Regattas

After marking the third decade of hospice regattas in 2011, the National Hospice Regatta Alliance (NHRA) is promoting no less than 25 events in 2012, taking place from Mt. Desert Island, Maine, to Santa Barbara, California. Since its founding in 1982, the all-volunteer hospice regatta movement has raised more than $16 million to support hospice programs around the country that have helped relieve the suffering of tens of thousands of dying patients through the years.

Jen French and JP Creignou, Mark LeBlanc, and Paul Callahan, Tom Brown and Bradley Johnson are the new members of US Sailing Team AlphaGraphics and will be heading to Weymouth, England, this summer for the 2012 Paralympic Sailing Regatta.

Keep up with Team Gringo, skipper Ryan Glaze and his Rockwell, Texas, based crew out of Rush Creek Yacht Club as they compete in the J/80 fleet during Quantum Key West Race Week 2012!

In the wake of last year’s Chicago-to-Mackinac race, in which two crewmembers died in the capsize of the Kiwi 35 sport boat WingNuts during a severe nighttime storm, the Chicago Yacht Club has instituted a series of changes to help ensure a similar accident doesn’t happen again.

At US Sailing’s Rolex Miami OCR on January 28, Zach Railey took home the gold in the Finn class. The 2008 Olympic Silver medalist is gunning for gold at this summer’s Olympics, and he’s off to a good start.

It was every sailor’s worst nightmare when 22-year-old Sam Goodchild fell overboard during Leg 2 of this year’s Global Ocean Race. Luckily, both Goodchild and his co-skipper, Conrad Coleman, are sailing instructors, so they knew what to do. And with SAIL’s detailed analysis, so do you.

In the rarefied world of grand prix racing sails, the distance between first and second can be measured in millimeters. Today’s racing sails are built out of an exotic menu of high-tech materials using advanced construction techniques to yield shape-specific sails that boast minimal stretch or creep.

Sixteen-year-old Dutch sailor Laura Dekker has successfully completed her circumnavigation of the globe, making her the youngest person to do so. She arrived at her starting and ending point of St. Maarten on January 21 in her 38-foot Jeanneau Ginnfizz ketch, Guppy.

The European Sailing Federation (Eurosaf) is reviving the old Eurolymp Sailing Circuit—which ran between 1975 and 2004—to compensate for ISAF’s decision to drop the number of European stops in its Sailing World Cup series

“I’ve always tried to have a plan of what I’m doing next after the Olympics. The 2012 Olympics has been the focus, but from that has come the opportunity to be able to build a team which we hope can ultimately go on to challenge for the 35th America’s Cup.”