Regattas

The hype surrounding the recent America’s Cup would have you believe that to go foiling in a catamaran requires a Herculean effort, but this is not the case. On the AC72s the monumental crew workout we all witnessed was required to maintain pressure in the hydraulics controlling the foils and the wing.

This past spring was an especially busy one on Charleston Harbor, with not one but three regattas taking place in quick succession in April: Sperry Top-Sider Charleston Race Week, the Moth North Americans and, new this year, the inaugural Fort 2 Battery Race, a high-speed 3.8 mile downwind sprint from Fort Sumter to the Charleston waterfront.

U.S sailor Ryan Breymaier and Spanish co-skipper Pepe Ribes have won the doublehanded IMOCA Ocean Masters New York to Barcelona race, completing the transatlantic course in 14 days 2 hours and 44 minutes.

Just over a month ago, 44 sailors and 11 coaches gathered for a crash course in racing during the 14th annual Offshore/North U Performance Race Week at South Seas Island Resort on Captiva Island, Florida

Now “ordinary” sailors can enjoy the same fighter-jet-style technology, thanks to a company called Afterguard Marine, which introduced its own set of head-up-display sunglasses this past spring, at about $2,000 apiece.

It’s been said the Newport Bermuda Race is held only once every two years because it takes that long for the memories of how tough the last one was to fade sufficiently to entice crews to sign on for another.  

Let’s start with the premise that Larry Ellison and his Oracle Racing CEO, Russell Coutts, set out after winning the Cup in 2010 to “normalize” the beast that is America’s Cup competition. Their intent was/is to transform Cup racing into a profitable, predictably organized professional sport.

Co-skippers Joe Harris and Patrick O’Connor aboard Gryphon Solo 2 won the fourth annual Atlantic Cup in a tiebreaker, closing out a dramatic series marked by both a hard grounding and the closest offshore race finish in Atlantic Cup history.

This year marks the 12th running of the Great Texas 300—a marathon event in which many teams are forced to drop out before they even have a chance to truly get going, as their dreams come to grief in the heavy surf of the race’s signature beach starts.

Hobie Alter began playing games in the Pacific Ocean in his teens. At 18, he started competing in surfing competitions, and in 1953 opened his first surfboard shop in Dana Point, California. He quickly developed ways to improve balsa core surfboard production, and it didn’t take him long to invent the foam-core surfboard, which revolutionized the sport by giving surfers a lighter, more agile toy to play with.