Winds in the mid-20s and a small craft advisory didnt stop Jimmy Spithill and Russell Coutts from heading out to test sail their AC45s in San Francisco Bay on Monday, June 13th. Owned by Oracle Racing, both boats were preparing to head to Cascals, Portugal later this summer for the Americas Cup World Series. But in a dramatic explosion of wind, wave, and carbon fiber, Coutts buried
The Extreme Sailing Series, a worldwide racing circuit starring high-powered Extreme 40 catamarans, is on its way to the United States.Now in its fifth season, the series features 11 teams loaded with veteran sailors whose resumes include everything from world championships to the Olympics to the Americas Cup. Among the nine scheduled stops this year are the Sultanate of Oman, Englands
Returning to the waters that made them famous, the J class yachts Velsheda and Ranger are holding a series of races off Newport, Rhode Island, June 15-19 to kick off a four-regatta series that culminates in a race around Englands Isle of Wight in 2012.Starts and finishes will be off Fort Adams. Other good vantage points around the bay will be at
Brad Van Liew has won the fifth and final stage of the Velux 5 Oceans Race, logging a perfect score for the round-the-world event aboard his Eco 60 Le Pingouin. The finish in La Rochelle, France, marks the end of Van Liews third solo circumnavigation and the second time he has swept the field in the Around Alone/Velux 5 Oceans series, solidifying his place as Americas
The Atlantic Cup, a new event intended to promote Class 40 racing in the United States, kicked off in style this past May, with four boats competing for $15,000 in prized money off the U.S. East Coast.Dragon, with Mike Hennessy and Rob Windsor aboard, won the opening double-handed offshore portion from New York Harbor. Cutlass/11th Hour Racing, with Rob
Day Four of the Extreme Sailing Series’ Istanbul stopover proved to be exactly that: extreme. In roughly 19 knots of breeze, with 11 boats gearing up for the start, Alinghi and Team Extreme suffered a classic port-starboard collision when Alinghi tried to duck below, but simply did not have enough room.Attendees reported hearing the crash from as much as 500
Team Dragon defeated three other doublehanded teams over the weekend to win the offshore opener of this weeks Atlantic Cupa new event featuring red-hot Class 40 sloops and $15,000 in prize money.Dragon completed the course, which began in New York Harbor and ended in Newport, Rhode Island, in just under 31 hours. Its two closest competitors, Team Cutlass-11th Hour
On April 10, American sailor Ryan Breymaier and his German teammate Boris Herrmann crossed the finish line on board the Open 60 Neutrogena in fifth place out of 15 boats in the double-handed Barcelona World Racedespite being relative newcomers to shorthanded offshore racing and sailing a relatively old boat, built in 2004.The 25,000-mile race begins and ends in the
This years Charleston Bermuda Race, set to begin May 21, will once again feature political satirist Stephen Colbert among its participants. This is the second time Colbert, a native of Charleston, South Carolina, and the host of Comedy Centrals Emmy award-winning program The Colbert Report, has sailed the race.The ocean has had a free ride for too long. Well, it has to deal
Many seperate details make a boat close-winded, but one critical factor often overlooked is the headsail sheeting setup. The most exquisite hull form with the most modern rig in the world wont sail well to windward if the headsails cant be trimmed in close enough to get the sails to do their work.Headsail sizes are defined in terms of their luff perpendiculars (LP) as a percentage of
During the pandemic, I was stuck aboard Guiding Light, a Lagoon 410, in St. Lucia for over a month. During that time, as I worked
Anacortes, Washington, is an unassuming sea-salty town near the San Juan Islands of Puget Sound, and the Betts Boats yard is easy for a passerby
The Xquisite X5 Plus is a major update of the boat that SAIL awarded Best Large Multihull and Best Systems titles in 2017. The changes
When I began preparing Minx, my 1987 Pearson 39-2, for extended Caribbean cruising, I had to balance my champagne wish list against my beer budget.
The decision to host the next America’s Cup in Barcelona ruffled the feathers of some fans, but the Defender is happy with how the venue
Elan’s first sporty “Grand Turismo” yacht, the 43ft GT5, launched in 2017, and was actually a bit of a mash-up. It combined an existing go-fast
The days of multihulls being the weirdos of the sea are gone. Nothing illustrated this better than the 2021 Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC), which
There is, of course, nothing new about bowsprits—sailing ships have been using them for centuries. That said, these days they are more popular than ever
For years, Nautitech Catamarans has been doing things differently from other production cat builders, and it seems to be paying off. When the French company
