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After some disillusionment with the capabilities of his trimaran – little prepared to participate in major races – Éric, Tabarly decides to undertake a campaign in the United States to prove the seaworthiness of his trimaran. The first records follow one another and it’s a second “life” that awaits the trimaran in the hands of Alain Colas.
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High-performance multihull racing returned to the waters of southern Mallorca on Friday with the opening day of the 2022 Multihull Cup…
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While New Zealand sailing is on the return path to a full international sailing program, with some good successes, there have been a few ruts along the way. The roughest ride has come from the performance of the Kiwi SailGP team…
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by Adam Loory, UK Sailmakers
The strategy of winning sailboat races involves knowing how to control your competition— when to cover your competition and when to sail your own race. I was reminded of both during the 2022 Ida Lewis Distance Race off Newport, Rhode Island. I sailed on the Reichel Pugh 69 WIZARD chartered by David Greenstein.
Four-time Volvo Ocean Race winner Stu Bannatyne was our skipper, and WIZARD was scratch boat in ORC. The only boat that was close to us in speed was the Judel Vrolijk 66 DENALI, to which we owed about 20 minutes on the 150-mile course. There was also a TP52 in our class, but since we owed her about two hours, there was no reason to be close to her.
At the starting line we did our best to get away from DENALI. Stu Bannatyne did a masterful job of winning the start and closed out DENALI at the signal boat, forcing her to go around and start again. Watch below:
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The World Sailing Show delivers 30-minute episodes which feature news, profiles, and racing highlights from across the world of sailing.
Episode 4 has Ben Ainslie’s return to British waters, 11th Hour Racing Sustainability Award, and VI Foundation action with Switzerland SailGP team.
For the full archive of past episodes, click here.
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The 129-foot My Saga sank on August 20 nine nautical miles off Calabria, Italy. A tug attempted to tow it to shore but worsening weather and further listing of the yacht led to its demise. All onboard – four passengers and five crew – were rescued…
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After a 47 year drought, the Spanish duo of Alfredo Gonzalez and Cristian Sanchez sailed a great last race of the Championship to return the Snipe World trophy to Spain…
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As electric cars become mainstream it’s only natural for sailors and boatbuilders to eye solutions that work the same way on the water. To date, only 2 percent of boats worldwide are powered by electric or hybrid propulsion, but e-mobility is expected to grow by 50 percent over the next two decades, which will likely result in electric-powered boats in the charter market as well.
Today there are multiple players in electrification. Germany’s Torqeedo launched its small electric outboard technology in 2005 and then expanded into high-voltage systems for inboard use. The company’s Deep Blue 25kW and 100kW inboard motor applications have also been combined with saildrives in various power and sailboats. At this year’s Miami boat show, Torqeedo launched a 50kW version, which is paired with a folding propeller and a regeneration feature that produces power when you sail at speeds as low as 6 knots.
Swedish engine manufacturer Volvo Penta is also experimenting with electric motors installed inline between their diesels and IPS pods. As part of this effort, they’ve been working with Fountaine Pajot production catamarans on driving a Lucia 40 sailing cat. Meanwhile, Dutch bow and stern-thruster manufacturer Vetus has developed inboard electric motors for small powerboats, and the Finnish company OceanVolt is now powering a number of J/Boats and Alerion daysailers…
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Launched in Germany this August, Elida is a 15m offshore racer cruiser featuring a timber hull and carbon fibre deck, designed for the Baltic and Northern seas…
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Day Three big boats before the lay day at the 2022 Hamilton Island Race Week…
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The crews have gathered and the yachts are ready – it is all systems go for the 2022 Multihull Cup with three days of friendly and competitive racing set to start this Friday in the sparkling waters off Mallorca’s southwest coast…
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No races were completed on Wednesday at the 2022 ILCA U21 World Championships due to lack of wind. The race committee waited until 15:00 to send the sailors out, but once on the water, the wind picked up to about 7 knots and was too shifty…
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The ASF aim is to transform young people’s lives through sailing. Each year, we enable 1000’s of young people to get out on the water and experience the joys and challenges of sailing. We can only do this with the support of amazing people – like you…
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A characteristic of Southern California racing is a noon start because the seabreeze takes a while to generate the onshore flow. While this makes for a good sleep after the Saturday night party, overnight racing can be a lottery.
The 49th Santa Barbara to King Harbor Race knows this reality all too well, and in this report by Zafar Khan, he shares the triumphs and torture from the 2022 edition onboard his 29-footer:
“We’re in that pesky 1-knot cyclone!” I hollered as we rounded the first rocks of Anacapa Island to port with our big “pink squid” spinnaker full of 18-knot wind — which suddenly transformed into a 1-knot wind swirl…
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Before the fourth event of the 2022-23 SailGP Season, league CEO Russell Coutts questioned changes to the US Team’s program which had thus far performed far worse than the previous season. Skipper Jimmy Spithill shares an update after finishing fifth among the eight teams competing in Denmark on August 19-20:
The second day of racing at the Rockwool Denmark Sail Grand Prix in Copenhagen was one of my favorite days since joining SailGP.
It was one of those days where it all just comes together – great conditions, a perfect venue, heaps of action and thousands of fans on shore making noise…
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Designed by Pippa Garner, this 1968 Buick LeSabre and 1970 Datsun combination takes the term Land Yacht to a whole new level. Called ‘Long Time No Sea’, it is in the exhibition ‘Land Yachts: Cruising the Interstate Highways’ at the Audrain Automobile Museum in Newport, RI…
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At Scuttlebutt HQ, we consistently cringe at the claim that ‘foiling is the future’ as we know the expense, complexity, and skill required is not how to sustain a sport. Australian Chris Thompson dives further into the topic:
We cannot keep on hoping that a hyper-performance elite approach will revive sailing.
That has been the party line of World Sailing since they started squeezing popular types out of the Olympics in favor of tiny niche types like foiling cats; the approach taken up by the America’s Cup since it went from monohulls and into classes that create far smaller fleets; and the approach taken by much of the industry and sailing media over the past 25 years.
During that time, there has been enormous promotion of high-performance sailing as the future of the sport. High speed sailing is great (I’ve done it for many years) but excessive promotion of the inaccessible and expensive side of the sport clearly is NOT working.
It’s time to check the numbers that prove that “extreme” sailing is not popular (look at the tiny number of extreme boats racing or selling) and return to promoting the types that can actually become popular enough to sustain the sport…
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For his 44 years as a military pilot and Commercial airline Captain, Craig Warner has had the benefit of the most intense safety training available. He is also a 40-year-long racer (who was on the winning J/105 SEALARK – owned by Clark Pellet – in the 2022 Chicago Mackinac Race) and has always tried to bring his safety background knowledge and commitment to sailing. In this report, Warner shares a compelling case for prevention:
On the Chicago to Waukegan Race back in 1992, a good friend of mine, a fellow Soling sailor, crewed on one of the boats in the race. She had been racing for some 20 years, and she loved the sport. To quote her, “I can count on two hands the times I wore a life jacket. This year’s beat to Waukegan was not one of them.”
The skipper ordered life jackets, and she handed them to the crew while she was down below navigating. When she came on deck, she forgot to wear hers. At some point during the race, she went overboard.
When she hit the water, she began to find it increasingly difficult to breathe due to inhaling water. Her clothing quickly became saturated and impaired her swimming ability. As she struggled, she saw another boat pass by with crew members pointing at her. When they left without rendering aid, she felt despair. The survival clock started ticking, and for all practical purposes, it was fait accompli…
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After the loss of two races on Sunday due to insufficient wind, IRO Con Murphy advised the fleet at the GUL Fireball Worlds that three races would be on the agenda for Monday with an earlier start time of 11:00…
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Dragon Gold Cup 2022 – Gery Trentesaux of France sailing with Christian Ponthieu, Jean Queveau and Morgan Riou was the winner of race 2…
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At 37 years of age, he is in his prime physical condition to take on this challenge, which he hopes to be a stepping stone for his ultimate dream: participating in a Vendée Globe…
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After 35 days 10 hours 42 minutes and 42 seconds of racing, Craig Horsfield and Oliver Bond aboard Amhas took line honours in Mauritius in this the second and longest leg of the GLOBE40 round the world race…
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The 1970s is regarded as the ‘golden era’ of 18 footer racing with large fleet and champion competitors competing each week on Sydney Harbour, strong fleets in New Zealand and Queensland and emerging fleets in Western Australia, UK and the USA…
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The grandstands sold out and fans filled the shoreline to watch the Rockwool Denmark Sail Grand Prix in Copenhagen on Saturday…
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The Australian Sailing’s 2022 Australian Yachting Championships (AYC) began in fine style at Hamilton Island Race Week today, brilliant sunshine and ideal winds set the scene for the Rating and the Multihull Racing divisions…
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The 2022 Fireball Pre-Worlds and Irish Nationals was a win for Isaac Marsh and Oliver Davenport…
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Friday and final race day. 2 races schedule which would enable all crews to utilize a second discard. At the top of the fleet, only 2 points separated Ian Dobson and Matt Mee so this title was still very much up for grabs…
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James McHugh’s Tquila is the first Class40 to complete the Sevenstar Round Britain and Ireland Race. Finishing on Saturday 20 August at 14:06:47 BST in an elapsed time of 13 days 2 hours six mins and 47 secs…
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Swiss SailGP Team will race in Copenhagen over the next two days at the ROCKWOOL Denmark Sail Grand Prix. It’s the fourth event in SailGP’s global championship calendar, and the second event in the European leg of the league…
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Ben Ainlsie’s Great Britain SailGP Team have pulled out of this weekend’s ROCKWOOL Denmark Sail Grand Prix in Copenhagen…
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by Michael Burgess, New Zealand Herald
Kiwi America’s Cup icon Sir Michael Fay has resigned his 46 year membership of the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron in protest at the club’s decision to sanction the sale of venue and hosting rights for the next Cup defence by Team New Zealand.
Fay, along with fellow Cup luminaries Alan Sefton and Andrew Johns wrote an open letter to Commodore Aaron Young on Thursday (August 18), detailing the club’s “regretful approach to its obligations as Trustee of the America’s Cup”.
The trio argued that under the terms of the historic Deed of Gift, the squadron has “no license” to relocate the venue offshore, along with the fact that the decision means that New Zealand will miss out on the numerous benefits of a Cup defense.
They highlight the relevant Deed of Gift passage: “It is distinctly understood that the Cup is to be the property of the Club subject to the provisions of this deed, and not the property of the owner or owners of any vessel winning a match.”
The 37th defense of the America’s Cup will be held in Barcelona, after the Catalan capital won the rights in March following an international tender that saw bids from cities in Europe and the Middle East, in a process that commenced before last year’s successful defense in Auckland.
Fay is considered the godfather of the America’s Cup in this country, while Sefton and Johns played prominent roles in New Zealand’s pursuit of the Auld Mug…
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When the Kiwi team showed up at the 2017 America’s Cup with their systems powered by leg cycling rather than arm grinding, it was the application of a known fact. That legs are stronger than arms is no surprise, but it was believed that crew mobility would be restricted.
Apparently not, but upon victory, Team New Zealand banned the practice for the 2021 America’s Cup. Bad optics to have bikers instead of sailors, but the AC75’s power needs missed the legs, so cyclers are back for 2024. It’s not like the crew is needed to manage a spinnaker…
However, critical to the power needs for the next America’s Cup is how the AC75 crew has been reduced from 11 to 8 people, and while the teams were initially quiet about their energy ideas, it has become clear that legs are back in fashion.
Among the ten people on the British challenger’s sailing team, four are listed as cyclors.
To watch a video, click here.
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Sail Canada in partnership with David Cripton have launched a podcast series focusing on Canadian sailing called Whitecap, with Clara Gravely featured in Episode 4.
Canadian ILCA 6 sailor, Clara is a member of the Canadian Sailing Development Squad, gold medalist at the Canada Summer Games in 2017, and winner of Sail Canada’s Marvin McDill award for Rookie of the year in 2019.
In this episode, the conversation discusses the Canada Summer Games, what inspires her dreams of sailing at the Olympics, and using process goals over perfomance goals to acheive success and limit discouragement.
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Ian Dobson and Andy Tunihill (-4 3 1) lead reduced to two points as they go into final day at GP14 World Championships…
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U.S. SailGP Team CEO and Driver Jimmy Spithill recognizes the hard work ahead at this weekend’s ROCKWOOL Sail Grand Prix | Denmark, and says the team has pulled no punches during their internal debriefs to help them improve…
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The line-up of nine teams for the SailGP global sports league in Denmark is limping toward the start line as damage during practice may impact the racing in Copenhagen on August 19-20.
It started when the Spanish team’s rudder was damaged in an underwater collision while training, forcing the struggling team to miss crucial practice racing on the day before racing starts. Next down was the Great Britain SailGP Team which hit an uncharted rock just outside the racecourse boundary (see video).
SailGP’s Tech Services will be working through the night to get them both ready for the first race, and while the Spanish troubles look to be solvable, the Brits issues look to be too much to overcome with damage on the starboard side which snapped the head of the starboard rudder clean off along with problems to the foil and board case.
After incurring its share of damage last season, the U.S. SailGP Team has simply not been able to get out of their own way this season, with speed issues and mental errors placing them seventh overall after three events…
SailGP information – Denmark details – Season 3 scoreboard – Facebook – How to watch
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Bala Sailing Club hosted the 2022 Catapult National Championships over the weekend of 16-17 July. The forecast of light airs and the record-breaking heatwave obviously put off some potential competitors, so it was a reduced fleet of 8 helms who took part…
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The start of the sailing on the was postponed due to prognosis of light winds. And the teams could have a soft wake up in the morning. The start was set to 11 o’clock and by then there was warm weather and a steady breeze at about 6 to 10 knots…
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A new rival has entered the ring, with Tom Slingsby confirming that the New Zealand side could now be the Australia Team’s top competition to beat at the ROCKWOOL Denmark Sail Grand Prix, taking place this weekend…
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Part 1 and 2 of the SailGP’s insider view of the professional sailing league explores the New Zealand SailGP Team’s dynamic, especially that of co-CEOs Pete Burling and Blair Tuke, and the team starts to see the fruits of its labour…
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