed of 6.9 knots for 2.4 hours, or at a cruising speed of 4.2 knots for more than eight hours.

Creature comforts are easily accessible because the cockpit, saloon and forward cabin areas are all on one level with standing headroom.

For relaxation time on the hook, there is wraparound upholstered cockpit seating that converts into a daybed for two people. In the cabin, there’s a walkaround, queen-size island berth. At the bow, where guests can relax on the trampoline, a cooler is built into the anchor locker with drink holders.

The galley is in the under-cover cockpit area, allowing the cook to socialize and enjoy the view—and giving heat a place to escape so it doesn’t stay trapped inside the saloon.

They don’t call it a head: The main deck has what HopYacht calls a proper bathroom, with a shower that has a bifold glass door, a Thetford Tecma Nano electric flush toilet with a macerator; and a Lewmar opening port in the window for ventilation.

Where to learn more: click over to www.hopyacht-usa.com

The post Meet the HopYacht 30 appeared first on Cruising World.

In the 1550s, a three-masted ship-rigged vessel was the pinnacle of sailing technology. In the almost 475 years since, aerodynamic advances have sped things up a bit, allowing sailing vessels to go farther faster and with less dependence on fair winds.

Enter California-based startup Outsail, which, at the recent Düsseldorf International Boat Show, debuted an innovative approach to harnessing the wind: a carbon-fiber airfoil wing. The wing will stand 98 feet tall aboard an Outsail 60 catamaran, which will be the first cruising yacht to employ the technology. The wing is concealed within a box through tape-spring technology—a metallic strip similar to what is used in satellites for low mass, low cost, and overall simplicity.  

According to Outsail founder and CEO Arpan Rau, the Outsail 60 is a CE-class yacht that can cruise using only the energy of the sun and wind. Unlike a conventional sailing yacht, it will be able to travel at any angle relative to the wind, and compute its own optimal route. However, like a conventional catamaran, it will also have many conveniences of powerboating—minus the noise and fuel burn that come with diesel engines.

Rau, a robotics engineer who has designed flight hardware for NASA and SpaceX, is a self-described addict when it comes to the force of wind. His casual interests range from paragliding to sailing. He says that there are three pillars of wingsail technology: to provide useful thrust while sailing nearly directly into the wind; to provide useful propulsion at vessel speeds that turn other sails into parachutes; and to work hand-in-hand with an engine, enabling new forms of hybrid propulsion.

Though, according to Rau, the most important pillar of the wingsail’s performance is planning software.

“We found that by using clever software, our wind-powered vessels can plan routes that keep them powered for their entire journey,” Rau says. “They could decide, for example, when it made sense to power through a high-pressure zone using their electric motors, and when to skirt around and save energy for later.”

Outsail recently closed a seed round of funding from Silicon Valley investors, including Y Combinator, which has helped to launch more than 4,000 companies since it was founded in 2005. Those companies include Airbnb, Doordash, Instacart, Dropbox and Reddit. 

Additional investors in the recent seed round of funding for Outsail include Climate Capital, which focuses its investments on emissions reduction and climate adaptation; Venture Hacks Fund, which was an investor in Twitter; and Collab Fund, whose previous investments include Beyond Meat, Daily Harvest, Kickstarter, Lyft, The Farmer’s Dog and TaskRabbit.  

According to Rau, Outsail’s ultimate goal is to apply technology in the maritime industry—not just in cruising yachts, but also with container shipping and defense—to reduce the amount of diesel fuel being burned. Outsail is currently working with shipyards such as Conrad and Alva on custom-build projects.

The post Invention on the Breeze appeared first on Cruising World.

When I was asked by Cruising World to report on this year’s International Multihull Show, held at La Grande Motte, France, I was struck by the irony of our parallel paths once again crossing, and I jumped at the opportunity. Having a reason to return to the town where my last boat, Aventura Zero, a bespoke version of the Outremer 45, was built.

More than 70 multihulls were on display in the attractive, Mediterranean port, from a Tricat 30 to a GP70 catamaran. All the major players were there, providing a modern glimpse at how multihulls have evolved over the years. We know that their popularity among cruising sailors has been steadily increasing, as shown by recent figures I gathered from Cape Town, a key transit point on the world cruising circuit. Among the 169 sailing boats that passed through in 2023, 56 (or 33 percent) were catamarans. A similar increase was reported in the ARC transatlantic rally in 2023 where, among the fleet of 252 boats, 71 (28 percent) were catamarans.

My first boat should have been a catamaran, which I believed would have been best suited for the voyage I was planning with Gwenda and our two young children, Doina and Ivan. In the early ’70s, Britain was the world leader in catamaran construction, and the Prout Snowgoose 35 would have been my choice. The problem was that we only had enough money to buy the bare hulls, as I was planning to handle the rest myself. When I approached the builders, they firmly refused, so I ended up with a 36-foot Trintella GRP hull designed by the Dutch naval architect Van de Stadt and built by Tyler Boat Co. near London. Working every free minute away from my job as a BBC radio reporter, I managed to finish fitting out the ketch-rigged hull in just over one year. The first Aventura was launched in July 1974.

Remembering those days of chasing that elusive Snowgoose, I was pleased to see that, among the boats on display at the show, there were four catamarans of a similar size: the Aventura 37, the Excess 11, the Comar-Cat 37 and the Bali Catsmart. These represented the smallest cruising catamarans at the show. I marvelled at how, even in a relatively small LOA, the designers of each of these cats managed to fit both a spacious living area and a functional cockpit, as well as three or four separate cabins. After visiting their larger peers, I was just as surprised by their prices ($360,000 for the Aventura 37, $380,000 for the Bali Catsmart, $400,000 for the Comar-Cat 37, and $480,000 for the Excess 11). In the context of a new-boat show where the majority of boats cost north of $1 million, price is relative—but is it affordable?

In recent years, the price of boats has been steadily increasing, well above the rate of inflation. The cost of materials and labor obviously play a part in this, but I suspect that high demand is also a determining factor. For comparison, I looked back at the cost of a similar boat 50 years ago, when a boat of that size would have cost $30,000 and the average annual salary in the US was $12,000 (whereas it is currently $64,000). In 1974, a similar boat would have cost the equivalent of 2.5 years of earnings, whereas now it is more than five years.

Earlier this year, I concluded a survey on the global movement of cruising boats. With cruising restrictions having been lifted post-pandemic, figures obtained from various transit points around the world showed a return to the prior numbers. At the show, builders reported unprecedented high demand, with a growing number of sailors planning voyages in the near future. Regretfully, I am no longer in that situation, but, based on my own experience, I spent my remaining time at the show determining which boats I might consider today if I was in fact planning another world voyage.

As my requirements have not changed since I prepared Aventura Zero for a world voyage, I would still be keen to do it on a boat with zero emissions, or at least one that could be made as eco-friendly as possible. Several builders were offering the option of electric propulsion, but only Outremer’s 4.zero model could be described as a fully electric boat. All others were employing a variation with a hybrid setup. Four of the boats were catamarans: the ORC 57, the Fountaine-Pajot Aura 51, the Windelo 54 and the HH 44. Two were trimarans: the Neel 34 and the Neel 37. Their builders explained that a fully electric solution was not yet sustainable, so they were addressing this aspect at least halfway for now. The consensus is that it is better to have a hybrid system, reducing carbon emissions by 50 percent or more, than to not address it at all.

For some companies, electrification is not yet on the table, and understandably so. One builder, for instance, noting that its primary customers are either charter operators or individuals investing in charter boats, acknowledged that its hesitation in exploring electric is related to quality control. The fact is, maintaining boats in perfect working order throughout a charter season via a local workforce is much simpler on a standard diesel engine as opposed to a more complex electric setup. Not to mention having to pay an additional nearly 10 to 20 percent for an electrical hybrid system. (Outremer encountered a similar financial reaction from clients interested in the electric propulsion option pioneered by Aventura Zero, instead opting for a hybrid solution. These practical considerations were similarly expressed by representatives of several other leading manufacturers.

Among the various hybrid systems, the all-carbon-fiber HH44 catamaran featured the most ingenious solution, based on its EcoDrive parallel hybrid system. Besides the standard diesel-engine mode, the system operates in three electric modes. In generator mode, with the propeller shaft clutch disengaged, the turning shaft converts the two diesel engines into two 5 kW generators. In silent mode, the disengaged electric motors provide 10 kW of propulsion power per shaft. While sailing in hydro-generation mode, the free-spinning propellers turn the shafts, allowing the electric motors to generate electricity. In addition, the extended coachroof featured an impressive array of solar panels with a total capacity of 4.2 kW.

The ORC 57 (Ocean Racing Catamaran) was exhibited by Marsaudon Composites, which has a long history of high-performance racing catamarans and trimarans. Its system consists of two Bellmarine 20 kW electric motors, supplied by a battery bank of 1120 Ah, a genset and 5.8 kW solar panels. The ORC concept is based on three basic principles: performance, simplicity and lightness. All three were evident on this pure racing machine with a displacement of just under 12 tons. I was particularly impressed with a sensor at the base of the synthetic cap shroud, which activates an alarm when the tension exceeds critical mass, warning the crew to reduce sail.

A similar hybrid arrangement is at the heart of the new Windelo 54, another performance-cruising catamaran. According to the builder, its goal is to reduce the carbon footprint within the production process by 50 percent. By using natural basalt fiber and foam from recycled plastic bottles in its construction, that goal was achieved.

Environmental consciousness was also underscored by Thomas Gailly, director of Lagoon catamarans, who said: “With over 7,000 catamarans built in the last 40 years, our main focus is on the ecological aspect. We have replaced synthetic fibers in the hulls by using hemp and other natural materials. All of our boats are now built to ISO 14001 standard that sets out the requirements for an environmental management system. As a result, the carbon footprint is not only drastically reduced in the construction process, but also when the time comes to recycle the hulls at the end of their lives.”

The two Neel trimarans were equipped (not standard) with 25 kW electric motors on a saildrive fitted with a Gori folding propeller. Additional electricity was provided by a 28 kW genset. An enhanced system based on a Bellmarine electric motor is under development and will be an option in 2025, according to the builder.

While all the above examples involve some sort of hybrid system, Balance Catamarans has taken an entirely different approach, equipping its boats with high-output Integrel alternators. The two Yanmar 30 hp engines on the Balance 442 in the show were equipped as such.

“Thanks to the high-efficiency Integrel alternators, we no longer offer generators on our 442, 482 and 526 models,” said Balance President Phil Berman. “For those who don’t want a hybrid, the Integrel alternators are the greenest and most efficient method of charging 48-volt lithium banks. The next step is the Integrel E-Drive hybrid system, of which the first will be installed later this year.”

Fountaine-Pajot, who has been at the forefront of the movement to renewable sources of energy, has worked with the French company Alternative Energies in the development of hydrogeneration pods and energy storage systems. Its Aura 51 was the first to use the Smart Electric system consisting of a large array of solar panels delivering 2 kW to two battery banks of 32 kWh each. This is supplemented by up to 1.5 kW of electricity generated by the propellers’ reverse rotation when under sail. This efficient yet simple hybrid system is considered to be reliable enough to be offered in the charter option.

According to a Fountaine-Pajot representative, the brand aims to have 50 percent of its catamarans fully electric by 2025. By 2030, it envisions that 100 percent of their fleet will be entirely self-sufficient, with diesel engines completely phased out. If such ambitious objective is eventually echoed by more leading builders, the outlook for multihull boatbuilding indeed feels electric, and in more ways than one.

Visit cornellsailing.com for information on Jimmy Cornell and about his books.

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Boaters worldwide can now access to the most comprehensive resource of ocean regulatory information, including marine protection areas, through the savvy navvy app. Made possible through a collaboration between savvy navvy and ProtectedSeas, a data-driven and ocean-focused business headquartered in Silicon Valley, California, the app aims to empower boaters with information to make more environmentally conscious decisions while out on the water. 

ProtectedSeas Navigator currently provides boaters with 22,000 marine protected and managed areas in more than 220 countries across the world. This includes speed-limit zones to protect marine mammals, fisheries management areas among other protections. 

“Working with ProtectedSeas enables us at savvy navvy to bring their valuable research to life and help anyone on the water to make better decisions to protect the environment,” said David Cusworth, head of innovation and partnerships at savvy navvy. “We like to do things differently, and building on our seagrass data from last year, we will now have a whole layer of information just about sustainability. This partnership is the latest in savvy navvy’s ambition to bring sustainability to the forefront of boaters across the globe, as we continue to make navigation safe and easy for everyone on the water.” 

ProtectedSeas scoured the globe to compile marine protection information into the Navigator database of marine protected areas (MPAs), both large and small, including creating the first public digital maps for over 2,400 areas—roughly 10 percent of the areas included in the database. Launching their digital data after eight years of research and development, savvy navvy now delivers the Navigator data to boaters and watersports users all over the world via their app. 

“ProtectedSeas is excited to see Navigator information in the hands of boaters on the water,” said Virgil Zetterlind, director of ProtectedSeas. “Through our partnership with savvy navvy, boaters are more empowered to know and comply with conservation rules on the water which help protect the ecosystems they know and enjoy.”

Since launching their first global view of marine life protections, ProtectedSeas has been complimented by several industry-renowned leaders and bodies, including the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Dr. Sylvia Earle, and the governor of California. Savvy navvy, often referred to as “Google Maps for boats,” is a revolutionary, award winning boat navigation app that aims to deliver information needed by boaters for a seamless experience on the water, all in one place. They were among the first to integrate multiple sustainable data sources from different conservation agencies and bodies. Some of the ProtectedSeas data is already live in the savvy navvy app now, with more to follow soon. 

To learn more about the sustainable data or to download the app visit savvy-navvy.com

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North Sails has launched Renew, a North Paneled Laminate (NPL) sailcloth for cruising boats 25 to 45 feet. Renew sailcloth is constructed from more than 90 percent sustainable sources, with no sacrifice in performance or longevity. The launch of Renew sailcloth marks an important shift towards building more sustainable sails with the best materials and further underscores North Sails’ commitment to sustainability, low-impact manufacturing, the use of alternative fibers, and opportunities for material circularity. 

“There’s been a lot of rigorous work behind the scenes over a number of years to ensure Renew is a sailcloth with legitimate sustainability credentials,” said Renew Product Director Tom Davis. “This product has been tested to the absolute limit, and we are confident that a sail constructed with Renew will offer unbeatable durability and sail shape for our cruising customers without compromising on performance.” North Sails’ close relationships with the big companies supplying films, fibers and fabrics, as well as their shared commitment to creating more sustainable products, have been the foundation of the journey to Renew. 

For Renew, North Sails was able to source recycled polyester film and yarn, and bio-based Dyneema, with no compromise on performance, to create a highly durable cruising laminate cloth that features more than 90 percent alternative bio-based and recycled raw materials. The supplier products for Renew are all Bluesign Certified and ISCC compliant to guarantee the validity of the sources and processes used in their manufacture.

North Sails President Ken Read noted: “We have been deliberate and comprehensive in vetting the authenticity of sustainability claims and thoroughly testing the materials before bringing a product to market. We wanted to be 100 percent certain with Renew that North Sails could stand behind the improvements in the carbon footprint and authenticity of the sustainable materials in our sailcloth. With our wider commitment to continuous improvement and our push to strive for more sustainable solutions across the business at all levels, Renew will not stop with panel laminates, and we will look to apply this approach to sustainable raw materials across our broader range of products.”  

Under the Renew program, North Sails will continue to partner with suppliers to identify and refine the raw materials needed to produce ever more sustainable sails for all customers. North Sails is working on new solutions for sustainable sources across all North Sails technologies, including 3Di sails.   

“North Sails has committed to adopting Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to learn about the ecological impact of all products and to establish goals for reducing waste and pollution,” Davis added. “An important aspect of achieving these goals is to introduce more recycled content. By 2025, North Sails will implement a Responsible Product Scorecard for all products and will also establish measurable goals for circular products that can be recycled at the end of their lifecycle.”

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Grand Soleil Yachts has announced its Blue concept, a 33-foot weekender conceived for sustainability and efficiency underway. Conceived by Cantiere del Pardo, Grand Soleil Blue gets its exterior and interior design by Nauta Design, with naval architecture by Matteo Polli.

Underscoring the builder’s commitment to sustainability and environmentally conscious cruising, Grand Soleil Blue, which is capable of hosting up to four guests overnight, promises both zero environmental impact during sailing and complete recyclability at the culmination of its life cycle.

According to the builder, the Blue concept marks a turning point in boat construction by employing thermoplastic resin to address end-of-life recycling, one of the more significant complications in eco-conscious construction methods. Traditionally, composite boats have been built using thermosetting resins, which are very difficult if not impossible to recycle. Thermoplastic resin allows for easier separation of the resin and glass or carbon fibers for re-use or eco-responsible disposal.

This smart design approach allows simpler separation of boat accessories and components, similar to end-of-life practices currently being explored in the automotive industry. The process ensures that every part of the Grand Soleil Blue can be effectively disassembled and recycled, minimizing environmental impact.

Grand Soleil Blue will feature a lithium battery bank and electric propulsion for zero-emission cruising, contributing to a more sustainable future by reducing emissions. Renewable energy autonomy will be provided through the use of solar panels, which will recharge the battery bank to feed the electric motor. The proposed standard battery pack will allow for a range of approximately 30 nautical miles at around five knots, which translates to six hours of continuous engine operation, or 12 hours with the dual battery pack, in total silence and with zero emissions. The sails are also crafted from thermoplastic materials, further minimizing environmental impact. While underway, the Grand Soleil Blue concept can recharge its batteries through hydrogeneration, converting energy to electricity as the propeller spins in response to the water flow generated by the boat’s speed.

The world premiere of the Grand Soleil Blue concept is slated for the 2024 Cannes Yachting Festival.

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On March 11, skipper Charlie Enright and his 11th Hour Racing Team sailed a staggering 586.36 nautical miles in a 24-hour push aboard their IMOCA 60 Mālama. The team was in the wind-swept depths of the Southern Ocean, west of Australia’s Cape Leeuwin, en route from Cape Town, South Africa. It was headed to Itajaí, Brazil, on The Ocean Race’s mammoth 12,750-nautical-mile Leg Three, and conditions were perfect. In fact, the team temporarily owned the unofficial 24-hour world record for a crewed IMOCA 60, but its pace was bettered some 24 hours later by skipper Kevin Escoffier and his HOLCIM-PRB team (it’s now 595.26 nautical miles). Records aside, there’s a difference between these two monohulls that’s far more important: impact quantification. It will affect far more than speed across a few nautical miles. It has the potential to change the future of sailing, and that of humanity.

The 11th Hour Racing Team’s website summarizes the team’s goals for this year’s race: “The only thing more important than winning is leaving a positive impact.” Achieving that goal began with Mālama’s design and build process, the latter of which took place at CDK Technologies in Port La Forêt, France. The team worked alongside the global-sustainability firm Anthesis Group to optimize the MarineShift360 life-cycle assessment tool. It’s specific to the marine industry, and it can model carbon footprints, water-consumption requirements, and greenhouse-gas emissions for different design and build options. 

MarineShift360 is now publicly available online, giving owners, designers, naval architects, project managers, and production-boat builders a way to look at how materials, construction methods, energy sources, and more might lower the impact of a new build or a refit. As more people use MarineShift360, their data is imported into its growing database, making the tool even stronger.

“The MarineShift360 tool isn’t specific to the racing sector. It’s very much for the broader marine sector,” says Damian Foxall, 11th Hour Racing’s sustainability program manager (and a six-time Volvo Ocean Race veteran). “It’s based on a standard LCA inventory, which is used by multiple industries, and then it’s been improved through specific pilot-user input.” 

Users can choose among three subscriptions available for MarineShift360: free, professional and enterprise.

“Free users are limited to creating a single project and single assessment, so they could model a single component, like a hull, for instance, but they would not be able to model the complete boat or compare the impact of using different materials in the construction,” says Ollie Taylor, associate director at Anthesis Group. “If you wanted to understand the complete cradle-to-grave impact of your vessel, you would need to purchase one of the subscription options.”

All three versions are based around a deep list of information prompts—either drop-down menus or fields where metrics can be entered—that numerically describe the project. These information prompts vary, depending on the project’s size, type and construction methodology. They range from the specific materials and quantities to the sources and quantities of electricity, gas, and water required to produce the raw material and transform it into a finished product.

Impact quantification will affect far more than speed across a few ­nautical miles. It has the potential to change the future of sailing, and that of humanity.

While the hull material represents boatbuilding’s single biggest environmental impact, there are plenty of other important impact sources to consider, such as resins, metals, rare minerals, and coatings and paints.

“It is a simple enough process, collating the input data from the manufacturer, but it is an intensive undertaking,” Foxall says, adding that the tool can be used by everyday boaters as well as corporate sustainability officers who can likely realize added benefits (read: preparing your own taxes versus hiring an accountant). “The results are only going to be as good as the data that you put into it.”

Once these values are imported, the ­system calculates impacting factors, including greenhouse-gas emissions, ­electricity consumption, water use and waste percentages. Users can then adjust their input variables to identify the ­project’s environmental hotspots.

“Any single decision that you make will have a knock-on effect,” Foxall says. “This is where the LCA tool is really useful ­because it will take into account the ­overall process.”

While greenhouse-gas emissions drive much of the environmental conversation, MarineShift360 can also quantify other impacts. This includes the water that’s used directly in the manufacturing plant and—if the right data has been imported into the database—the water consumed to grow trees, flax and other organic ­materials, which are then shipped to a different area to be incorporated into a manufactured product.

It’s important to use multiple indicators. There’s no single perfect solution to this. It really depends on finding the right balance. We need to look at all of these issues through multiple lenses. 

For example, carbon fiber has one of the heaviest CO₂e and energy-consumption footprints of all contemporary ­boatbuilding materials; however, its ­consumed-water footprint is ­significantly less than that of flax or wood. So if someone looked at a proposed project only through the lens of water consumption, rather than studying the big-picture impacts, information would be missing.

“This is why it’s so important to use multiple indicators,” Foxall says. “There’s no single perfect solution to any of this, and it really depends on finding the right balance. We need to look at all of these issues through multiple lenses.”

Foxall also says that it’s essential to ­focus on the owner’s (or boatbuilder’s) goals and values for the project. Key criteria need to be defined.

“What do we think are important in the decision-making process?” he says, pointing as an example to the choice between plastic bottles and glass jars. The former may be made from oil, but the latter has a higher carbon footprint, given the amount of energy required for its production and transportation. “I think we all prefer to use glass bottles to plastic bottles, but if you were to purely look at it through a carbon-emissions lens, you wouldn’t come to that conclusion. So again, it’s about understanding what lens we’re using and why we are making the decisions.”

One of the most important decisions involves deciding whether to build something new or to reuse something. MarineShift360 uses a 100+0 model for this equation. The original owner effectively owns 100 percent of the project’s environmental impacts, while secondhand buyers enjoy an impact-free boat (excluding any refitting work). This can be a consideration for anyone who is debating building a new yacht versus refitting.

This is also where the words “quality” and “durability” enter the conversation. Few people will waste time or treasure refitting an old, cheaply built boat, but brokers typically don’t have to work too hard to sell an older, higher-quality build.

“The next lens to use is ‘better,’” Foxall says. “Better might mean a better ­manufacturing process, where we’re using fewer disposables.” It could also mean ­using recycled carbon fiber in molds, adding higher-quality materials, and leveraging as much renewable energy and recycled materials as possible.

Production-boat builders may have ­different goals and values than an ­individual building her dream cruising yacht, but larger-scale operations can often magnify impact reductions beyond what a single yacht could ever realize.

As an example, Foxall says, ­production lines can switch to reusable silicone bagging from single-use plastic-intensive vacuum bagging. Or they can build a high-quality mold for hundreds, possibly thousands, of use cycles.

“The LCA tool allows you to describe what you are building and the process associated with it, within the context of the manufacturing site, allowing you to make smart decisions,” Foxall says.

While the benefits associated with the MarineShift360 LCA tool are obvious, there are some inherent challenges. As Foxall mentioned, the results hinge on the quality of the data that’s entered and how granularly accurate the information is. For example, are generic numbers being used to describe a piece of equipment? Or has the equipment’s manufacturer supplied exact metrics?

“In an LCA process, you’re always going to have a certain amount of averaging and best-available data,” Foxall says. “What is important is to establish a consistent reference point.”

As more users supply MarineShift360 with accurate metrics, the tool should continue to become more accurate. So if you’re considering building a new boat or refitting an existing hull, start entering the data that describes your dream. Odds are excellent that you will improve your project and that your great-great-great grandchildren will thank you.

And, as evidenced by Mālama’simpressive run, you won’t have to sacrifice speed, performance or offshore capabilities.

“At the end of the day, the LCA is just a number,” Foxall says. “The question is: What do you do with that number?”

David Schmidt is a lifelong sailor and writer. He has worked with Cruising World since 2015, he regularly contributes to Yachting and Sailing World, he’s the North American editor of sail-world.com, and he’s a sailing contributor to The New York Times. He and his wife live in Bellingham, Washington. 

The post Sustainable Sailing: Teams in The Ocean Race Competing to Win, and to Save the Planet appeared first on Cruising World.

Rain, sun, hot days, cold nights, freezing temperatures, even snow and hail—yikes the elements can be hard on wood that’s left outdoors for months or years at a time by design.

We sailors know all too well the toll that the elements can take on the exterior wood that adorns our boats, which is why for centuries those who could afford it have chosen teak for its durability in topsides applications and for its natural good looks, resistance to rot, and strength when used for furniture and structural panels belowdecks.

“Teak loves water,” says Mal Haddad, vice president of Westminster Teak, a high-end furniture design and manufacturing company based in Live Oak, Florida. Haddad notes that it’s those very qualities appreciated by sailors that make teak an ideal choice for outdoor furniture at home, no matter where you live. Left with its natural finish, oil rises to the surface of the wood, its high oil content and relatively low coefficient of thermal expansion means teak can withstand large swings in temperature. In other words, it can be left outdoors year-round, even in snow-covered regions, without the wood warping, shrinking or expanding.

Haddad, with a background in industrial and ocean engineering, grew up in Singapore, where as a boy he was surrounded by exotic woods—especially teak—at the shipyard where his father built oceangoing tugs. After attending college here in the States, Haddad worked as a consultant to telecommunications companies and traveled extensively, but as a hobby, he began to design and build teak furniture, eventually opening a studio and gallery in Florida that was tailored to interior designers and other furniture makers. It was at the studio that he met Jim TenBroeck, who founded Westminster Teak in 1997. It took some persuasion, Haddad said, but eventually, 16 years ago, he brought his design skills to the company full time as vice president. Today, many of the designs in Westminster’s catalog are his.

And on the subject of design, Haddad is passionate. Because of teak’s longevity, furniture built from it will last years longer than pieces made from metals such as aluminum, or even plastics, he says. So, Westminster favors timeless styles that won’t fall in and out of favor, depending on the trend of the day. Several of Westminster’s designs date back to the company’s early days, and new models are introduced only after a lot of thought has gone into them.

Besides having a large collection of teak furniture of his own, Haddad says that he also collects bowls—not only as art, but as utensils that he uses around the house. Comparing bowls to furniture, he says: “It is an object you live with … and love! That’s good design.”

In the marine industry, recently the trend in production-boat building has been to find teak alternatives for decks, trim and interiors. This is due in part to cost, but also because of concerns about the availability and sustainability of the wood itself.

Haddad, though, is equally passionate about the environmental benefits and sustainability of properly grown and harvested teak. From the outset, Westminster has had a strategic partnership with an Indonesian factory that was the first to join Nusa Hijau, the Indonesian chapter of the Global Forest Trade Network. All its teak comes from sustainably harvested plantations in Java, Indonesia. Those plantations are managed by the Ministry of Forestry, Perum Perhutani, and every process of the teakwood, from forest to retail floor, is monitored and certified by third party technical organizations. Sustainability, he adds, also means making sure workers both in the plantations and in the factories are treated fairly and paid a living wage.

When people think of teak, Haddad says, they often think of luxury yachts and the lustrous, rich look of high-gloss varnished teak furniture and trim. That, says Haddad, is fine for wealthy owners who can afford to hire crew to cover chairs and tables when they’re not being used, or to frequently sand and revarnish rails and whatnot.

But teak, he says, will do just fine on its own if left unfinished outdoors and allowed to weather over time and develop a handsome silvery gray patina—a look that he says he prefers as it complements beautifully with the landscape of the outdoors , and often what is found aboard yachts with teak decks.

Upkeep is minimal, he says. All you need to do is wash down the teak a couple of times a year with dish soap and water, using a soft-bristle scrub brush to remove airborne dirt and the like. Don’t, he says, oil the teak for outdoor use, because moisture can find its way under the surface and cause mold or mildew that will stain the wood and difficult to remove. 

His advice for a homeowner: Invest in good-quality, well-designed outdoor furniture. Sit in it and enjoy its look and feel because it will be with you for a good long time.

For more information about Westminster Teak, visit their website at westminsterteak.com.

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Over forty years ago, when my husband and I embarked on our five-year sailing adventure to circumnavigate the globe, the world was a different place. I was a different person. 

During ocean passages back then, we often saw swarms of flying fish and vast pods of dolphins that sometimes stretched from one horizon to the other. Coral reefs we explored were vibrant and home to a mind-boggling diversity of sea creatures. It was easy to find a good-sized fish to spear for dinner, and trolled lines usually scored a catch, even for fisher know-nothings like us. 

Weather forecasts were rarely available, so when it came time to cross an ocean, we departed on a nice day, oblivious of what the weather gods might be brewing along our route. Our primary source of weather guidance was the compilations of weather logs tallied by decades of roaming seafarers: the wind roses displayed on ocean routing charts.

When we began that voyage in 1980, I had completed three years of college toward a career in dentistry, relegating my love of all things weather to hobby status. A meteorological profession just seemed too impractical and unorthodox. But after spending five years cruising—thwarted, propelled, battered, and enthralled by daily weather conditions—I realized that the atmosphere was my calling. 

After the trip, I returned to school in 1985 to pursue a degree in meteorology with an emphasis on the Arctic. Why the inhospitable, cruising-unfriendly Arctic, you might ask? We had spent one summer exploring the high-latitudes north of Scandinavia: Norway, Svalbard, Jan Mayen Island and Iceland. Weather information was either non-existent or mostly useless, so I figured Arctic forecasting might be a worthwhile focus for my weather career. Plus, it’s an intriguing part of the globe that challenges scientific understanding with its complex interactions among winds, ice floes, ocean currents and harsh terrain.

While I was pursuing my meteorological studies at San Jose State University in the late 1980s, climate change was not yet widely recognized as a public crisis. That said, a few scientists had begun to ring warning bells about the effects of heat-trapping gases—the waste products from burning oil, coal and gas—on global temperatures and precipitation patterns. Even the fossil fuel companies acknowledged that burning their products would warm and disrupt the global climate. 

It wasn’t until late in my journey toward a PhD in atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington that the collective groundswell of scientists’ anxiety surged about the destructive impacts of the changing climate. The Arctic in particular was already showing signs of the long-predicted, wholesale transformation of that region. Sea ice was disappearing, high-latitude temperatures were soaring, the Arctic system as we knew it was coming apart at the seams. Change was happening much faster and sooner than elsewhere on the globe. This blatant evidence of human-caused climate change spurred me to set my research sights on understanding how and why it was happening, as well as its impacts on other aspects of the climate system. Whenever and wherever we cruised, my antennae were tuned to detect changes, both expected and unexpected. 

Fast forward to July 2009, we again set sail, but this time on a “family sabbatical year” of cruising with our two tweenagers. Saphira, an Atlantic 55 catamaran designed by Chris White, carried us on a circuit from New England to a summer in the Bras d’Or Lakes, then southward to Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Colombia and Panama, followed by a northward turn up the east coast of Central America via Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Yucatan, Key West, Bahamas and back home. Along the way I noticed many changes. 

During our offshore passages, I wondered what happened to the large pods of dolphins and fleets of flying fish? While diving in Bermuda, it seemed the reefs were much less vibrant with life and color. Maybe it was due to hurricane damage, or, were rising ocean temperatures and pollution to blame? Some beaches in the BVI didn’t look anything like photos in cruising guides: once idyllic white sand was replaced by rocky shores. Beach sand does come and go with bouts of big swells, but the pervasiveness suggested erosion caused by sea-level rise could be at least partly responsible.

As we cruised through the San Blas Islands of Panama, my antennae picked up incontrovertible evidence of climate change. In several locations, our two-year-old charts indicated the existence of a small island. We found instead that the island had disappeared, replaced by a sand shoal completely submerged below the surface. While sea levels had risen only about 7 inches on average around the globe, the low-lying, unstable sand islets that make up the San Blas can be easily eroded even with only small changes in water height. 

Elsewhere in the islands were obvious signs of substantial erosion, as roots of trees and shrubs were exposed along their shores, and many coconut palms had toppled into the sea. In the western islands at least, sea life seemed greatly depleted and many beaches were buried in plastic garbage transported by the trade winds from the east. The primitive homes of the indigenous Guna people perched inches above normal high water, and already they contended with regular flooding. Altogether, it was a disturbing scene. I wondered how many more years the Guna could inhabit these islands where they’ve lived for centuries. 

That was 2009. More than a decade has passed, and my husband and I recently returned to the cruising life. Eight months a year we live on our new catamaran, another Chris White design also named Saphira. The pandemic prevented us from cruising to as many of the Caribbean islands as we had planned, but we have been able to return to the Bahamas, Virgin Islands, Lesser Antilles, Bonaire and Curacao. 

The news, I’m afraid, is even more disturbing. Coral reefs in the Virgin Islands, Bahamas, and northeast Caribbean islands (St. Martin, Antigua, Barbuda) have further declined. Most upsetting was our return to Conception Island in the Bahamas, a national park with no inhabitants or development. Back in 2010 we delighted in snorkeling around magnificent mushroom-shaped coral structures over 100 feet in diameter, seemingly growing out of a sea of perfect white sand in water so clear it was invisible. An astonishing variety of fish and sea creatures lived in the coral’s knobs and crevasses. Ten years later, in 2020, we returned to the very same coral mushrooms, excited for another chance to see these hives of sea life. But what we found instead were corpses; lifeless mounds of dead coral covered in a thick layer of brown algae. Only a few sergeant majors and barred jacks patrolled the area. 

It was hard to hold back tears. I knew the earth’s coral reefs were struggling, but this blatant transformation from brimming life to utter death felt personal and terrifying. Because Conception Island had no development, it seemed unlikely that pollution could have destroyed these thriving colonies. According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coral Reef Watch program, the main culprits are rising ocean temperatures and disease, aided and abetted by overfishing.  

The news is not all bad. Our southward heading brought us to Bonaire and Curacao, where the corals are still healthy and teaming with life. Cruising friends report healthy reefs in parts of the Windward Islands, as well. These relatively healthy reef systems, along with local efforts to grow new coral colonies, can help restore this vital ecosystem, but only if we give them a chance. Further warming caused by emissions of heat-trapping gases produced mainly by burning fossil fuels must decline dramatically and rapidly, or else cruisers will encounter more and worsening impacts of these gases. 

Not only are oceans warming, but they are also becoming more acidic as they absorb carbon dioxide from the air, which is converted to carbonic acid in salt water. Higher acidity stresses marine creatures that form hard shells from dissolved calcium carbonate, such as corals and mollusks. Climate scientists like myself have known for many decades that increased greenhouse gases would have these impacts, and we’re now learning about the many ways that a warmer earth will cause stronger storms and more frequent extreme weather events of many kinds. Recent Atlantic hurricane seasons have shown us a glimpse of the future, with higher numbers of major tropical storms, more cases of rapid intensification, and heavier rainfall when they come ashore. 

We cruisers are acutely attuned to our surroundings, from weather and sea state to currents and marine life. We are also on the front lines of the impacts of a changing climate. As my husband and I continue to explore the planet by boat, I expect to see ever-clearer evidence of the monumental changes resulting from human activities to date. My research will continue to focus on uncovering details of why these changes occur and which regions will be affected.

Governments, businesses, and individuals can (and must) work together to reduce carbon emissions, curtail overfishing, prohibit harmful coastal development, and restore devastated marine life. The cruising community can help by getting the word out, volunteering in local efforts to repair and prevent damage, advocating for action, and minimizing our own impacts on the beautiful coasts we are so fortunate to visit. 

Jennifer Francis is acting deputy director and senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Falmouth, Mass.

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Journey Through the Northwest Passage: Arctic Circle Party

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