A very tight finish for the 18th edition of the Wagner Cup-9th Bertamini Trophy, an event reserved for the splendid Dragoni class: a revolution in the general classification and therefore the final podium, after the last three of the seven races…
Capricorno claims IMA Mediterranean Maxi Inshore Challenge
At the end of a challenging week of maxi racing at Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez, conditions on the final day did at last prove too light and fickle to complete a race…
2022 SSL Gold Cup Finals in Bahrain postponed
With just over two weeks to the opening of The SSL Gold Cup Finals in Bahrain, the event has been postponed…
5.5 Metre Herbstpreis at Thunersee overall
MF XXII (SUI 232, Jürg Menzi-Schmid, Jürgen Eiermann, Christof Wilke) has won the 2022 5.5 Metre Herbstpreis, at Thunersee Yachtclub, after just one more race was possible on Sunday…
Back in time with Dennis Conner
There are eight inductees in the National Sailing Hall of Fame from San Diego Yacht Club, and the bar can be a bit of a who’s-who of yachting. Scuttlebutt HQ is about a 15 minute walk to San Diego Yacht Club and twice that on the way back. The difference is staggering… must be the conversation.
SDYC Commodore in 1984, Dennis Conner was a member of the first induction class in 2011, and his “no excuse to lose” approach forever changed how the sport has been played. In this report from April 1983, the local publication San Diego Reader takes us back to that time:
All is not tranquil at the San Diego Yacht Club. The appearances are deceiving. In the last few weeks, I’ve been frequenting the club and I can report that it often appears to be the most serene spot on earth, an adult Disneyland for people who like their rides in the form of racing yachts and powerboats.
All yacht clubs are happy places, but the San Diego Yacht Club is this town’s most idyllic — the biggest; adorned with the greatest expanses of dark, varnished wood; landscaped with the most elaborate floral displays. Here the rich and powerful wear dungarees as often as they wear dinner jackets. People smile at each other often and sincerely…
Endeavour Trophy 2022 – RS800 pair take overnight lead
Tom Morris and Guy Fillmore representing the RS800 class have taken the overnight lead of the Endeavour Trophy dinghy champion of champions event…
2022 ILCA 6 Radial Worlds – In the unique surroundings of the Texas Corinthian YC
The 2022 ILCA 6 World Championships will be sailed on Galveston Bay in Kemah, Texas, USA, at the Texas Corinthian YC from 9 to 16 October…
Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez Maxi day 4
“A very light mistral at Les Issambres!” Booming out over the VHF, it was all that was needed by the Race Committee, who were waiting early this afternoon to release the Maxis into the arena created by the Gulf of Saint Tropez…
whatever floats your boat
Post Ian, this little relaunching party happened in Cape Coral, FL. Props to anarchist Kim. Make sure your sound is turned on.
2022 NSW Youth Sail concludes
After a two year break, 2022 NSW Youth Sail was back on Lake Macquarie. The event began on 28th September with a three day coaching clinic, with 103 sailors and 17 coaches taking part…
M32 Worlds at Cascais, Portugal day 2
Great racing in picture perfect conditions and and extremely tight score card. That’s Friday’s wrap up from the M32 World Championship in Cascais until Sunday, the 9th…
Cup Spy: End of the Beginning for the Defenders
The America’s cup Defenders, Emirates Team New Zealand say the have probably have wrapped up their testing of the AC40 in one design mode, and will start testing new components on the AC40, which will morph into an LED12 test boat…
Show goes on for RC44 World Championship
The 2022 RC44 World Championship taking place October 12-16 in Slovenia has eight owner-driven professional teams vying for the title. It has been a difficult year for a class populated with Russian teams amid a war-time climate which has banned their participation due to the Ukrainian crisis.
Only 3-time World Champion Vladimir Prosikhin’s Team Nika remains, though they have reflagged themselves from Russia to Monaco. It is not clear how this is possible, as Monaco may offer residency but rarely issues citizen rights, and international classes must defend their designation through global participation audits
The top team in 2022 has been Slovenian Igor Lah’s Ceeref powered by Hrastnik 1860 with British ace Adrian Stead calling tactics, followed by Dutchman Nico Poons’ Charisma led by Kiwi tactician Hamish Pepper. Ceeref is a 2-time world titlist while for Charisma it would be their first since joining the class in 2015.
It has been a decade since the RC44 World Championship was held on the Adriatic in Rovinj, Croatia, some 30 miles to the south of Portoroz in 2012.
Details: https://www.44cup.org/events/2022-44cup-world-championship-portoroz
Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez Maxi day 3
At the suggestion of Pierre Roinson, President of the Société Nautique de Saint-Tropez, the magnificent Club 55 Cup duel, traditionally staged on the first Thursday of Les Voiles for the Classic and Modern yachts, was repeated today…
island time
The Environment
Belgium is pushing ahead with plans to develop an artificial island off its coast, creating a regional grid connector for offshore wind farms and a future hub for European energy transmission.
Belgian transmission system operator Elia has unveiled the draft plans for what it believes will be the first artificial energy island. (This would put Belgium’s development ahead of a well-publicized Danish plan for a man-made energy island off the coast of Jutland.) Elia’s installation in the North Sea will benefit from a $100 million subsidy under Belgium’s post-COVID-19 recovery plan, pending European Commission approval.
The newly-built Princess Elisabeth Island will be located about 45 kilometers off the Belgian coast, and it will serve as the link between the offshore wind farms in a new offshore wind zone and the onshore high-voltage grid. It will also serve as a central hub for new interconnectors with the United Kingdom and Denmark, facilitating the exchange of electricity between countries. This will be the first building block of a European offshore electricity grid. More here.
Windsurfer World Championship – Back to the Future
350 competitors from 25 nations are taking part in the 2022 Windsurfer World Championship started in Mondello, Palermo, Italy…
Globe40: Detour in the Indian Ocean
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 third leg from Mauritius to Auckland, New Zealand.
After leaving the Indian Ocean island nation on September 11th, Harris files this report from onboard GryphonSolo2 on October 5, 2022:
I must apologize as it has been a while since my last blog post. The main reason for that is that we were sailing upwind for 700 miles and the boat was pounding so bad I could barely type! But let me retrace the steps from where we were, approaching the Eclipse Virtual Gate, which was 60 miles south of the coast of Australia.
I felt from the beginning that this gate made no sense, as we were all sailing along the southern boundary of 42° south latitude in the prevailing strong westerly winds and then had to head 600 miles north into an area of high pressure (no wind) known as the great Australian Bight. It was a real struggle to get to the gate as we had very strong winds from behind for three days and then were becalmed for three days before we finally got around on October 1…
Emirates Team NZ: Horonuku gets a first salt run
Emirates Team New Zealand’s land yacht ‘Horonuku’ has had its first day of sailing on Lake Gairdner, in South Australia, with pilot Glenn Ashby behind the wheel, in his bid to eclipse the 2009 wind-powered world record speed of 202.9 km/h…
Cup Spy: AC40 gets close to AC75 speeds
The AC40 was put through its paces in a morning session on the 2021 America’s Cup Courses D and E off Auckland’s Eastern Beach, in the strongest winds yet experienced. The day was punctuated with a new top speed and another capsize…
TF35 Scarlino preview
The Yacht Club Isole di Toscana returns to the forefront of international sailing by hosting the TF35 class for the second consecutive year…
Under the stars, a navigation challenge
Last weekend a fleet of 15 entrants sailed all night in the ORCV Overnight Challenge on Port Phillip Bay. “A race that offered a bit of everything, in perfect conditions” commented Andrew Neeson, skipper of Runnalls 39 “Jaffa and overall winner…
Cup Critiqued: The twin Universes of AC75 & AC40
Over the past week, we have gazed into the twin universes of the AC75 and AC40. The AC75 insight was more one of getting a first look at Barcelona as a venue. The jury is still out on the AC40 – but so far it looks very good indeed…
new old
The Swiss challenger for the America’s Cup has been putting its AC75 training boat BoatZero – bought from Emirates Team New Zealand earlier this year – through its paces in Barcelona…
Club pride to be tested in San Diego
The yacht club challenge circuit points west in the fall toward San Diego Yacht Club’s Sir Thomas Lipton Challenge Cup. Attracting top teams across the USA, the round-robin format in J/105s held within San Diego Bay on October 28-30 in San Diego, CA.
“Planning for this signature regatta has been going on since January and I couldn’t be more excited about the 107th running of the Lipton Cup that dates back to 1904,” noted event chair JR Young, and while SDYC owns sets of sails dedicated to the event, Young relies on local owners to donate their boats, and a volunteer army to look after them.
Eleven teams are registered from yacht clubs east to west for three-days of racing. Some novice to the Lipton Cup, and some experienced, all skippers were selected by their home club to best represent them on (and off) the water.
Participants:
American Yacht Club – Skipper Dwight Greenhouse
California Yacht Club – Skipper Will Peterson
Chicago Yacht Club – Skipper Will Holz
Coronado Yacht Club – Skipper Scott Harris
Del Rey Yacht Club – Skipper Chris Weis
Long Beach Yacht Club – Skipper Keith Ives
Newport Harbor Yacht Club – Skipper Justin Law
New York Yacht Club – Skipper Peter Levesque
San Diego Yacht Club – Skipper Tyler Sinks
San Francisco Yacht Club – Skipper Shawn Bennett
Storm Trysail Club – Skipper Bill Zartler
Eight Bells: Jim Hokanson
James Gilbert Hokanson, better known as “Hokie” to many, passed away peacefully September 14, 2022 in his Fallbrook, CA residence with family by his side. He was 91 years of age.
After his Coast Guard service, his career as a Culver City police officer, and running his business Hokanson’s Sails for over 35 years, Jim and his wife Phyllis built their retirement home in Fallbrook. Jim and Phyllis were together over 70 years and shared a lifetime of love.
Born in Minnesota, he moved to California as a child. His love affair with the sea began at an early age and he became a master yachtsman well known in the sail racing and sail making industry. When he retired, he became a farmer tending to his avocado grove in Fallbrook. He was an integral part of his neighborhood and will be deeply missed.
Jim is survived by his wife Phyllis and his children Pamela Bounds and her husband James Bounds, his son Ty Hokanson, his grandchildren Brady and Paige, and his nephew Pete Millikin.
Is this the next level of madness?
It is one thing to have canting keel and water ballasted boats racing against fixed keel designs, but ‘Maxi week’ at 2022 Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez is taking it to the next level (of madness?) by permitting the entry of Roberto Lacorte’s fully foiling 60-foot maxi FlyingNikka.
Unlike FlyingNikka’s first event at 2022 Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup, where the radical boat was placed in a special division in which there were no other entries, her second event in Saint-Tropez will be starting in Division 1 alongside luxury sailing yachts nearly twice her size and well matched with each other… but markedly slower than the foiler.
It is notable the highly refined maxi racing yachts are in Division 2… did they protest the notion of racing against something so different? Their ratings aren’t that much different than the stately yachts in Division 1 which will have to contend with this anomaly.
Racing in France takes place October 4-8 (layday on the 6th), organized by the Société Nautique de Saint-Tropez in conjunction with the International Maxi Association…
Cruising: Hawaiian Island Hop
We didn’t get off on the right foot sailing into Hawaii. It was our own fault, of course. We should have known better. It’s never a good idea to assume that just because procedures were a certain way one year, they will be the same the next. It was an especially bad idea given the world was still in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic. Nonetheless, “Go away!” shouted through a megaphone, didn’t seem like the most constructive way of handling the situation.
Not to say my husband, Seth, and I was entirely surprised. Having lived in the islands for a number of years now, we knew sailors often don’t get much of an aloha from the authorities in this part of the world. We also knew the reasons for this attitude, having heard the stories of sailors being polluters, creating eyesores both above the surface and sewage below, as well as sailors who contribute nothing to the economy while making use of the state’s infrastructure and paying no taxes. Then there are that handful of entitled cruisers who have behaved rudely to local officials over the years, sealing the deal, as it were. The result is a kind of official obstruction to sailing here, as well as poor services for boaters, both local and transient, which is a shame. Hawaii has one of the greatest seafaring histories in the world, and yet it’s very difficult even for locals to cruise the islands. One of our good friends—a Native Hawaiian, no less—was recently run out of an anchorage on the island of Lana`i with no reason given. The official antagonism toward cruisers is all the more bizarre because the rest of the people who live here don’t seem hostile to sailors at all.
Knowing all this, and despite being Hawaiian residents, Seth and I had decided against sailing directly home when we’d left North America aboard our cold-molded sloop, Celeste, deciding instead to sail to French Polynesia—an area we had both wanted to go back to ever since our circumnavigation a dozen years earlier…
American Magic open winter training in Pensacola, Florida
Tom Slingsby will join the American Magic team in Pensacola, Florida, where the NYYC American Magic has its training base and begins working toward the 37th America’s Cup…
Swiss team wins 3rd consecutive GC32 Racing Tour
Appropriately, given it is the longest-standing and most successful catamaran racing team on the planet, Alinghi Red Bull Racing has been confirmed as the 2022 winner of the GC32 Racing Tour…
Formula Kite Europeans – Leaders Boschetti of Italy and Jessie Kampman of France
Lorenzo Boschetti of Italy moved to the front of the pack on day three of the 2022 Lepanto Formula Kite European Championships in Nafpaktos, Greece…
Globe40: Two down, One to go
Seven teams were at the beginning of the 2022-23 Globe40 on June 26, a multi-leg doublehanded round the world race in Class40s. With five duos having started the third leg from Mauritius to Auckland, New Zealand on September 11, here’s an update on September 30, 2022:
Yesterday, the Dutch crew on SEC HAYAI, Frans Budel and Ysbrand Endt, passed the longitude of Cape Leewin in south-west Australia, a 3,580-mile sea passage from Mauritius, which took them 16 days and 12 hours. They were followed just 8 hours later by the Japanese/ Italian crew on MILAI Around The World. SEC HAYAI was also the first to negotiate the gate at Eclipse Island, the course mark close to Cape Leeuwin.
In the legendary trilogy synonymous with round the world races, the GLOBE40 has now checked off two of the three great capes – Cape of Good Hope and Cape Leeuwin. This passage via Australia more or less marks the halfway point in the event’s second longest leg, which spans nearly 7,000 miles in all and rounds of in New Zealand. Only Cape Horn remains…
a worthy cause
patriot state
The keel block for the second of five new purpose-built, state-of-the-art training vessels for America’s state maritime academies was set into place today at the Philly Shipyard marking the next milestone in the project. The start of the assembly of the second vessel, which will be named Patriot State, comes just days after the first vessel, Empire State VII, left the dry dock for her final stage of outfitting.
Work on the second of the vessels began in March 2021 with the first steel cut. Today’s keel laying was a ceremonial recognition in which the first grand block of the vessel is loaded into the building dock. The second NSMV (National Security Multi-Mission Vessel) is scheduled to be delivered to Massachusetts Maritime Academy in 2024. Read on.
Rich get poorer in Golden Globe Race
(September 29, 2022; Day 26) – A week after the 2022-23 Golden Globe Race fleet crossed the Lanzarote gate, Simon Curwen (GBR) is leading the fleet into the Doldrums through the 10th parallel, where the elastic fleet expands and compresses depending on the conditions.
It has been mainly compression as leaders Curwen and Tapio Lehtinen (FIN), who after making most of their time west of the stormy low-pressure system, are now hitting the windless wall of the Doldrums…
Notice of Race for Youth and Women’s America’s Cup
In addition to the 37th America’s Cup is the 2024 Women’s America’s Cup and Youth America’s Cup, with up to 12 teams competing for each event in Barcelona, Spain.
The Youth America’s Cup starts on September 19 and the Women’s America’s Cup on October 3. Both series begin with a week of practice for the teams before the fleets are split, where possible, into two with the confirmed Amrica’s Cup Teams competing in one group and all the invited yacht clubs from around the world competing in another.
With evenly matched AC40 boats provided, a qualifying series of fleet race advance the top two teams for a winner-take-all final race.
The scheduling for the Youth America’s Cup has the finale on the same day as the America’s Cup Challenger Final on October 2 – and will be raced in-between the Final flights – whilst the Women’s America’s Cup final race will be held on October 16, the date scheduled for two America’s Cup Match races and again between flights…
For Notice of Race, click here.
Six titles at Hobie 16 World Champs
The 2022 Hobie 16 World Championships were September 15-29 in Sant Pere Pescador, Spain. As is tradition, the Hobie Cat Company provided 50 new identical boats to be used for the championships which had 15 days of racing, 60 races, and 353 sailors from 22 countries participating in this event together.
Here are the titles decided (age limit for skipper with crew age open):
• Cam Owen/ Susan Ghent (AUS) are the new masters champions (45+ years, 37 boats), followed by Darren Smith/ Claire Bisgood (AUS), and Stefan Griesmeyer/ Caterina Degli Uberti (ITA)
• In the Grand Masters (55+ years, 24 boats), Rod Waterhouse and Kerry Waterhouse (AUS) are the new World Champions, They were followed by William Edwards and Lucinda Edwards (RSA) in second and Jens Goritz and Michela Piu (GER) took third.
• In the Great Grand Masters (65+ years, 12 boats) it was USA for the top three spots with Peter Nelson and Holly Deuterman (USA) being crowned Champions followed by Michael Montague and Kathleen Ward, and Blair Wallace and Sasha Wallace respectively in second and third.
• In the Women’s series (13 boats), Caterina Degli Uberti and Diana Rogge (ITA) top the top spot, followed by Bella Zanesco and Juliet Bates (AUS), with Carmen Andrews and Haylie Andrews(AUS) picking up third.
• For the Youth series (under 21 years, 17 boats), Valerio Tomassi and Eva Orsolini (ITA) were number one, with Ben Jochims and Paula Deppenbrock (GER) coming second, and Morgan Smith and Annabel Luxton (GBR) in third.
The overall open championship was held at the end in which 50 teams pre-qualified through their home country with another 74 teams hoping to advance through on-site qualifiers on September 22-24.
For those able to qualify, the championship group competed in a Semi Final stage on September 25-27 to advance the top 48 for the Finals and the open world title on September 28-29…
• Details: https://hobieworlds.com/
• Results: https://sailingresults.net/?id=81406
OK Dinghy Europeans – Three Races . . . Three Winners
Following two days of mistral, racing finally got underway at the 2022 OK Dinghy European Championship, at Société Nautique de Bandol, France…
Royal Cup 52 Super Series Scarlino Day 3
The waters of the Golfo di Follonica, Tuscany continue to deliver excellent racing conditions for the Royal Cup 52 SUPER SERIES Scarlino…
America’s Cup: Recon Diary – Pretty Epic
Returning to New Zealand from the European summer circuits, Pete Burling and Blair Tuke wasted no time in re-joining the extensive Kiwi testing programme, stepping aboard ETNZ’s AC40 for a blustery first taste of the most sensational boat of 2022…
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