The sharks of Raroia, Atlantic crossings both ways, and Sven Yrvind, 87, stowing sardine tins to sail the world in a boat not that much bigger than a sardine tin

This week 72 channels from the fleet put 92 videos to water in 12 cruising regions — stretching from the tidal passes of the Tuamotus to the cargo lanes of southern Brazil, from the Gambia River to Newfoundland, and covering everything from shark behavior to the stowage obsessions of a solo sailor working in cubic inches. The week brought a course change in the North Atlantic, a climbing detour in Newfoundland that required the boat as basecamp, a defunct autopilot in protected water, and — almost forgot — the debut of sailing.directory, a new deep index of sailing YouTube where you can ask any question in any language and let the sailors and their videos answer you directly.

Sven Yrvind methodically provisions for an offshore passage with the density obsession of a man sailing a boat measured in feet, not meters — stowing 14 tins of sardines 0:19 in bilge spaces beneath the bunk and below the water line, every cubic inch of hull volume accounted for. His inventory 1:51 runs to two sets of foul-weather gear at three kilograms, spare cotton trousers, and a tool kit substantial enough to rebuild half the boat at sea: cutting, filing, drilling implements, specialized torque wrenches, super glue, tape 2:28, and a dedicated bag of sail-repair gear 3:17 — palm, splicing tools, needles, thread. The man who designs boats small enough to carry ashore packs like a watchmaker going around the world, down to nail clippers, tweezers, a mirror, a magnifying glass, and a measuring tape, each item justified by the weight it displaces and the problem it might solve two thousand miles from help.

Sampson Boat Co is 24 days and 3,700 miles into a North Atlantic crossing from Florida, now 400 miles west of Ireland 0:48 and planning a detour Leo Goolden did not originally intend: a landfall at Fastnet Rock and Baltimore instead of a straight shot to Falmouth. The detour buys a preview of the Fastnet Race route 1:29 and a stop at a local boatyard, with Falmouth now penciled in for August 4 or 5 2:14. The boat has held up — autopilot steering the whole way, rig managing chafe, only minor trouble with a melted cooker connection and a watermaker fan 5:01 — and this is the farthest east the hull has been since the 1960s 2:53.

While Leo and crew approached Ireland, Blue Horizon sat on the Gambia River near the Lamine Lodge, Thilo and Leonie expanding their crew to four 1:06 with Georg and Sebastian before a 3,000-mile push in the opposite direction to Brazil. The genoa had shed its luff tape, and the team spent an afternoon hand-stitching the cloth back onto the foil track 2:10—slow work in the heat but the kind of repair that holds. Sahara dust had settled into every locker and crease, so they scrubbed the decks and filled the freshwater tanks from a solar-powered well ashore, then topped off the outboard fuel and cooking gas. Meteorologist Sebastian Wache confirmed a weather window but warned of light air and thunderstorm complexes in the ITCZ 13:21, the kind of forecast that buys you a start but promises no easy middle. By the time the boat was clean and the sails mended, the crew had turned provisioning into departure: every small repair a vote that the crossing was real.

Acorn To Arabella used Arabella as a staging platform for a climbing objective near Francois, Newfoundland, anchoring behind Sandy Point and running a dinghy outhaul 2:32 — a shore-to-buoy clothesline — to keep Victoria positioned offshore against tidal swings while they ferried gear in. The climbing site demanded a 3.5-mile slog through bog and rock 0:24 — multiple round trips hauling ropes, hardware, and camp supplies in country thick with black flies and bear sign‚ and no trail beta to lean on. Once on the granite slab they chose for base camp, Steve and Robin built a rock windbreak 10:27 to blunt the wind without trampling the fragile tundra plants, a deliberate bit of low-impact rigging in an exposed spot. Back aboard, Steve rebuilt the Victoria's transom mount 15:14 with a reverse-curve plywood brace that drops the dinghy an inch and nests into the housetop curve, stopping the tender from shifting when lashed on deck — a winter-project refinement now proving its worth in rough anchorages.

Hashtag Sal's Adriano Plotzky piloted his boat south through the Lagoa dos Patos toward Praia do Tigre with a dead autopilot, a manageable nuisance in protected water but a looming problem for blue-water work. The breakdown forced constant helm attention through Itapuã's narrow channel 0:29, where cargo ships converge and quick reflexes matter more than patience. Northwest winds redirected the fleet to anchor at Praia do Tigre 0:59, a sand crescent open only under certain wind conditions on the western shore of the 265-kilometer freshwater lake. The crew rafted three boats together 1:36 for an overnight barbecue before casting off at 08:00 for a 42-nautical-mile run to Porto Barquinho—short enough that hand-steering remained a chore rather than a crisis, though longer offshore legs would demand a fix 4:32.

Reversing Entropy analyzed ePropulsion's $1,200 eLite electric outboard in 15–20 knots and chop near Gibraltar 0:44 and found a motor that underdelivers at every level. Paulo ran his Zodiac 310 RIB a quarter mile to a chandlery in La Línea; the return against wind and chop took 30 minutes and dropped the pack from 67 to 40 percent. The small propeller cavitates frequently even in calm water 1:38, killing efficiency compared to the older Spirit 1.0 at the same draw, and the 750-watt sport mode delivers only 60 seconds of peak power 3:55 — too brief to matter. The telescoping tiller and motor-removal latch bind with salt crystals 2:42, and the kill switch is so flimsy it pops loose with normal use, forcing most owners to defeat it with tape or a zip tie. Paulo would not buy the eLite again and would return to the Spirit 1.0 or step up to ePropulsion's 2.5 kW model for a dinghy that can plane.

Flight Level Zero hauled out their Beneteau 57 Vanishing Point at a Marina Del Rey yard for three days to chase down a persistent vibration and rudder wobble — the kind of systems hunt that keeps a 57-footer moving cleanly under power. Chris and Karmen pulled the cutlass bearings, patched prop-shaft dings with JB Weld 3:11, and tackled cosmetic hull scuffs by dissolving rubber marks with WD-40 1:30 without touching the gelcoat, the sort of owner-aboard refit the yard encourages with its machine shop and parts counter on-site. The proof came at the low-tide relaunch 16:16: threading an 8.5-foot draft through the harbor entrance and finding the drivetrain humming smooth at 2,600–2,700 RPM, the vibration finally gone — the kind of repair dividend that makes a haul-out worth the disruption.

Sailing Zatara anchored at Raroia in the Tuamotus to dive the tidal passes — the same channels that serve as entry points for vessels and funnel current hard enough to draw blacktip reef sharks, rays, and schools of fish 0:24. The crew encounters sharks regularly near the boat, particularly when discharging gray water 2:57, but notes they remain skittish and non-aggressive; the advice is to treat them like bears on land — respect and distance 4:34. Light winds on the passage to Rairoia forced careful rationing of generator hours, and the crew now struggles with fuel consumption, necessitating careful management of reserves 8:25 as they prepare to transit to Fakarava for a grouper spawning dive 5:17. In between dives, they attempt to fish for wahoo in the pass using deep-diving lures but come up empty.

The week was much bigger than this. These were just a handful of great stories picked while the fleet kept right on filming. RAN Sailing cut steel on a fiber laser 0:43 while preparing components for a new boat, while SEILmagasinet scrubbed the keel from the dock 0:30 using a homemade hull cleaner that reached the hardest midship sections, and Sailing Parlay Revival welded a new bottom plate 15:26 into a corroded aluminum fuel tank. Every one of these videos, and thousands more, lives in a searchable index at sailing.directory where plain-language questions pull answers straight from the sailors who filmed them.