By the legendary Ben Dover, world’s best yachting journalist 

Dearborn, MI – I can reveal exclusively to SA readers that the American Magic syndicate has re-formed to challenge for the next America’s Cup series and that the massive Ford Motor Company will partner with them to provide technical support.

Speaking to me from a private room at the New York Yacht Club in Manhattan, Commodore Elsworth Q. Dellingberg III confirmed the historic agreement. “National pride is at stake here”, he said. “We can’t have those sauerkraut eaters at Mercedes or Red Bull claiming the best technology.

“As much as it pains us to have a relationship with some rather shabby provincial Michigan people ‘in trade’, it seems that Ford has the expertise and resources to ensure that the NYYC will once again fail with dignity in the America’s Cup.”

Ford CEO Wayne Kerr was decidedly more upbeat about the partnership. “We’re very excited to be involved”, he told me. “Breaking new ground has always been important to us at Ford, so we’ve decided to name the division ‘Project Edsel’…

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The Sydney-Hobart Race is a genuine offshore passage race. But a rapid resurgence of Covid in Australia may turn that aspect of the event into a disruptive nightmare.

The race starts in mainland New South Wales and ends 628 nautical miles away on the island of Tasmania. But here’s the catch: the separate states of the Australian Commonwealth each set their own health protocols.

Last year’s race was abandoned a week before the December 26 start, principally because the Tasmanian government and health authorities were concerned that arriving crew and supporters would bring the virus with them. Many other states also closed their borders for long periods.

Now, with just four days to go before the starting canon is scheduled to fire at 13:00 on Boxing Day, genuine fears are emerging that the fast-multiplying Omicron strain will hamstring the race, if not force its cancellation altogether. NSW recorded more than 3,700 new infections yesterday while Tasmania had 12 after recently re-opening their borders…

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Sydney, Australia – SailGP supremo Larry Ellison has announced major changes to the format of the event following the two-day series just concluded in Sydney. The new rules apply immediately and are the conditions under which the final round will be sailed in San Francisco on March 26-27.

Speaking to the media before boarding his “Powered by Nature” private jet for the flight back to the US, Ellison conceded that the radical changes to the SailGP format were a response to general disappointment with the series so far.

“The same few boats win all the races”, he said “and no matter which country they’re supposed to be representing they’re all sailed by Australians anyway. The only exciting moment was when the UK boat smashed into Japan and ripped the bow off one hull. TV replayed that 37 times from six different angles.”

But that incident sparked an idea in Ellison’s ever-fertile mind. “It was my ‘Eureka!’ moment – like Archimedes in the bath. If a collision is the only thing to get people interested in the event, then why not make it all collisions? Let’s have an old-fashioned Demolition Derby on water at 35 knots!”…

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Not everyone hangs onto a dream with unrelenting tenacity. In 2011, Bodacious Dream, a Farr-designed Class 40, was commissioned as Dave Rearick’s singlehanded entry in the Global Oceans Race–A dream Dave held for forty years.

When organizers canceled the race, Dave’s sponsors encouraged him to continue. On October 2nd, 2013, Bodacious Dream left Jamestown, RI, with its 55-year-old skipper to circumnavigate the world. Dave’s book, Spirit of a Dream, is an invitation to join the journey, not just as a reader, but intimately onboard with his thoughts and experiences as he sails the traditional race route–Alone.

Released from the pressures of the Race, Dave is free to pursue his thoughts and connections with the powerful essence of the Sea. As quoted by one reader, “Spirit of a Dream is as good a read as any book written by the great sailors. I tried to savor it like fine wine but read it in one sitting. It was worth it.”

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Y’all know that I am a huge fan of IOR boats from back in the day. Having sailed a bunch of them then (Freefall, Farr 37 and Farr 40, Reliance NM 41, Flamboyant, Peterson 41, Travieso, NM 44, Legend, Peterson One Ton, Starship, NM 68, etc. I loved the era…

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Friend Peter Huston took this amazing shot from today: This is the Point Abino lighthouse, north shore of Lake Erie, 10 miles west of Buffalo, NY. Here is the same shot, taken only three hours earlier! That is one helluva lot of water movement!

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Straight from the PR machine, this seems like a really good idea. We can see doublehanded sailing really take off. One problem being that you kind of need a boat designed and built for this, which equals expensive, which equals what do I do with my old boat, which equals do I really want to do this? Life is hard.

Royal Swedish Yacht Club (KSSS) will host the first-ever ORC Double Handed World Championship in July 2022. With the start in the middle of Stockholm and an intricate navigation race through the archipelago before reaching the open sea, and sailing around the island of Gotland it will be a true challenge for the competitors…

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Many have tried, but virtually all have failed and none have sustained. Now, finally, there is one circuit that might just have hit on a formula to make sailboat racing a mainstream sport. This means not just a one-hit wonder held every few years, but a series with mass appeal that can maintain and build an audience via an annual circuit of repeated events, just like motor racing’s Formula 1 or sports like golf and tennis.

Well on its way to achieving this is SailGP (sailgp.com). Unquestionably, it helps that it is bankrolled by one of America’s richest men, Larry Ellison, and masterminded and executed by one of the world’s most accomplished sailors/pioneers, Russell Coutts. But there’s no denying the thing itself has serious legs.

SailGP has been in Coutts’ mind for years. In 2007 he and Paul Cayard announced the World Sailing Series—a prize-money driven circuit for 70ft catamarans that never came to fruition. Since joining forces with Ellison, he also delivered in the 34th and 35th America’s Cups, held in AC72 catamarans on San Francisco Bay and four years later in AC50s in Bermuda. With these events, though, Coutts and Ellison were shackled by the constraints of the America’s Cup Deed of Gift and intervention by third parties such as the Challenger of Record. With SailGP, they could design a circuit all their own from the bottom up…

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That, my friends, is a lot of sail area! More.

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The first Infiniti 52 has sea trialed in the UK before heading south through Biscay as part of its training program and its first race in January 2022, the RORC Trans-Atlantic Race. Joint developer of the DSS patent and founder of Infiniti Yachts, Gordon Kay talks us through the gestation of the genre-defining project.

The boat will have to be trucked from Composite Builders in Holland, Michigan to Baltimore and then shipped to Southampton, where the team at Racetec Rigging will carry out the final fit-out and commissioning in conjunction with Infiniti Yachts…

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The famous Rolex Sydney Hobart Race is now only a month away. It won’t be long before navigators and skippers start seeking data to optimize routing for the great race south and competitors who have the most accurate data on hand will be able to make the best possible decisions for the fastest route.

The weather can be challenging for all competitors in this 630mile race down the NSW coast, crossing the notorious Bass Strait, continuing south along the Tasmanian East Coast then around the corner across Storm Bay and up the final 10 miles of The Derwent.

It is not only the potential of ferocious winds for sailors, there is also the powerful East Australian Current (EAC) to be considered which can vary between 15km and 100km wide and flow at speeds up to 4knots. The EAC is like a meandering river generally flowing southwards along the course however eddies and interesting twists and turns necessitate careful analysis, making course optimization a challenge for even the most experienced navigators. At times the EAC can even flow in a northerly direction!

Fortunately, the Team at Tidetech can help identify the location, speed and direction of the EAC to complement your Sydney Hobart race strategy…

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