FRENCH POLISH
Jeanneau’s new Sun Odyssey 415 on test GIMME SHELTER
Finding the perfect hurricane hole
SOLO ACROSS BISCAY
One woman’s tale of escape from the rat race
COLLISION AVOIDANCE
Could AI finally be put to good use?
Spring Shenanigans
The Caribbean racing season is gradually winding up but there is still much fun to be had in early spring. Here , the DNA F4 foiling catamaran Falcon tacks towards Scrub Island enroute to 11th place in her class in the Nanny Cay Round Tortola Race, part of the BVI Spring Regatta
Photo: BVI Spring Regatta
WAR AND PEACE
After years working as a war correspondent, Charlie Faulkner needed to do something different. Solo offshore sailing seemed like a good option – but could she make the switch?
The windvane jolted and Moonshot lurched to the west and off course. My heart raced, I felt panic rising through me. “Was this a dreaded Orca attack?” I thought, as adrenaline began to surge through my body. Hung off the stern rail, leaning over my windvane with a spanner in my hand, I eventually realised it wasn’t, I had just overtightened a nut. But the fear was very real. Now 24 hours off the coast of France into the Bay of Biscay, taking stock of the landlessness surrounding the boat, it dawned on me just how alone I was out here in the middle of this huge expanse of blue.
It was late August 2025 and I was halfway into my first single-handed passage from Falmouth, Cornwall, to the northern coast of Spain. Six months earlier I couldn’t sail, and before setting off on this passage, the furthest I’d ever solo-sailed my little Twister 28, Moonshot, was as far as the local river two hours away from my mooring buoy.
Weeks of long days and late nights had culminated in a final mast climb, a refuel and a topping up of water before a teary wave goodbye and a crank of the throttle as I departed Falmouth Harbour. I was embarking on a solo voyage that would take me across the Atlantic Ocean in just four months’ time – I had no idea the ride I was in for.
LEFT Porto Santo, Portugal
ABOVE Leaving Falmouth
GIMME SHELTER
If the Caribbean is your cruising ground, have you thought about what you’ll do when hurricane season arrives? Jenevora Swann offers some options on how to carry on sailing
It’s not every day that a boatbuilder offers a new model cheaper than the one it replaced – yet that is precisely what French manufacturer Jeanneau has done with its new Sun Odyssey 415. Sam Jefferson finds out more
BRING ME SUNSHINE
24 YEARS LATER…
The British Virgin Islands are noted as a paradise for sailors of all stripes. Sam Jefferson made a return to the islands he lived in 24 years ago to take part in the BVI Spring Regatta and rediscover somewhere he once knew very well…
Many, many years ago I undertook my RYA Yachtmaster Offshore training in the Solent. It was one of those zero to hero affairs – often derided but, as I was about to find out, incredibly gruelling. I started in November and finished in February. Three months of freezing sailing, endless night passages and fearful storms. At the end of it, I knew the Solent
by heart and swore I would never again sail in a cold climate. A year later in 2002, I lucked out, landing a job as sailing instructor at Biras Creek Resort on Virgin Gorda in the BVIs. The job was incredible; involving occasionally taking a guests out in a hobie cat or Laser, teaching windsurfing, supervising twice weekly snorkelling trips in a small motorboat and giving people sailing lessons in an engineless Folkboat which, somewhat inexplicably,
belonged to the hotel. I was 24 years old and the whole experience was extraordinary. I was given a very roomy waterside house to share with my girlfriend and spent my days sat on a pristine beach waiting for a client to ask me to take out a Hobie. As often as not, no client appeared and I would pass whole days, alternating between reading books while lying on a hammock slung between
ABOVE
The Bareboat fleet does battling in the BVI Spring Regatta