The design rule for the 36th America’s Cup is the most audacious yet: a 75ft foiling monohull that will race mostly in flight at four times true wind speed, up to 50 knots. It’s more an airplane than a boat; more a story of aerodynamics than hydrodynamics. That is the defining ...read more
It can be easy to take for granted the incredible performance of today’s most cutting-edge grand prix racing boats. The latest crop of full-foiling 75ft America’s Cup monohulls, for example, were all up on their foils and even successfully tacking within hours of their first ...read more
Jeanneau America's Mike Coe takes SAIL aboard the brand new Sun Fast 3300 for an exclusive tour. This mid-sized stripped-down racing boat has a perfect balance of amenities and weight-saving simplicity to make it a blast to sail. Though it boasts sleeping space for up to six, ...read more
Team 11th Hour Racing finished in fourth place this past week among the 29 IMOCA 60s competing in the 4,335-mile doublehanded Transat Jacques Vabre race from Le Havre, France, to Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. Aboard were American Charlie Enright and French sailor Pascal Bidégorry, ...read more
. 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
The four monster trimarans taking part in the 14,000-mile Brest Atlantiques race, from Brest, France, to Brazil and then Cape Town and back, found themselves battling brutal conditions under deeply reefed sails from the word go. The event in many ways represents the pinnacle ...read more
Emirates Team New Zealand may have been the first to launch a new-generation America’s Cup boat, but it was the New York Yacht Club’s challenger, American Magic, that had the last (first?) laugh. Just a few days after ETNZ’s radical-looking AC75 hit the water in mid-September, ...read more
In July, 22 12-Metres from six countries gathered in Newport, Rhode Island, for the quadrennial the 12-Metre World Championship—the second-largest 12-Metre gathering ever, only topped by the America’s Cup Jubilee in Cowes, England, in 2001. The famed class is best known as the ...read more
More than just a midlayer Much as we sailors respect our gnarly offshore gear, it’s the lighter-weight stuff we tend to grab on a regular basis, and for a chilly day of racing or just tooling around the harbor it would be hard to find a better piece of kit than Helly Hansen’s ...read more
Coming fast on the heels of Defender Emirates Team New Zealand and the New York Yacht Club, Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli and the Circolo della Vela Sicilia that it represents have launched their AC75 foiling monohull in Cagliari, Italy. Constructed by Persico Marine, the build ...read more
It’s official—Volvo Ocean Race veterans Mark Towill and Charlie Enright will campaign an IMOCA 60 in The Ocean Race 2021-22. Their team, 11th Hour Racing, has become one of the first official entries in the round-the-world race, which is open to both the Volvo 65 one-design ...read more
Team USA’s young sailors went to the quadrennial Pan-American Games in Lima, Peru this summer with high hopes, and returned with a good haul of medals—two Golds, three Silvers, and two Bronze. Gold medals went to Ernesto Rodriguez and Hallie Schiffman (Mixed Snipe) and Riley ...read more
In this fun video, two crews of offshore “Acorns” from Oakcliff Sailing go toe-to-toe aboard a pair of Farr 40s in the 2019 Marblehead-Halifax race. See video… . ...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
As recently as the late 1980s, the idea of an all-female sailing team in the Whitbread Round the World Race (the predecessor to the Volvo Ocean Race) seemed laughable to many. How could women handle the competition? They weren’t strong enough. They wouldn’t be able to take the ...read more
Mark Riley’s Farr 63 Kiwi Spirit secured line honors yesterday in the Marion to Bermuda race, finishing off St. David’s Lighthouse at 0227 local time. Francis Seldorff’s Kinship, a Baltic 52, was second in the 40-boat fleet, crossing the line at around 0500. With 18-year-old ...read more
This July 8-13, Newport, Rhode Island, will be reliving its storied history when the Ida Lewis Yacht Clubs hosts the 12-Metre World Championships. For two and a half decades, from 1968 to 1983, Newport hosted the America’s Cup back when it was sailed aboard these iconic boats, ...read more
Music: https://www.purple-planet.com During last week's 39th Heineken Regatta, all eyes were on The Polish National Fund's Volvo 70 I Love Poland (formerly Puma). The team is comprised of ocean racing veterans, Olympians, and promising under 30's who The Polish National Fund ...read more
Whatever is in the water in Brittany, it must be powerful stuff. Followers of the singlehanded sailing game are used to pretty heroic performances by Breton sailors, but none of them have come anywhere near the recent achievements of a 74-year-old former math teacher named Jean ...read more
The Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race is best known for the wild weather that often marks the Bass Strait between Tasmania and mainland Australia. However, Tasmania’s Derwent River, which serves as the homestretch into the finish in Hobart, can be no less daunting with its ...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
In what is being described as a return to the Volvo Ocean Race’s roots, the route for the 2017-18 will feature almost three times as much Southern Ocean racing as the previous running. No longer will crews have to contend with an often light-air slog north through the Indian ...read more
Photo courtesy of Carlo Borlenghi Be warned. If you ever get a chance to go out on a photo boat with world-renowned marine photographer Carlo Borlenghi, what he likes best is taking dramatic shots of big boats in big waves—really big waves. It was for this reason that Carlo, our ...read more
The 35th America’s Cup, set to take place on Bermuda’s Great Sound, officially kicks off May 26 with the start of the Louis Vuitton Qualifiers, comprised of a pair of elimination rounds that conclude June 12. The winner then takes on the Defender, Oracle Team USA, in a best of 13 ...read more
