American Joe Harris along with Roger Junet are competing in the Globe40, a multi-leg doublehanded round the world race in Class40s. Seven teams were at the beginning on June 26, with five teams now on the fifth leg from Papeete, Tahiti to Ushuaia, Argentina.

After starting on November 26, Harris files this report from onboard GryphonSolo2 on December 4, 2022:

Senator, we are a long way from anywhere. This is ‘Point Nemo’ where NASA drops used satellites and jet trash. Ain’t nuthin’ or nobody around for thousands of miles.

But strangely…. I have been here before… in 2015 during my solo circumnavigation when I felt way lonelier, so at least I have four other boats around me now in the event of a disaster.

For the start of this leg, we motored quite a distance to get to a scenic location with little wind. We won the start while nosing Sec Hayai out at the committee boat (French Naval vessel) end of the line but then sailed into a wind hole.

We then had to choose the southern route between Tahiti and Moorea which was shorter, or the longer route around the north end of Tahiti which had more wind. We chose south and chose wrong and parked up for a bit before admitting our error and humbly following the fleet to the north. Oh well!

Race details – Entries – Tracker

Read more on Scuttlebutt

Unrelenting Grey was the colour card for the opening races of the PKC 2022 big boat programme. 20 kts of breeze gusting 25, and a 1.2 nm leg windward-leeward for the racing divisions got the 34th King’s Cup away today…

Read more on Sail-World

The latest episode of the World Sailing show goes behind the scenes to look at the first weeks of testing ahead of the 2024 America’s Cup in Barcelona. Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli’s LEQ12 test boat is currently in Cagliari…

Read more on Sail-World

Britain’s Dylan Fletcher is the 2022 International Moth World Champion. Fletcher finished the 13 race series with 17 pts after three final races on the final day of racing at the Yacht Club Argentina. Second was Massimo Contessi of Argentina with 27 pts and third Simone Salva of Italy with 36 pts. Francesco Bruni of…

Read more on Sail Web

Five doublehanded Class40 teams are on the fifth leg of the Globe40 race which extends from Tahiti toward the Argentinean stopover of Ushuaia via the legendary yet feared Cape Horn. Located on southern Chile’s Hornos Island, at the southern tip of South America, Cape Horn’s reputation is in the news again.

Amid the trepidation that this mark of the course already offers the ten competitors, they now must absorb the news of how a rogue wave killed one person and injured four others on the 665-foot Viking Polaris along this same route.

The massive wave smashed into the Antarctic cruise ship during a storm, while sailing off the southernmost tip of South America, with a 62-year-old woman from the US hit by broken glass when a wave broke cabin windows while four other tourists sustained “non-life-threatening injuries” and were treated onboard.

The incident occurred November 29th while the expedition ship was sailing towards Ushuaia, which is the main starting point for expeditions to Antarctica. The ship suffered minor damage and was anchored off Ushuaia a day later with several windows smashed on the side.

A rogue wave is greater than twice the size of surrounding waves, according to the National Ocean Service, and come from directions other than prevailing winds and waves. Reports of rogue waves, which are considered rare, have described them as “walls of water.”

Launched in 2022 and is the newest ship in the company’s fleet, Viking Polaris was built specifically to explore the world’s most remote destinations and endure harsh conditions. Our thoughts go out to the Class40 sailors as they approach these same water on December 18-19.

Read more on Scuttlebutt

Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli, the Italian America’s Cup challenger capsized in 21-22kts winds after being caught in a rapidly building breeze and sea state. In Pensacola American Magic put another 75nm in their logbook foiling for 2hrs 43min…

Read more on Sail-World

When the Volvo Ocean Race 2017-18 was one month from finishing, it was announced how the next edition of the race would start in 2021, under new ownership, without Volvo as a sponsor. It was a lot to take in, but the leadership was solid and the race remained iconic.

That all seems so long ago.

In July 2020, the pandemic postponed the start from the autumn of 2021 to October 2022. No title sponsor stepped forward, with the race awkwardly rebranded as The Ocean Race. The plan was to bring back the VO65s for a third time, but also heighten excitement with an IMOCA division.

The start got delayed again to January 2023, but also lacking was verifiable entries. The TEAMS link on the website had been more of a wish list, though the IMOCA fleet does now list five confirmed teams. As for the VO65s, some of the boats have been active since 2018, but no firm commitment to The Ocean Race.

That situation just took a weird turn with the introduction of the new The Ocean Race Sprint Cup. While the press release was full of promise, it now appears the VO65s may not be going around the world…

Read more on Scuttlebutt

Of the boats competing in the 2022-23 Golden Globe Race, Tapio Lehtinen was stunned that it was his Gaia 36 Asteria which sank. Yet that’s what happened 460 nautical miles SE from Port Elizabeth, in South Africa.

Lehtinen was successfully rescued, but remains at a loss for what failed on Asteria which was profiled in this report by Yachting World:

Sparkman and Stephens aficionado Tapio Lehtinen believes his Gaia 36 Asteria is the perfect vessel for the rigors of the Golden Globe Race, despite being the oldest yacht in the fleet having been built in 1965. Lehtinen completed the 2018 edition, the first ‘re-running’ of the famous solo non-stop race, in 5th place in the same boat, after being hampered by ineffective anti-fouling that resulted in massive underwater growth.

However, a bigger refit than anticipated meant Lehtinen was not able to fully realize his vision for the boat last time. He bought her in 2017 in Italy, but it was only after sailing home to Finland that significant delamination was discovered in the deck. Eventually the entire deck and coach roof was sliced off and used as a male mould for its replacement.

At the same time, the hull was stripped right back to a shell, with all furniture and bulkheads removed. Even the gelcoat and top 1mm of the hull laminate was ground away and then relaminated with Kevlar to improve impact resistance against collision with floating objects…

Read more on Scuttlebutt

Along with five confirmed IMOCA teams racing around the world, up to five VO65 teams will be on the starting line in Alicante, Spain in January, with an option to compete for a new trophy within The Ocean Race called The Ocean Race VO65 Sprint Cup…

Read more on Sail-World

100 boats have registered for the 30th Annual Block Island Race Week presented by Margaritaville next for Summer 2023 and sign-ups show no signs of slowing as new teams continue to join the ranks across divisions…

Read more on Sail-World

You can rent the full movie at Amazon Prime for $3.99

Read more on Sailing Anarchy

One wonders if the pursuit by the uber-rich to have the biggest yacht is more about claiming it than having it, but there is one such yacht that somebody does need to have. While the images remain conceptual, this creation is serious eye candy. Here’s an update from Boat International:

Announced in 2010, the 141 metre sailing superyacht Dream Symphony was revealed with a number of groundbreaking promises. The four-masted schooner-rigged sailing yacht, currently in build at Dream Ship Victory’s yard in Bozburun, Turkey, would become the largest sailing yacht in the world when launched.

Constructed entirely from wood, epoxy laminated iroko to be precise, it would also break numerous engineering feats. RINA was approached to certify construction, but there was a problem – it had never certified any wooden structure measuring over 30m in length…

Read more on Scuttlebutt

There is irony in how the America’s Cup defender, eager to deliver high performance racing for the 37th Match, has us watching grass grow. Okay, it’s not watching grass grow, its watching water dry … pretty much the same thing.

Their pet project, which meant to fill a gap in the schedule, now dives into a meteorological education which needs to soon end. Here’s their latest update:

Lake Gairdner in South Australia is vast, a 160km long and 50 km wide salt lake where Emirates Team New Zealand is aiming to break the Wind powered Land Speed World Record in their land yacht called ‘Horonuku’.

The fly in the ointment in the attempt continues to be that the lake and the state of South Australia, and in fact a large amount of Australia has had excessive rain this year, resulting in an uphill battle against the elements for a prolonged stretch of dry salt to let Horonuku fly…

Read more on Scuttlebutt

James Harden DeWitt died November 19, under the care of hospice at his home in Point Richmond, CA. He was 92-years-old.

Jim was born in Oakland, CA in 1930. At age 7, he drew pictures of sailboats while watching his father build a 19-foot sloop in the family’s backyard. Then at age 19, he purchased materials and built his own small boat, an El Toro (#216), and began racing it on Lake Merritt in Oakland, CA.

This launched Jim’s remarkable and highly unique career. He became internationally known both as a fine artist who specialized in action-packed, spirited and accurate portraiture of racing yachts, and also as one of the most successful yacht racers from the San Francisco Bay.

School was difficult for Jim as he was dyslexic at a time when nobody understood what that meant. Teachers told him he was lazy or stupid. Fortunately he took an art class in high school and did well. His mother was thrilled and got him into art school. This, he said, “saved his life”.

After high school, Jim trained for six years as an artist, first attending Oakland’s California College of Arts and Crafts, and then Los Angeles Art Center in Pasadena, one of the premier art colleges in the United States.

To save money while going to art school in LA, Jim started making dinghy racing sails for himself. This led to his own sail loft when he returned with his young family to the Bay Area in about 1960. DeWitt Sails operated for many years in a quonset hut on MacDonald and San Pablo Avenue in Richmond.

The business was moved to Brickyard Cove in Point Richmond into a brand new building that housed both the sail loft and his art studio in 1980. A few years later, Jim sold his loft to Sobstad Sails so that he could focus on his art career. Sobstad sold the loft to Quantum. It still operates out of the same building today. – Read on

Read more on Scuttlebutt

The second constituent event of the Top Dog Trophy Series 2022-2023, the One Global Lipton Trophy, took place on Saturday 26 November with an average of 5kts of easterly wind being bestowed upon Victoria Harbour…

Read more on Sail-World

It is always a privilege when Sir Robin Knox-Johnston checks in with Scuttlebutt HQ. As the first person to perform a single-handed non-stop circumnavigation of the globe, and then later to set the fastest time to earn the Jules Verne Trophy, RNJ is royalty.

But as much as he’s accomplished in the offshore world, he recently crossed something new off his 83 year old list. He just got attacked by the sea life he has spent a lifetime sailing above. He explains:

Read more on Scuttlebutt