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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in the cutthroat world of Rolex TP52 World Championship sailing, where every point is hard earned and every mistake amplified, American Magic Quantum Racing clinched its eighth world title by the narrowest of margins. The elite 52 circuit demands a meticulous and disciplined approach, and for Terry Hutchinson, the team’s longtime skipper, success came through both human capital and a continuous evolution of the team’s boat and sails. On the waters off Cascais, there was a measurable but delicate balance of aggression and control that reflects the team’s ongoing transition to a younger, dynamic squad. There’s a “meat and potatoes” philosophy that underpins their success, even when the “red mist” descends. The boss shares his thoughts.

How do you approach this series every year to make sure you have the complete package?

To succeed, the first area we start is with the team, and specifically with the people, because the people are our number one asset. So, when we consider success on the racecourse, we have to look at the whole program. We set a disciplined strategy based around our people and what’s executable. It’s one thing to say, “we want to win this regatta,” but it’s more important to ask how we’re going to win the regatta. Tell me what’s going to separate our team from the others, and what’s going to help us win this regatta. So, as a team, we’re always thinking about the people, the boat, the sails and the equipment.

How far out of a world championship of this caliber does that need to happen?

At the end of the 2024 season, Cascais (Portugal) was announced as the venue for the world championship. Straight away, we knew it was going to be a reasonably windy venue. And inside the 52 class rule we have variations of sails that we can use or not. This was the first world championship that I’ve raced with a J3-plus, which is a sail that’s in between a J4 and a heavy. That was a difference maker, but it was something that we identified that we needed to have, at least in our sail program, have the option to put a button on it, if we wanted it.

So, there’s one area of development. There was also the A2-plus, which is stronger than the A2, but not as heavy as the A4. The structure inside that sail is slightly different, and the sail was pretty good down-range in 17 knots of wind, but very good in 23 knots without the risk of breaking. So that was another sail evolution that takes time. 

Those are a couple examples of the sail development side of things that we considered to make sure that we gave ourselves the best chance at this event. It’s about reliability in the racing and reliability in the team. We’re a small team, so we’re sailing with an extra person on board, which is great. It makes the weigh-ins really hard, but that extra set of hands when it’s really windy is pure performance.

How essential was it to have that extra person?

By the time the regatta starts, all the teams would be overweight, but we’re carrying an extra person on board so we’re providing a little bit more hiking stability. And so, in a windy venue, and on these boats, you hike harder downwind than you do upwind, because there’s just so much to gain in performance. Where you see it on our boat going around the racetrack is everybody giving 110 percent in the hiking, so the performance there is awesome. It’s a measurable gain.

Teams push their boats and themselves so hard at these events, especially in the big breeze you had. How do you balance that part of it knowing there’s no room to hold back? 

We had very good boathandling, and the reliability of our equipment and our boat comes out of that. We broke a lot of stuff, but we got exactly what we deserved by being too aggressive at times. 

Is there one example that best demonstrates this?

One example is when we got into a tussle with the French at a top mark. We came around the mark, and the call was to do an “Indian,” which is basically a hoist and a jibe. The whole maneuver happens simultaneously. But we were on a J4 and it was 26 knots of breeze, and it was too windy, and I had a little bit too much red mist from the situation that we had just been in. I wasn’t thinking clearly and we went for the maneuver with some of the team members out of position. I’m responsible for taking up the new runner, and the new runner got trapped on the leeward side of the boom. The spinnaker went up inside the jib, and the turn was a little bit too fast, so the spinnaker ended up in the foretriangle. From there it snowballed.

This Quantum Racing team has been around for a long time and there’s a transition now to a younger squad working alongside mentors. What’s involved with that?

Starting on the bow, we now have Norm Berg, who’s the mid-bowman, and then Ian Liberty trims downwind. Victor Diaz de Leon is a strategist, Harry Melges (IV) is the helmsman, Sarah Stone is the navigator, and Luke Muller is the aft grinder. Individually, they’re all great sailors, so part of the learning process is getting us all to learn how to race together, how we communicate together and then instilling a certain level of discipline to know that at certain times we just don’t have to go for the kill. It’s consistency that’s going to win the regatta, it’s our reliability and how we interact with each other. I’ve nicknamed it “on board meat and potatoes,” because meat and potatoes aren’t fancy, but they’re always good. 

That, however, requires a certain level of consideration that we’re fast and that we have optimum performance all the time. It’s always taken into consideration that our boathandling, and the things that impact the boat’s performance, are going to be the consistency of the team. Within that, there is a level of accountability. That gets discussed and it gets developed and becomes part of the team’s culture and who we are. 

The new sailors may come with new ideas and approaches; how does those make their way into years of refinement and old habits?

We do have this balance of those with experience and those that have been developing their skill sets in smaller boats and coming onto something bigger. One good example is with Ian [Liberty]; after the first day of the regatta, because of his suggestions, we made an adjustment to our downwind technique, and we went from being just OK to easily being the fastest boat on the racecourse. 

What was the improvement there?

We were sailing in a side swell, so on starboard, the swell was on the beam, and on port it was on the transom. So, on port jibe, you could do a normal surf. But on starboard, the technique change was a big ease on the kite and a big grind on the main—almost grinding the main to center line. So, the sail trim was very asymmetric, and we get these big downs on the waves. And as soon as the boat starts to decelerate, the kite gets trimmed on and the main gets eased out to a normal position as the apparent wind is going forward. It changed the performance of the boat in such a positive way, because we weren’t just sticking our bow in the waves. The boat was breaking free, but it was doing it in a down way, not in a bow up way.

You use the term “process” a lot, what does that mean within this world-caliber team?

The process is driven around the performance and our accountability on board. We’re disciplined when we leave the dock. We’re disciplined when we show up. It’s a commitment to seven points or less on the day, and to understanding that we don’t win the regatta on the first three days. You win it on the last two days, but you can’t take yourself out of it on the first three days. 

We try really hard to share that level of responsibility on the boat. And I think that it’s something that is critical to the success everybody’s accountable for their areas, and at the same time, how you blend that together is probably where a lot of performance can come from, and then it’s just being tactically disciplined.

Everything about the 52 Series is sophisticated, especially onboard the boats where, in your case there’s yourself, a tactician, and a strategist in the afterguard, providing input all the time. How much latitude is left for the helmsman to follow his instincts in the moment? 

We’re pretty diligent about not chirping too much. Let’s take the start for example. I help with getting them into the spot, and then the final time and distance—the last 60 seconds are on them. It’s never one person; there’s the bowman, there’s Harry and I, and then there’s Sarah giving the time to kill. So, Harry is managing the platform. I’m giving them feedback, reassuring his instincts, and really backing them up so he can be highly confident in what he’s doing. 

The one race where we were OCS, the hard part was the computer and the Vakaros both had us behind the line by a reasonably large amount. All of our electronic inputs were saying we were racing, so we called Greg (Gendell) off the bow. Doing that, we lost our third point of certainty, and we were over by a meter or so. It goes back to the process, and there we slipped a little bit on our process. These are little things that even at the level that we’re after, we still make some of these mistakes.

How difficult is it these days, tactically, when no one is giving an inch?

The tactical side and the fleet management side of it is understanding where the boat can make gains, understanding the performance of the boat and your target boat speeds well enough. It’s understanding whether the posted target is the correct number to sail in that moment, or do you need to sail one-tenth under or over given each position of where you’re at. I can’t speak for what the other tacticians do, but I am very boatspeed focused in the moment, and continually updating the mode that we should be sailing. We won’t go more than 30 seconds without an update happening, because that’s how much we’re watching things evolve on the course. Regardless of whatever boat you’re racing, it’s important to have an intimate knowledge of the boat’s performance in traffic, versus a clean lane versus, boatspeed numbers and a range.

And what about fleet management?

I did two J/70 regattas this winter with 50- or 60-boat fleets. Getting clear and winning the first cross of a group of 20 boats versus being stuck in fifteenth is a massive difference. When you’re in fifteenth around the top mark your next opportunity to gain separation is downwind and picking a good spot to allow the boat to sail its mode, because traffic slows everybody down. It’s the same thing in the 52. At the Worlds we had 11 boats, so the hardest spot to be in was fifth, because it’s so easy to be in seventh if you screw up one thing. So, positioning wise, at any given time, we race with the mindset that people are going to make us suffer by tacking on us, so whatever we’re expecting, we have to pay it back to keep the distance the same.

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American Magic announced in late October that it would not compete in the 38th edition of the America’s Cup in Naples, Italy. According to a team statement, the decision to end a bid for a third Cup challenge, “follows a comprehensive review of the event’s current Protocol and Partnership Agreement and their alignment with the team’s long-term sporting and strategic objectives.

“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, Team Principal of American Magic. “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.”

Having extracted itself from the Cup while also retaining all its previous campaign assets, currently idle at the team’s base in Pensacola, Florida, the team will likely be looking to liquidate its AC40s, its two AC75s and containers of equipment to any team looking to take advantage of the new 38th Cup protocol which stipulates new teams may use existing platforms.

Unconfirmed rumors of entering a team into the SailGP may hint at what’s to come, and the team is also aligned with Nautor Swan to activate a new ClubSwan 28 US series in Pensacola and Newport, Rhode Island in 2026.

“Our focus now shifts to the future,” said Mike Cazer, CEO of American Magic. “That means athlete and technology development, international competition, and continuing to drive advanced manufacturing and design innovation from our base in Pensacola.”

Founded in 2017, American Magic has represented the New York Yacht Club in two America’s Cup campaigns and supports elite American sailors across senior, youth, and women’s disciplines. The team will continue to invest in the sport through its Pensacola-based high-performance center and international racing campaigns, including programs that support U.S. Olympic sailors. These efforts reinforce Pensacola’s role as a hub for top-tier American sailing talent.

“To our teammates, partners, donors, and supporters — thank you for standing with us,” said Terry Hutchinson, President of Sailing Operations. “We could never have accomplished what we have without you. You are a vital part of who we are.”

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Doug DeVos’ American Magic Quantum Racing crew were crowned 2025 Rolex TP52 World Champions today in Cascais, Portugal. The US flagged team is a potent mix of long serving, experienced past winners anchored by tactician Terry Hutchinson along with the likes of Sean Clarkson, James Dagg, Matt Cassidy and Greg Gendell who have all won the many TP52 worlds along with a new, young generation which includes Harry Melges IV who at 24 becomes the youngest helm ever to steer the title winning boat and Sara Stone, the first ever female navigator to win the worlds.

It is the eighth time the Quantum crew have lifted the world title but veteran Hutchinson admitted on the dock in Cascais Marina that this one was the hardest. They were pushed to the final leg of a dicey, difficult 10th and final race by Jean-Luc Petithugeunin’s hard driving, much improved French team on Paprec.

Having led during the week and been mostly in the top three ‘les bleus’ finished popular runners up just one tantalizing point short of the Americans and at 1 point in the finale had a hand on the world championship.

Returning to Cascais again in search of the legendary big winds and waves for the premier regatta of the year the 11 boats from nine nations were not disappointed. Only in the middle of the event was there one light winds, single race day. But the final day required the course area to be moved into the river mouth slightly on to a thrilling arena which saw big gust peppered with areas of much lighter winds.

Cascais has a particular allure for the class and for Hutchinson and American Magic Quantum Racing. It is the third time that the New York YC team have won the Rolex TP52 World Championship title at this big-winds grand-prix yachting mecca.

“This world title is super special. Harry and the guys did such an incredible job today. It was a really challenging day and when I reflect on it we had a lot of things go our way and boy when it didn’t go our way it could not have gone any worse. So, I give us all high marks for mental toughness and fortitude. Paprec sailed a great regatta and especially today they asked the question of us and we answered, but it was not easy.

“But really two of these events are more special than the others. This win along with the win with Doug DeVos in 2022 and so to do this with this group and to understand how much potential we have, but to keep running into our own wall. The discussion this morning was ‘we are racing ourselves, there are all these other great teams out there but we have to do our day as best we can. There is no feeling that beats winning, it is an awesome feeling. And this one was the hardest because of this last day. In 2022 we did an entire regatta on the J1 and J1.5 and then on the last day it got windy. Here you really did not know what was going to happen. And our sailing style, the corners is not us. We are meat and potatoes, getting a good start and sailing the middle and trying to chip your’re way through and there was none of that today.”

The French team, led by ocean racing legend Loïck Peyron, leave Cascais with their heads high having consistently asked questions of the Americans and frequently coming off   better. They seemed happy to back themselves and go up against the benchmark team showing great all-round speed, especially downwind in the breeze.

Peyron, who at 65 years old retains the zest and hunger to keep learning in this demanding pressure cooker atmosphere of grand prix racing, was happy, “I am happy. I am here to learn. And I learn with a very good, nice crew, a happy owner on a marvelous boat against a group of other marvelous teams and boats. I love it. I never use the word ‘regret’ even if there are so many reasons to use it. But we have such a great crew. We were efficient, more consistent. Second is a good position and Terry and American Magic. Terry is still the one!”

And Takashi Okura’s Sled team finish on the worlds podium for the second year in a row. In the shifty, gusty conditions – something of a casino at times – they were unable to claw back the points needed to wrest the title from the clutches of the top two crews.

Don Cowie (NZL) mainsail trimmer on Sled concluded, “We are a little disappointed because we came here to win but didn’t. We are happy because that is two years in a row we have finished on the podium at the worlds. But that was one very tricky final day. It was a hard day for the afterguard for sure, going from 27 knots to eight knots of breeze. We broke a spinnaker in the last race which did not help. But we are going well on the circuit, we are going to have to make a bit of a move on American Magic now to catch them but we are happy to be in second after three regattas.”

Tony Norris, of the Plattners’ Phoenix team, finished top owner-driver.

Rolex TP52 World Championship Cascais 2025 Final Standings

• 1. American Magic Quantum Racing (USA), Doug DeVos, 3+2+1+3+6 +2+2+8+8+7= 42
• 2. Paprec (FRA), Jean-Luc Petithuguenin, 4+1+5+2+2+3+5+10+5+6 = 43
• 3. Sled (USA), Takashi Okura, 1+3+9+8+8+1+3+3+6+9 = 51
• 4. Phoenix (RSA), Tina & Hasso Plattner, 8+10+2+11+1+9+6+7+1+5 = 60
• 5. Alkedo Vitamina (ITA), Andrea Lacorte, 10+6+8+1+3+6+9+1+7+10 = 61
• 6. Alegre (GBR), Andy Soriano, 2+5+11+5+10+5+8+4+4+8 = 62
• 7. Platoon Aviation (GER), Harm Müller-Spreer, 11+4+6+6+7+11+1+5+9+3 = 63
• 8. Gladiator (GBR), Tony Langley, 5+11+4+9+4+4+10+2+3+11 = 63
• 9. Vayu (THA), Whitcraft Family, 9+9+3+4+9+7+4+6+10+4 = 65
• 10. Alpha+ (HKG), Shawn & Tina Kang, 7+8+7+10+11+8+7+9+2+2 = 71
• 11. Provezza (TUR), Ergin Imre, 6+7+10+7+5+10+11+11(+2)+11+1 = 81

52 SUPER SERIES 2025 Standings after 3 events

• 1. American Magic Quantum Racing, USA, Doug DeVos, 18+23+42 = 93points
• 2. Sled, USA, Takashi Okura, 13+58+51 = 122~
• 3. Paprec, FRA, Jean-Luc Petithuguenin, 23,5+ 63+43 = 129,5
• 4. Alkedo, ITA, Andrea Lacorte, 28+49+61 = 138
• 5. Platoon Aviation, GER, Harm Müller-Spreer, 36+44+63 = 143
• 6. Vayu, THA, Whitcraft Family, 27+68+65 = 160
• 7. Alpha+, HKG, Shawn & Tina Kang, 21,5+68+71 = 160,5
• 8. Alegre, GBR, Andy Soriano, 30+71+62 = 163
• 9. Provezza, TUR, Ergin Imre, 30+64+81 = 175
• 10. Phoenix, RSA, Tina & Hasso Plattner, 48+69+60 = 177
• 11. Gladiator, GBR, Tony Langley, 12+120+63 = 195
• 12. Teasing Machine, FRA, Eric de Turckheim, 48+73+120 = 241
• 13. Crioula, BRA, Eduardo & Renato Plass, 28+120+120 = 268

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It’s mid-October, and the bases of Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli, Alinghi Red Bull Racing and American Magic are ghost towns, save for shore teams decamping and craning chase boats onto the hard. All three have been dismissed from the Louis Vuitton Cup, leaving INEOS Britannia to eventually get crushed by Emirates Team New Zealand 7-2 in the 37th America’s Cup Match.

American Magic’s skipper and president of sailing operations, Terry Hutchinson, meets me at Gate M29, the high-­security entrance to the team’s Barcelona base. He escorts me through a second security gate and then through the team’s bike-storage room, usually jam-packed. With most of the team’s sailors and cyclors sent packing after three long years of going hard, there’s plenty of parking.

We continue to the front office, where boxed computer monitors sit among piles of cables and plugs, and then into the hospitality area, empty of visitors but with television screens still looping video of the team’s AC75 Patriot, sailing in fine trim. The boat itself is in the shed, decommissioned and wrapped for delivery to Pensacola, where the team will return in January for another possible run at the Cup.

Should there be another Cup challenge for American Magic, it will be their third. Auckland 2021 was a disaster marked by a ­catastrophic capsize. Barcelona was marginally better; this time bad luck was plentiful, resulting in a campaign that could have and should have had a stronger run to the match.

Hutchinson has just returned from a post-elimination decompression trip to Normandy, France. The team’s loss to Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli in the Louis Vuitton Cup’s second round-robin races still stings, he admits, but he’s working through exit interviews with team members and a “debrief document” for principals Doug DeVos and Hap Fauth.

“Figuring out where we were good. Where were we bad? How are we going to get better?” he says. “The hard part is that we can see how much we did well, and we can also see areas where we were dysfunctional, the interpersonal team relationships, and things that we could have done better.”

He’s not throwing ­anyone under the boat, except himself. American Magic’s failure to reach the match wasn’t because of a slow boat. “On the contrary,” Hutchinson says, glancing longingly at a video monitor across the empty room, admiring the sleek and shallow AC75 that he’s convinced was the fastest of the latest challenger fleet. “It’s hard to not feel that we underachieved again.”

In the “plus” column, however, he places the team’s operational efficiency, its financial standing, and a gem of a boat.

But bad luck is a cruel mistress with an ax to grind, and no one could have foreseen starting helmsman Paul Goodison falling down an open hatch, breaking ribs and getting sidelined at the most critical point of the series. His replacement, Lucas Calabrese, is plenty skilled, but the demands put upon him when thrust into the crux of ­competition were too great.

“He got thrown in at a really hard time against a competitor that had been together for six years. So, you can’t underestimate how good of a job they actually did in that series, and how good of a job Tommy (Slingsby, the starting starboard helmsman) did starting and ­winning the first cross.”

On Calabrese’s first day of Louis Vuitton Cup against Luna Rossa, American Magic led into the second weather gate in both races but lost them in the end. Those defeats were followed by two breezy races sailed at the red line of the AC75. They lost one race by 2 seconds and the other by 7. The one they lost by 2, Hutchinson says, was due to a momentary loss of control—in modern Cup parlance known as a “wobble.”

“That’s just time in the boat,” Hutchinson says. “When you’re going that fast, the trimmer, the helmsman and the flight controller need to be completely in sync. When you’re thrown into it, it’s hard to find that rhythm.”

Calabrese had sailed on Patriot for all of 10 days in the earlier phase of the ­campaign—and held the top speed, Hutchinson says. He was always full-tilt with the boat.

While there was much to lament watching the British and New Zealander sailors go at it, with that nagging feeling that “the wrong boat got to the final,” Hutchinson says that he’s uncertain what he and the team could have done differently.

Patriot certainly had its strengths as the most aerodynamic package of the AC75 fleet, the sailing team roster was rich, and three years of training and development went all according to plan.  

“I do truly believe that we would be in a different spot here today without Goodie’s accident,” he says. “And that’s not a discredit to Lucas. The guy did a flawless job at stepping into a really difficult situation, and he showed so much ­mental fortitude.”

With Patriot being a third-​generation AC75, Hutchinson says that the platform’s unique trait was an ability to crab to windward. How the boat is able to do so requires a deep explanation of the many forces at play on the AC75. Crabbing isn’t easy, he says, because it makes the boat “cranky,” but it’s ­powerful when done right.

Patriot was also noteworthy in the fleet for the use of recumbent cycles inside the hull. “I’m proud of the clever thinking and doing that,” he says. “The uninformed say that we were lacking power, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. Everybody has the same amount of power inside the boats, give or take. Power wasn’t the issue. The allocation of it may have been—the systems inside the boat, how many pumps we had in the boat versus what the others were using. That’s the bigger issue. We have to get better in the mechatronics and the control system, the mapping of each function—where it goes and how you do it.”

Science and technology are driving the evolution of Cup boats ever faster, with simulators, sensors, logic, HMIs, and especially AI making it ever more difficult for teams to develop and improve during the racing itself. They can improve with every race, but everyone else can too, and silver bullets no longer come overnight.

There also needs to be a shift away from on-water development to more hours in the simulator. That, Terry Hutchinson says, is where they made a mistake. Time in the sim now trumps time in the boat.

“It’s now bloody hard,” Hutchinson says about improving during the competition. Once the Cup racing gets going, there are not enough races, or time, to turn things around. “For the amount that’s being invested, we need to have more racing.”

For the next Cup, should American Magic challenge again, Hutchinson suggests a series of lead-up regattas—four or five—that would allow teams more racing. “That would allow all the teams the opportunity to develop, and all the racing leading up to that would be closer. We should all be racing together, including the defender. The America’s Cup will always have the relevance of the history of the regatta, but at a certain point, the regatta has to change if it wants to remain relevant. But it can’t just be another SailGP.”

While American Magic has a side seat at the table with the New Zealanders and INEOS Britannia as the Challenger of Record for the 38th Cup—when, where and how are TBD—all Hutchinson and the team can do is retreat to Pensacola, unpack the tools, and get on with the job ahead. But for Hutchinson, there’s still much more introspection to come, and figuring out a way to get faster without getting on the water.

“Our biggest area of improvement was going to come through time on the boat racing and racing development,” he says. That obviously didn’t happen in Barcelona with the early elimination. But there also needs to be a shift away from on-water development to more hours in the simulator. That, Hutchinson says, is where they made a mistake. Time in the sim now trumps time in the boat.

But there’s also the nagging question of his own leadership and his management of the talent. “We have to look at why we are not progressing further in the competition,” he says. “I can see the whys, but the whys don’t answer the question completely. In hindsight, knowing that we had a team dynamic to work on with Tom and Goody, should I have done something different and pushed further into the space of making it more of an open competition for the helmsmen and trying different combinations?”

As a point of reference, he cites INEOS Britannia replacing its starting port helmsman Giles Scott with Olympian and America’s Cup first-timer Dylan Fletcher in the weeks before the start of the regatta.

“The hardest calls are the ones that can unsettle the team the most and yet has probably the most room to gain,” Hutchinson says, pausing to measure his words carefully without saying outright that perhaps the chemistry wasn’t perfect. “We’re all results-driven people. I…I wanted to win the regatta because…to be…to…to finally take a deep breath. Now I have to keep holding my breath.”

The exhale might come in 2027 or ‘28, but for now, we sit tight.

The post The Barcelona Exit Interview appeared first on Sailing World.

With the AC75s of Emirates Team New Zealand and INEOS Britannia tucked in their sheds getting final nips and tucks ahead of this weekend’s start to the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup all was quiet along the waterfront. And it would have been easy to miss the simmering excitement at Barcelona’s Port Olimpic if were not for the boisterous arrivals of the chase boats of Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli and American Magic, packed full of team members to spur the women of the Puig Women’s America’s Cup as they wait to dock out for one final day of qualification races.

Berthed in order of the rankings, at one end of the quay are the sailors, friends and families of INEOS Britannia’s Athena Pathway sailors in their pole-position parking spot. Next to them, the sailors of Alinghi Red Bull Racing team, then Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli, Emirates Team New Zealand and Orient Express Racing Team. At pit row’s end is the AC40 of the New York YC’s American Magic.

Helena Scutt, a designer with New York YC challenge, darts past with a camera and a roll of tape, which she stows on the chase boat. She’s an alternate, and today will be watching and analyzing as the American women sail four races to dig themselves out of the basement and into the top three of the Group A fleet.

Group A are teams associated with the Cup teams and Group B are the “invited” teams. They’ve already completed their qualifying races for the Semi Final, with Swedish Challenge Women’s Team Powered by Artemis, Jajo Team Dutchsail, and the locals of SailTeam BCN making the cut after a few spectacularly breezy races.

Scutt’s adivce for the team today is simple: “Don’t worry too much about the points, if we sail the boat well it will show,” she says. “It’s about mastering our own boat before worrying about what other people are doing.”

Success will come, she assures me. It will be a matter of “heads out of the boat,” she says. “Keeping it simple and looking for pressure. You can’t worry about the shifts. It’s just about staying in the breeze and on the foils.”

While the team could have warmed up with a few laps on the simulator, today, Scutt says, starboard helmswoman Erika Reineke eschewed the additional screen time. “Erika didn’t want to sim this morning because she wanted to be head-out-of-the-boat,” Scutt says, “she just wanted to not get too locked in on the screen.”

When it comes to AC40 racing, there’s plenty the simulator can’t do and that includes acclimating one’s cranial settings to recent updates to the AC40’s autopilot software. Emirates Team New Zealand writes all the autopilot software, Scutt says, while the helms are adjusting the boat’s trim, its pitch, the depth of the foils and their cant angle. “Essentially, you input what you want and the autopilot achieves that,” Scutt says. The autopilot update came about a month ago, toward the end of their training period, so all the teams are still adapting to it.

“In order to keep the rudder immersed a certain amount to prevent losing it, if it detects that the rudder is—it used to be less than 300mm of immersion—it kicks the rudder and sinks the stern so you have more of a bow-up trim. If you have a combination of too much ride height and leeward heel it, the geometry changes and [the autopilot] kicks the rudder. They changed it to 500mm of immersion so the kicks are happening more often. Now you’re bow-up and it forces a reset, so you have to ease sails and get settled again.”

As Scutt explains the intricacies of the autopilot software, the chase boats arrive into the marina with a cacophony of horns and music, an impromptu postponement harbor parade of sorts. Onboard American Magic’s chase, rap music is booming. The Italians follow, waving the red-white-and green, which stirs the Italian camp into a flag-waving volley.

The American Magic sailors dash out to the bow of the AC40 to reciprocate the celebration. Port helmswoman Francesca Clapcich sprints out to the bow and dances on the foredeck to Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” ba-bop-ba-da-bop…let’s go girls…” and then to Lenny Kravitz’s “American Woman,” appropriate tunes, not just for the Magic sailors, but for the two dozen females whose skills, determination and patience have earned them a spotlight on sailing’s biggest stage.

While this gathering feels more like a side-stage gig to the Cup itself, the excitement is as palpable as it should be. This is historic stuff in a sport that’s long been skewed male, and as they peel off the dock and turn to the racecourse one at a time, each and everyone one of them knows it. Smiles and hand hearts say it all.  

 “It’s really cool, and hopefully they [America’s Cup organizers] keep it rolling next time,” says American Magic coach Charlie Ogletree. “I can’t see them going backward.”

We’re interrupted by the arrival of legendary hardware maven and sailing Hall of Famer Peter Harken who’s out wandering the scene. He agrees it’s very cool and he’s been enjoying watching it from the Barcelona beachside condo where he’s been posted up for a while.

Forty minutes or so later, these six Group A teams are on the America’s Cup racecourse, foiling into lumpy swells in winds just barely strong enough to get and keep the AC40s on their skinny foils. These boats are difficult enough to handle in marginal winds, but the big swells make every hard turn of the steering wheels a 50-50 proposition.

The women of American Magic are quick to follow the day’s plan: have a good start, get the first shift and go from there. It’s basic stuff, but to get out of the basement and make the Semi Final cut, requires at least one race win and a couple of top finishes. Beyond that, all they can do is let the fleet sort itself out.

With a well-timed approach, Reineke, the starboard helmswoman and Fort Lauderdale’s ILCA 6 Olympian, is cracking the line, on time and with plenty of pace. It’s a great start in the middle of the line. The women of Emirates Team New Zealand are a touch late to the line, but have a better speed build and are immediately advanced on the Americans, positioned to leeward.

Approaching the left boundary, Reineke and her starboard trimmer, Olympic Mixed 470 sailor Louisa Nordstrom, drop the foil and turn the steering wheel, and then pass the responsibility to the port-side pair of Clapcich and Sara Stone. With their foiling tack complete, all looks perfect as they accelerate out of the tack and straight into the waves on port, flying up the course and momentarily into second place. 

“Our priority was the start,” Clapcich says when we meet outside the Media Mixed Zone after racing, “because we’ve been missing quite a lot, and I definitely can take that on me as I’m on port and responsible for getting all the pre-starts set up for the last tack. So, I didn’t deliver the first day of racing, and that was really high in my priority, to get back into our good pattern, getting out of the line fast.”

The New Zealanders, however, have a jump on the fleet, as do the Brits. The Kiwis are first through the windward gate and streak down the run with what could be—and should be—a runaway win. 

But a failed layline jibe at the bottom corner of the course has the Kiwis bobbing. The race is wide open.

INEOS’s Athena Pathway says, thank you very much as they temporarily snatch on final approach to the leeward gate. But in a blink the Brits are off the foils too and doing the displacement foredeck dance. Now streaking down the middle of the course with a straight shot and through the gate first is Alinghi Red Bull Racing’s squad.

Meanwhile, a few teams at the back of the fleet, including American Magic, are linking jibes and steaming down the racecourse too. American Magic sails past the Kiwis to round third through the gate, a position they will hold to the finish of a race that is eventually shortened to three legs. With a third, American Magic finally pockets valuable points, but they remain at the bottom of the Group A standings. Alinghi Red Bull Racing’s win makes it mathematically more difficult for the Americans.

“We never gave up,” Clapchic says. “Even before the start, we were really focused on it being us and the boat. We knew that it was a really open race and anybody could win so we stayed really focused on our own boat and tried to make smart decisions on maneuvers. It’s a bummer for us that Alinghi won, but we cannot control what other boats do.”

With this fifth qualifying race in the books, there’s a pause for the next but what wind there is fading fast. And then comes the wait. And more waiting until the race committee calls it quits for the day. The Swiss are content with a win.

“Today was one of the best days of my life,” Alinghi Red Bull Racing’s port helmswoman Alexandra Stalder says after racing. “Winning a race in the Cup is something special, so I’m super happy. But we’re not yet confirmed for the next round, so we have to fight for these last points. Tonight is an important night—we have to sleep well and be ready for tomorrow.”

There are only three remaining races to determine the final pecking order, and tomorrow morning at Port Olimpic will, no doubt, have a familiar feel to it. With a good night’s sleep and another raucous repeat send off from Port Olimpic the fleet will be straight into a race-packed day on Friday October 11 with races for both A and B groups. Should the wind cooperate, of course.

The post One Tough Race At a Time for Puig Women’s America’s Cup Teams appeared first on Sailing World.

It stings when an America’s Cup campaign ends without the sailors hoisting or chugging from the Auld Mug like they dream about. But when it’s the New York Yacht Club that comes up short, the loss seems a lot heavier. Bearing that burden in Barcelona today is American Magic’s skipper and President of Sailing Operations Terry Hutchinson who will spend the next few months trying to figure out what led to a second straight exit from the challenger semifinals and what to do better next time—should there be a next time.

American Magic was once again eliminated by Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli Team’s fast silver AC75 to a 5-3 victory in the Louis Vuitton Cup semifinals, an improvement from 2021 when they returned to Pensacola winless following a capsize and near sinking of its first-generation Patriot off Auckland that effectively ended the campaign.

“What could we have done better? Why are we in this situation and how can we improve if we’re given the opportunity to go forward? I mean, we could always be better. But it’s not a criticism of any one thing because these things are hard and the competitors are very good.”

Terry Hutchinson, American Magic Skipper and President of Sailing Operations

While Luna Rossa takes on Ben Ainslie’s INEOS Britannia for the right to face two-time defending America’s Cup champion Emirates Team New Zealand, American Magic will begin debriefing and packing up to return to Pensacola, where the team is building a $15 million training center.

A few big questions hang over the end of this Cup campaign, however, which has been largely financed by principals Hap Fauth and Doug DeVos in the latest attempt to return the Auld Mug to the NYYC’s clubhouse on West 44^th Street in Manhattan. Cup pundits and fans will long wonder how much American Magic’s performance was affected by the loss of co-helmsman Paul Goodison who broke five ribs before the semifinals when he fell into an open hatch while helping to carry the mainsail across the deck.

Lucas Calabrese was subbed in for the more experienced Goodison to helm opposite Tom Slingsby. “We’ve been asked a couple times, you know, would it be different? It’s simply, the boat’s performance was good,” Hutchinson says. “Lucas did an outstanding job. We had trained for it. And, you know, you can’t really engage in a hypothetical because it’s a hypothetical. And out of respect to the guys on the boat, I think that’s a disservice to the entire team.

“But I can tell you that the boat’s performance was good and they raced it well and they did a lot of things really well. And so, in that vein, it was good.”

Praising the work of designers Aaron Perry, Britt Ward and Pete Melvin, Hutchinson said the newest Patriot was “a great boat. I would say the guys punched well above their weight for the amount of time they had.”

Speaking a few days after elimination, Hutchinson said it was time to move on from talking about the disappointment and focus on the why. “Like, what could we have done better? Why are we in this situation and how can we improve if we’re given the opportunity to go forward? I mean, we could always be better. But it’s not a criticism of any one thing because these things are hard and the competitors are very good.”

Hutchinson is game to continue pursuing the America’s Cup and says, “You’re never going to back away from a challenge and this is definitely a challenge.”

Emirates Team New Zealand boss Grant Dalton suggested recently that if the Kiwis retain the Cup, the next edition could come as soon as 2026, which seems to fit well with Hutchinson’s thoughts for the next regatta.

“If Team New Zealand was to win, the challenge is to sit down and have a good conversation with Dalts about how to move the America’s Cup forward, how to move it into the 21st Century, really,” Hutchinson says. “We have all the correct technology pieces to the puzzle. And so, what it needs is continuity and marketability. The opportunity is there because the boats are so cool and so I think we want to model ourselves after what other sports have done.”

He mentions Formula One and even SailGP, the global league backed by former America’s Cup winner Larry Ellison that features many sailors from the America’s Cup. “What SailGP has done is really good. It doesn’t have the lure of the America’s Cup, but it’s still a great platform,” Hutchinson says. “Let’s look at those things and see how we can grab, are they good pieces, and incorporate it into the America’s Cup.”

The post Questions Before Answers at American Magic appeared first on Sailing World.

April began with new-boat reveals that highlight the innovations of the second-generation AC75s for the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup. While similar in size and scale, no one boat is alike. 

Alinghi Red Bull Racing, of the Swiss camp, was first to show its AC75, BoatOne, in a theatric soiree, giving observers and other teams a peek at the boat’s design traits. Its straight and narrow bow profile transitions to a long and tapered bustle that goes all the way to the stern. The walls of BoatOne’s tall crew pods stop sharply before the transom section, leaving what amounts to a long overhang to accommodate the internal rudder elements. Bumps sculpted into the foredeck are said to redirect wind flow into the jib and down the middle of the boat for aerodynamic gains.

America’s Cup defender, Emirates Team New Zealand, was next to reveal, with a soft launch, followed by a foiling session the following day. With a naming ceremony that came a week later, the Kiwis’ AC75, Taihoro, was blessed for action, and they went straight into sailing in Auckland. Unlike the high cockpit walls of Alinghi’s BoatOne, however, those of Taihoro taper down toward to the ­transom scoop, which houses the mainsheet traveler system in a trench, and the rudder assembly.

The following day in Cagliari, the Italians of Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli rolled out their metallic silver AC75, a menacing-looking design that has its pronounced curves and a significant bustle which rises toward the stern. The boat’s tall cockpits produce a deep trench through the middle of the boat. 

INEOS Britannia was fourth from behind the curtain with a boat dubbed RB3. It’s different enough from Alinghi’s and ETNZ’s AC75s to be dangerous. The plumb bow starts sharp and maintains a steep deadrise before flaring out to a flatter bottom. A pronounced ­bustle tapers off near the stern and transitions to a thin skeg that ends short of the rudder.

The New York YC’s American Magic revealed its boat, Patriot, in early May, blessing it and going sailing on the same day. It’s certainly a different look, summarized by the team’s design coordinator, Scott Ferguson. “We followed our own design path with Patriot as we pushed the limits of the AC75 rule while tailoring for the Barcelona venue,” he says. “Our overall philosophy is minimalistic, as we’ve tried to squeeze down our volumes to the base minimum while still fitting the crew and systems into the boat.”

With the French Orient Express Racing Team pulling from Team New Zealand’s design package, there’s an expectation that its ­platform will not be too far off the defender when it comes to light soon enough. It had not yet been launched at press time.

In terms of crew-pod assignments, cyclors have now taken the back seats, mostly concealed and out of the airstream, while ­trimmers and helmsmen take the front seats for a better view of the action. American Magic went to the extreme, positioning three pods inboard, two well aft in the boat, with cyclors on recumbent bikes.

The post The Marvelous AC75s On Deck appeared first on Sailing World.

As complex as the AC75s will be when launched for racing at the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup Challenger Series, New York YC’s American Magic trimmer Lucas Calabrese says that getting the team’s 75-foot foiler around the racecourse will demand the same fundamentals he honed in his years of Olympic 470 sailing. A mainsail is a mainsail, after all, but how trimmers manage the power in these towering high-aspect sails is exponentially more critical. The AC75 Tech Regulations, which define virtually every aspect of the AC75, are “quite restrictive” with the sails, Calabrese says. But for the second-generation twin-skinned mainsails, there is plenty of innovation yet to come.

Most teams accept that Barcelona will be a generally lighter-wind venue, so most design packages will focus on performance in medium to light breezes. And when it comes to designing the “aero package” for these AC75s, the challenge is to have ample power in the sails for takeoff and minimal drag when up to speed. “These boats go very fast, and as soon as we’re going very fast, we need to get rid of a lot of area, which we can do,” Calabrese says. “But the hard part is that we also need to maneuver and need to accelerate. So, there’s no one solution to this challenge. It all relates to the rest of the package.”

That package, of course, includes foils, flaps, a rudder, rudder elevators, and countless other considerations. But for Calabrese, the main concern is the mainsail he’s tasked to trim with efficiency. The controls at his disposal include the mainsheet, which controls leech tension like any sailboat. Unlike a traditional keelboat, however, the AC75s have no booms. Given the high apparent wind angles at which these boats sail, booms are essentially unnecessary. With such narrow angles and no boom, Calabrese says that the mainsail could be considered as being more akin to a jib. The mainsheet simply impacts leech tension (on both mainsail skins), and then there’s the outhauls, which work ­similarly to a traditional outhaul. The cunningham system, he says, “is a pretty simple setup.” One additional consideration is mast rotation.

“Those are the main controls we use to set up the sails, and are important to controlling the boat’s heel angle,” Calabrese says. “But the most important tool to control the heel is the traveler. Heel is important because it’s all related to the foil-cant angle and to the flap, and to the stability of the boat.”

On the AC40s, used for pre-Cup development and preliminary regattas, the traveler system is battery-powered, so mainsail trimmers use it extensively. On the AC75, however, the traveler is powered by humans, the cyclors, so teams are more limited in the amount of traveler adjustments. “You just need to know how to use it wisely,” Calabrese says.

Outhaul adjustments are more micromovements, but because the clews are so close to the traveler itself, “the angle changes quite abruptly with small movements,” Calabrese says. “For every centimeter you move the outhaul track, you’re moving the angle, so you get a nice effect without having to move them too much.”

As for the cunningham, the loads are smaller to begin with at low speeds, but as speed builds, more travel in the system is required. The faster they go, the faster it changes; faster equals more load and more effort to pull, which requires more power from the cyclors.

Preliminary racing in the AC40s has demonstrated one of the most important elements of sailing an AC75: the takeoff. Initiating takeoff is one of the more challenging moments, Calabrese says, because the apparent wind angle during the acceleration phase is quite wide. The first thing they must do is rotate the mast fully to try to be as close as they can to the apparent wind angle. With maximum rotation, the traveler is pulled outboard.

“Because we don’t have a boom, it’s the only way to get the sail to set wider,” Calabrese explains. “So, basically, we’re trying to have good trim on [the main and jib], making sure that the two leeches are matched.”

As the speed builds, so too does the apparent wind as it shifts forward. “That’s when you start trimming on. And once we reach the boatspeed that we think we can pull up, that’s when we do the final trim up on the traveler. That will basically get us onto the foils, and once we’re on the foils, the speeds start going up really, really fast.”

At that point, he says, they’re looking to shed excess drag in the sails, using all the tools at their disposal (and this applies to the jib as well): cunninghams, outhauls and mast rotation. “Upwind, the apparent wind angle is about 13 degrees or so, and downwind really is not that much different,” Calabrese says. “So, basically, once we are up in the air, it’s about flattening the sails as much as we can.”

All of this, of course, requires tapping into the wattage output of the cyclors hammering away on their cranks. “We have the sensitivity of needing human power to move every sail control,” Calabrese says, “so we have to be mindful that if we’re moving the traveler all the time, the cyclors are not going to be happy.”
Takeoff is one thing, but the high-speed bear away at the top of the course is another. It’s the most difficult maneuver, especially uprange, Calabrese says. “Everything is very loaded, and we’re going very, very fast, so it’s all about timing. We have to be ready to time the helm really well because if you get to the point where the helmsman is going into the power zone and you start to heel to leeward, you can really start to lose it rapidly, which happens on an almost daily basis on the AC40s.”

Success in the bear away is therefore all about being in precise synchronization. If the helmsman turns downwind and the boat is not properly depowered, leeward heel increases rapidly, and the point of no return is instant. “When you heel to leeward, you’re losing your righting moment quickly, and it snowballs. What happens next is the rudder comes out of the water, and then it’s over.”

Equally demanding on the power team and critical to being in sync is the turn through the bottom gate, especially when it’s windy. Going into the turn, the trimmers rely on software to tell them the time and distance to the turn. It’s also important that the cyclors know how far out they are from the mark—when things start getting pulled on and loaded, they’d better be ready for maximum output. The timing has to be right; pull things on too early, and VMG drops. Too late is too late. The sequence of events, Calabrese says, is cunningham on, outhauls adjusted, and then be prepared for the round up and acceleration. Mainsheet and jib-sheet adjustments ­happen in sync.

“The hardest part is to time things right so that you don’t end up with things trimmed on too early or too late,” he says.

And let’s not forget about the traveler; there’s a lot of big adjustments right after turning up, which draws a lot of energy from the cyclors. The cascading effect of any late adjustment is that other controls come on even later, which then requires even more traveler adjustments to follow. “Like every boat, if your sails are not in the right shape, you’re gonna end up way more unstable,” Calabrese says. “It’s similar here, so you want to make sure when you go around the mark, you can be pretty much set. It’s as much about managing the pressure from the cyclors as it is doing what you want. A lot of the time, you just can’t do what you wish to do.”

If the mainsail comes on too early and the jib late, the boat “gets pretty backloaded, and you can spin pretty quickly,” Calabrese adds. “Been there, done that. These are ­incredibly sensitive boats, regardless of how big they are. And we have to be very careful making sure we’re balanced because even though they’re big and heavy, they are still super-sensitive to being in the proper sail trim. The issues come when the helmsman turns and the sail trimmers are not ready or not ahead. That’s when you get into problems.”

The post Developments of the AC75 Mainsail appeared first on Sailing World.

Perched on the shores of the deepwater Pensacola Bay, in the farthest northwest corner of the Florida Panhandle, the city of Pensacola had for years eluded the sailing spotlight. So-named for the long-haired indigenous inhabitants encountered by the Spanish explorers of the 1500s, Pensacola’s identity has ebbed and flowed with the tides. This City of Five Flags was abandoned for nearly a century after a hurricane wiped out its original Spanish inhabitants, to later be governed by France, Great Britain, the US and the Confederate States of America. 

A significant economic contributor to Florida for timber and fishing in the 1930s and 1940s, Pensacola’s sailing culture flourished in the decades that followed but fell dormant in the aftermath of the 1970s and 1980s hurricanes, which once again drove an entire generation elsewhere. 

With a history as turbulent as the hurricanes that defined it, the city on the bay is rising again, this time capitalizing on its distinguishing geographic features. 

Immediate past commodore of the Pensacola Yacht Club Tom Pace knows the city—and its bay—quite well. The once-professional windsurfer grew up in Pensacola, moved away during the aforementioned dormant years, but returned to care for his ailing parents. His love for Pensacola inspired a Quixote-esque quest to showcase the bay’s ideal location and sailing conditions. 

Spanning roughly 5-by-11 miles in depths of 22 to 32 feet, Pensacola Bay’s sail-racing area takes advantage of the optimal sailing conditions. Here, wind conditions vary from season to season, but serve up a perfect 8.1 mph average punctuated by 15 to 25 mph frontal surges between October and May. The warmer months see light winds in the morning building into a southwesterly sea breeze later in the day.

The bay has been home to several notable youth sailing events in recent years, including the 2018 Optimist National Championship and the US Sailing Youth National Championship, as well as a host of national and international regattas. 

“It had been a dream for years,” Pace says. “We are trying to rebuild a sailing culture.” 

Pace’s vision coincided with the brewing of the perfect storm—one propelled by the New York Yacht Club’s decision to challenge the 36th America’s Cup. Led by three-time Maxi72-class champion and yachtsman John “Hap” Fauth, businessman Roger Penske and Quantum Racing head Doug DeVos, the AC Cup Challenger team American Magic was looking for a training base. Key West offered the infrastructure but temperamental conditions. Pensacola’s protected bay, on the other hand, offered conditions similar to Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf.

“We kept bugging American Magic to relocate from Key West to Pensacola,” Pace says. “The bay offers winds from every direction and, unlike San Francisco or New York, it’s not as seasonal. The cost of living factors in as well.” Team representative Dr. Jim Andrews visited during a particularly stellar 40-knot day. “We got a call a month later from Tyson Lamont (WHO). They would need a dock, containers, and stakes for tent structures for the AC36 Challenger team who would use Pensacola Bay as its winter training base, named Warehouse 10.

“In the 1984 Olympics, the US took gold or silver in each of 12 sailing medal divisions,” said Pace. “Since then we’ve fallen off; during the past three Olympic cycles, the US has had one medal. Hap and Doug saw this stagnation of American sailing and went back to the cradle. They needed a performance sailing center.”

In 2020, the biggest names in American sailing turned their attention not only to US sailing, but to Pensacola as well. Names such as Paul Cayard, Dawn Riley, Ray Palmer, Terry Hutchinson, and Mike Cazer were each influential in the fledgling opti, foils, and Moth events now surging on the bay.

This year, Pace’s vision for Pensacola came one step closer to reality when the board of Triumph Gulf Coast voted unanimously to approve an $8.5 million grant for design, renovation, and completion of the American Magic training facility. The new Center for Maritime Excellence will serve as the permanent headquarters for the American Magic team. On top of this, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced a $3.9 million grant from the Florida Job Growth Grant Fund to strengthen Pensacola’s infrastructure and “promote economic opportunities in the sailing industry for the Florida Panhandle.”

“There is a lot of excitement here now that real hard dollars are going into our vision,” says Pace. “None of this would have been possible without Merrill Land Company President/Owner Collier Merrill at the state level and Ellis Bullock, President/Creative Director of marketing and communications firm EW Bullock on the local level. Without them we would not have begun the sponsorship of American Magic. In fact, Pensacola, Florida will now be displayed on the sails through the Cup Finals. They have been critical to the relationship with local leaders as well as with the Governor, Florida Senators and Congressmen, and remain the bedrock of all of this.

“Our task now is to build out the infrastructure,” says Pace. “The marina space may be a challenge but the water is not. There is a load of potential in revitalizing the waterfront as well as downtown Pensacola.”

Now that the momentum is going, Pace can already taste an American Magic win in Barcelona. “If American Magic wins, how do we shape up the defense in Pensacola? There is a lot of excitement. We need tourist development and the county engaged, if it’s all going to work. What we have is an incredibly cohesive core group that we hope will influence the ancillaries. Everything has been set, we have legitimate money, everybody is in. If you build a little bit of infrastructure, you will attract a lot.”

Godspeed, Pensacola. We’ll see you on the bay.

To learn more about Pensacola sailing visit www.visitpensacola.com/feature/sailing/.

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