if you’re looking for a boat that is fast, fun and stable, look no further than the good ol’ reliable beach catamarans, which gained popularity in the early 1970s because of one man, Hobart “Hobie” Laidlaw Alter. Alter invented the Hobie Cat and went on to revolutionize beach-cat sailing with nearly 30 different models during his lifetime. The Hobie name lives on as a moniker of the many two-hulled sailboats still out there. But there are now many builders producing excellent alternatives: Nacra, Goodall, Cirrus, Topcat, RS and Topaz, to name a few.

My path to cat sailing is the same as many others. I caught the bug watching my father sail off the beach in Central America in the 1970s in a Laser with his buddies. Soon I had my own yacht, a Styrofoam Snark that I tricked out to be mine. I loved that boat. But one day, a family friend took me for a ride on a lime-green Nacra, and we tore up and down the beach with that boat. I was hooked on the speed, and hanging out in the trapeze blasting through the water.

My father sold the Snark, and that was the end of my monohull days. I sailed Prindle cats off the beach in Miami during college and got my first Hobie 18 SX with wing seats after that. I’ve always loved the speed of the boats because you can go places fast, but as I gained more experience, I started racing, then realized that I wanted an even faster boat. I transitioned into a Nacra F18 Evolution, a great boat and top of its class in the world. I raced around the buoys with world-class sailors, sailed expedition-style races, and even long-distance races. It all evolved from that one Nacra session.

I know that a lot of sailors are reluctant to try beach-cat sailing because of the unfamiliarity of it. Access to trying one can be a barrier too, so the best way to get hooked is to find a rental location when on vacation, a sailing school, or a sailboat dealer with an experience center or club with a beach-cat fleet. It’s good to have someone who knows what they’re doing to walk you through your first experience.

I’m confident that your first ride will, like with me, get you hooked, and maybe thinking how you can get your hands on your own starter beach cat. Here’s where I’d start looking:

The Hobie Wave is an exciting and insanely easy-to-sail catamaran for sailors of all sizes and skills levels. It’s readily available for rental at resorts and beach clubs, both new and used. At 13 feet long and 245 pounds, with a capacity of 800 pounds, this boat can be sailed solo or with a crew of four. It has a simple rig, with only a downhaul and mainsheet—and no boom. The rotomolded hull is virtually indestructible, so launching and docking is stress-free. The Hobie Wave enjoys a cult following among catamaran sailors, as well as a racing class for people of all ages.

The RS Cat 14 is the next step up in the entry-level catamaran world. It’s designed for youths and adults, from novice to experienced sailors. The boat has the potential to grow with you as your skill level improves by adding more sail options to the boat. Durable rotomolded construction makes it a very tough boat. At 14 feet and 275 pounds, with a capacity of two people, the boat is easy to move and set up, which makes it easy to trailer, and to explore and play in different venues. It’s simple to sail, but it also brings in that potential next-level sailing experience on the water.

For a versatile boat that’s ideal for coming into the cat world with something new and modern, the Nacra 500 MK2 is a solid option. With fiberglass hulls, boomless main, no daggerboards, and high-quality hardware and sails, the Nacra 500 MK2 is a fun, fast, and easy boat to sail, with plenty of options to eventually turbo the ride. It’s a good recreational sailboat for youth and adult sailors, as well as a fun boat to race with friends in a class or mixed fleet. It sets up quickly and is easy to transport. Sail it solo, double up, or take four people (including yourself) for a fun day on the water.

With the Nacra 570 MK2, the performance leap from the 500 to the 570 is real. The MK2 version of this boat is the top dog in the recreational-beach-cat market. Its strong and incredibly sturdy hulls, combined with its hydrodynamic and sleek design, make it way faster than the average beach cat, while still staying particularly stable. At 18 feet 3 inches, the boat is light for its size at 364 pounds, so it is easy to move around on land and on the water. If you are moving up from a Hobie 16 or an older 18-foot beach cat, or coming into beach-cat sailing from the sportboat or skiff world, this is a true beach cat that will check all the boxes.

The post Four Proven Catamarans To Get You Started in Multihull Racing appeared first on Sailing World.

The first twilight race of the year is a special time. After thinking about sailing and racing all winter long, we finally get to go ­evening racing again. My wife, Libby, has a J/70 that she races on Lake Washington, and sometimes I get to tag along. Our first Wednesday-night outing was the start of her season, and excitement was high.

However, when we arrive at the boat and start rigging, we discover a major issue: There is no tail to the jib halyard. The thin rope used to hoist the jib is lost inside the mast and nowhere to be seen. There is only one approach to fixing this problem: We’ll have to pull out the halyard from the top of the rig, rerun it down inside the mast, and then fish it out through the narrow halyard exit slot in the mast wall. Fortunately, we have more than an hour until the start, so we are confident that we can make it happen and not miss a thing. We’re darn well going to try anyway, because we really don’t want to miss the season opener. 

One of Libby’s crew is 20-year-old Esther Goodell. She is smart, capable, eager and fearless. As I am preparing to get hoisted aloft on a fender repurposed as a bosun’s chair, Goodell volunteers to go up instead. Let’s see…her 110 pounds or my 180 pounds?

Yeah, sending Goodell up is a much better idea. So, we haul her to the hounds carrying a weighted string to feed into the mast. After a couple of attempts and some fiddling with it, she finally gets the string to drop all the way down. Then comes too many unsuccessful attempts to fish the string out of the slot, until Libby finally snags it with a hook and pulls it out. Success! We are definitely making the start.

Not so fast, cowboy. As we try to pull the halyard through, the messenger becomes disconnected, and we are back to where we started. We have to go through the whole process again, but soon enough, we have a working halyard, and finally we can lower Goodell to the deck.

Sails go up, and we’re off the dock with 20 minutes to spare. Spirits are high until we go for our practice spinnaker set. The halyard skies to the top of the mast, and the spinnaker falls into the water. In our haste to get going, we had tied a poor knot, and now our kite halyard is at the top of the mast.

After a brief discussion of our options, we head back to the dock to try to tip over the boat and recover the halyard. I have seen this done with other J/70s, but I’ve never done it myself. Turns out, it’s an exciting exercise but perfectly doable. We start pulling the boat over onto its side using the main halyard and pulling on the shrouds. It takes the full weight of the crew pulling like crazy until we get it far enough over to grab the runaway halyard.

With the mainsail back up, we’re in business and hustling to get out to the racecourse. But by now we’ve missed the first race of the night. Bummer, but we were good to go for the second and final race. We sail well and get a fifth place in the 27-boat fleet. 

While our DNC and fifth-place scores might not seem that great, for Libby’s team, it’s a positive night. We’ve worked together to overcome multiple challenges. It would have been easy to give up and say it was all too difficult, but we’ve persevered, kept a positive attitude, and problem-solved our way to making a fun second race. It’s amazing how adversity makes us stronger and brings a team closer together. The lessons for us are obvious: Think through solutions as a team, don’t give up, and take your time when tying halyard knots.

A Skied Halyard Recovery Kit 

If you’ve never accidentally sent a halyard to the top of the rig, congratulations. It’ll happen eventually. Getting back into action requires the right tools at the ready. A few essentials in an onboard tool kit, or in the dock box, are all you need. Also, to make the job easier, have a reeving splice in the tail end of every halyard.

• Length of small-diameter Dyneema that’s
  at least twice the mast height
• 6- to 12-inch section of bike chain
• Sewing kit with whipping twine
• Electrical tape
• Seizing wire to make a hook
• Bright, narrow-beam flashlight

The post Recovering Skied Halyards: Lessons From the Racecourse appeared first on Sailing World.

Nothing else matters except beating that one boat across the finish line.

Which is why I’m maniacally trimming the sail even though it hurts like hell. Every time the winged-out jib folds back onto itself and refills with a violent snap, zingers of pain shoot into my right shoulder. It might be carnage to my rotator cuff, but screw it. I don’t care. Over my shoulder, straight off to starboard 100 feet away, is the pink boat with a crew in matching pink shirts. The two of us are battling it out at the tail end of the 21-boat fleet, as we have been for the past three days. There’s always one boat in every regatta that seems magnetic, right? Voila is that one, and right now we’re mathematically guaranteed to beat them in the regatta. This race is for all the karma marbles.

We’re neck-and-neck in the 14th race of the best-kept secret in all of one-design racing. While the two of us are hand-to-hand for our respective points and our dignity, the leaders are already halfway back to Cowpet Bay and the chillaxed St. Thomas YC, where the Cruzan rum and the all-you-can-eat buffet awaits. Here at the back of the fleet on the sand-colored Stinger, my teammates and I are broken, but we’re not quitting.

With me is our skipper Ian Scott, the finest gentleman yachtsman anyone could ever sail with. I’ve been his bowman on the J/24 Crack O’ Noon for exactly 37 years. Practically cradle to grave. On jib and spinnaker trim is Herb McCormick, who’s been cross-sheeting Crack O’s genoa sheets for more than 40 years. The two of them are lifelong Aquidneck Island mates. They’re brothers, as far I’m concerned. Both raised me to be the sailor I am. Which I guess makes them my sailing fathers.

That said, I’ve never sailed or raced with my own father, even though he’s the one who cast me off into the sport as a wee lad. That is something I regret, which is why I’ve recruited my 21-year-old son, Tim. He never liked sailing when he was young, and I never pushed it. Given his towering height, basketball naturally became his thing. Before we step foot on Stinger for a day of practice, he doesn’t know a vang from tang, a guy from a twing, or a tack from a jibe, but after a few practice laps, he’s plenty up to speed.

Show-Up-And-Race

So, that’s the four of us: Ian, Herb, Dave and Tim. Team Crack O’ Noon, checking in from Newport, Rhode Island’s J/24 Fleet 50, where the legends and Read brothers once ruled. We’re here for spring training—because we said we would be over too many beers seven months earlier. Our boat for this exercise is the aforementioned Stinger. It’s one of a dozen IC24s that are owned by the St. Thomas YC and used extensively for its adult racing, member gunkholing and the annual St. Thomas International Regatta, which everyone simply refers to as STIR. The regatta, which is always held in March when the trade winds reliably blow, is the club’s marquee event. And the marquee fleet is the IC24, which is essentially a modified J/24. Think of it as a mashed J/24, J/22 and J/80. There’s no genoa to rake across the rig. Just a happy little jib, a symmetric spinnaker, and legs inboard at all times.

The IC24 is a brilliant concept conceived by St. Thomas local Chris Rosenberg. As the class story goes, after Hurricane Marilyn wiped everything the club had, Rosenberg had the wisdom to reimagine and remake a J/24 as a comfortable, five-person, user-friendly interclub keelboat.

The interclub part of Rosenberg’s vision spawned the interisland IC24 phenomenon. There are now fleets in St. Croix and Puerto Rico, which is where the hot boats reside—dialed-in, dry-sailed. Across the fleet, “one-design” is “close enough” for laid-back Caribbean class racing.

But that doesn’t mean the slick-looking Puerto Rican IC24s are inherently faster than St. Thomas YC’s heavily used charter boats, which are available for STIR at a cost just north of $3,000. For that, and a $200 monthly yacht-club membership, we get unlimited use of the IC24, as well as the club’s Hobie Waves and Sunfish. With this deal, you can have one heck of a St. Thomas sailing vacation.

But it gets better. Hundreds of rentable condos flank the club, all of them with sweeping hillside views of Cowpet Bay and pristine islands in the near distance. From our four-bed condo with a balcony, for which we paid $3,000 for the week, we can walk exactly 87 steps to the club, straight to the launch, to the boat, to the racecourse and back.

There’s no reason to cook dinner at the condo because the club’s nightly buffet spread—pasta night, barbecue night and meat night—is all you need to race, eat, drink, sleep and repeat. That’s how it flows in St. Thomas.

Relaxation Earned The Hard Way

Such is the rhythm we settle into after our first day of racing, which we toast to with balcony beers. We’re solidly midfleet. We’ve had some good races; we’ve been in the mix with the top local boats at the first mark, but we’re losing boats on the run by not jibing soon enough. Our race-committee honcho is Dick Neville, a white-haired Aussie from Annapolis who’s the king of running races in the Caribbean. Because of the record-size IC24 fleet, there’s no room for Neville to set up in Red Hook Bay, where the IC24s normally race during STIR, so we’re wedged in around the corner in Nazareth Bay.

Neville has his race-committee boat parked 50 feet or so away from the coral-pocked headland. A short finish line is set on his starboard side, even closer to solid ground. He’s kind enough to enlighten us before the start of the first race that we should jibe immediately after finishing.

By the nature of the race committee’s parking job, Neville has favored the committee boat end, but there’s not a lot of wiggle room or runway for either a barging or Vanderbilt-style start. The one bit of local knowledge that everyone seems to know is to go left for the lift off the shore at the top of the beat, but with a 1.2-mile leg and a long line, starting at the pin end is a fast pass to the middle fleet, which is where we end up at the end of the day. The locals are crushing.

The first day’s friendly trade winds allow us to ease into the regatta, but the following morning, the palm fronds are hissing. Breeze on. Back home in New England, 25 knots often feels like a lot more. The air is colder, heavier, and punchier. In the Caribbean, 25 feels perfect: warmer, gentler, with diamond-filled puffs flitting across the blue. Don’t bother bringing foul weather gear to St. Thomas. But do bring gloves, because the salt-caked ropes carve bare-skin crevices to the bone. And pack your swim trunks for an after-race pit stop in Christmas Cove for a swim and the fresh-out-of-the-oven Easy Peasy Cheesy from Pizza Pi boat anchored in the cove.

Tears, Beers and A Bully

Twenty-five knots is what we get for the next five races. Tim is an overnight sensation at remembering the mechanics of getting the spinnaker out of the hatch without snagging on the shrouds, and then back into the boat during windy and chaotic leeward-gate roundings. While he’s blissfully learning and bleeding, the rest of us are having our issues: Ian’s oversize tiller extension keeps getting caught in the backstay. Herb is on doctor’s orders to not destroy his recently rehabilitated rotator cuff again. He has no winches for the highly loaded kite sheets, and he’s playing them straight from their respective blocks. I’m constantly fighting with the spinnaker pole, which won’t stay on deck, and through the leeward gate, I’m high-stepping through and around Tim and Herb to get back in time to hand-over-hand the mainsheet through the turn.

It’s a miracle we make it through all the tacks, jibes and corners without issue.

But we’re far from perfect. At some point in the blur of Neville’s five rapid-fire races, we whiff one windy jibe and wrap the spinnaker sphincter-tight around the headstay. It’s a bummer of a mistake because we’re having our best race yet. When you’re tired and beaten, St. Thomas’ 25 suddenly feels like a New England 25. For the last race, we cry uncle and shift to jib-and-main. We’re comfortable with our place and our purpose. We’re not here to win it, and a voice of reason in my head is loud and clear: Don’t make Tim hate this.

Just one more race. Let’s make it a good one.

We’re in the mix for the first lap, but without a spinnaker, we’re eventually at the back of the fleet. Approaching the weather mark for the second time, we’re on the port-tack layline, and out in front of us, two starboard tackers easily cross our bow. Behind them is a gaping hole in front of the next boat.

What do you know? It’s Voila. Of course it is.

As soon as the shouting starts, I know where this is going. They are way overstood, their jib is eased to the rail, and the leeward telltale is pointing skyward. Clean and easy, I think to myself. No problemo.

Ian pushes the tiller away to tack, as he has a million times before, but this time, the annoying extension gets lodged in the backstay cascade. It’s not a pro tack, but it’s good enough.

“That’s a foul!” someone bellows.

“No way!” I retort.

Enraged words fly as we round the weather mark, and the shouting continues down the entire offset leg. We split jibes after the rounding, and try as we might to out wing-on-wing them, they beat us easily across the finish. Oh well. I think. We’ll get ‘em tomorrow.

Back ashore, as we saunter down the quay toward the club bar, parched, sunbaked, wind-whipped, smarting and deflated, the pink boat’s skipper, still fuming, advises me of his intent to protest the incident. Paperwork is already filed.

Our futile argument carries on and over to a waiting area outside an air-conditioned shack in the parking lot where the jury is in session. I cannot convince him of the senselessness of the exercise. He beat us, we’re both at the bottom of the standings, and we’re both sticking to our stories. Besides, the rum is flowing, and there’s a rigged Hobie Wave on the beach with my and Tim’s name on it. Christmas Cove is calling, and the sun’s going down. This isn’t the world championship, pal. What are we doing here?

Go Have a Hobie Day

Thankfully, the committee promptly disallows the protest on account of Voila failing to display a protest flag. And thanks to that glorious technicality, Tim and I are soon zippering catamaran wakes with a rapid exit out of Cowpet Bay, water splashing through the trampoline.

Once clear of the mooring field, Tim takes over, nervously holding the tiller bar and beginning his journey to sailing bliss. He’s kind of a natural, and the smile on his face as the little cat takes off is a memory forever placed into the happy-memory drawer of my mind. He gets his Pi slice, and I get him a T-shirt to memorialize this precious father-son experience.

The ol’ boys back at the condo are duly impressed by our willingness to go back out to sea in the Hobie Wave after such a physically and mentally draining race day. YOLO, indeed.

The palm fronds are sizzling again as we ramble down the steps from our condo the following morning. It’s another glorious Caribbean race day, and we’re ready for it.

That is, until the mainsheet swivel-cam base explodes on the way out to the racecourse. Ian saves the day with a spare shackle that’s in his little plastic zipper bag of spare hardware. But as the day goes on, we’re not the only ones handicapped with breakdowns. At some point in another blur of five races, Voila blows its vang, and in the third race, our jib halyard skies to the top rig (the shackle tape job didn’t hold, I promise).

Voila and Stinger are now both playing in the jib-and-main minor league, and in the next race we’re at each other’s throats again, all around the course. On the final leg, they’ve got a jump on us, so I’m fighting the sheet and cursing at the jib, wishing for a spinnaker to make the pain in my shoulder stop. But they’re faster, have a better angle in the waves, and slip ahead halfway down the run. I’m cursing under my breath. We can’t lose to them!

Because Every Point Counts

But miracles do indeed happen, and just as it appears we will lose this battle, mere boatlengths from the finish, they spin out of control and head-to-wind, sails flogging in the wind. Behind the boat pops up its pink-shirted skipper, flailing in the water and waving the broken tiller extension in the air as his crew scrambles to stop and get him back on board.

It’s been a long time since I felt such true joy in someone else’s misfortune. But we’ll happily take that point, thank you very much.

They must have sensed my smugness, or they simply have it out for us, because in the next and final race, they seek us out in the final 30 seconds of the start, intently tacking to leeward and shouting at us to head up. As they would, they stuff us head-to-wind, driving us into a pile of boats above us.

Like, come on, man. Is that really necessary?

Our hopes of a good start, and to finish the regatta on a high note, are toast. We’re pinned against their windward quarter as we cross the line. There’s nowhere to bail out, and there’s a long starboard tack ahead of us. We’re screwed.

Until Neville mumbles a set of OCS numbers over the crackle of the VHF. Our friends are soon peeling off and heading back to the line to restart.

With an open course, the four of us collectively dig in deeper for a keeper. Through sheer persistence, we’re rewarded with our best finish. Viola is nowhere in sight the entire race. 

As the saying goes, we are only as good as our last race, so that night, over the last of our Cruzan-and-Ting “Crack-O Stingers,” we groan out our aches, empty the box of adhesive bandages, and raise our glasses to the wisdom of our spring-training block—and one to our friends on Voila. Racing is nothing without our rivals, and we met ours with poise. We’ve stirred it up, all right.

The post Stir It Up in St. Thomas appeared first on Sailing World.

The enduring Sunfish, created by Alexander Bryan and Cortland Heyinger back in the early 1950s, remains the most iconic sailing dinghy. But nowadays, there’s more than one fish in the big pond.

LaserPerformance (Velum Limited), which owns trademarks to the Laser and the Sunfish, was once the global Sunfish builder, but chronic supply issues forced the International Sunfish Class Association to seek an alternative source. Enter Zim Sailing, in Bristol, Rhode Island, which is now an official builder of the ISCA dinghy. To be clear: An ISCA is not a Sunfish, and only ISCAs are class legal.

But then, what of the Sunfish?

About 800 miles northwest of Zim’s shop is SERO Innovation, in Marine City, Michigan, which has been licensed by Velum to build the Sunfish (and Laser) for North and South America.

SERO CEO Chris McLellan and his company, Sunfish Direct, has been selling class-legal sails, hardware and boats. They’ve also been building a Sunfish-like craft called the SOL, which was McLellan’s approach to supplying affordable boats to sailing camps, schools and sailors unable to get their hands on new Sunfish or parts.

So, here’s where we’re at today: The ISCA is not a Sunfish, and the Sunfish is not ISCA class legal. The SOL is neither Sunfish nor ISCA. Got it?

The International Sunfish Class Association’s frustration finally came to an impasse in 2024, and that’s where the principles at Zim and its parent company, Starting Line Sailing, stepped into the picture. Zim was already in the final stages of building class-legal ILCA dinghies, as a result of the International Laser Class Association also breaking from Velum. Zim was keen enough to take on the ISCA too.

From new tooling built by their Rhode Island neighbors at Symmetrix, Zim has slightly tweaked the construction to rectify a few known shortcomings of older Sunfish, namely common leak and failure points and adhesion of foam flotation blocks inside the hull. Sprayed foam now acts to essentially lock in place the closed-cell flotation blocks and provides additional stiffness. Reinforcements in the maststep area and aluminum hardware backing plates should also help with longevity. There are also hardware upgrades, including class-legal Harken Carbo blocks on the boom and a 2-to-1 block on the traveler bridle.

With the first of its ISCAs splashed in late April, Zim now offers three different models, including two “SCA Club” versions. One has a wooden rudder and daggerboard (and retails for $5,700), and the other has glass blades and a lower-cost sail from North ($6,100). The Race model ($6,285) comes with Harken hardware, a North racing sail, and prespliced outhaul and cunningham control systems.

SERO’s first batch of vacuum-infused Sunfish were shipped from Marine City to its dealers in April. McLellan accepts that he’s now essentially blocked from the ISCA racing market, but his goal, he says, has always been to grow the sport from the bottom up anyway. “The frustration of getting Sunfish was fueling a decline,” he says, “and that’s where the SOL came from. The Sunfish is a great tool to get people sailing, and if we can make an impact there, it will ultimately help [ISCA] racing.”

The post Race or Relax: Sunfish and ISCA’s Diverging Paths appeared first on Sailing World.

I’ve overstood the windward mark by a few boatlengths, and as I bear away, the windward runner blade lifts a foot or so off the ice, then slams down hard. Still, the little DN iceboat slings me downwind like a proverbial bat out of hell. I’ve rounded third of 11 in my debut iceboat race, and I’m feeling pretty cocky. Until one boat passes me to windward as if I’m standing still. Then, another boat zooms past me to leeward. By the end of the leg, I’m dead last. Clearly, I have a lot to learn about how to sail an iceboat, especially downwind.

As a Midwest teen, I caught the sailing bug early and spent most of my spare time racing dinghies and crewing on any racing boat that would have me. Going fast was always the goal, and I vividly remember crewing on a 28-foot E Scow and planing for a mile or more on a two-sail reach. This was, to date, the fastest sailboat ride of my life. It seemed as though we were sailing as fast as the wind, and I began to wonder if breaking the wind barrier under sail was possible.

A little research back then revealed that, at one point, iceboats were the fastest man-made inventions on Earth. Large stern-steering iceboats on the Hudson River regularly reached speeds approaching 100 mph as early as the 1880s. The secret to an iceboat’s speed is fairly simple: Runners on smooth ice have very low drag compared with a conventional sailboat hull. Runner blade resistance is almost negligible at full glide, and almost any well-designed rig will allow the craft to break the wind barrier. As an iceboat accelerates, its apparent wind shifts forward and the acceleration is addictively breathtaking. 

Getting hooked on the hard stuff

Over the centuries, iceboat designs have evolved. Most Hudson River iceboats had a wide runner plank forward, a rear oval-shaped seating platform, and a tiller-controlled steering runner aft. Most were sloop-rigged, but some had huge lateen sails. These designs worked well enough, but the stern-steerer rig had inherent control problems when the runner plank lifted, resulting in spinouts and capsizes—not fun when sailing at highway speeds.

Today, almost all iceboats are cat-rigged bow steerers with the runner plank aft. The DN is the largest one-design iceboat class in the world, but there are several other successful one-designs, including the Arrow, Nite and Renegade, to name a few. There are also development classes and hundreds of home-built designs. The current speed record is reputed to be 143 mph, set on Lake Winnebago, in Wisconsin, way back in 1938. In a high-tech boat with perfect ice and wind conditions, 200 mph is not out of the question.

Until my late teens, I had never seen an iceboat, but that all changed in 1963 when I was a freshman at Denison University near Columbus, Ohio. In the fall of that year, I had crewed on Lightnings at the Buckeye Lake YC not far from the Denison campus. That winter was particularly cold, with weeks of subzero temperatures. Thick, snow-free ice formed on all the area lakes, ponds and rivers.

One day in February, I borrowed a car and drove to Buckeye Lake, where I witnessed a vintage gaff-rigged iceboat tacking its way toward the docks. The wind was in the upper teens, and the ice was Zamboni smooth. Even hard on the wind, the boat was moving at an impressive speed. The rumble of the cast iron runner blades carving their way across the frozen surface was all I could hear until the boat approached, suddenly spun head-to-wind, and stopped yards from where I was standing.

The skipper, an older gentleman with a big smile on his face, beckoned me, and asked, “You want a ride?”

Apparently, his crew had failed to show, so he’d ventured out solo, albeit without using the jib. He needed a mainsheet trimmer. And I needed a thrill. So, I shoved him off, jumped in, and we rumbled off onto a broad reach. As our speed increased, the mainsail luffed, and following the skipper’s orders, I trimmed the sheet in hard. We accelerated to a speed I’d never experienced under sail. My stomach was telling me that we must be sailing down an incline, even though my brain knew that the ice was perfectly flat. It was an odd sensation. The skipper did some calculations in his head and estimated that we were doing upwards of 60 mph. I took his word for it, but it felt so much faster. We bombed around the lake for about 30 minutes before he dropped me off where he had picked me up, then sailed away. I never got his name, but I will never forget the surreal experience.

Like riding a bike—on ice

It was almost 20 years before I got to sail an iceboat again. That time, I was living in upstate New York, where DN racing was a popular diversion for soft-water sailors waiting out the long winters. One of these icemen was Bill Sill, from Sodus Bay, New York, a large bay just off the south shore of Lake Ontario, east of Rochester. Sill was a gifted dinghy racer but also built boats, including DNs at his father’s marina. We became friends on the summer dinghy racing circuit, and he was always talking about the joys (and frustrations) of iceboat racing.

One Friday night in early spring, he called to tell me that the bay has smooth ice. He had an extra boat and invited me up to race the following morning. At 6:00 a.m., I was in my VW Rabbit heading to Sodus, about 2 hours away. 

He was right. The conditions were near perfect. The ice was about a foot thick and as smooth as nature can make it. It was sunny and the wind was in the midteens. I was dressed in downhill-skiing clothing, tinted ski goggles and a full-length international-orange jumpsuit (to make it easier for the first responders to find my body).

Bill threw me a motorcycle helmet that loosely fit and explained that the first race would start in five minutes. He gave me a 60-second safety briefing, including the fact that in iceboat racing, a windward boat has right-of-way over a leeward boat. I reminded him that I’d never skippered an iceboat before and maybe I should spend a few hours practicing before entering a race.

He dismissed that notion, saying that practice would be “boring.” Racing, he said, will be a better way to learn. Five minutes later, we were on the starting line. Six of the 11 boats were angled on starboard tack and the other group on port. Somebody counted down aloud: “Five, four, three, two, one—GO!” and we were off.

There was a lingering deep freeze that produced fine ice conditions.  I didn’t own an iceboat at the time, so I committed to building one in one night.

Sailing a DN upwind is somewhat similar to soft water sailing, but a lot faster. At that moment, I was feeling somewhere between exhilarated and terrified. By dumb luck, I caught a big lift going into the first mark (a bright red traffic cone) and rounded in third place close to the leaders. I knew that I would have to tack downwind because going straight was simply not an option, but I also assumed that the sail needed to be eased a little sailing on a broad reach. Not so.

Within a few minutes, the entire fleet passed me on the way to the first jibe. Knowing what angle to sail, optimal sail trim, and when to jibe is a very seat-of-the-pants skill learned over time and many races, and changes constantly based on wind velocity, ice conditions, and tactical considerations. I was utterly lacking in those skills. I improved as the day wore on but still finished last in every heat, and yet, it was one of the best racing days of my life and certainly the most exciting.

To the ice by whatever means necessary

Iceboating is a true addiction, and there is something unexplainable that happens to hardwater fanatics whenever perfection presents itself. Drop everything, reschedule meetings, cancel plans. I can attest to this: One week in January long ago while living on Cazenovia Lake near Syracuse, New York, there was a lingering deep freeze that produced fine ice conditions.  I didn’t own an iceboat at the time, so I committed to building one in one night.

Using a pair of long downhill skis I’d rescued from the local landfill, I assembled a rudimentary stand-up iceboat out of scrap plywood, two-by-fours and an old Windsurfer rig and two sails. I bolted the skis to the two-by-four frame, angled so only the inside edge touched the ice. I then installed foot straps made out of rope and short lengths of garden hose looped through holes drilled through the plywood deck. It was done by midnight and ready to test.

The following day, the ice was perfect, and the wind was 10 to 15 knots. I donned a bicycle helmet, ski goggles and ice hockey pads, and rigged the larger of the two sails. My kids looked on, with one of them dubbing the boat “The Rails of Death” and predicting my imminent demise. Undeterred, I hopped on, pulled in the sail, and took off at an alarming rate of speed. Seconds into the ride, a puff hit, the sail got overpowered, and in a blink, I was thrown into a 720-degree flat spin, me still dangling in the foot loops. To my surprise, I rose from the ice injury-free, and my craft was undamaged. It was back to the beach to bend on the smaller sail.

My next runs were much more successful. Rails sailed surprisingly well with the smaller sail, and I could steer it like a Windsurfer by moving the sail fore and aft. My kids even tried it and admitted that my contraption was great fun. I did some rough calculations and concluded that it could sail in the 25 to 30 mph range. No world records would be set, but it was not bad for a one-night workshop wonder. 

Subsequent winters got warmer, making for more snow and thinner ice, but I couldn’t resist buying an Icefish class boat that came on the market at a bargain price. The Icefish is an aluminum tube design that’s steered with foot pedals. Its double fiberglass seats look as though they’ve been stolen from a school lunchroom. This one was powered by a 75-square-foot Sunfish lateen sail with a Sunfish mast modified with fore and side stays. I got about five years of memorable days of breakneck speed on the Icefish before selling it to a farmer who wanted to try sailing it on his frozen 5-acre pond. 

These days, I get an occasional ride on a friend’s Locksley Skimmer, an aluminum frame affair with a canvas seat and a 45-square-foot sail. It’s no DN, but it’s still a thrill to sail on the rare days when we get clear ice and a fresh breeze.

Skills transfer to soft water sailing

Iceboating skills certainly translate to conventional sailing and racing. One of my Cazenovia clubmates, Ray Cudney, who sails a DN when conditions permit but also races everything from Lasers to J Boats, says, “One thing that always struck me was how quickly an iceboat responds to the slightest of sail trim. Iceboating teaches one how important the small adjustments are because it produces an instantaneous response. When you get it right, everything tightens up, the mast bends like a pretzel, and you are given that instant speed reward.”

Cudney also notes that small adjustments in mast design, runner shaping, perfect runner alignment and plank interaction, and even efforts to reduce bow-stay diameter all play a part in developing winning boatspeed. If you think about it, there are striking similarities between iceboats and the current crop of foiling craft. It’s all about reducing resistance and drag to a minimum, and both can sail several times the speed of the true wind.

Perhaps future America’s Cup skippers should have winter training blocks in Minnesota in February. But then again, once they experienced the rush of iceboating, they might be forever jaded and never go back to soft-water sailing.

The post Iceboating: An Adrenaline-fueled Experience appeared first on Sailing World.

Paris Henken glances over her shoulder and takes in a Waszp going through its paces on Alamitos Bay in a wispy midmorning breeze. It’s a warm and sunny Mother’s Day, and the Alamitos Bay YC is already abuzz with the brunch crowd taking seats and sailors rigging in the boatyard. Henken and her sailing partner, Helena Scutt—both of whom are ABYC members and new residents in Long Beach, California—have walked to the club from their homes nearby. They’re now full-time residents of the sailing venue of the 2028 Olympics. They’re both clearly relaxed and excited to be where they are in life right now—teammates again in the 49erFX.

“I grew up in San Diego sailing Sabots, and I’m looking behind me here at ABYC, where I learned to race from age 10, then as a youth sailor, I’d come here every year in the 29er for the CISA Racing Clinic,” says Henken, 29. “I have been familiar with this area for a very long time.”

For Henken, the time between those foundational clinics and returning to her childhood sailing ground has included completing a college degree at the College of Charleston, where she sailed three Olympic campaigns all in the 49erFX—placing 10th with Scutt in Rio in 2016 when she was just 19, and two with Anna Tunnicliffe (Tokyo and Paris), losing both times in the Trials to Maggie Shea and Stephanie Roble.

Scutt’s path to the Olympic scene was different, but by no means less spectacular. Learning to sail at the age of 15, Scutt immersed herself in the sport, competing in her first Olympic Games at age 22. She completed a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford, became a Moth Class world champion, and had the distinction of being the only woman on the New York YC’s American Magic design team for the 37th America’s Cup.

Los Angeles Calling

With LA2028 on the horizon, unfinished Olympic business was all-consuming for Henken. The FX had been in the back of her mind since the 2024 Trials. She came up empty-handed after some crew scouting with the assistance of America One Racing (A1R), and then recalled an out-of-the-blue conversation with Scutt. On that call, Scutt had nonchalantly mentioned that she’d been thinking about FX sailing again.

“I thought Helena was calling me to catch up, because she’s my sister-in-law and we hadn’t seen each other in so long, then all of a sudden she brings up FX sailing, and I was like, ‘Whoa!’” Henken says with a laugh.

Realizing she had a lifetime to follow her engineering career, Scutt jumped on the opportunity to capitalize on more than a decade of exceptional sailing experiences. And competing on her home turf for a medal was an opportunity not to be missed.

“There’s nothing like the FX for me,” says Scutt, 32. “I love doublehanded sailing, working with somebody else, and the FX rewards being in sync in a way that I haven’t found in another boat. It’s fast and I like trapezing, but for me it’s about teamwork.”

Within days of teaming up, the pair headed to Palma for the first regatta of this year’s new Sailing Grand Slam Series. At the Trofeo Princesa Sofía Mallorca (Spain), they had a terrific first regatta together, finishing eighth in a 46-strong fleet. “We’ve never had such a short lead-up, so we weren’t sure how it was going to go in Palma,” Henken says, “but it was all about getting racing experience with the competition.”

A few weeks later, the duo were in Hyeres, France. Rather than teams splitting into gold and silver fleets, this regatta was one fleet of 38 boats. Having never sailed an FX regatta with that many boats on the line, which the pair found competitive and challenging, Henken and Scutt secured second overall after 15 exhausting races.

“It was a marathon,” Henken says. “That was five days of three races per day with a medal race. We just kept solidifying what we knew how to do well in our control, and anything else we couldn’t control was about adapting. We could have won the regatta right at the end if I had called a better layline at the finish. Nonetheless, we surprised ourselves, and it’s exciting to know that we are competitive at the beginning of this journey.”

The competition is hard to pick right now, Scutt acknowledges. “It’s not lost on us that a lot of teams took a break after the Games, but we’re excited to already be beating teams who have just done the Games.”

Combined efforts over multiple campaigns places Henken and Scutt in an enviable position; both agree it is different doing a quad at age 30 versus 20. They have four years to work on this next quad, which is two more they’ve had in each of their previous campaigns. Not having to start over with a new crew is a big deal.

“With Helena, we are exponentially more steps forward than I would have been with anyone else because I know her and she knows the boat,” Henken says. “It takes so much time to be really good at this boat; the past 10 years of my life have catered toward Olympic sailing, and now I have all the tools and skill to make anything happen.”

Scutt agrees: “When I know what I want, I move pretty quickly, and this is why we jumped into a pretty competitive calendar right off the bat. I’m really excited that I bring a lot of skills that I wouldn’t have otherwise had if I had kept sailing the boat (after Rio), as far as technical aspects and being in faster boats than skiffs, and even the management experience is helpful.”

Together the Quad Squad

Scutt and Henken feel fortunate to be two of nine athletes selected to be part of the elite America 1 Racing Team for this next quad, with its emphasis on performance planning around elements such as scheduling, training, fitness and logistics.

“They know us very well as people and athletes,” Scutt says. “Our funding is not contingent upon our performance; they are not worried about results because they believe in our abilities, so we can focus on being professional athletes. Their help takes the weight of fundraising off our shoulders.”

Not forgetting that the Henken-Scutt union now includes a bronze medalist in the family, the pair are more motivated than ever to set their sights high for 2028. They’ve quickly adapted to the systems and processes that brought Hans Henken and teammate Ian Barrows their medals in Marseille. With a prior commitment for Palma, coach Willie McBride joined the pair very recently, so Henken coached his wife and sister for that regatta.

“It was really cool,” Scutt says with a broad smile. “Hans knows the boats inside and out, just as Paris knows the FX, so we benefitted from their combined knowledge. He really emphasizes the process and the mindset, and he’s coming at it from the athlete’s perspective, not necessarily that of a coach. He can also be super-honest with both of us; there is no beating around the bush.”

The Henken-Scutt duo are off to an enviable start; next up, the pair will race the 2025 European Championship in Thessaloniki, Greece, in June, followed by the fifth and final regatta of the Sailing Grand Slam Series, the Long Beach Olympic Classes Regatta, in July. The 49erFX World Championship in Cagliari, Italy, in October, will be one final check of the year’s progress.

“We’ve already had great success, and we can’t guarantee an end result,” Henken says, “but we can guarantee that we will try to do everything we can to be successful in 2028.”

The post Los Angeles 2028: Henken and Scutt’s Quest for Gold appeared first on Sailing World.

there’s a magic that stirs when like-minded people come together to embrace a common passion—whatever, wherever and whenever that might be. For the disciples of team racing, the wherever is a small suburb of Liverpool, in northwestern England, specifically the West Kirby Sailing Club. The whenever is that meandering time between the first warning signal and the Sunday-night debrief, with nothing to do but talk, sing, dance and laugh until we cry, before doing it again a bit too early the next day. The whatever, of course, is the Wilson Trophy, justly hailed as “the world’s best team-racing event,” which offers refuge for one long and spectacular weekend where sailing is the most important thing in the world.

In conversing, ­reminiscing, hypothesizing about this sport we love, we fill the space with past, present and future. Sitting at the West Kirby Sailing Club’s windows as the sun sets over the reservoir, dubbed “The Theatre of Dreams,” we can sit next to Colin Merrick, who has been making the pilgrimage to West Kirby since 2003 and who is perhaps the best to ever do it. In the same space, we can turn around to talk shop and compare the different styles of different teams from different countries with the kids who are absolutely dominating the team-racing scene today, the ones who have yet to graduate from their universities.

I’m talking about the likes of brothers Mitchell and Justin Callahan, Lachlain McGranahan, Sara Schumann, Libby Redmond and Marbella Marlo—representing Biscayne Bay YC this particular weekend, but stateside they are known as “Los Huevos.” Together, they are the best team-race squad on the planet today.

I have been at this team-race thing for more than two decades, counting six Wilson Trophy appearances, a dozen Hinman Trophies, countless Team Race Midwinters and everything between. Or at least what I can remember at this point. I have coached 29 ICSA National Championship events and sailed in a few as well. I’m sure most tenured historians of the sport, such as the late Ken Legler, would find the examples I’m searching for, but here on the shores of West Kirby, I have certainly never seen a team like this year’s champion. The Biscayne powerhouse is all that, and then some.

To unspool the significance of this team’s current prowess, the next best living time capsule of past and present team-race lore is Amanda Callahan (not related to Justin and Mitchell)—coach at Roger Williams University and multi Wilson, Hinman and Team Race World Champion, who, long ago, sailed with the team called Silver Panda. The Pandas held a piece of team-racing history as the first/only team to win the “Triple Crown” of team racing: winning the Wilson, the Hinman, and the Worlds in the same calendar year, 2007. Take it away, Madame Callahan.

Team Racing Through and For the Ages

I skipped my college graduation to attend my first ever Wilson Trophy in 2003. When we arrived in West Kirby, an idyllic town on the shore of the River Dee, with its classic English gardens and horrible British food, we were transfixed. It was love at first sight: a man-made marine lake created in 1899 to allow sailing and windsurfing when the river runs completely dry at low tide. It’s the perfect playground for team racing, with flat water and reliable breeze, and a walkway around the perimeter that allows for up-close ­spectating and heckling. Back then, regatta organizers erected grandstands on the promenade, making sailing a real spectator sport. Commentary by Legler and others blared from speakers lining the south end of the lake, enticing any passersby to check out the racing and help make sense of the colored sails ­whipping around. The marine lake is magic. 

At that time, the regatta had been run for more than a half-century, and we had never seen anything like it—an entire fleet of boats used exclusively for the regatta, and there was a dedicated trailer with TVs displaying the upcoming race schedule, the leaderboard, and recent race results. A digital display on the committee boat showed the race number and countdown time into the next start. Umpires wore black-and-white-striped jerseys. All this was very cutting-edge at the time. Fifty years of institutional knowledge in running the event meant that the racecourse length was set with ­scientific precision. We had enough time to sail the course, rotate at the change dock, and arrive at the start line with about four ­minutes until their next start.

And that was just the racing.

The Lore and Allure of West Kirby

The traditional Wilson Trophy dinner on Saturday night was a next-level social event, with guest speakers and wine waves, and people dropping coins in your drink so that you may heroically down your beverage and save the queen from drowning. After the Brits headed home, the American contingent spent Sunday night at the local Ring O’ Bells pub cementing hazy weekend ­memories into Wilson lore. 

The West Kirby Sailing Club has now been hosting the Wilson for more than 75 years. This year, 34 teams arrived from across England, Ireland and the US. These teams span the ages—a few high school teams and a lot of university teams, and then at the other end of the spectrum, there are teams like the West Kirby Hawks, with members who have sailed every Wilson for the past 25 years. You can do the math on that. Sailors love this event so much that they write it into their work contracts; Wilson Trophy weekend off is nonnegotiable. And, by the way, there are plenty of pets named Wilson.

The Silver Pandas can now be easily considered old-school, and while the American teams have won the past five editions of the Wilson Trophy, which speaks to the strength of the state of team racing in the US, it’s Los Huevos who are not just dominating team racing, but redefining greatness as well. The Callahan brothers and their Biscayne Bay posse are not only athletes, but they are also ­inheritors and innovators of a legacy driven by a love of the game.

The Callahan twins have been winning team-racing world championships since 2017—back in their Optimist days. They won the CJ Buckley Team Race, the C420 Team Racing National Championship in back to back years. In 2022, they won the High School Team Racing Championship for the Baker Trophy in their senior year. And at the end of their freshmen year of college, they won the College Sailing Team Racing National Championship. Months later, they won the Hinman and the US Team Racing Nationals—on their first try. In 2024, they repeated as Hinman champions, and in 2025, they reclaimed their ICSA Team Racing title. It should come as no surprise, then, that at their first appearance at the Wilson Trophy—the British Team Racing Nationals—they smashed it.

Where will they go next with their team racing? How will they continue to etch their names in the team-racing history books? Will they try to take down Colin’s six wins at the Hinman? No ­matter what, the enchantment of West Kirby will be calling them back.

The post Inside the Magic of Wilson Trophy Team Racing appeared first on Sailing World.

The answer is, “It depends.” It depends on how your boat behaves, how windy it is, and how big the shift is relative to the puff. I approach the decision from the viewpoint of how fast I am going. I’m going slow in light air, so I favor pressure over shift because a good puff could double my speed. I reason it would take a big enough shift to make up for that. I move along nicely in medium winds, but I am not topped out yet. This is the fun range where I need to pick which of the two—shift or pressure—is more significant.

If the puff ahead is large, I would be willing to sail through a small header to get there, but in a big header, I would tack to stay in phase. I’m going fast already in heavy wind, and I figure that I don’t go much faster in a puff, so I focus on the shifts. I consider only the biggest puffs, and even then, only when the shifts are small.

These rules of thumb have served me well, but I wanted to dig deeper into why. I was curious if all my assumptions were right. And what else might I be missing? So, the first thing I did was to use the polars of a popular small one-design keelboat to plot its Velocity Made Good. With this, I can see how the boat’s VMG increased in a puff to see what I can learn. I will layer on shifts later.

Let’s dive into Graph No.1: VMG Versus Pressure. Looking at the VMG Versus Pressure graph, two things surprised me: 1) When it is light (3 to 6 knots), a puff increases VMG less than I expected. I have not layered on shift yet, but my original assumption that I should focus mostly on pressure when it is light is now in question; and 2) above hull speed, there is almost no increase in speed with more pressure. Even with a lot more pressure, the boat will go only so fast. Maybe shifts are not in play as much as I thought, even big ones.

Next, I added a 5-degree shift to our original VMG graph. A lift is just like being able to point higher, increasing our Effective VMG. For example, a 5-degree lift is like pointing at 40 degrees instead of 45. Another thing I realized is that the effect of this shift is doubled because the only alternative to tacking, in order to take advantage of the lift, is to sail the header. The effect is like pointing 5 degrees lower—50 degrees instead of 45. It’s not useful to compare a lift to no shift at all because that’s not an option. To the graph, I added both the increase in Effective VMG by sailing the lift, and the decrease in Effective VMG by sailing the header.

Now consider Graph No. 2, VMG Versus Effective VMG for a 5-Degree Shift. Looking at the Effective VMG of a 5-degree lift versus eating a header is telling. I got it mostly right, but I did learn Lesson No. 3: Shifts become dominant once up to hull speed. There is no amount of puff that will come close to making up for even this relatively small 5-degree shift. At hull speed and above, there is no point in looking for more wind; shifts are all that matter.

The rest fell in line with what I expected, but it’s good to see a number on it to confirm. When the wind is light, it does not take much of a puff to make up for this small shift. When it’s medium, it takes a 3-knot puff, so that too is consistent with my original assumptions that this is a crossover range. But what about a bigger 15-degree shift?

That brings us to Graph No. 3: VMG Versus Effective VMG for 15-Degree Shift. Looking at the impact of a 15-degree shift is equally telling, giving me Lesson No. 4: In light air, both shift and puff are very much in play. I consider a 15-degree shift significant, and in light air, it takes a significant puff to make up for it. Until I did this study, I would still have given any increase in pressure precedence over even this large a shift. And there’s Lesson No. 5: For this boat, when we get to 7 knots, which is well below hull speed, there is no size puff that makes up for a 15-degree shift. A 15-degree shift is significant, but even so, the old me would have given a good-size puff equal consideration. Not anymore.

The graphs are telling, but we are not going to be looking at graphs out on the water, so we need updated rules of thumb.

Light air: Almost any increase in pressure is significantly more important than small shifts. But bigger shifts are a factor and need to be weighed against the size of the puff.

Medium air: When the shifts are small, both shifts and puffs are in play. But if the shifts are big, shifts are all that matter because puffs don’t help enough to be considered.

Heavy air: Shifts are all that matter; even the biggest of puffs cannot make up for a small shift.

I use indicators to quickly figure out what range I am in. Light air is when I am sitting in. Medium air is when I am sitting on the rail or even hiking a little. Heavy air for these purposes is when I reach hull speed. My default is to consider myself at hull speed when I’m fully hiked out. But I fine-tune that by getting to know my boat and what it feels like and how hard I am hiked when it no longer accelerates in a puff. If I’m sailing a boat with a speedo, I simply look at a number.

By focusing on the trade-off between the size of the puff relative to the shift, I have left out one obvious consideration: It also matters how far away the puff is and how long it will last. In our example where we ponder if we should tack to stay in phase or sail a header to the new pressure, if it is far away and short-lived, the answer likely would be to tack. But if it’s just a few boatlengths away and significant, the answer likely would be to suffer through the header for a short time to get to pressure, even if we’ve prioritized shift over puff.

Another factor to consider is that changes in pressure typically bring a different wind direction. We need to anticipate the direction of the shift in the new wind, not just the shift we are sailing in at that moment. Now suppose, in our earlier example, that we think the new wind is a persistent shift. Then likely it is worth sailing the header because when we get there, we can get to more wind and tack onto an even larger lift. That’s a win-win. But if the new wind is likely a lift, that complicates the decision. Layering on that, where we are on the course matters too. If we are getting out to an edge and on the short tack, we might give up on chasing the puff all the way into the corner. But we might justify sailing a header to pressure if it helps center us up on the course.

I wasn’t far off with my original rules of thumb, and I made some nice updates based on this study. Your boat, however, is going to behave a little differently, so you should do a bit of homework. Maybe, for example, your polars show that your boat reacts more to puffs in light wind and less in medium. Your indicators might be different as well. For example, your boat might reach hull speed before you are fully hiked. Or maybe your boat is very different, e.g., it planes or foils upwind. Make the rules of thumb your own based on your boat.

If all you do is prioritize puffs when you are below hull speed and shifts when you are above, that will serve you well. But with your personalized rules of thumb in hand, you’re ready to take it to another level. Prerace while you are tuning, and take a moment to note what wind range you are in, paying particular attention to how much faster (or not) you go in the puffs. Assess how big the shifts and puffs are, and decide which has the biggest impact. Then get a good start on the lifted tack heading for pressure, and you’re all good. If, or when, you get that header, you’re now armed to make the call with confidence.

The post Why Wind Shifts Matter More Than You Think appeared first on Sailing World.

every week, there are important regattas that take place across the United States, with competitors all sharing the same goal: namely, to win. To be successful on the water takes a lot of work and the type of knowledge that comes only from experience. As it relates to improving, top sailors are always quick to say that their defeats are as helpful as their victories. This is a common thread that runs through the weave of the National Sailing Hall of Fame, which will induct another class this fall.

Two inductees among the Hall of Fame’s incoming class are Greg Fisher and Ken Read, both of whom have enjoyed similar career paths and impressive results over the past four decades, but they have done so each in their own unique way. These two professional sailors are certainly two of America’s best, and now that they’re in their 60s, they both spend more time helping others achieve their goals rather than chasing their own victories.

Read grew up racing in New England, while Fisher honed his unique skills on what he describes as a “dinky pond” in Ohio. Read was a three-time All-American sailor at Boston University and was named Intercollegiate Sailor of the Year in 1982. Fisher was an All-American sailor at Ohio Wesleyan University in 1975. Read has won world championships in the 12-Metre, Etchells and J/24 classes. Fisher has won 25 North American or national championships in seven different classes. Later in their careers, Read went on to skipper in two America’s Cup campaigns and two Volvo Ocean Races, and Fisher elevated the College of Charleston’s sailing team into a national powerhouse. And today, both are in the sailmaking business.

Interestingly, both sailors got their professional start working for Shore Sails. Read says that he is grateful to its founder, Bill Shore, for giving him a job and helping him to become a better sailor. “I crewed for Bill when we won the Lightning North Americans on Lake Ray Hubbard near Dallas,” Read says. “He got up at the trophy ceremony and said, ‘None of you people know who this kid is, but you’re going to hear about him.’ It was one of the nicest things anybody ever said about me. He was a master at boats; he was intense; and he taught me the details about boats and getting the most of it.”

Fisher echoes Read’s comments about Shore: “Bill’s done a lot for a lot of people in the sport. I came through his program after college. It was great to be around people like that.”

For Fisher, the specifics of what makes a winning sailor should come as no surprise. “It starts with speed,” he tells me directly, rolling into his well-oiled coaching speech. “You’ve got to practice and work on getting the boat to sail fast. You need the right equipment that makes the boat easy to sail. If you’re confident in your speed, you can come off the middle of the starting line and get to the first shift. When I coached at the College of Charleston, I had the sailors spend time speed testing and experimenting with sail trim, weight placement, and steering. They improved their technique even though the dinghies were simple one-designs.”

As the president of North Sails, Read spends a lot of time these days racing with maxis and superyachts, which is a delicate balance of delivering results while ensuring an enjoyable experience for the owner. “It’s not easy,” he says. “There are plenty of times I’m not very good at it. I can be a little edgy striving for perfection. I hold myself to a standard as close to perfection as you can. I’m often not even close. I try to get the best people and put them in the best spots to be successful. You put the right people in the room, and now you’re the dumbest person in the room, and you let them work and trust their abilities to thrive.”

Like many of the greats of the sport before them, Fisher and Read have plenty of stories of soaring victories and disappointing defeats. For Read, there are two events that stand out among his most satisfying wins. “I made multiple attempts to win the J/24 Worlds, but I was too brash and young to know how to win at that stage,” he shares. “A few years later, we were racing in Japan and won. It was a big moment in my sailing career to realize I could win a big one.”

His greatest disappointment: dismasting in the South Atlantic in 2011 during the Volvo Ocean Race. When the mast broke on Puma Ocean Racing’s Mar Mostro, they limped to the remote island of Tristan da Cunha. “Talk about your dreams crashing down,” he says. “We had a good team that stayed together. We got ourselves back into the hunt.”

One of Read’s most notable performances came in the 2003 Etchells World Championship, which had a fleet of 93 boats competing in an eight-race series off Greenwich, Connecticut. Read and his crew, Scott Norris and Karl Anderson, opened with a second and then won six of the next seven races to win the title. Read remembers it well: “The starting line was three-quarters of a mile long. There was a midline race-committee boat. We started just to windward of the midline committee boat and had clear air off the line. After three races, [1998 Etchells World Champion] Dirk Knuelman came up to me at a beer party and said, ‘I know what you are doing.’ So, we battled Dirk for position.”

Running a racing campaign these days is very much like running a business, he says. And he would know, through his involvement with the big record-breaker Comanche, the J Class sloop Hanuman, and the 12 Meter Challenge XII, which won the 2019 International 12-Metre Class World Championship. “The structure starts with funding, finding the right people, being an operations manager,” he says, “filling holes with competent people, and not micromanaging them to death.”

Fisher, who always had a reputation of being a great starter, suggests being conservative early in a regatta. “I avoid the pileup at the pin end of the line or the stack at the windward end,” he says. “I try to sail in clear air. Even a little bit of clear air is good. Be careful about putting your boat in a risky position that you can’t get out of.”

Fisher wrote a book with Dr. Thomas Hubble, past president of US Sailing and a veteran Thistle sailor. In the excellent book, the authors say that a boat’s speed is “paramount” and that a conservative tactical philosophy will prevail. “Tactically, decisions now are a little easier with new electronics and technology,” he says, “which makes getting good speed even more important.”

While the bulk of Read’s professional sailing career was primarily in keelboats, Fisher has been a master in the sport’s enduring one-design centerboard classes, including, Snipes, Y Flyers, Thistles (five-time national champ), Flying Scots (seven-time national champ), the Johnson 18 class and Highlanders (four-time national champ). Fisher’s keelboat racing has been in the J/22 class. The 2010 J/22 North American Championship stands out as a special victory for him. “My wife, JoAnn, was on the boat along with my oldest daughter, Martha,” he says. “This was just before I went to coach at the College of Charleston.”

During his tenure at Charleston, by the way, his team won the Intercollegiate National Championship in 2017.

While both sailors started their professional careers at Shore Sailmakers and years later worked together at North Sails, Read leads North Sails from his office in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and Fisher is putting his decades of experience to work with Evolution Sails based in Charleston, South Carolina. Being a sailmaker keeps both superstars on the water helping clients improve their skills and making their boats fast. Any young person considering a career in the marine industry can learn from the arc of these two dedicated champions who push themselves hard and are happiest when they are on the water racing in any form.

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Eccoli arrivare (here they come). In two years, seaside residents of Naples will bear witness to the arrival of the America’s Cup entourage to the Italian city of nearly 2 million people as, for the first time in Cup history, the Louis Vuitton Cup and Louis Vuitton America’s Cup Match will be sailed off the Italian shoreline in what’s promised to be “the most colorful and enthusiastic” edition ever.

While Barcelona put on quite a show for the world’s oldest ­international sports trophy, the Italians certainly have a ­reputation for hosting first-class sailing events, and with Italian challenger Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli finally holding court, it does promise to have the expected flair.

The announcement of Naples as host to the 38th edition ­followed months of silence from the defenders of Emirates Team New Zealand and the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron. While the defender’s own government declined to host and finance the regatta in Auckland, several remnant teams were keen for the regatta to remain in Europe. The Spanish port of Valencia, which hosted in 2017, seemed a viable choice, but the announcement of Italy comes as no surprise given the tenacity of Patrizio Bertelli, Prada’s chairman and kingpin of the Italian syndicate. Bertelli has been trying to win the Cup for more than three decades in the hopes of bringing the regatta home. He now has the opportunity to do so in a sea of red white and green.

In the mid-May host announcement, Andrea Abodi, Minister for Sport and Youth for Italy, said that ­hosting “represents a tremendous opportunity for the entire country to enhance the value of its territory, to boost tourism, and to ­promote sports.”

For Naples Mayor Gaetano Manfredi, the benefits of hosting are twofold: It puts an international spotlight on the city, as well as a long-overdue injection of development funds into the port of Bagnoli, 6 miles ­northwest of Naples.

According to America’s Cup and Naples government officials, Bagnoli will serve as the epicenter of team bases. It’s a “strategic area where the government has decided to invest decisively, with the goal of finally returning it to the city and its citizens,” Manfredi said. “The complex work of environmental remediation and redevelopment in Bagnoli is already underway and progressing according to plan. The America’s Cup will serve as a powerful accelerator for tourism, the maritime economy, local entrepreneurship, and the development of new skills, providing a tangible preview of what this area can become upon completion of its urban regeneration.”

The America’s Cup village and event activation zone is centered closer to the city, with the racecourse itself set in the Gulf of Naples off the 12th-century waterfront Castel dell’Ovo and Posillipo at the western flank of the Gulf. Historical winds on the Gulf of Naples persist in the 5- to 10-knot range, either from the northeast or southwest, with late spring and early fall being the most reliable for consistent breeze.

Grant Dalton, CEO of America’s Cup Defender Team New Zealand, said in the announcement: “There is a raw spirit and absolute pride in Italy that seems so appropriate to have the next America’s Cup here…. Italians are the most passionate and engaged America’s Cup audience, and obviously it is the home of Luna Rossa, who are such an amazing team and strong competitor. So, from the Defender’s position, it certainly feels like we are entering the lion’s den competitively, but from an event perspective, it feels like the perfect venue to host the Louis Vuitton 38th America’s Cup.”

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