Racing
Ultims to Race Solo Around the World
For years now, maxi-trimarans, both solo-sailed and fully crewed, have been racing the clock on their own around the world in an effort to set ever faster records for the world’s fastest circumnavigation under sail. Back in 2000-01 there was also a no-holds-barred ...read more
Spindrift Racing
In the 11 years since Spindrift Racing made its debut, the pro sailing team has made a big splash, and the upcoming season is expected to be no different. Spindrift co-owners Dona Bertarelli and Yann Guichard recently unveiled their plans for 2022, which included the appointment ...read more
St Maarten Multihull Challenge
To go behind the scenes of a well-run major regatta is to wonder at a marvel of organizational skill. Going behind the scenes at the 2020 Caribbean Multihull Challenge held off the island of St. Maarten this past winter, not so much—and that’s a good thing. Gathered around the ...read more
Ultimate Multihull Sailing
It’s hard to be sure when things started to change, but I am pretty sure it was the evening of April 20, 1993. As the sunset, spluttering and sizzling into the Atlantic, the 86ft catamaran Commodore Explorer crossed an imaginary finish line near Île d’Ouessant off the northwest ...read more
Ngalawas and The Kraken Cup
I have been a sailor my whole life and knew the moment I accepted a job in Zanzibar that I would need to find my way onto a sailboat and into the sailing community there. This led me to Google, where I started searching for anything sailing-related in the area. Once I made it ...read more
Video: The Power of an Ultime Tri
. If there was ever any doubt as to the speed potential for the eye-popping Ultime maxi-trimaran class, the first 24 hours of the Brest Atlantiques race have surely put such doubts to rest. The drone footage above of Franck Cammas and Charles Caudrelier’s Gitana Edmond de ...read more
Joyon’s New Record Hunt
He might be the graybeard of the glamorous Ultime trimaran class, but veteran singlehander Francis Joyon is rocking his 60s with a new burst of record-seeking inspired by age-old trade routes. The 63-year-old, who currently holds the Jules Verne Trophy for the fastest crewed ...read more
Catnapped Aboard a Racing Multihull
It was after midnight when I realized my daysail with Tony Bullimore aboard his giant record-breaking catamaran, Team Legato, was not going to plan. The big cat was en route for a December dash from England across the Bay of Biscay to Barcelona and the start of a drag race ...read more
France’s Maxi-tri Ultime class
It’s hard to believe how far foiling has come since the Moth class figured out how to reliably take to the air in the early 2000s. Was it really only in 2013 that the America’s Cup was dragged kicking and screaming into the foiling world by Emirates Team New Zealand back in San ...read more
The European Great Loop
I always wanted to see with my own eyes the places where Western history was made. Since most of our forefathers were explorers by ship, it seemed fair for me, as an American, to discover those lands just as they’d left European shores to discover ours hundreds of years ago. So ...read more
François Gabart Sets a New Singlehanded Round-the-world Record
When François Gabart sailed his giant trimaran Macif across a line between England’s Lizard Point and Oussant in France on December 17 after 42 days at sea, the 35-year-old Frenchman not only set a new singlehanded round-the-world record, he cemented his place among the great ...read more
Multis Rock the 600
Over the last 10 years the RORC Caribbean 600, a distance race that starts and finishes in Antigua and winds around the Leeward Islands from Guadeloupe in the south to Anguilla in the north, has grown to become a highlight of the island regatta season. It’s hotly contested by ...read more
SuperFoilers are Taking the World by Storm
It was the summer of 2013 and Aussie sailor Bill Macartney was in San Francisco for the 34th America’s Cup—the summer of “the Comeback” and the moment when the Cup officially took to the air thanks to the efforts of Emirates Team New Zealand. “Seeing Team New Zealand come ...read more
Video Highlights from Rolex Yachtsman, Yachtswoman of the Year Awards Ceremony
. This year’s Rolex Yachtsman and Yachtswomen of the Year Awards, which went to J/70 World Champion Peter Duncan and Enoshima Olympic Week Laser Radial Gold Medalist Erika Reineke, were presented at the New York Yacht Club’s famed Manhattan headquarters March 2018 ...read more
Foiling Multihulls Take Their Toll
Although sailing has always been inherently dangerous, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that in addition to elevating boatspeeds, today’s foiling multihulls are also dramatically upping the level of risk. In the run-up to the 35th America’s Cup, regatta organizers were fond of ...read more
MHS: Atlantic Records Tumble
There are few accolades in sailing more sought after than the title “record holder,” and there are few records more sought after than that for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, west to east. The record is for the fastest time from Sandy Hook, New Jersey, at the ...read more
Foiling a 105-footer—singlehanded
Vraiment Incroyable! It’s official, we have now truly entered a “Brave New World” of sailing; either that or the world has truly lost its mind. This past fall, SAIL magazine first covered the Brest Ultime Challenge, a singlehanded nonstop round-the-world event set to take place ...read more
The America’s Cup and Multihulls
A look back at how we got to full-foiling cats in Bermuda Ever since the schooner America won the “100 Guinea Cup” fated to bear its name, the America’s Cup has been as much about technology and change as actual sailing. America itself, for example, won in large part thanks not ...read more
High-speed, Singlehanded Trimarans Ready to Circle the Globe
Just when it seemed impossible for another event to describe itself as the “Everest of round-the-world yacht races,” one has popped up on the radar that is, well, the Everest of round-the-world yacht races. The Brest Ultime Challenge is due to take place in 2019 and will be like ...read more
Harken, Slingshot and the Sailing Speed Record
In an excerpt from his recently published memoir Fun Times in Boats, Blocks & Business, Harken Inc. co-founder Olaf Harken recalls the time his company helped try to break the world sailing speed record My brother, Peter, and I have a common philosophy regarding future major ...read more
R2AK: Alaska or Bust
If you haven’t heard of the most outrageous boat race in North America, it’s time to get with the program. It’s the Race to Alaska, a 750-mile epic up the Inside Passage from Port Townsend, Washington, to Ketchikan, Alaska, with a stopover in Victoria, British Columbia. Beset ...read more
Two U.S. Sailors are Taking on the European Foiling Scene
What does a pair of enthusiastic Texans do when they can’t find anyone to race against aboard their full-foiling Flying Phantom catamaran? Go where people are racing them, in the south of France. This past April, John Tomko and Jonathan Atwood, both of the Lone Star State, ...read more
Oracle Team USA Ends Up in the Drink Again
It was October 16, 2012, only a couple of months after Emirates Team New Zealand took to the air with the world’s first full-foiling AC72, making the Kiwis the odds-on favorite to win the 34th America’s Cup. Then just as things couldn’t look worse, Jimmy Spithill stuck the nose ...read more
Stadium-style Catamaran Racing
“Democratization” has long been a buzzword among technologists and a certain type of business guru. But the phenomenon can also be said to be alive and well within the sailing world, especially in the area of cutting-edge inshore catamaran racing. Indeed, in many ways it has ...read more
A Transat for Cruising Multihulls
ARC founder Jimmy Cornell is not one to rest on his laurels. He has come up with a new transatlantic rally exclusively for cruising multihulls. The Multi Transat will start from Santa Cruz de Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, on November 12, and finish in Barbados. It is open ...read more
A Trimaran Takes the ARC
History was made in the 2015 Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) when a production cruising trimaran took line honors in the 2,680-mile event. The Neel 45, La Caravelle, skippered by Frenchman Jean-Marie Caillaud, arrived in St. Lucia on the evening of December 5, just six hours ...read more
Cup Action in New York, Chicago
Americans will get a look at the six teams who’ll be sailing for the America’s Cup in 2017 when the Louis Vuitton America’s Cup World Series comes to New York and Chicago this year. The United States has scored two of the six events for 2016. The New York round of the series, ...read more
The Transat is Back
Back in the late 1950s a small group of British sailors got together and came up with the crazy idea of racing each other across the Atlantic, singlehanded. The Observer newspaper stepped in with sponsorship, and in May 1960 five intrepid sailors started the Observer ...read more
Phaedo³ and Timbalero III Steal the Show at Antigua Sailing Week
It seems that over the last year every conversation on a dock or yacht club dealing with multihulls invariably included two boats—the big green tri and the little orange cat that were, respectively, breaking records and turning heads all over the Caribbean. So I was pretty ...read more
Orange is the New Foiler
Emirates Team New Zealand stunned the sailing world in 2012 by “foiling” its wingsail-powered AC72 catamaran. Now Gunboat founder, Peter Johnstone, owner Eduardo Perez and the Timbalero III team made sailing history by foiling Perez’s new Gunboat G4 performance “cruiser” at ...read more
Multi-stage Beach Cat Racing Remains the Ultimate Rush
My eyes open after only one deep droning buzz from my alarm clock. I’m already half awake, my mind focused on a strange noise outside the shabby two-story Myrtle Beach hotel. As I stare at the cracked popcorn ceiling, I realize what it is: the sound of a northwesterly whipping ...read more
Paradox: a Modified ORMA 60
Peter Aschenbrenner has been fascinated by high performance trimarans since the mid-1970s. He not only has watched the breed evolve, but has also made three attempts to build a dream boat of his own—a fast cruiser that could sail the oceans with complete autonomy. His first ...read more
Multi-stage Beach Cat Racing in the Worrell 1000
My eyes open after only one deep droning buzz from my alarm clock. I’m already half awake, my mind focused on a strange noise outside the shabby two-story Myrtle Beach hotel. As I stare at the cracked popcorn ceiling, I realize what it is: the sound of a northwesterly whipping ...read more
Nigel Irens Designs Some of the Fastest Racing Multihulls
Tucked away down a narrow alley in the picturesque town of Ashburton, on the edge of Dartmoor National Park in England, is a tiny building called the Tenter loft, a relic from the ancient wool industry when cloth was stretched on tenterhooks. It’s now the quirky office of ...read more