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
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
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
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
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
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
. 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
“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
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
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
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
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
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
