36 - Green Boat
Ecological or simply energy-saving? By reducing energy requirement and waste, as well as emissions of all kinds, even an older boat can be made environment-friendly. Let's see how.

44 - A voice throw away
Safety at sea is what every seafarer always keeps very much at heart. The VHF ensures such safety by enabling the user to contact ships within an average of a 25 mile radius which may of course be reduced by obstacles or adverse weather conditions and reaching 35 miles when directed to rescue planes or land stations located on high ground. The system never isolates under any circumstances.

48 - Waves generated by wake, waves generated by wind
A small boat with outboard heads for the wave kicked up by a big cruiser. Then the weather turns bad and the same boat ? nds itself having to cope with the waves in rough seas. Two themes that need plenty of answers.

56 - Ready for use. Or no?
The installation of an outboard motor on the transom of a boat is something simple that anyone can do provided a few basic rules are stuck to. Otherwise, you get unsatisfactory performance and problems.

64 - The bowsprit
Having started life acting as an extension to the sail area, its purpose now also includes simplifying some manoeuvres especially during regattas. Let us examine the changes in looks and usage of this useful appendage in terms of sailing performance

70 - The new Torqeedo
The new travel model is certainly an alternative to the preceding one. Wève chosen to offer our readers a comparative study highlighting their main differences.

74 - We tested
655 Deck Saloon
Sanlorenzo 62
Queens 54
4TFour Genius
Privilege 1250 Ak
Azimut 38 Fly
Regal 2550
Merry Fisher 645

144 - Sport: The fastest sailing boat in the world
This is not only the world's fastest sail boat but also the most exciting. On board everything is spartan and functional with no room for luxury. The format is a trimaran with a beam of 24 metres on a length of 18.20 metres.

148 - Charter: Maldives
Sun, sand and sea, a thousand islands ? t for "Robinson Crusoe", enormous lagoons tinted of different shades of blue and turquoise of varying depths, bewildering underwater gardens of corals

Getting ready for the recovery
WITH COMMON SENSE

The worldwide crisis in the yachting trade that is to all intents and purposes still in full swing has certainly brought to an end a golden era in yacht building. Many companies have been forced to shut down, with loss of jobs and the realistic risk that skilled labour will go lost as well. At the same time, many boaters, hit by taxes or no longer in a position to sustain the running costs involved in owning a boat, have chosen to take to the sidelines or change to bureaucratically simpler and cheaper pastimes. There are some signs of recovery but in Europe at least it will still take time before the trade gets back to the levels of 2008, even if most builders are announcing programmes for a new launch. What's dramatically missing at the moment is the market base, that is the buyers. Traditional boat buyers, that is longstanding boat lovers, have stopped buying, whilst still motivated potential customers want boats that are cheaper to buy and run, craft that are easier to sail, also singlehanded, and certainly with better general assistance and after-sales services. Thus, a still uncertain level of demand, but which needs a trade that can satisfy all the buyers' needs, from financing their purchases, to finding crew and moorings, help in selling their boat, offer trade-ins, and, for the richer ones, provide food supplies and welcome services in marinas, and so on. All this needs investments, structures and ever more specialised staff and managers, all costs that affect sale prices and thus tend to put off both new and old potential customers. Some think that an alternative is the development of charter and rental services in general but it is necessary to sustain western national markets, which are the sector's hard core. The way forward is greater productivity, so as to cut production costs, but also simpler bureaucracy, less taxes for small boats, a part of the industry that is socially very impor- tant, at the same time working out every possible way of getting the market to grow. Furthermore, it is important to make boating easier, in all its aspects, so that the sector may defend itself from competition from other leisure-time activities that are easier and cheaper to do. Till recently, buyers' purchasing power had kept competition focused on quality at the best price. Today, price is paramount, even at the expense of quality. In order to be able to think ahead one needs to be able to invest, and at least in the Latin world this is very costly unless one has one's own money, so much so that the majority of Mediterranean yards de facto belong to banks and are strapped by the need to restructure their bank debts. Others have chosen the way of private equity, but these are investments that are available only to companies that can show they are good, which means when they can ensure repayment of the investment and can ensure suitable returns on capital to the investor of risk capital or pension fund that it might be. But in a moment of great change such as this one, is it really the right time to invest in a yard or the production of accessories? This is the doubt many investors have and the answer is often that the best thing is to sell the company, also because the pioneer days are over and today's investments in the yacht trade can only be based on sound business criteria. And it is owners too that have the same doubt: "is this the right time to buy a boat or might it not be better to wait"? In effect, many dangers menace western economies. Some are already manifest or easy to see coming, others are yet to appear. Till recently, in our trade, boat builders have nearly all been American, European, Australian or Japanese. Now, the development of the so called new industrial nations is creating a new middle class that has never before existed and that is generating wealth to an extent that was hitherto unimaginable. And so, after buying white goods, cars, a first and a second home, they will start dreaming about a boat, even if they are very inexperienced in this field. It is thus to be expected that, not now but certainly in a few years time, we will see boat production kick off in those countries, where they will build boats the strong point of which will be price. Many builders, also important ones, have already or are now making their know-how available to South American and Chinese companies, and these last have bought up a number of European yards, even if no major yards have yet appeared in the Far East. Yet from the internal market to exports is but an easy step, we must thus study ways of defending ourselves from a competition that will certainly be unfair because it will be based on an imbalance in currency values and will exploit cheap labour. Last but not least, the problem of the currency of reference. The dollar would seem to be still hanging on to this role, also thanks to the certainties that American laws offer in terms of defence of property and thus of foreign investments, but there are already some that would contest it. The current President, Obama, says he wants to hold high the value of the dollar, but also that he wants to boost US exports, two objectives that work one against the other, whilst American multinationals and middle eastern centres of power hold off the euro so as to keep its value up but not too much in such a way as to oblige the EU to help them defend themselves against the same adversaries. It is however equally true that an autarchic policy would be even more dangerous. It would mean that our boat building trade would lose those advantages it has gained by being the first to come to grips with globalisation and the need for continual and healthy confrontation with international competition.

Lucio Petrone