The U.S. West Coast racing circuit culminates in San Francisco, California on August 17-24 for the 2024 World Championship hosted by The San Francisco Yacht Club. Twenty-six teams from the U.S.A, Canada, Germany, Italy and Croatia have committed to the starting line. Now is the time to register and BE THERE!
As America’s Cup entrants must build their boats in the country they represent, shipping can consume valuable time to the race venue in Spain. For American Magic, they opted for air transport, releasing images of it being loaded on a Antonov AN124, one of the world’s largest cargo planes, for its transatlantic flight to Barcelona.
With all six teams soon to launch their new AC75s, the images offered no sense of what is to come as the hull was camouflaged in a plastic wrap. Peter Brown wondered what they were hiding: “Shrouding the hulls in secrecy, when the hull only touches water while waiting for the 10-minute gun?”
Plus, what about the environment? Teams must now have hydrogen powered chase boats, but plastic is okay? This question has a slightly better answer as the hull was covered in biowrap which is a ‘green’ alternative to traditional marine shrinkwrap films.
Charlie Enright, victorious in his third consecutive challenge for The Ocean Race last July, has since been winding down that project while taking some time to find the next thing. The “next thing” just happens to be on the Gunboat 68 Convexity2 owned by Don Wilson, participating in the 2024 BVI Spring Regatta and Sailing Festival.
“It’s been a bit of a whirlwind since finishing up The Ocean Race on 11th Hour, there’s a lot of follow up – you just don’t flip a switch and wind down something like that overnight,” said Enright. “I am still dealing with that as I speak, but seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
“Next up, I’m not sure, I’m more focused on what’s right rather than what’s next. I’m exploring a bunch of different opportunities – pursuing a few things that aren’t concrete right now and seeing what else shakes from the tree.”
Henri LLoyd Go Back to Basics || Matt Sheahan
Fifty years ago, the state of Virginia introduced what is considered today one of the best tourism campaigns ever created: “Virginia is for lovers.” After making numerous trips to Virginia’s Northern Neck, both by sailing vessel and land yacht, I can attest to the fact that the slogan has stood the test of time.
Originally inhabited by eight Virginia Indigenous tribes who established villages along its shores, Virginia’s Northern Neck is one of the most historic regions in Virginia. In 1608, our first tourist, Captain John Smith, referred to it “as a place heaven and earth never agreed better to frame man’s habitation.”
After the engine breakdown on board his Nicholson 35 Lady Blue in the Kiel Canal, one of the busiest commercial channels in the world, Harry Dekkers explains how they resolved the situation
The Kiel Canal provides a convenient shortcut between the North Sea and the Baltic, or as the Germans call it, the Nordsee and the Ostsee. We Europeans call it the Nord-Ostsee-Kanal, or NOK for short, while you Brits just call it the Kiel Canal.
Going from west to east you enter the Kiel Canal via the Elbe River where you enter the locks at Brunsbüttel and you leave the Kiel Canal at Holtenau locks where you proceed into the Kieler Förde. Due to the shortcut of approximately 240 miles, 27,000 commercial vessels and 12,000 yachts transit the Kiel Canal every year.
What happens when one of Southern California's most fearless and well-dressed sailors, and Christian Williams, go daysailing?
By David Blake Fischer
April 2, 2024
Christian Williams tacks his Bruce King-designed Ericson 38 while the author “trims” the genoa, midway through a 10-mile daysail on California’s Santa Monica Bay. Ryan Steven Green
I was at home trying on outfits, preparing to meet author, yachtsman and YouTuber Christian Williams. My aim, I’d told my wife, was to look nautical, literary or, at the very least, not silly. “Do we own any turtlenecks?” I asked, searching through our closet.
Emily had left the room, and our 9-year-old son stood in her place. “A turtleneck?” Ezra asked, shaking his head. “Dad, who’s more famous? You or this guy you’re going sailing with?”
Christian Williams is a former newspaper editor and television producer. In the 1970s and 1980s, he was at The Washington Post. He worked on Bob Woodward’s legendary investigative team, and sailed with Ted Turner and won the 1979 Fastnet race. He completed three solo passages from Los Angeles to Hawaii (and back), most recently at age 78. He’s also the author of five books, and has written and produced multiple TV shows. “Oh, and he’s the creator of a YouTube sailing channel with 75,000 subscribers and over 10 million views,” I said.
Professional sailmaker and one-design champion Allan Terhune reflects on one of the most successful years of his career.
By Dave Reed
April 2, 2024
Allan Terhune is all smiles after a fulfilling year in the MC Scow, Lightning and 6-Metre classes. Hannah Lee Noll
Allan Terhune Jr., of Annapolis, Maryland, finally found himself among the illustrious short-listers of the 2023 Rolex Yachtsman of the Year award. As a sailmaker 15 years and counting, Terhune has won plenty of regattas as both skipper and crew, but 2023 was especially good, putting up big wins in the MC Scow Class, securing his first 6-Metre World Championship title as tactician, and then wrapping up the year with a gold medal in the Lightning Class at the Pan American Games in Chile. One could say he’s getting faster with age, but he’d say, he’s simply having more fun.
The start date for the next edition of sailing's greatest Corinthian challenge has been set. The Transatlantic Race 2025 will depart Newport, RI on Wednesday, June 18, 2025 headed for the southern coast of England. A virtual gate off Lizard Point will enable teams to challenge the course record for this historic passage, but the official finish will take place off the Royal Yacht Squadron's waterfront castle in Cowes, England.
The Transatlantic Race 2025, is a direct descendant of the first great transatlantic ocean race, which started from New York Harbor on December 11, 1866. In the years since, this course has been plied with less frequency than other, shorter offshore race tracks; the 2025 edition will be just the 32nd transatlantic race organized by the New York Yacht Club. Because of that, and the fact that a race from the United States to Europe (or the return) is virtually guaranteed at least one significant storm, simply finishing a transatlantic race remains one of sailing's most coveted accomplishments.
The Organizing Authority of the TR2025 is comprised of the New York Yacht Club Regatta Association, Inc and the Royal Ocean Racing Club. Together with the support of their partners, the Royal Yacht Squadron and Storm Trysail Club, these renowned sailing established will ensure this edition of the Transatlantic Race will be a memorable one.
From Starlink to tradewind sails, first aid and cooking, Ali Wood reports on new and traditional gear for transatlantic sailors and how it performed during an ocean crossing
The Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC), and its sister event the ARC+, is the ultimate gear test – often to destruction – of everything from sails to self-steering, cookers, communications and electronics.
I first visited St Lucia in 2005, and have since covered the event five times.
Sailing boat gear, from sails to watermakers and self-steering systems will be tested during an ocean crossing. Credit: WCC/James Mitchell
While crews are inevitably exhausted when I meet them on the docks, so is their sailing boat kit.
Running sailing boat kit day and night for three weeks in Atlantic swells and squalls, often with tired and inexperienced operators, is a great way to test its limitations, not to mention the problem-solving nous of the crew
I wrote these words in the foreword of my book World Cruising Routes: “Sailing routes depend primarily on weather, which changes little over the years. However, possibly as a result of the profound changes that have occurred in the ecological balance of the world environment, there have been several freak weather conditions in recent years. The most worrying aspect is that they are rarely predicted, occur in the wrong season and often in places where they have not been known before. Similarly, the violence of some tropical storms exceeds almost anything that has been experienced before.”
The Ocean Cleanup has deployed its first Interceptor™ river cleanup solution in the Chao Phraya River, Bangkok - part of a wider partnership to tackle plastic pollution leaking from one the world's busiest working rivers.
Together with partners The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources, Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, The Coca-Cola Company, the Embassy of the Netherlands in Bangkok, Ecomarine, Asimar, and Chulalongkorn University, the project will see Interceptor 019 extract trash while helping us learn more about plastic pollution in Bangkok's rivers and canals.
What do you do when you have yachts that are as diverse as innovative daysailers, a lake sportsboat, a recyclable one-design and an elite high-end carbon weapon? Well at the European Yacht of the Year Awards, we define them as specialist yachts. And this year’s eclectic bunch of nominess for the best special yacht really were full of interesting new ideas.
Learning how to inspect for small rigging problems can stop them from becoming bigger ones after you’ve left the dock.
By Jamie Gifford
March 22, 2024
As sailboat races go, the first Wednesday-night race of the season was off to a cracking start. Our crew maneuvered ungracefully prestart, and we were sloppy tacking aboard the J/35, but our winter fog lifted as we beat toward the windward mark.
Then the sailing therapy abruptly ended with a crash.
As dismastings go, this one was uncomplicated. The windward cap shroud failed at the upper T fitting. What had been installed by a rigger the week before became a mess of wires, crumpled aluminum, and torn Kevlar. I was a sailmaker at the time, and my takeaway was clear: Never trust riggers.
As the business end of the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup nears, all the teams have spent the month of March getting ready for the arrival and final preparations of their new AC75 yachts. These yachts will be the pinnacle of design, the result of thousands of man hours and computer simulations all to produce the apex and defining generation of America’s Cup foiling craft.
Check out the Team-by-Team Rundown, including video updates….Here!
Puerto Rico's Francisco Velez, tactician on Giberto Rivera's IC24, Urayo, perfectly summed up the challenge of the day, and the first two days, of the 50th St. Thomas International Regatta (STIR).
"Local knowledge usually is a big advantage. But now, with winds out of the West rather than East, something that is very unusual, everybody is lost. We are all finding our way. It levels the playing field," says Velez, of Team Urayo, which sits in 4th in the 15-boat, highly-competitive, one-design IC24 class.
With Barcelona going through the early Spring blues as inclement weather systems roll in from the Atlantic and up the Mediterranean keeping many of the teams ashore, it was a day for the brave as NYYC American Magic put in a high-intensity, high-quality, pre-determined training session that was deeply impressive.
