In the annals of shorthanded sailing, Australian Jon Sanders stands with the greatest. His achievements are little short of awe-inspiring, all the more so for being accomplished in modest boats on small budgets. A sheep shearer for many years, Sanders started sailing as a child ...read more
Mark Wheeler went overboard a few minutes before midnight. He was in the middle of Lake Michigan, 30 miles offshore in 40 knots of wind. As he fumbled for the lanyard to inflate his lifejacket he watched his racing sailboat, Meridian X, disappear into the night at more than 18 ...read more
The Medalist I bought in 1962 was designed by Bill Tripp and built in Holland by LeComte. The hull was fiberglass and the interior finished to a very high standard in wood. Bill Tripp was a big man and the scale of the boat reflected this. A combination of wide beam and high ...read more
If it is true that adversity introduces man to himself, Michael Kane, 54, must know himself rather well. In a former life, Kane, who still goes by his childhood nickname, Spike, was a bike messenger, an outdoor instructor, a kayaker and a boatbuilder who loved to work with ...read more
In 1968-69 Robin Knox-Johnston won the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, the world’s first solo, nonstop circumnavigation. In June 2018, 30 sailors will set out to honor that historic accomplishment, marking its 50th anniversary by also attempting to sail 30,000 miles, alone, ...read more
Winner of the first-ever round-the-world yacht race, the 1968-69 Golden Globe, on his 32ft teak sloop Suhaili, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston is one of the greatest living sailors. In the years following that solo epic, Knox-Johnston and fellow legend Sir Peter Blake set a Jules Verne ...read more
In a sport dominated by men, Team SCA was not just the only the all-female team to compete in the 2014-15 Volvo Ocean Race, it was also the first all-female team to complete in the VOR in 12 years. Andy Schell recently spoke to team member Sara Hastreiter about what ocean racing ...read more
This past December, the world of competitive sailing lost one of its greats when Danish Olympian Paul Elvstrøm died in his sleep at the age of 88 in Hellerup, Denmark. In addition to being the preeminent Olympic sailor of his generation, winning four consecutive gold medals in ...read more
This past May, the offshore sailing community lost one of its pioneers with the passing of Ramón Carlín, owner and skipper of the Swan 65 Sayula II, winner of the inaugural Whitbread Round the World Race in 1973-74. Carlín was a complete unknown when he entered the event, ...read more
How US Sailing’s new Olympic Development Program will help improve America’s Olympic fortunes Seismic changes have been afoot at US Sailing since the conclusion of the 2012 London Olympics, where the American team suffered its first medal-ceremony shutout since Berlin in 1936. ...read more
Donna Lange is not just a grandmother of 11—she’s a musician, songwriter, registered nurse, delivery captain, the founder of OceansWatch North America and one of the few American female sailors to circumnavigate solo. In 2007, Donna sailed around the globe and stopped twice ...read more
When it comes to professional sailing, Peter Isler, 59, of San Diego, California, literally and metaphorically helped write the book. Isler’s sailing resume is pure pedigree: two America’s Cup wins as navigator (1987, 1988); Intercollegiate Sailor of the Year while at Yale ...read more
Many of sailing’s great names have won the Melges 32 World Championship, but until now these wins were always one-offs. Jason Carroll, 37, of New York City, grew up sailing on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake before matriculating at Harvard, where he sailed Larks and ...read more
The Farr 40 is easily one of the most competitive owner/driver one design classes afloat, placing a world championship title amongst the highest-level achievements that a well-polished sailing program can attain. These attributes, plus the boat’s high-performance temperament, ...read more
It’s 0900 on the dot, and Dawn Riley is starting the morning meeting. With military precision, she scrolls down an agenda she’s been working on for the past three hours. How’s that fiberglass repair? What’s up with the shipment of boats to Abu Dhabi? She scribbles a diagram on ...read more
A thin Spanish breeze skitters over the northwestern Mediterranean as evening slowly fades into night’s cooler comforts. Ashore in beautiful Barcelona, the evening’s bustle is reflected in the myriad lights that are sparking to life, but aboard the IMOCA 60 Hugo Boss, U.S. ...read more
A 2011 graduate of Old Dominion University, Wisconsin native Stephanie Roble has leveraged a stint with the Chicago Match Racing Center to become the third-ranked women’s match racer in the world. She also recently turned pro, sailing aboard boats like the Melges 20 and J/70. In ...read more
Veteran offshore racer Joe Harris and co-skipper Patrick O’Connor took first overall in the fourth annual Atlantic Cup, a doublehanded offshore/inshore series from Charleston, SC, to Newport, RI, aboard Harris’s Class 40 GryphonSolo2. A three-week Class 40 regatta held in May, ...read more
As Newport, Rhode Island’s Ida Lewis Yacht Club prepares to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its signature late-summer distance race, it also takes time to remember its namesake—the real life Ida Lewis. Once hailed as the “bravest woman in America,” Lewis tended the Lime Rock ...read more
Boatbuilder Chris Hood is doing a fine job carrying on the family legacy In 1967 The New Yorker published a now-famous profile of the late sailmaker and America’s Cup skipper Ted Hood. The story noted how, even as a boy, Hood had an aptitude for recognizing yachts at a great ...read more
This past summer U.S. shorthanded veteran Jonathan Green won both his class and IRC overall in the fabled OSTAR race, from Plymouth, England to Newport, Rhode Island, aboard his Beneteau Oceanis 351 Jeroboam, beating a varied fleet that included a high-octane Open 60 in the ...read more
When two people decide to navigate life together as a married couple, it takes work to keep the relationship afloat. But Emma Creighton and Dan Dytch, who are engaged to be married in August 2014, already have the teamwork thing down, having navigated and raced extensively ...read more
It’s been said before, but it bears repeating: one of the great things about sailboat racing is the fact that there’s a place in the sport for competitors of all ages. Take, for example, the case of retired sailmaker and veteran sailor Norm Cressy, who at the tender age of 75 ...read more
