SAIL.SailMagazine

Sailing is notably safe among adventure sports, so safe, in fact, there may be a tendency to regard serious accidents as anomalous freaks from which little can be learned. This is a mistake.

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.

On arriving at St. Georges, Bermuda, this past May to cover the 2012 ARC Europe rally, I quickly found there were four boats in particular that had already formed an unusually close bond.

No two charterers are alike, and we wanted to discover exactly what defines our charter readers. This summer, we sent a survey to over 20,000 readers, asking them to divulge their charter-trip preferences, and we learned a lot.

A strong lineup of new boats from domestic and foreign builders will be on display at the Newport International Boat show in September and the U.S. Sailboat Show in Annapolis in October. SAIL’s judging team will be inspecting them closely for the 2013 Best Boats awards.