Ocean Racing

San Francisco Bay sailors are accustomed to having the big professional round-the-world races pass them by some 93 degrees of latitude to the south. A diversion to the Golden Gate makes no sense.
How long does it take to get addicted to speed? Not long, aboard the foiling trimaran, l’Hydroptère DCNS. The big, French “water wing” holds the nautical-mile record at 50.17 knots and now has its sights set on a Los Angeles-Honolulu record.
Forget about the speed, what about the noise? It was the pre-start of a 150-mile race from Newport, Rhode Island, to New York City, and I was one of four sailors manning the dual coffee grinders aboard the Multi One Design (MOD) 70 Race for Water.

The Once and Future Volvo

by Brian Hancock, Posted September 6, 2012
Another Volvo Ocean Race has been written into the history books, and to the surprise of many, the event went out with a bang, not a whimper.
It was the start of Leg 2 of the second annual Atlantic Cup, a mixed-format regatta raced in high-speed water-ballasted Class 40 sloops, and we were bound for Newport, Rhode Island.
Team Sanya had a run of bad luck in the Volvo Ocean Race. Really bad luck. Sanya Lan, skippered by Australian Mike Sanderson, is a VOR veteran, yet in this race it seemed like she spent nearly as much time out of the water being fixed as she did in it.
It was a Newport-Bermuda Race competitors will not soon forget, with “perfect” conditions that allowed race leaders to not just break records but shatter them. Leading the charge was George David’s 90ft maxi Rambler.
Abu Dhabi nabbed its first Volvo Ocean Race leg victory after sailing 3500 miles from Miami to Lisbon, Portugal in 12 days. Groupama finished second just six minutes later, followed by PUMA, Telefónica, CAMPER, and Team Sanya.
In late May, the German-flagged Mare won three of five fully crewed inshore races off Newport, Rhode Island, to take first overall in the second running of the fast-growing Atlantic Cup Regatta.
Twenty-something years ago I stood at the mouth of the Solent and watched the start of the Whitbread Round the World Race. I counted 23 boats making their way into the English Channel, with 32,000 miles of hard racing ahead of them. 
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