“Love the little trade which thou hast learned, and be content there with.” — Marcus Aurelius

It was hardly a little trade Tony Parker was practicing at the helm of an America’s Cup 12 Metre in the summer of 1978 off Newport, R.I.

He’d been asked by Baron Marcel Bich to skipper the French trial horse in training for the next Cup, and was doing so well against the A team, by his own account, that its helmsman Bruno Troublé took him aside at one point and beseeched him to lighten up.

The Cup was on the verge of taking the sports world by storm with Dennis Conner, Australia II, the winged keel, ESPN and Fremantle in the wings. Parker, having finished second in three straight Congressional Cups and with a gold-plated resume from Harvard sailing, was a match-racing star in position to play a big role on yachting’s biggest stage.

But something little caught his eye across the dappled waters of Rhode Island Sound that day and changed the arc of his life.

“I saw fifty J/24s out there racing in their first national championships,” Parker says. “The class was brand new and it was exploding. All the best sailors were there. It was so competitive they couldn’t get a start off. There were no black flags or U flags back then. Everyone was over early.”

Parker couldn’t wait to get a piece of that mayhem. “I’m really, really good at infighting,” he says. So off he went to buy his first J/24 and set the stage for the next 47 years, when he’d get his jollies banging away at the top of the fleet in the quirky turtle boats.

All of it came to fruition this fall in a gutsy performance in another fleet of 50, this time at the J/24 World Championships in Plymouth, U.K., where the wind blew the oysters off the rocks. When they sorted out the wreckage after five days at 20-plus knots, Parker’s Bangor Packet stood a stunning second. It marked the fourth time he’d made the podium at the Worlds over the decades, with two thirds and two seconds, but not yet the gold.

The dean of the class, however, was able to mount the stage and accept his trophy just three days shy of his 80th birthday. Parker and his teammates on Bangor Packet finished 7 points behind Headcase, whose Irish skipper Cillian Dickson is Parker’s junior by 47 years.

“It’s absolutely remarkable that he’s stuck with it and does that well at his age,” says one of Parker’s contemporaries, Scott Allen, an ex-Olympian who raced with and against him for years and now lives across the creek from his old rival in Annapolis.

“I think he just really likes the boat, he knows it and he’s comfortable with it,” says Will Welles, of North Sails, who sailed with Parker in all the major events leading up to the Plymouth worlds. “He’s been at it so long, and at the top the fleet, that he does a bit of a legend status. He keeps a young crew to keep him excited, he just loves the sport—he loves to talk about it and thinks about it all the time.

“But what’s really amazing is that he has this drive to keep getting better, and he has no ego whatsoever.”

Of course, the J/24 Worlds no longer attracts the hottest sailors on the planet. Still, Parker’s achievement had the racing crowd back home on edge, monitoring the internet as the regatta wound to a windy conclusion. He was in range of winning till the very end, 4 points back on the last day, when he finished 3-2 to Dickson’s 2-1, with a Japanese team 20 points back in third overall.

By all accounts the regatta was a daily grind, with winds of 20 to 30 and foaming grey seas breaking all around. In one race, Dickson’s boat, well ahead, broached so badly on the last downwind run that the spreaders hit the water, yet the crew managed to get the mess cleared up before the fleet caught up, and they still won the race. “How often do you see that in a world championship?” Parker marvels.

He, by contrast, is a light-to-moderate air specialist, as befits a denizen of the Chesapeake. He attributes his success at Plymouth to a young, athletic crew of sailing pros and a week of practice onsite before the festivities began. “We were lucky that it blew just as hard for practice as it did for the racing,” he says.

He had a veteran team—Emmett Todd, James Niblock and Will Bomar working the front half of the boat and Welles calling tactics.

Still, it was unfamiliar territory. “Sometimes I was steering with both hands on the tiller,” he says. “Six of the (nine) races we had to use the little jib, which we hadn’t had out in five years.”

At least the boat is familiar. He’s had the same Bangor Packet, J/24, Hull No. 58, since 2003 when he bought a steady winner from Andy Horton. Even in one-design racing, he says, some boats come off the factory line inherently faster. He’d been through two that didn’t make the cut before he got his current steed.

Welles, a two-time J/24 world champion himself, acknowledges that Parker has always been committed to having the boat immaculately race-ready. “He puts money into the boat, and that’s why he ships it to the worlds instead of chartering. He values his boat. It’s top notch, the sails are top-notch sails and he treats his crew well so they want to be there and work hard.”

To keep the boat current, Parker sends it “to the spa” at great expense every couple of years for a full treatment at the best boatyard he can find, and lets the experts do their thing. “I’m not the guy you’ll find under the boat sanding the keel,” he says.

Not that he couldn’t. His father owned and ran the marina at the mouth of the Harraseeket River in Maine that’s still in business as Brewers South Freeport Marine. He and his two brothers and sister grew up there, and all were Maine junior champions in one class or another. But by the time his shot at the America’s Cup and sailing’s big tent came along, he says, “life had intervened.” Marriage, a child, law school, a successful business career and eight years in politics as treasurer of the Republican National Committee were to follow, and it all kept him busy.

As for the elusive gold medal he has yet to claim, Parker seems none too bothered. The next J/24 Worlds are in Australia, but “I’m not going to Melbourne,” he said. “That would take a month.”

So, his next shot is October 2027, in Rochester, New York, just down the road. He’ll be 82. Don’t bet against it.

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Randy Hecht got the call while racing at the International Knarr Championship, in Copenhagen, Denmark. The good news? His boat had made the 2,600-mile journey from San Francisco to Toronto in time for the 2025 J/105 North Americans. The bad news? The boatyard in Toronto accidentally broke the mast. With barely two weeks to spare before the start of the championship, his two-week Danish regatta swiftly became fraught with faraway logistics.

“I was confronted with both finding a replacement mast—you cannot just go to a store to buy an immediate replacement—and also finding a skilled rigger to get a replacement mast ready for the boat,” Hecht says. “I was close to throwing in the towel and towing the boat and the broken mast home.”

Hecht, however, was on a mission to win his third J/105 North American title with his talent-stacked crew that included Russ Silvestri (tactician and main), Maggie Bacon (pit), Ethan Doyle (trimmer and strategist), David Janinis (mast), and Steve Marsh (bow). In 2022, racing the boat for the first time, Team Niuhi won the J/105 North American title in San Francisco, and did so again in Rye, New York, in 2023. The team did not race the 2024 edition but Hecht was always committed to Toronto for the opportunity to race against Terry McLaughlin, a four-time North American J/105 champion, Canadian Olympic silver medalist and America’s Cup skipper for Canada.

“This was an opportunity to test ourselves against arguably the best J/105 sailor and team ever,” Hecht says. “We also wanted to sail against a completely different fleet of 105s than what we had faced in San Francisco and Rye.”

Team Niuhi got a lucky break; it was able to borrow a good mast from a local youth sailing charity and found a local rigger to fit it to their boat. Niuhi then went on to win its third J/105 North American title in slam-dunk fashion, finishing with a net score of 25 points after 12 races, including six race wins.

In a regatta post-mortem, McLaughlin, a fierce competitor who has been sailing Mandate with his J/105 partner Rob Wilmer for 13 years, shares his observations: “They are fast and I guess they have been fast for years,” he says. “They also have a very good crew; they seem able to get mediocre starts and come out of those better than anyone else.”

Hecht, who resides in the San Francisco Bay Area, got into the class because he wanted to gain more experience starting a keelboat in bigger fleets. He was also looking for a boat to sail in the Rolex Big Boat Series, and he liked the idea of competing in the 2022 J/105 North Americans, which were being held on the Bay. Hecht had never sailed a J/105 before, but he liked it.

“The feeling of crossing the finish line in first, just nipping a group of other boats, the teamwork needed to adapt to a rapidly changing situation, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, and whether disaster strikes or disaster is avoided, I’ve found it all in the 105,” he says.

Hecht is the kind of guy who owns the room; he’s a commanding presence with his athletic and towering physique at 6 feet 5 inches. He’s intense and tough, having finessed his sailing skills in his early 20s racing Tempests, including the 1972 Olympic Trials. He’s also a 20-year leukemia survivor so his fight or flight instincts may be stronger than those of most others. Hecht also campaigns a 30-foot Knarr and an 18-foot Mercury, which are both competitive fleets with excellent sailors. All of his boats are aptly named Niuhi—Hawaiian for “large man-eating shark” as aptly illustrated on his J/105 mainsail and spinnaker.

Over the years he and Silvestri have put together a crew of sailors to sail the three boats which are all part of Team Niuhi. “We have a process that we use to select crew,” Hecht explains. “First, someone on the crew has to recommend you for the job needed, and everyone on the team understands what we are looking for. We want crew that are responsible, committed for the long term, team-oriented, skilled at their job, likeable, passionate about racing and improving, and have the ability to perform under pressure. Our objective is to win big regattas as a team and that’s how we attract top talent.”

Doyle, Niuhi’s trimmer and strategist, has sailed with Hecht for eight years and thrives on the competitive environment and team philosophy that Hecht embraces. “We went to Toronto with one objective: to win,” Doyle says. “That all-or-none attitude creates an emotionally high-stakes vibe and it is immensely satisfying to be part of a team that gels and thrives under that competitive pressure. Randy is a leader that has an intense focus on success. That level of competitive intensity is not for everyone but leading by example, he’s done an amazing job of putting together a team that embraces that philosophy.”

While Team Niuhi’s success on the racecourse is seemingly a guarantee while Hecht is behind the wheel with his tight crew, he’s a fan of making sure the balance of work versus fun is in check, whether it is a beer can race at home or one on the road, and part of that is having a mix of younger but very skilled sailors on the boat.

“I love the mix of young and older people and how well that can work on a racing sailboat,” he says. “One of our young sailors started a process of playing music as we leave the dock and now we play music all the way to the racecourse—we found that we would all relax and laugh pre-race when listening to music.”

Since his debut in the J/105 fleet, Hecht has been proactive in helping other teams improve, fully aware that keeping a fleet strong does benefit everyone in it. “We try to be an open book on how we make our boat go fast,” Hecht says. “I will take the time to talk to anyone about J/105 speed questions and I will also invite skippers to sail with us for Friday night beer can racing. Without a doubt, it is also helpful to have a local sailmaker who can spend a lot of time with the fleet and act in a teaching role.”

Hecht also takes immense pleasure in the widespread nature of the J/105 class, which he notes has many fleets in wonderful places, with benefits that include a broader group of sailing friends, learning a new racetrack, and experiencing other competitive fleets. He’s a fan of getting on the road once in a while to mix things up, acknowledging that while the coordination around trailering a bigger boat to a new location can be taxing. But the rewards, he says, are worth the bumps.

“We always rent a house for the entire crew which has become a terrific bonding experience for all of us,” he says, “from making meals together, playing pingpong or spending time in the pool discussing how to improve on the racecourse the next day.”

The J/105 North Americans will be in Seattle next year and Hecht is hopeful that there will be a strong contingent from his Bay Area fleet. And speaking from experience, his recommendation to owners and skippers looking for an economic solution to destination racing with a bigger boat is to charter one that is not being used in the local fleet. “The cost and effort,” he says, “is usually less than taking one’s own boat and it comes with fewer challenges.”

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The New York YC’s American Magic was 0-2 with its America’s Cup challenges, and given its early eliminations from AC36 and AC37, the money burn rate was high and the return on investment low. It’s all par for the course with the America’s Cup. After decamping from Barcelona to the team’s base in Pensacola, Florida, there was plenty of lip service about another go at the Cup in Naples, Italy in 2028, but in October, what was a hard maybe became a hard pass.

They didn’t agree with the final Protocol or the defender’s proposed scheme to take management of the regatta out of the hands of Emirates Team New Zealand and into the hands of a quasi-independent governing body called the “America’s Cup Partnership.” With American Magic’s exit, for the first time in Cup history, there may be no American syndicate.

“After extensive engagement with the Defender, Challenger of Record and fellow teams, we’ve concluded that the present structure does not provide the framework for American Magic to operate a highly competitive and financially sustainable campaign for the 38th America’s Cup,” said Doug DeVos, American Magic owner, in a team statement. “We care deeply about the America’s Cup and what it represents. However, for a team committed to long-term excellence, alignment around financial viability and competitive performance is essential. At this time, we don’t believe those conditions are in place for American Magic to challenge.”

Terry Hutchinson, the team’s sailing director, says American Magic’s exit is more of a “hiatus” that will allow them to instead prioritize building “a sustainable platform for high-performance sailing in the United States.” While winning the America’s Cup was always the goal, Hutchinson says they can now focus on their parallel effort to build what they envision as a pipeline of top-level American sailors, designers, engineers and boatbuilders. The shift in priorities, Hutchinson adds, will also allow them to bolster the underperforming U.S. Olympic sailing program by diverting funds and resources to private organizations supporting athletes, including AmericaOne Racing and the Sailing Foundation of New York.

According to Hutchinson, American Magic’s issues with the Protocol and the America’s Cup Partnership primarily revolved around concerns with the event’s commercial structure and future governance, and specifically, what the team felt was the lack of a clear and sustainable financial model. American Magic sought a structure where investors could reasonably expect to recoup their investments within a couple of cycles, but found the proposed model too risky and not conducive to such a goal. The model, Hutchinson says, would require ongoing support from private individuals and yacht club members rather than evolving into a self-sustaining, profitable sporting entity.

SailGP, he says, has the right model, borrowing many of its elements straight from Formula 1’s playbook. And SailGP may well be in the team’s future.

The focus for American Magic and its skeleton crew of engineers, boat builders and sailors in Pensacola is to now take a measured and strategic approach to winding down its America’s Cup operations and assets. Hutchinson says that process includes evaluating the potential to support another American team, should one step up to fill the void, which is not likely at this point. “We would always be open to supporting another American team if somebody wanted to step forward and take it on,” he says. “But it’s not a small undertaking.”

Still, they’re not rushing to fire sale all of their AC assets either, which include a pair each of AC75 and AC40s, containers full of parts and spares, assorted gear and foil sets, not to mention priceless design and performance data and intellectual property. While now officially out of AC38, Hutchinson says they remain cautious and “prefer not to make hasty decisions that could close doors to future America’s Cup involvement.”

Instead, Hutchinson says, they intend to keep their foot wedged in the America’s Cup door and would conceivably field teams into the planned Women’s and Youth America’s Cup AC40 regattas—should American Magic be invited to race. “We want to be good stewards for the America’s Cup,” he says, so the plan is to wait, observe how the event evolves and keep the possibility open for a future return.

For now however, the Olympics, and custom boatbuilding, take precedence, and for this, there are ample resources at American Magic’s Pensacola base. Hutchinson stresses that the goal is to build on existing Olympic systems already in place with US Sailing and elsewhere, rather than disrupting them.

“I think the first way to make the connection is to not impede progress that is already happening,” he says. “There’s a great system already in place, so our role over the next two and a half years is to learn the system that they have and support it where we can. We should make sure that every US sailor that goes to the Olympics in a boat that is immaculately prepared and perfect.”

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There’s one moment from the 2023 Mini Transat Race that is seared into my memory. I was six days into the Atlantic, crossing alone on my 21-footer Terminal Leave. The trade winds were cranking and the boat was surfing along. I remember it vividly—tiller in one hand, mainsheet in the other, appendages humming as the boat accelerated down each wave. Nothing but wave tops and open sea in front of me. For hours everything felt perfectly in flow.

And then, in one explosive moment one of my rudders sheared off the transom. The boat rounded up violently, and I was suddenly in survival mode. Once I discovered that there was no water coming into the boat, I focused on the repair and diverted 300 nautical miles further south to Cabo Verde for a technical stopover. Without a satellite communication link to my shore team, it was on me and my Pilot book to find a port. Fortunately, or maybe through telepathy, I arrived at the correct dock that my girlfriend coordinated to have help available on a Saturday morning.

With the rudder repaired and remounted, I got back to it. Once at sea, alone again, I was reflecting on the previous 48 hours and reminded myself that I was racing for a larger purpose. Sure, getting to the finish was the point, but I was really out there to raise awareness for U.S. Patriot Sailing, the dear-to-my-heart non-profit that supports the veteran community navigate much bigger challenges than I could ever experience in my little boat.

The three years of commitment to that race was one of the most meaningful experiences of my life. I am truly grateful I had the opportunity to race amongst the now and future legends of the French solo offshore racing scene. I am frothing, ready to take it on again. But this time, I’m attacking the race with the most advanced boat I can get my hands on. A focused mindset and a renewed sense of purpose is driving me every day.

The Mini 6.50 fleet used for the race has evolved dramatically from its origin in 1977. Racing across the Atlantic every other year since has led to radical design advancements that eventually make their way to the larger IMOCA 60s of the Vendée Globe. The newest generation of foiling ocean-racing sailboats are rewriting what is known to be possible. Consider this: Nicomatic-Petit Bateau, a foiling Mini 6.50 Proto, broke a new distance record for 352.59 nautical miles in 24 hours during this year’s race. That confirms what many of us already know—the foiling Mini generation is an open invitation to blitz the course.

While I’ve been thinking a lot about what it would mean to participate in this race again from a performance perspective, rather than a mere participant, I’ve also thought about what the race represents for me. After a decade on active duty in the Marine Corps, the last Mini campaign was a bridge that helped me transition back into civilian life. Through that experience, U.S. Patriot Sailing was central to my journey. While my first campaign was about raising awareness for the organization, this next one is about expanding support so more veterans can access the same community that helped me.

When I began exploring what a second campaign might look like, one name kept surfacing: Samuel Manuard. Manuard is one of the most influential and forward-thinking French naval architects today, with a specialty in offshore shorthanded sailing. His designs range from Class40s, to the winning IMOCA in the recent Transat Café L’Or, and even the new generation of planing performance production boats for Beneteau. Simply put: His boats are fast.

In addition to his legendary designs, Manuard is approachable and responsive. Our relationship began with a simple e-mail, in English, and no introduction. From the outset, he believed in me and was transparent about the design process. In November 2024, we finally met in person, on the famous Vendée Globe pontoon next to Charal 2, just days before it was to set off on its non-stop race around the world. From that initial handshake, we were committed to working together. It was a surreal moment as I locked in this incredible yacht designer and knew I would be one day crossing the starting line on the newest generation Classe Mini 6.50.

In the Spring of 2025, my partner, Jane Millman, and I met again with Manuard in France where we spent hours talking through the design options. As he sketched what he thought the boat would look like, we talked through the pros and cons of specific features—and there are many. The campaign is now launched and construction is underway at JPS Production, in La Trinité-sur-Mer. It will be a state-of-the-art carbon flyer. This new prototype is the next evolution of Manuard’s foiling design, with a scow bow, large foils, twin T-foil rudders, a canting keel, rotating wing mast and deck sweeping mainsail.

There were certainly reservations and reflective moments as I committed to this project. A foiling Mini is an entirely different experience from my older RG 650. The learning curve will be steep. Mistakes will be obvious and costly. The speeds will be higher, the loads greater, and everything far more extreme. It’s more boat, more power, and more responsibility. But that’s also what makes this next chapter so exciting. The goal isn’t to simply complete the race; it’s to push the boundaries of design and maximize performance. Ultimately, my new mission is to win the Mini Transat.

The race starts in two years, but the race to get to the starting line began long ago. The build, testing, training, qualification races, preparation, and refinements will be wrapped into a relentless campaign. This time, I understand the process better. I know what weeks at sea alone feels like and how fatigue creeps into decision making. I am far more mature and know how to stay disciplined when the weather doesn’t cooperate or a routing choice doesn’t pan out.

My expectations are high but grounded. I know I will need to adapt to this new foiling platform, refine my boathandling and understand the complex systems on this boat. I’m ready to put in the work as I focus on this campaign full time and bring onboard with me the more than 700 U.S. Patriot Sailing participants across multiple states. With locations on both coasts, and two new teams located in Seattle and Tacoma, Washington, the impact and reach of this organization continues to expand. The organization continues to provide veterans with community and a renewed sense of purpose supporting each other, which often disappears after taking off the uniform. While solo sailing is a lonely challenge, the difficulties faced after returning from combat deployments or transitioning to civilian life are far more isolating for many veterans.

The foiling element is fitting, for this new campaign is an opportunity to give back at a higher level. It is a platform to raise awareness and to increase support. By helping the organization expand programs and create new opportunities for veterans, there is a bright future for the veteran community this team supports. If I have learned anything over the past few years, it’s that purpose is what gets me through tough miles.

The next two years will be demanding, humbling and exhilarating, but all of it will be worth it. While I’m excited for the race to come, I’m more eager to share the highs and lows, and to inspire. In two years, I will be at sea, savoring my victories and facing my failures. I will be alone in my foiler, propelled by wind and a patriot’s purpose.

The post The American Sailor Intent on Foiling Across the Atlantic appeared first on Sailing World.

As I’ve traveled around the country over the years visiting yacht clubs and community sailing centers big and small, I’ve observed an extraordinary amount of perfectly good raceboats sitting idle on their trailers, racks and moorings. It’s easy to tell which ones don’t get used very often, their owners likely at home and thinking about the happier times when they bought the boat with aspirations of using it frequently and maybe even winning a few races.

Either life gets in the way, or in the case of many older one-designs, when new classes come on to the scene, older ones tend to fade away. Too often, remaining boats don’t have a place on the racing schedule, a spark plug to keep the fleet active or a community to rally. This sad and all too common sight of lonely crafts is often a result of too many types of boats in one area but access to the water and easy storage and launching are other barriers that I often hear about.

But there is an easy remedy to get small boats and their owners back on the water, and it’s been available to us for a long time. I am, of course, talking about Portsmouth Yardstick handicap racing. It’s a fundamental tool that can be used to rejuvenate a local fleet of small boats, and it’s an important step in helping to keep dinghy racing alive in the U.S.

Keelboats of different designs race successfully using a variety of handicap rules. Currently in the US, we have Offshore Rating Council (ORC), Performance Handicap Racing Fleet (PHRF), Offshore Rating Rule (ORR) and a few other options. These handicap rules are primarily suited for larger keelboats, but not smaller one-designs or one-offs. These empirical rules are easy to use and are based on experience and observation and handicaps are calculated by using the performance results of different boats. A yacht club or sailing association looking to get more small boats on the water should try using the empirical Portsmouth handicap system to encourage sailors to get their lonely boats back racing.

At a recent regatta, Charlie Enright, the new chief executive officer of US Sailing, witnessed the potential of Portsmouth racing and agreed more can be done to showcase and embrace it.

“At the Archipelago Rally in Rhode Island you show up with your boat and the ‘rating czar’ assigns you a rating associated with the Portsmouth Yardstick,” Enright says. “It’s a pursuit race with a staggered start that allows people with all kinds of boats to race together on the same racecourse in a fun and meaningful way.

“No one complained about their handicap because it was more about participation. You would be surprised how often it is used on lakes and in Middle America. We (US Sailing) are trying to gather data on how many people use it.”

US Sailing publishes a North American edition of the Portsmouth Yardstick Rating Rule booklet (available online) featuring the ratings of a wide variety of sailing craft and Henry Brauer, president of US Sailing, says the organization already has the tools in place. “The Portsmouth system is ready to go for most one-design boats,” he says. “We are encouraging orphan one-design boats that are no longer supported to give Portsmouth a try. We have to make it easy for sailors to participate.”

The Portsmouth Yardstick system has been in place since 1946. It was first developed in England for racing dinghies. The title “Portsmouth” refers to the Portsmouth Harbour Racing and Sailing Association, which supported the work of Stanley Milledge, the local handicapper. At the time, regatta results were tabulated by the Royal Yachting Association, giving each class a handicap based on the collective performance of boats over the course of a season. The word “yardstick” is used to define the time allowance between a designated boat compared with a variety of other classes.

In “The Centennial History of the United States Sailing Association,” published in 1997, Commodore Harry Anderson wrote, “Portsmouth Numbers were imported from Great Britain in the early 1960s. The Thistle Class was used as the yardstick to compare its performance to other classes.” In the publication Anderson also notes that a mix of one-designs can race together using the Portsmouth Numbers (PN). “Imported from the British and adapted for North American (weather) conditions the PN handicaps classes for one-of-kind boats based on the submission of race results by clubs and fleets.”

The perennial challenge for sailing administrators, however, is how to handicap sailboats without factoring in the ability of the skippers and crews. In other sports, such as golf, handicaps are determined by a golfer’s score. In golf it is the athlete that is rated, while in sailing it is the boat that is handicapped. Empirical handicapping, however, does work when you average out the results of many boats over time. The different skill levels of sailors are evened out by using a large sample.

Yacht clubs and regatta organizers can easily add a Portsmouth division to a scheduled regatta or for a weeknight or frostbite series. The result could be a starting line filled with an eclectic fleet of boats raced by enthusiastic sailors. A sailor would not have to buy the latest equipment and spend a large sum to be competitive. Just dust off the old boat and head out on to the racecourse.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Yachting magazine hosted its “One-of-a-Kind Regatta,” which compared the performance of a wide variety of boats. It was quite a scene to observe a fleet of dinghies charging off a starting line with every boat different from the others. Performance capabilities and differences were soon apparent.

The racing was fascinating, whereas every boat seemed to have strong points and often an obvious weakness. Some boats were better in light wind, others in a stiff breeze. Some boats excelled upwind while others thrived when sailing downwind. The event was intriguing because the sailors learned how their boat performed relative to other craft. After racing, discussions among the sailors comparing notes were always interesting. There was no handicap allowance. Bragging rights belonged to the boat that finished first.

While the US Sailing Portsmouth Yardstick booklet lists dozens of classes and PN numbers that have been in existence for ages, creating an equitable handicap for newer and more modern designs is difficult. Recognizing that all boats perform differently, depending on the breeze, handicap ratings are adjusted for wind strength. Each class is listed in the handbook with a Time Correction Factor. A “time-on-time” scoring system is used. In the U.S., the scale is the number 100. Corrected time is calculated by multiplying elapsed time by the scale, and that result is divided by the assigned Time Correction Factor (which is listed in the US Sailing booklet). For those who appreciate a simple formula, Portsmouth’s is simply: Corrected time equals elapsed time multiplied by the Scale/Handicap.

The desire to create fair handicap rating systems has been elusive, but since 1906 there have been many attempts to fairly handicap boats of different sizes. The perfect system may never be found, yet sailors must continue to optimize their boats and sail perfect races. This is what brings everyone to the starting line.

Handicap rules that are based on velocity prediction programs and complex formulas are difficult to administer. Consequently, owners have spent fortunes trying to gain an edge over the competition. The advantage of an empirical rating system is that the handicap is based on actual performance and this is why PHRF and Portsmouth Yardstick have remained popular over the decades. Still, while PHRF is well known, Portsmouth remains under the radar.

Two books have helped me unravel the handicap rating conundrum. One of them is “Men Against the Rule: A Century of Progress in Yacht Design” by Dr. Charles Lane Poor, The Derrydale Press. First published in 1937 as a limited edition of 950 copies that dissected the handicap rating rules of the era, Dr. Poor provides the reader with multiple stories of yacht owners commissioning naval architects to find “loopholes” in the rules to gain an advantage. It is fascinating to read about the triumphs and failures of design.

In 1997, author Peter Johnson published “Yacht Racing: 170 Years of Speed, Success and Failure Against Competitors—and the Clock.” In the book, Johnson expounds upon Dr. Poor’s narrative: “It is a story that produces classic racing winners, distorted freaks, sharp controversy and disputed results, but always fascination for the participant in, and the observer of, yacht racing.”

With the help of years of race results and data, the Portsmouth Yardstick system works well today, so sailors should embrace the opportunity to race—or simply just sail their boats with fellow like-minded small-craft sailors.

I am personally fascinated with racing boats of different sizes and shapes. I appreciate that, if my boat is slower on handicap, then my tactics revolve around finding clear air and avoiding being blanketed by larger boats. On the other hand, when I’m sailing a bigger and faster boat, I look for a clear lane and try to take advantage of puffs and wind shifts early in the race. Over the course of a season, I try to race on boats of different sizes to help me work on different strategies. I find the intellectual challenge one of the most interesting things about racing sailboats. Encourage your friends to get that neglected but back on the water.

The post Get More Racers on the Water with Portsmouth Racing appeared first on Sailing World.

“One thing that I love about distance racing is the 10-minute victories,” says Jaime Mack, a few hours into the 2025 Round the County Race.

This annual two-day event organized by the Orcas Island YC and the Friday Harbor Sailing Club circumnavigates the islands comprising Washington State’s San Juan County with a Saturday night stopover in Roche Harbor on San Juan Island. The 65 nautical-mile race regularly attracts triple-digit fleets and unfurls in early November, with even-numbered years rounding clockwise and odd-numbered years taking a counterclockwise course.

The direction matters, of course, because the waters surrounding the San Juans have notoriously strong currents that can leave a fleet parked up or inverted, especially when someone forgets to ply the wind machine with enough Benjamins. Much like the 2025 race.

I consider Mack’s words as we slowly fetch Matia Island, maybe 10 miles into our 34 nautical-mile first leg. While November in the Pacific Northwest is often wet and stormy, and always dark, this particular weekend is a stunner: bluebird skies, sunshine and warm temperatures.

Better still, our skipper Justin Wolfe has assembled a great crew consisting of Ben and Jen Morgan Glass, and Andy and Jaime Mack aboard Ripple (in still water), his Paul Bieker-designed Riptide 35. We’ve never sailed together as a crew, and most of us are new to the boat, but Ripple is well-prepared, and our logistics are carefully sorted.

There are just two hiccups: foul currents and a dearth of breeze.

Still, we’ve had our wins.

Take, for example, the first “chapter” from the starting area at Lydia Shoal, in Rosario Strait, to Point Lawrence, Orcas Island’s northeastern-most point. The smart money, at least temporarily, wagers on the course’s western edge, while we find ourselves milking a thin kelp- and rock-dodging breeze that carries us east, then north.

Flash forward two hours, and we’re slatting in lumpy waves next to other boats that started with us, temporarily looked smarter, only to be (closely) examining our sheer line or transom at this next restart.

I savor this 10-minute victory, as the rest of the day looks challenging.

The Round the County Race has a long history of temperamental winds, so the Sailing Instructions require boats to record their times at the legs’ halfway points, perchance it becomes impossible to finish the complete legs by the 1800 cutoff.

Such is our fate aboard Ripple, as it becomes clear by 1430 that our objective is evolving from finishing the leg to fetching the halfway mark by its 1600 deadline.

Still, math is math, and the VHF calls start at around 1530. We aren’t happy to announce our own retirement 10 minutes later, but the last 2 miles will be someone else’s 10-minute victory.

We tuck Ripple into its berth three hours later, and the reason for the race’s strong local following refocuses: Sailors, bundled in winter jackets, mingle on the docks with libations and victuals. There are a few groans about the day’s breeze, of course, but most scuttlebutt that I overhear involves sunshine and warm temperatures. This is my fifth time doing this race, and every year is different, from torrential rains to big breeze to frigid temperatures, but the race is (usually) good sailing, has a laid-back vibe, and the chance to hang with friends in Roche Harbor are—for me—its gravity.

We nail our boat-end start the following morning, and we assume a windward lane as we reach toward San Juan Island’s Hanbury Point. Our A1.5 spinnaker is pulling, and after yesterday, 7 knots of Speed Over Ground feels big.

We shift gears several times between the J1.5 and the A1.5 and commit to an offshore lane that gives us fine views of San Juan Island’s western shoreline. Jibing Ripple’s kite is easy in the 10 to 15 knot breeze, and the boat’s water-ballast system, combined with our active crew ballasting, keeps us rumbling.

Mount Baker’s glaciated summit appears as we reach San Juan Island’s southern flanks, and, eventually, the leg’s halfway point. But as we pass Colville Island, in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the missing Benjamins again become problematic.

We push up Rosario Strait, bucking a 2-knot current and hanging onto increasingly fickle fingers of wind with Ripple’s A1.5.

Mack’s words about 10-minute victories play out again as our section of the fleet negotiates Bird Rocks. We opt for a westerly routing, but for a pregnant hour, the smart move looks to have been the easterly line. Jen Morgan Glass, our tactician, and Wolfe work some magic, linking scuffed-up stretches of brine amongst swaths of greasy-looking saline, while the rest of us keep the sails—and mood—trimmed.

It works, sort of.

Our position, which had been looking bearish, transitions into another 10-minute win, before the bottom falls out. Flow detaches from our foils, and nothing budges our SOG above zeros. Painful.

Mountaineers say the final 5 feet are the crux of any climb, and this truism resonates as we stare at the finishing line for what feels like hours. We’re talking frisbee range, but bow stems are all that matter.

And we’re not alone: the nearby fleet compresses, all of us parked, as we rifle through headsails and kites. All options hang limply as the sun slouches west.

We drift toward the finish line in a tight scrum-cum-rulebook-knowledge-melee. We finally catch the RC’s finishing whistle and clear out, making room for others who are still fighting for their final five feet.

The day’s bonnet blue sky fades to black as stars and a waning gibbous moon punctuate our delivery back to the Orcas Island YC. I burrow into my down jacket and consider how celebrating 10-minute victories helps to justify hours of hard work while also distributing the day’s dividends more widely across the fleet than mere award-ceremony hardware.

Granted, it would be nice to use some of these dividends to bribe next year’s wind machine, but it wouldn’t be a full value Round the County Race without restarts, challenging currents, kelp, and the tapping of local knowledge.

But hey, at least it didn’t rain.

The post The Allure and Agony of Seattle’s Round-the-County appeared first on Sailing World.

His tan has long since faded, but Paul Nuechterlein still can’t get the smile off his face from that time when he, his son Ross, a crew of his best mates and a mothership catamaran full of rowdy racer-chasers won the regatta of their lives.

The regatta was, of course, the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series Championship in the British Virgin Islands. Months earlier, Nuechterlein and his friends on Never Alone had won their Cal 25 division at the series’ Detroit stop, which scored them a championship berth, a 42-foot bareboat monohull from Sunsail and six days of Caribbean vacation racing.

The unknowns they had to top for the title included Jeff Padnos’ S2 7.9 aces (K2) from Holland, Michigan; Craig Roehl’s Tartan 10 Meat entourage from Chicago; Carolyn Corbett and her Elektra squad of IOD and Viper 640 sailors from Marblehead; and Brad Tindall and Greg Turman’s J/105-racing Texans on TNT. Rounding out the fleet was veteran pro George Szabo from Quantum Sails San Diego. He had nine souls crammed onboard his vessel, three of them pre-teen girls.

K2, Meat, TNT and Never Alone were each sporting motherships laden with friends, so the flotilla was indeed a grand one when it set off from Sunsail’s base in Road Town, Tortola. The itinerary for the racers was simple: Day 1, race around a bunch of islands. Day 2, race to a resort. Day 3, enjoy a lay day at said resort. Day 4, race to a pool, a deserted island and then a dance floor. Day 5, sprint to another anchorage and then buoy race through its mooring field. It would all end with awards on the beach and cannonballs from the upper deck of the legendary Willy T.

That was the plan, and the crew of Never Alone was ready for it. Upon winning their berth back in June, they did what all good race teams do: recon. They got tips on how to locally source materials for a whisker pole, how to get maximum speed from their untunable bareboat and how to get around and through the BVI’s towering islands.

“There was a lot of information available to us to find out which islands we would be sailing to and how to trick out the boat a little bit,” says Ron Sherry the greatest American iceboat racer of our time and Never Alone’s all-purpose crewmember, “what we would need to bring to make our whisker pole and trimming aids and all that kind of stuff.”

They arrived in Tortola with a veritable chandlery of hardware, tools and ropes. And lo and behold, the planning immediately paid off. They had a decent start in the first race, a circumnavigation of the islands Cooper, Ginger and Salt, which at one point had them calling for water at reefs awash.

“We had to really hug the shore with the crashing waves and there were three boats all trying to get as close to those rocks as possible,” says Ross Nuechterlein, Never Alone’s captain for the week. “That was nerve wracking.”

Overlapped as they rounded the top of Ginger Island and turned downwind toward the finish, Never Alone’s preparation was on display. The 14-foot 2×4 they’d crafted into a whisker pole was working its magic, as was its handler, Ken Swetka. They had a sophisticated contraption with multiple handy-billies that gave them multidimensional control of the floppy jib’s profile.

They almost pipped Szabo and his team at the shortened finish.

“Another couple of hundred feet,” says trimmer Tom Dawson, “and we would have had them.”

The next morning, following a morning scramble through the boulders of The Baths—the BVI’s iconic natural wonder—the race committee dispatched the sailors and motherships to their second destination: The Bitter End Yacht Club.

In preparing for this leg, Sherry had called a friend who knew the area well, and his advice was well taken. “He said, ‘just look for the puffs and stay where the pressure is,’” Sherry says.

With another decent start, Never Alone’s navigator Tom Dawson nailed the layline to the first reef, then did the same to the next set of islands—skirting their 10-foot fathom—and then called a perfect layline into Virgin Gorda Sound from a million miles out.

Buoyed by their race win, they were intent on dominating the Hobie Wave racing at Bitter End YC (the race committee didn’t bother recording finishes), the Mount Gay Rum drink recipe contest (close, but no) and the SUP-tow surf challenge (maybe, but again “scoring issues” prevailed). Still they and the flotilla devoured all that Bitter End and Virgin Gorda offered for the lay day: snorkeling reefs, winging off the beach, windsurfing and nighttime tomfoolery.

The idle hours of the lay day, however, were torture for Szabo, who couldn’t put a finger on what was off with his boat. Naturally, he sought advice from the guy winning the regatta. It didn’t help.

“I was standing on the back of our boat at the dock and George was beside himself,” Nuechterlein recalls. “He came over and said, ‘You gotta help me out. There’s something wrong with our boat—the rudders don’t line up. They’re not parallel.’

“So, he then asks, ‘do you mind just going on your wheel and moving it back and forth?’

“I did while he was walking back and forth looking at my rudders. And then he finally says, “Hmm, yours don’t line up either.”

Never Alone carried their mojo straight into the next day’s race to the pit-stop pool at Scrub Island Resort and Marina. To get there, they had to short-tack their way out of Virgin Gorda Sound before weaving through more islands where they once again found themselves nip-and-tuck with Szabo and his family. The San Diegans got the win at Scrub, but Never Alone returned the favor with a runaway victory in afternoon’s second race to Sandy Cay.

With the overall results confirming the top three boats mere points apart, the championship’s final leg was a win-or-lose deal for the Detroiters. To win, they had to first navigate the current-and wind shift-riddled Great Thatch Cut. The Cut is divided by a tall island, so there were only two strategic choices: leave it to starboard and run the gauntlet or leave it to port and work the St. John’s shore.

The latter option rarely works, but Szabo went for it. As did Never Alone, the two of them split from the leaders as they entered the cut. Szabo, however, centered on the rhumb line too early while Never Alone kissed St. John’s and slam-dunked the fleet with truly astonishing upwind boatspeed.

They had their Sunsail 42 smoking. Having applied their own telltales to both the mainsail and the jib was crucial, as was their trimming technique and the use of their handy-billies.

“The jib tracks on these boats are too far forward and too far inboard,” Swetka says. “It’s perfect for ergonomically walking around the boat with a bathing suit on, but it’s ridiculous for racing. So, when we were going upwind I always pulled the jib outboard and back a little bit.”

Ross Nuechterlein, alone at the helm, had his work cut out keeping the boat up to speed, but his Cal 25 skills were well applied.

“Anytime you start pinching with these boats, you just completely stop,” he says. “When you load them up to get moving out of a tack you can really feel the whole boat going sideways.”

As a first-time helmsman of a 42-foot charter boat, he adds, it was especially good having his wife Karly in the middle. “On the Cal, you have two people behind you and one person right in front of you so you can hear what everyone’s saying,” he says. “But not on this boat, so it was great to have her there funneling information to me about what’s going on at the front of the boat.”

The buoy racing portion in The Bight at Norman Island was ultimately a one-race dud, but Never Alone won that one too, and so, before shot-skis, jumps and another late night with their new friends on the Meat mothership, they were crowned Caribbean Champions. And there, on the sands of Norman Island, emerged the mile-long smile that is stuck on Nuechterlein’s face.

The post How <i>Never Alone</i> Won the Caribbean Regatta Championship appeared first on Sailing World.

The Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England, hadn’t experienced a summer invasion of this scale or caliber in more than two decades. The arrival of 30 grand-prix race yachts, and the onslaught of owners, shore crew, grand-prix veterans and eager sailing teams, was indeed a moment to behold. Everyone was hyped for the revival of the Royal Ocean Racing Club’s iconic regatta, and here in the busy seaport of Cowes, the Admiral’s Cup—once old, was new again.

Before we turn our attention to the current affairs in the UK’s cradle of sailing, however, a brief history of the Admiral’s Cup is necessary. The RORC founded the regatta in 1957 with a simple but compelling concept: a nation-against-nation series raced by teams of offshore yachts. At the time, the offshore racing scene was booming. The Fastnet Race was increasingly drawing international entries and Cowes Week itself was the jewel in the crown of the big-boat racing landscape.

The Admiral’s Cup stitched these elements together into a cohesive narrative: three-boat national teams, typically composed of the most competitive yachts from a country, would race a series of inshore events before culminating in the legendary Fastnet Race—the 650-nautical mile epic from Cowes to the Fastnet Rock and back to Plymouth.

The format was designed to reward versatility: a winning team had to perform in the tight confines of Solent courses and not just survive, but thrive, in the offshore waters of the Irish Sea and beyond. This highly compelling formula attracted the world’s very best boats, skippers, and crews, and many countries ran trials to identify and deploy their very best assets.

The 1970s and 1980s were the Admiral’s Cup’s golden years. In those decades, the Cup was the regatta to win for any serious offshore racing nation. Big-name sailors of the era—Lawrie Smith, Harold Cudmore, Ted Turner, and Iain Macdonald-Smith, to name a few—became household names in the sport. Simultaneously, some of the most famous racing yachts of the era—Impetuous, Morning Cloud, Ragamuffin, and Container—all became part of sailing lore through their Admiral’s Cup exploits.

National rivalries ran deep and fierce. The Americans brought cutting-edge design and deep pockets. The Australians were dogged and fiercely competitive. The Germans were ruthlessly well-organized. And the British fought tooth and nail to defend the Cup on their home waters.

At its peak, as many as 20 nations fielded teams, and the Admiral’s Cup became a spectacle, drawing international media coverage and hordes of spectators to Cowes and the Fastnet finishing port of Plymouth. By the 1990s, however, changes in rating rules (the transition from IOR to IMS), rising campaign costs, and the proliferation of competing grand-prix circuits, such as the Audi MedCup for TP52s and the burgeoning Farr 40 one-design class, as well as a growing calendar of superyacht regattas, all conspired to dilute the Admiral’s Cup’s once-unassailable status.

In 2003, only seven teams competed. The RORC cancelled the 2005 edition citing a lack of entries, and with no clear path forward, The Cup quietly faded, becoming a relic of its heyday, its trophies collecting dust behind glass in the RORC’s clubhouse in Cowes. It was a disappointing loss for the offshore racing community. For many, the Admiral’s Cup wasn’t just a regatta; it was an institution, a cultural cornerstone of post-war international yacht racing.

Over the past several years, however, the regatta’s revival was carefully planned by key members of RORC. Renowned French offshore racer Eric de Turckheim—owner and skipper of a string of serial trophy-winning yachts called Teasing Machine—was the RORC Vice Commodore in 2022 and headed the club’s program and race committee.

Not surprisingly, the Frenchman fondly recalls racing in Cowes in the 1970s, still in his early 20s and dreaming of one day being part of the glitz and glamour of the Admiral’s Cup. Tasked with bringing it back after 22 years, he smartly opted to simplify the event’s rules and regulations to make it easier for teams to be formed.

“Bringing back the Admiral’s Cup was important,” de Turckheim says. “RORC offshore races have been very successful and continue to grow in participation. You just have to look at the number of entries for the Fastnet Race, which grows every year. But it was also important to bring back the international teams to Cowes and the return of the Admiral’s Cup was one way of achieving that.

“Secondly, we wanted to give back some importance to inshore racing. RORC is very active on the offshore front but not so much with inshore. But we have so much inshore racing going on with the TP52s, the Maxis and the Maxi 70 classes and that makes it an important factor.”

Choosing the size of boats was a simple decision. “In the 50- and 40-foot range, you have some top boats and crews all around the world,” de Turckheim points out. “So that’s why we limited it to those two categories, which are quite professional.” 

The most intriguing change was the RORC’s decision to make the Admiral’s Cup a competition between yacht clubs rather than nations—a move that simplified the formation of teams given that coordinating things with a yacht club is infinitely more straightforward than dealing with national governing bodies. As great as it was to have the Admiral’s Cup be a nation-based competition, the appeal of the yacht club route is also compelling.

The RORC keeps good company, so it should be no surprise that the entry list ultimately featured a swath of top-tier international clubs, such as the Yacht Club de Monaco, Royal Hong Kong YC, Italy’s Yacht Club Costa Smeralda, the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, the Netherlands’ Royal Maas Yacht Club, Royal Swedish Yacht Club, Yacht Club de France, New York YC, and Royal Irish YC. There were three German teams from Regatta Verein Greifswald, Bayerischer Yacht Club, Hamburger Segel Club, as well as two entries from the RORC.

The big-boat class featured six IRC-optimized TP52s, including four Botin designs. Peter Harrison’s Jolt 3 represented the Yacht Club de Monaco; Karl Kwok’s Beau Geste flagged for the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club; Maximilian Klink’s Caro sailed for the Royal New Zealand Yacht Club; and Gordon Ketelbey’s Zen hailed from the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia.

Slightly smaller, but designed as a TP52 slayer, was Giovanni Lombardi Stronati’s WallyRocket51 Django WR51—a boat with head-turning looks that was a weapon in both the inshore and offshore races. Equally striking to look at, but less sparkling in terms of results, was Niklas Zennstrom’s Carkeek 52 Rán. Worthy of note amongst the bigger boats was the Ker 46 Rost Van Uden, a member of the Royal Maas YC team run by Dutch around-the-world racer Gerd-Jan Poortman.

The small-boat class had Peter Harrison’s Carkeek 40 Monaco, American James Murray’s GP42 Callisto (sailing for RNZYS), Karl Kwok’s Botin 41 Beau Ideal (for Hong Kong)—a boat built specifically for the 2025 Admiral’s Cup, and Giovanni Lombardi Stronati’s JPK 11.80 Django JPK.

The format was six inshore races over three consecutive days in the highly tidal and obstacle-ridden confines of the Solent, sandwiched between two offshore races—the opening 165-nautical mile Channel Race and the final 695-nautical mile Rolex Fastnet Race, which took the fleet out to the southern tip of Ireland and back into the English Channel to the finish in Cherbourg, France.

With a double-points coefficient for the Channel Race and triple for the Fastnet Race, the challenge facing the teams was how to optimize their bigger offshore-configured boats for the inshore series, and how to make the smaller inshore boats—many of which had been set up to race in the regionally popular Fast 40 division—into potent offshore machines. It was a challenge that appeared to be welcomed by the owners and sailors alike, as a welcome change from Mediterranean-style windward/leeward racing. It also proved to be a boon for sail and systems developments across the fleets.

Rodney Ardern, a veteran of America’s Cups, Volvo Ocean Races, and Admiral’s Cups, and sailing aboard TP52 Jolt 3 for the Yacht Club de Monaco, says his team embraced the opportunity to break out from the norm of the 52 Super Series and usual offshore races. “This is a good combination of all that in a compact week,” he says. “We spent a lot of time developing the boats, and the sails in particular, with reaching sails, staysails, jib tops, and all of the kind of stuff you don’t spend a lot of time on unless you are on a pure ocean racing boat.”

Ardern says the major difference in the big boat class was between the older and newer boats. “Our 52 was an older design that dates back to when there were still reaching and coastal components to the Super Series. So, we don’t have sheeting systems that go through the deck, and that makes us relatively waterproof when we go offshore. Then, there are newer 52s like Beau Geste, as well as the specialist offshore 50s like Caro and Rán; those two are so powerful and have water ballast, so are pretty hard to keep up with offshore.”

Australian mainsheet trimmer Chris Hosking, racing on the all-new WallyRocket51 Django WR51, says the rejuvenation of the Admiral’s Cup has brought back an element of regatta racing that had been missing for a long time.

“In the Admiral’s Cup, there’s a lot of reaching and sailing at different angles and different modes. There are some skills that we are having to revive, for sure, and some that people are having to learn for the first time. Picking the sails for a day of inshore racing isn’t easy, either, when you have a windward/leeward first and then a round-the-cans course afterwards. You don’t know the course for the second race when you leave the dock, so we have to bring more sails than we would want to for weight, just in case.”

Then, there’s a great deal to think about, Hosking says, when it comes to switching a boat from offshore to inshore mode. “There’s obviously all the safety equipment that changes. The sail inventory changes. You do whatever you can to make the boat lighter: the reefing lines come out; all your bits and pieces like offshore gear bags and spares come off.”

Switching Django WR51 the other way—from inshore to offshore efficiency—means adding in an extra quota of reaching sails.

“Stuff like the Code 0, the jib top, and a big genoa staysail,” Hosking says. “Then there’s the capability to reef. We reef much earlier when we are reaching, and we might pull a reef in as low as 16 to 17 knots of breeze when we have got the Code 0 up and we need to sail a hot angle. It would be much more effective to reef the main rather than switch from a masthead zero to a jib top.

“With a boat that is this new, we are still learning and understanding every day. Even when we are racing, we are working out what the boat likes and what it doesn’t. It’s a constant process of evolution.”

The 30-boat Admiral’s Cup fleet made for a striking sight out on the swirling waters of the Solent. Given the levels of professionalism and preparation for most teams, starts and mark roundings were plenty intense, and boathandling at the front of the fleet was top shelf. Four clubs dominated the top of the leaderboard across the eight-race series, where the team scores were tallied based on individual race points rather than their series scores. The Yacht Club de Monaco’s immaculately prepared pairing Jolt 3 and Jolt 6 both won their classes to give the principality club the overall victory. Runner-up was Royal Hong Kong YC, where Beau Geste and Beau Ideal finished fifth and third. Third overall was Italy’s Yacht Club Costa Smeralda, whose Django WR51 and Django JPK 11.50 finished third and fourth in IRC1 and IRC2 respectively.

Credit is also due to the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia’s Zen—owned and skippered by Ketelbey—which backed up an excellent inshore series with a fourth place in the Fastnet Race to finish 1 point in arrears of Jolt 3 in the IRC1 standings. Poortman’s young crew on the Ker 46 Rost-van Uden also performed well in the inshore racing, before pulling off a stunning victory in the Fastnet Race to finish fourth overall in IRC1.

There was, however, much more nip and tuck to the racing than results might suggest. The battle in IRC2 between Jolt 6, James Murray’s Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron entry Callisto, and Beau Ideal burned fiercely throughout the regatta. The Fastnet Race was the decider, with a 1-point overall advantage going to the Monaco boat only after coming out of a jibing duel with the Kiwi yacht on the final approach to Cherbourg.

So, the Admiral’s Cup is back, and, by any reasonable measure, its return was resoundingly successful. Chatter in the pubs and restaurants of Cowes during the regatta was all about the rosy future of international team competitions like this. Moreover, it seems the British flagship event’s successful return may have triggered a wider revival of international team competitions.

On the eve of the start of racing at the 2025 Admiral’s Cup, the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda announced an Italian version of the Admiral’s Cup—the Sardinia Cup—last held in 2012, would return in 2026. There were even numerous unsubstantiated rumors of plans for Hawaii’s Kenwood Cup (formerly the Clipper Cup) to also be revived.

The next edition of the Admiral’s Cup has been provisionally scheduled for July 2027 in Cowes. No doubt there will be evolution of the format by then—perhaps a return to three boat-teams—and the inking of a title sponsor to provide the necessary funding required to fully return this gem to its glimmering state.

The post The Radical Return of the Admiral’s Cup appeared first on Sailing World.

At the West River Sailing Club in Galesville, Maryland, there are plenty of options when it comes to racing classes, but the one that has held high court since the early 1930s is the homegrown Chesapeake 20. There is no equal to it anywhere in the world, but that’s because—with the exception of a few runaways—they don’t exist anywhere else. It’s a West River thing.

This summer’s Chesapeake 20 “World Championship,” contested on the same skinny waters for which the tippy 20-footers were originally designed and built by Ernest H. Hartge, had seven compete. Some were fiberglass, some wooden, and there was plenty of color and colorful local characters, with a few sailors as old as their boats. There were a few days of river racing, and after it was all sailed and done, skipper Alex Shafer, from Eustis, Florida, and his crew of Jero Tudor and Daphne Clancy emerged as the new world champions.

The country Shafer chose to represent was the Bahamas, and, naturally, his contribution to the regatta’s dinner party was conch fritters.

The biennial regatta is not technically a world championship, and Shafer is not Bahamian, although his family has owned property there since the early 1900s. And while he’s got Florida tags on this truck, his roots run wide and deep in Galesville—to the Hartge family and its historic yacht yard. That too is a West River thing, where everyone, it seems, is six degrees related to the Hartges.

Shafer’s abbreviated version of the class takes us back to Grandpa Hartge’s first hard chine hulls, built by hand and eye. It was a development class at the outset, but once rounded hulls arrived and proved to be faster, that was that, and that is where the class is today. “Chesapeake 20 racing was their pastime, their weekend,” Shafer says. “This was their NASCAR. You had workboat people, oystermen, crabbers, and eventually the businessmen would come and buy boats from my grandfather. For them, it was competition, to go out and see who had the fastest boat.”

Hartge’s boatyard built the vast majority woodies, 40 or 50, Shafer reckons, until a mold was eventually built, ushering in a fiberglass generation in the 1980s. Some of the earliest 20s are in museums, and scant others are scattered around the continent, but at West River today, there’s about 20 boats in various states of care. Shafer owns three: one cold-molded model, the very first fiberglass boat, and one of his grandfather’s originals, Columbia, built in 1939.

Shafer, like other West River sailing kids who group up on, around and were mentored in the Chesapeake 20 fleet, has been more active with the class of late, partly because of a renewed interest in racing them and a younger generation of post-collegiate 20-somethings getting in on the fun. Rob Hoffman, runner-up to Shafer at the Worlds, is new blood, as is Charles Anderson, the youngest hot shot in the fleet.

At the Worlds, “Robert was schooling all of us from just hopping on the boat,” Shafer says. “He came out firing and scared us at first. I think he sailed on the boats as a kid a couple times, so he was familiar with it, and just like everyone else there, there’s some sort of connection to it, either by family or by legacy of living in West River.”

Anderson, a 22-year-old professional coach and St. Mary’s College sailing team alumnus, had to miss the recent Worlds for work, but he, too, is deeply rooted. As an eight-year-old, he was omnipresent around the sailing club and the various Hartge workshops. “All these guys are like family,” he says. “They’re all my uncles at this point.”

When Anderson was 13, a member of the club who had passed away willed his Chesapeake 20, Four Aces, a 1960s woodie, to someone young from the club that would keep it sailing competitively and Anderson’s family happily took ownership. “It’s a good-looking red hull with cool racing stripes,” Anderson says, “but it’s old and needs a lot of work.”

While Anderson and his father got to work on Aces they bought a fiberglass hull boat from the 2000s.

And when he was sixteen, Anderson raced the Worlds with Roger Link, whom he considers to be his sailing mentor. “He was 70, out on the wire, ripping it,” Anderson says. “He’s an incredibly talented sailor that taught me how to race.”

They won the Worlds that year, entered as Swedes, making Anderson the youngest skipper to ever win it. They were supposed to bring Swedish meatballs to the party, but that never happened.

Hartge’s Chesapeake 20 was designed for the lighter summer winds of the Chesapeake, and is therefore absurdly over-canvased—thus the trapeze, which was added in the 1970s. Fourteen knots of breeze, Anderson says, is pretty much the top end of control for the boat.

“It’s a very shallow and round bottom hull with a centerboard that’s about 250 pounds, and the rudder is quite small, so there’s a tremendous amount of weather helm,” he says. With a Star Class-type mast and 250 square feet of sail area, Anderson says, “trimming the main is kind of a beast and you’re fighting the tiller the whole time. If you ever have a neutral helm, you’re doing something wrong. But if it’s flat water, it’s beautiful. When you get up to 7 knots, it’s a blast.”

In as little as 7 knots of breeze, depowering is definitely required, Shafer adds, and one would be wise to keep the mainsheet readily at hand to dump when necessary. Two to three crew is the norm, but class rules allow up to five. “I don’t know where you’d put them all,” Shafer says, “but when I was a kid we used to race with four or five of us.”

Downwind, with the whisker deployed, Anderson prefers his crew standing up by the mast, like Star crews do. Sailing tighter angles, he says, is his preferred technique. Jumping on powerboat wakes is fast. “I sail a little bit more aggressively downwind than the majority of the fleet, coming from a dinghy background,” he says. “It’ll plane if you have enough breeze, but it is quite scary.”

While still a development class, there’s not much left to tinker with these days, Shafer says. Advantages can still be explored in the foils and mast tune (although Anderson admits to not adjusting his much, if ever). What’s more important is how one presents the boat to the wind, and managing the wackiness of river racing. “You better be on your shifts,” Shafer says, “plus, we have current and there are really, really good sailors at West River.”

At its peak, the world championship fleet had upwards of 20 boats and while it remains a core class at the club, turnkey boats are harder to come by. Fixing up the old woodies takes commitment, but when a good one comes along, it’s promptly claimed. “Everybody in the club respects the class and understands its history,” Anderson says, “and everyone also recognizes that the sailors that are still sailing these boats have sailed them since they’re probably 10 years old. There’s a lot of legend and lore around it.”

Anderson owns a Laser and a Snipe, as well, but his Chesapeake 20s are more than boats in the family fleet. “I don’t think I would ever want to get rid of them,” he says. “They’re just beautiful boats, and it’s great to be a part of it. It’s kind of my favorite, and I’m excited to keep the class going and bring new people into the class.”

The post Chesapeake 20 Racing: the Iconic West River Tradition appeared first on Sailing World.

The denser the fiberglass ceiling, the more force is needed to demolish it.

In the case of the biennial Transpacific Yacht Race (established 1906), this force had been gathering for 72 years before Alli Bell became the first woman skipper to win this 2,225-nautical-mile race aboard Restless, her Cal 40, this year.

It began in 1953 when Willard Bell—Alli’s grandfather—first skippered Westward Ho, his Lyle Hess-designed 36-foot sloop, in Transpac. Bell returned in 1959 with Westward Ho and a crew that included his wife, Inez, before upgrading to Westward, his Lapworth 50, which he first raced in the 1965 Transpac alongside sons Charles (Alli’s dad) and Sam.

Over the years, Willard Bell skippered all five of his children—three boys and two girls—to Transpac’s iconic finishing line off Diamond Head aboard Westward.

“I don’t remember a time that Transpac wasn’t a big deal in my life,” Alli Bell says.

While Transpac and Westward, which is still in the family, dominate Bell family lore, Alli Bell’s lifelong dream was to own a Cal 40. “And the obvious thing to do with a Cal 40,” she says, “is to go race Transpac.”

Becoming the first woman skipper in Transpac’s 119-year history to win corrected-time honors and the King Kalakaua Trophy, however, was the result of great preparation, rock-solid leadership, outstanding crew work, and that most fickle of offshore currencies: Luck.

Plus, adds Bell, perhaps some ethereal VMG. But that’s premature storytelling. 

Alli Bell’s first of five Transpacs unfurled in 2013, when uncles Sam and Willie decided that Westward needed to fetch Diamond Head again. Westward’s 2013 crew included cousins Mara, Jon, and Graham, the latter of whom navigated Restless to its 2025 win.

Westward finished the 2013 Transpac third in its class and ninth overall, notching a high-water mark for the sailing Bells.

But that’s only half of Restless’s lineage.

Enter Stephen Driscoll, Bell’s husband and a lifelong sailor with his own Transpac heritage: Clem Stose, Driscoll’s great-grandfather, won the 1928 Transpac aboard Teva, his W. Starling Burgess-designed 56-foot centerboard yawl, before earning the race’s Barn Door trophy (read: fastest elapsed time of any competing monohull) as the captain of Vileehi, H.T. Horton’s Edson B. Schock-designed 80-foot auxiliary ketch, in 1934.

Bell, who is the Transpacific YC’s Rear Commodore and the San Diego YC’s Vice Commodore, fulfilled her first dream in 2019 when she purchased Restless, a 1967 Cal 40.

Bell’s first call was to cousin Graham, requesting his navigational services. Eric Heim (a professional sailmaker who raced off the clock), Driscoll (who was still solidifying his position with his then-girlfriend, now wife), and cousin Mara also got calls. Bell’s friend Greg Reynolds was a later recruit.

First, however, Restless needed love.

While the boat sailed the 1975 Transpac and came with solid bones, it wasn’t race ready. The hull-to-deck joint needed attention, its undercarriage had osmosis blisters, and its mast failed its survey. Moss adorned the toe rails, the cruising sails were just that, and the belowdeck spaces were dark.

“The first thing I did when I bought the boat was clean up the toe rails, which resulted in a lot of leaking because I dislodged all the caulking,” recalls Bell. “I knew I had to take it to the yard to glass over the deck-hull joint, which is a common fix on Cal 40s.”

Restless was hauled from the brine, revealing her undercarriage sores. The deck carried a railroad yard’s worth of headsail track that Bell wanted to remove for (eventual) cruises to Catalina, but which necessitated all-new non-skid. And since teak was already on order, the cockpit combing needed refreshing.

Belowdecks, Bell and company rewired everything, revamped the engine (more, later), installed a new head and plumbing, fitted a watermaker and a new stove, and revitalized all brightwork. “We did pretty much everything down below,” says Bell, explaining that Driscoll Boat Works handled the blisters, the hull-to-deck joint, the track removal, the non-skid job, and all painting.

Fortune smiled on Restless when Bell found a Cal 40 owner who was divesting his sail inventory. “He had only used the main twice,” says Bell, adding that she also purchased other racing sails from this owner.

Other sails, like the team’s heavy J1, came from an Ericson 35, while the J3 had existed in a state of uncompletion for years. Both were recut for Restless.

“It was a lot of piecing things together,” Bell says. But for the record: “Secondhand doesn’t have to mean ratty,” she says, noting that she also bought a brand-new genoa and a No. 2 spinnaker.

Restless’s used mast was gifted by Don Jesberg, a fellow Cal 40 owner who had recently outfitted his whip with a brand-new stick.

All up, Bell, who is a higher-education policy analyst, estimates that she spent somewhere in the high five figures or very low six figures preparing Restless for the 2025 Transpac, and for other cruising adventures. “I haven’t done the math,” she says. “But there’s no way it was much more than that, because I don’t have those kinds of resources.”

But it was the engine, of all things, that almost soured everything.

The team fitted a new high-output alternator, but this required sending some pulleys to a shop in eastern Canada for servicing. They were due back in SoCal in March; instead, they arrived in late May. “Another few days and we wouldn’t have been able to go,” says Bell, noting the ridiculousness of having an engine threaten a sailboat race. “The irony of that wasn’t lost.”

Another windshift arrived a week before the start when cousin Mara broke two ribs. Restless’s six-person crew became a five-person operation. 

“We were disappointed, but we dealt with it,” says Bell, explaining that the team adjusted their watch schedule accordingly.

So how did Restless outsail 52 other starting yachts, many of which benefited from much newer hull designs, professional crews, and brand-new sail inventories?

“Luck,” says Bell. “We were lucky that the weather pattern worked out that we could just point the bow at Honolulu and go.”

Some backstory: Transpac uses a pursuit-style start, with teams starting on July 1, 3, and 5. While there’s no question that the first wave of starters enjoyed the best breeze out of the gate, the race’s Forecast Time Correction Factor scoring—which is also used in the Newport Bermuda Race—levels this playing field.

Restless’s starting date put the team to the west of an upper-level low that created an expansive area of light winds. But even so, Restless was only one of 15 monohulls that shared that meteorological good fortune.

When pressed on this latter point, two fundamental truths of offshore sailing emerged.

“Preparation, number one,” says Bell. “Number two, crew work.”

Still, it wasn’t all VMG running: On July 7, the team learned that Donald Wyatt, Driscoll’s uncle and a three-time Transpac veteran, had passed away. 

“We got to thinking a lot about what it means to be doing what we were doing,” Bell says of retracing sea miles previously plied by family members and friends who had crossed life’s final bar. “I like to think that their spirits kept us on,” she says. “I just think there was something propelling us that was more than just the boat.”

Intervening angels aside, there’s no question that great sailing was the team’s driving force.

Sure, there was a squall with a 27-knot stinger that overwhelmed the number of wraps holding the spinnaker guy around its winch drum, but—aside from this small SNAFU—the team otherwise focused on smart navigation, fast driving, and attentive sail trimming.

Restless crossed the finishing line at 2223 on Sunday, July 13, posting an elapsed time of 12 days, 12 hours, 3 minutes, and 16 seconds. They were met at the dock by more than 100 family members, friends, and fellow competitors—by far the largest welcoming party enjoyed by any 2025 finisher.

While this boiled down to a corrected time of 8 days, 12 hours, five minutes, and 49 seconds, which put the King Kalakaua Trophy within reach, the team had to endure days of uncertainty as protests (none of which involved Restless) wended through the protest channels.

“It was a little bit nerve-racking, and it definitely set into my imposter syndrome,” recalls Bell. “You sort of wait for the other shoe to drop, right?”

Instead of shoes, 119 years’ worth of (fiber)glass ceiling tumbled when Restless was declared the overall winner.

“This should be an inspiration, and not just to women,” says Bill Guilfoyle, commodore of the Transpacific Yacht Club. “It should be an inspiration to anyone who wants to compete knowing that any boat that’s well-prepared and well-sailed has the opportunity to win this race.”

It also shows that Transpac’s future is as bright as the noonday sun so long as there are dreamers and doers keen to take on this trans-Pacific challenge. When queried about the implications of her success, Bell, in her characteristic low-key style, downplayed her achievement.

“I don’t think I’m anything special,” she says. “I’m someone who wanted to do something and did it.”

While that may be true, there’s also something to be said about those in the family who had a hand in her destiny. They’d be right proud of her commitment and preparation, and not the least bit surprised by the result.

The post A Restless Transpac Chapter appeared first on Sailing World.