As boat-ownership costs and accessibility continue to stymie the sport, many American sailors and newcomers now depend on yacht clubs, community sailing centers, and sailing schools to get on the water and racing. As a result, institutions that can afford to do so are now looking into club-owned fleets that can be used for adult racing and instruction. Their options are limited, but the founders of Storm Marine, a new company, say that they have the “ideal” offering.

Several East Coast clubs with deeper pockets and team-­racing programs have recently invested in Sonars, the utilitarian design of the late Bruce Kirby, but these boats are now imported from England and are either cost-prohibitive or too large for most organizations. Storm Marine’s offering instead is a utilitarian keelboat that they say is designed to serve and built to last.

“Sailing is in a bit of a decline,” says Karl Ziegler, a world champion of multiple disciplines and co-founder of Storm Marine, “and yacht clubs are struggling to maintain their membership, particularly young members. A lot of the new members are coming from a couple of different demographics who are not in a position to buy boats to sail. They just want to join a club and be able to sail boats at that club.”

What’s now used at most clubs, Ziegler says, are boats that are either outdated in their design and construction, no longer in production, and difficult to maintain and source parts. “That means an increased burden on the maintenance staff, and quite honestly, they don’t provide that ‘wow’ experience for the new member who is sailing for the first time.”

The solution that Ziegler and his cohorts in New England have come up with is called the Storm 18, which will be built by David Clark’s Fulcrum Speedworks, creator of the UFO, a pint-size foiling ­catamaran, and the Rocket, a redo of the Howmar Phantom, a 14-foot dinghy of the 1970s.

One of Ziegler’s ­partners in the venture is William Craine, who’s been in the boatbuilding industry for decades, most recently with LaserPerformance. Craine’s yacht club on Long Island Sound is looking to replace its ancient fleet of Ideal 18s, another Bruce Kirby design. Certain traits of the Ideal 18 and the Sonar are carried into the Storm 18, which is designed by naval architect Bob Ames.

“We looked at a lot of things Bruce did, particularly the cockpit, and then we tried to make it more contemporary,” Craine says. “This is an evolutionary boat. It’s pretty hard not to be these days, unless you’re foiling or doing something crazy. [The Storm 18] is reminiscent of an Ideal 18 on purpose—because it works.”

Craine, Ziegler and Storm’s third co-founder, Chris Daley, did their due diligence before pushing ahead with a new boat, and that included a deep analysis of other designs, canvassing clubs and sailing schools, and picking the brains of experienced program directors and industry experts the likes of Hall of Famer and sailmaker Robbie Doyle. The common demand across all institutions was durability. “That means fewer parts, an infusion build, and a rub rail all the way around,” Craine says. “Clubs that do a lot of team racing and learn-to-sail programs want bow and stern bumpers, so those are standard.”

Stability and safety were next, Ziegler says, so the rudder is oversize. The cockpit is deep and has the option for ­newbies to sit inside the gunwale or racers on the rail. The conceptual sail plan—with a square-top main, a small hanked-on jib, and ­asymmetric spinnaker (symmetric is an option for match- or team-­racing programs)—is designed with light-air venues and ­beginners in mind. “It’s a pretty generic design,” Craine admits, “but all together, it is something different.”

For institutions with limited storage space and infrastructure, there’s a retractable keel, a custom cradle in design, and a swing-up rudder to allow ramp launching where hoists are not available. The target price, Craine says, is $40,000, but larger fleet purchases always garner a better deal.

As of early 2024, tooling was underway at Fulcrum’s facility in East Providence, Rhode Island, and Storm Marine’s plan is to sail the prototype through late spring before stepping off into full production over late summer or early fall, a moment that for Ziegler, can’t come soon enough.

“This entire project has been a labor of love,” he says. “It’s an opportunity to fill a space that we’ve seen open for a number of years. It’s not a sexy space, but it’s a space of utility and a space where we see an opportunity to impact the overall growth of the sport. We’ve all been the beneficiaries of institutional sailboats, and we just wanted to be part of a project where we could give that experience to the next generation of sailors.”

The post The Storm 18 is Brewing appeared first on Sailing World.

Nautor Swan is best known for the modern-day giants of its fleet, but they’re now extending their range into the high 20s with the announcement earlier this year of the ClubSwan 28, an impressive-looking sportboat from avant-garde designer Juan Kouyoumdjian that is said to be “based on the concept of simplicity, quality and, of course, pure one-design speed.”

Expected to be launched by late summer, the ClubSwan 28 has been conceived to be “as simple as possible,” while still maintaining a high level of performance in every condition. Nautor Swan’s design brief says: “Both hull and deck will be built using specifically reinforced fiberglass, with carbon mast and no backstay. The hull has been designed to perform well in all conditions, specifically in the medium/light winds.”

The deck layout design provides a clean and safe cockpit for a crew of four, allowing to race leg-in, sitting inboard. “All the ergonomic studies have been done around this feature,” says the builder. “The ClubSwan 28 will have a full kite retrieve system with a sliding hatch on the bow.”

Thanks to the lifting keel and dimensions, the boat is trailable, and is anticipated to be rigged and unrigged in few hours only. As the renderings show, the sail plan is powerful and the sail quiver includes a mainsail, a jib, an AP kite and a reaching kite.

The concept of the rig is all about simplicity, based on one single movement of the rig up and down through a dedicated and simple hydraulic system (mast jack) the mast bend and headstay tension is achieved simultaneously without the need of a backstay thanks to the configuration of the shrouds.

“ClubSwan 28 is not going to be extreme but will have great performance in medium/light breeze,” says Federico Michetti, Head of Sports Activities and Product Manager. “The brief was to have a boat not pushing to the limits of absolute performance, but it is a boat easily manageable and easy to sail.”

CLUBSWAN 28 PRELIMINARY TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

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Bill Crane, former chairman of the LaserPerformance Group, and several  influential marine industry experts and professionals recently announced the launch of Storm Marine Group, which aims to “dramatically change the approach to building and maintaining institutional sailboats in the United States.”

In an announcement from the new company, Crane said, “My partners and I have all grown up sailing and racing institutional boats, whether it be Ideal 18s, the Sonar or various other classes, most of our time on the water has been sailing in club-owned fleets. We have a passion for these boats and want to build something that elevates the sport through new institutional boats that are affordable, durable, and easy to maintain.”

Many institutional boats used in the United States, the company says, are designed for private clubs, public sailing centers and schools, and are built to accommodate two to five sailors. In addition, they say,  most of these historically popular classes are either no longer built, hard to replace and find parts for, or manufactured overseas at too high an expense for most US-based sailing organizations.

“We’ve all been the beneficiaries of institutional sailing all of our lives,” says the company’s managing partner, Karl Ziegler, whose background combines a history in business management, international sailing and coaching. “All of us see this as a mission and a passion and have a genuine desire to give back to the sport we love and help literally build its future.”

The venture, they say, has been a long time coming, prompted by a perceived COVID-era participation boom at sailing community establishments, private sailing schools, and yacht clubs around the country. “COVID brought sailing back to Marblehead (Massachusetts) in a big way,” says Robbie Doyle, a National Sailing Hall of Fame inductee. “I told Bill (Crane) about all the calls we were getting from people either interested in learning to sail or getting back into the sport, and they seemed more interested in joining clubs and using boats from house fleets rather than buying their own boat.”

Chris Daley, SMG’s third partner, said, “We’ve spent years talking about what’s wrong with the current equipment, and since all of us have ample experience in business and sailing, we think now is finally the time to do more than talk about it.”

Crane says he and his team are getting calls from all over the country as sailing organizations

struggle with aging fleets and associated replacement costs: “We concluded that there is a fairly immediate need for versatile boats that can serve beginners learning to sail and fleet sailors that race every Wednesday. They need to be relatively inexpensive, simple, stable and easy to sail, but also offer enough performance to surprise and delight the more experienced sailors.”

Crane also noted that boat design in all sizes has traditionally neglected the needs of women and the physically challenged, and that his team is developing ideas that will address those

constituencies as well. The World Sailing Trust recently put forward several recommendations

about meeting the needs of women sailors and is actively working with leaders in the industry to develop best practice guidance for gender equal design, which Crane says SMG will participate in. Crane also says the company is working with officials at US Sailing and other experts on the needs of the adaptive sailing community.

The company plans to formally announce details of its first major project, an 18-foot keelboat, in the coming the weeks.

The post New Company Looks to Meet Old Demand appeared first on Sailing World.

The was plenty of buzz surrounding the luxury motor yachts and big new cruisers at the Cannes International Boatshow last week, and amongst the many press conferences was the big reveal of a new big-boat one-design class from Wally Yachts, which announced “a new direction for the brand,” one “born from an aim to create the world’s fastest race boat that can thrill as a one-design class but which can thread her way to the top of the podium against the elite in IRC and ORC racing by sailing faster and rating lower than anything around her.”

This, they say, is the wallyrocket51, coming to a European racecourse next year.

Measuring in somewhere near the slick and fast 52s of the SuperSeries, this latest Wally, the builder says, “is designed to beat them.” [Eds. note: this statement has been amended to say “designed to beat any other boat.”]

How so? “Innovative features, ultralight displacement and an exhaustively refined hull,” designed in collaboration with Botin Partners. “The idea of Wally was to make a very strict one-design class that could provide pure racing, that was high-tech and that could provide a lot of fun, but which could also be very competitive under IRC and ORC rating rules,” says Adolfo Carrau, Partner at Botin Partners Naval Architecture. “That was the starting point. We began with a 52-foot design because of our knowledge in that size and the fact that it’s also a size that has proven competitive in all conditions and sea states.

But the first secret of the wallyrocket51 design,” he teases, “is that it’s not a 52-footer, it’s a 51-footer.”

Shaving that extra foot from the platform, Wally says, brings the boat’s racing trimming down to a mere 6.3 tons, “which makes the wallyrocket51 very reactive, super-fast downwind and quick to plane.”

To boost its upwind performance and reduce leeway from the narrow underwater appendages, they’ve returned to some old school technology with the use of a trailing-edge trim tab on the keel fin. “In spite of having a shorter waterline length,” they say, “the wallyrocket51 will be able to sail higher and faster than competitors.”

This is all theoretical, of course, and only once the first boat races will we see the capabilities of this new rule-beating one-design big-boat class concept. According to Wally, the boat will be raced by a crew of 11, assisted with a water ballast system that’s part righting moment booster and part pitch dampener. The ballast system capacity is 145 gallons (approximately 1,200 pounds), and is projected to take 80 seconds to fill, 60 seconds to empty, and 10 seconds to transfer.

Says the builder: “The combination of keel trim tab and water ballast has been cleverly designed to offer a greater performance gain than the rating sacrifice they entail which, in combination with the length and displacement advantages, will give the wallyrocket51 the edge at all points of the racecourse.”

“This project represents a truly unique approach to the creation of a new boat that was very much needed in today’s competitive landscape for this size. The wallyrocket51 is very close to our hearts and has eluded us for years as we sought to develop a design that could win any regatta in the world,” says Stefano de Vivo, Wally’s Managing Director. “We have cracked it at last, and we anticipate strong demand for the wallyrocket51 once the world sees it perform. This is a boat that will appeal to all those owners who love to race at the highest level but want to do so in a new and entertaining way.”

Carrau characterizes Botin’s latest design as “a very versatile boat and it goes well upwind, downwind and reaching – and it’s also engineered to ISO Cat-A so it can do any offshore race. Our simulations show that she can beat her competition under IRC or ORC in any of those inshore or offshore scenarios.”

The hull is a pre-preg carbon and Corecell laminate, while Nomex is used in deck. The high-modulus carbon rig is by Southern Spars (and AeroSix standing rigging) and the sail areas add up to 163.9 square meters upwind and 361 square meters downwind. “Fast, fun, smart and revolutionary, as all Wallys,” says Luca Bassani, Wally’s Founder and Chief Designer. “With her dramatic reverse sheerline, flush deck and long bowsprit, the wallyrocket51 is instantly part of the family. And true to Wally’s DNA she will feature some ground-breaking innovations that not only make it the most competitive vessel, but also reduce the annual running costs versus the existing one-design classes today.”

The first wallyrocket51 is already under construction and it is scheduled to launch in 2024.

The post Wally’s Big New Rocket appeared first on Sailing World.

The ClubSwan racing yacht range is well-established and represents some of the finest performance One-Design racing available. The ClubSwan 125 now sets the highest possible benchmark for Nautor and is finally at sea ready to take part in the most iconic events in the sailing calendar with her debut being the Fastnet.

“At Nautor’s Swan we are very proud of having completed the construction of the ClubSwan 125. This is going to be a milestone in the history of yachting. We are grateful to the owner for having entrusted Nautor to build this boat, sharing with us the same values we have of innovation, technology, quality and reliability,” says Leonardo Ferragamo, Nautor Group President. “The project has been amazing and the opportunity to work together with the greatest boat builders, designers and technicians around the globe, was awe-inspiring.”

The yacht, which sees the cooperation of the most brilliant minds in the marine industry hit the water in Pietarsaari, rounding off a complex and challenging project but with the end-result exceeding all expectations.

“The brief was at first for a very fast superyacht for inshore racing, but, as we were developing the project, it changed. We all realized, the owner at first, this yacht was meant to be a record-breaking machine,” said Enrico Chieffi, Nautor Group Vice President and CS125 Project Leader, speaking from the deck of the boat right after the sea trials. “And so here we are, the brief has changed, and the boat has been developed to be successful in offshore racing and intending to beat all the monohull records around the world.”

The ClubSwan 125 is designed with a deep attention to detail, engineered under DNV-GL classification, built by the best boat builders of the industry, and outfitted with the very best equipment from the most experienced suppliers. To achieve its extremely light displacement, the ClubSwan125 is designed with a deep draught canting keel reducing weight and increasing righting moment at the same time, while the hull, deck, and structural parts were all made from state-of-the art carbon-fiber prepreg with Nomex and CoreCell cores.

To create horizontal and vertical forces at the same time, a rotating C-foil with an asymmetric profile, has been developed. This foil provides vertical lift, reducing the boat’s displacement and bringing it into a “skimming” attitude. Equipped with twin rudders, the leeward one is always aligned with water flow and therefore optimizing helmsman control in all conditions, including sailing at very high speeds.

“Sailing on ClubSwan 125 makes me feel very proud of what we’ve been able to design and build,” says Juan Kouyoumdjian, the boat’s naval architect. “Being part of this project, which is meant to write a new page in sailing history is something very rewarding. I’ve been able to work with the most brilliant professionals and we learnt a lot from each other.”

To marry performance and top-class sailing experience in an extreme project like ClubSwan125 is an inspiring challenge that forced the team to think outside the box collecting experience from the past and pushing frontiers.

“The ClubSwan 125 has really been an exciting project here in Finland and for sure it now leaves a void in our lives because we had not one day without excitement dealing with, what we like to call, this beast,” says Giovanni Pomati, Nautor Group CEO. “For a yacht of such technology and performance to have been entirely built here in our facility, the BTC (Boatbuilding Technology Centre), makes us very proud, and allowed us to push our limits to the extreme to create something great.”

Technical Specifications:

Dimensions

LOA   42.620 m

LWL  36.605 m

Beam max 8.75 m

Draught (canting keel) 7,4 m

Displacement (empty) 58 820 kg

Ballast (fin and bulb)    23,230 kg

The post Nautor Swan’s ClubSwan 125 Revealed appeared first on Sailing World.

“Hey, Dave, we’re out sailing the RS21,” says a voice on the other end of the line. “Any chance you can get out with us today while we have breeze?”

Does a bear sh*t in the woods?

“Yep, I’ll be there in 15,” I respond, and in minutes, I’m peeling out of my parking space and taking every local back road I can to avoid the summer traffic. It’s a frenetic dash to get to Fort Adams. A race against the dying northerly.

At the dock, I’m picked up in a RIB by Ed Furry, the owner of Sail22, a raceboat concierge service based in Culver, Indiana, who will be helping the English boatbuilder with establishing the new keelboat class in the States. Furry manages many of the J/70s being towed about the country these days, but I can tell he’s genuinely excited about the RS21.

He knows there are plenty of sailors who will pan the 21-foot keelboat as another pretty boat that will contribute to the struggles of one-design classes everywhere. But he also knows there are sailors out there looking for something different than the pro-laden, high-budget classes garnering all the attention. There are clubs and club sailors looking for a lower-cost option.

That’s where the RS21 comes in, says RS Sailing’s Alex Newton-Southon, in from England to oversee the first U.S. demos. “We were asked in Scandinavia to come up with a new boat to do some league sailing and racing. They felt at the time that the right boat wasn’t out there; others were too expensive and not stable enough, so we felt there was an opportunity for a new low-cost super stable boat for sailing clubs and institutions, a boat for learn to sailing all the way to the more competitive types. There’s no question that people are trying to look for a low-cost way of going team sailing.”

The boat, estimated at $40,000, including “trailer and absolutely everything to go racing,” is a “one-design boat ready to go,” says Newton-Southon. “What you get is what you get.”

And what you get is a lightweight and nimble boat that’s best sailed with a crew of three or four. The sail controls and the layout of the boat, says Newton-Southon, is such that everyone has an active hand in getting it around the racecourse. With the three of us, all full-sized males, the boat felt about right (the ideal crew weight, says Newton-Southon is somewhere around 800 pounds combined). Elbows would be bumping with anything more than four bodies.

Fair comparisons will be drawn between the RS21 and the J/70 and Melges 20, but these two are slightly more substantial boats in a few different ways. The RS21 weighs a stated 1,433 pounds, roughly 300 pounds lighter than the J/70 and 200 heavier than the Melges 20, which is obvious given there’s no cabin top or interior whatsoever. As an open-deck boat that’s lower to the water, the RS21 will feel more like a dinghy, especially when waves and chop breaking over the bow come sluicing through the cockpit. The RS21’s sailplan (265 sq. ft. upwind/606 sq. ft. downwind) doesn’t have as much horsepower as the Melges 20, but it’s pretty darn close to the J/70. When you start talking about the cost to get to the racecourse, however, that’s where the divide grows, and that’s where sailing clubs looking to replace aging fleets will be most hawkish.

The hull shape is straight-up modern and has all the go-fast looks with the chines and reverse bow. The cockpit ergonomics are comfortable with beveled edges for pain-free sitting and hiking. Speaking of which—one-design class racing will have a no-hiking rule, so it’s legs in, folks. In the normal sailing positions, the helmsman has plenty of lines to fuss with, including the fine and gross-tune mainsheet and backstay easily at hand. The jib sheet lead is good, as are the spinnaker sheet leads. The halyard has a hoist line and a retrieval line, which pulls the kite into a foredeck sock. Adjustable turnbuckles on the two-part carbon rig will be easy to step and adjust between races.

No rig adjustments were required on the day I joined Newton-Southon and Steve Perry, Zim Sailing’s presidente. In the fading 10-knot northerly, the helm was beautifully balanced and subtle tugs and pushes on the tiller extension brought immediate movement to the bow. Light and lively are the words that came immediately to mind. The boat begs to be roll-tacked and jibed; lean inboard until the chine bites, roll hard to weather and the main comes across clean overhead because of the high boom. On the flatten, the boat accelerates quickly.

There will be critics of the “granny bar” to which the mainsheet is attached, but it serves a double purpose in protecting the lifting Torqeedo electric outboard shaft and providing a balance point for less nimble skippers when crossing the boat.

RS21s are built on Isle of Wight off the south coast of England where they keep close tabs on the quality and finish as well as delivering on their mission to promote sustainability in boatbuilding by integrating eco-friendly “bio derived resins and recycled core materials” in the hull. Whatever the blend, the hull and deck felt plenty stiff from where I sat, tiller in hand, as we tacked and jibed our way around Narragansett Bay.

When it was near time to head back to the dock, I suggested we go for a good ol’ fashioned Newport “harbor burn.” Tacking up the narrow east channel, dodging tour boats and launches, brought back doing memories of doing the same in 420s as a kid and nowadays with my buddies on the J/24. It also reinforced the notion that, yeah sure, it’s another new boat to convolute the market, one that could possibly kill off a classic plastic one-design class of the 70s, but a boat that’s as exciting to sail as the RS21 was on this fine summer day is fine by me. Anything that gets more people out sailing is good for sailing.

The post A Sporty Little Sportboat appeared first on Sailing World.

As the most aggressive-looking one-design yet from Nautor’s Swan, the strict one-design ClubSwan 50 piles grand-prix concepts into a straightforward boat that will challenge amateur crews but reward them with speed, especially when the breeze turns on.

Heel — 18 degrees of it — is something to get used to with the ClubSwan 50. Flat is not fast. This Juan Kouyoumdjian creation is the first one-design of Nautor’s Swan new direction. Where similarly sized Swans of yore were laden with cruising interiors, this one is not. It’s a furniture-free 50-foot one-design race boat to be sailed hard and put away wet (with a dehumidifier, of course). For an owner looking to get into TP52-style boat-on-boat racing without the new-boat arms race, the ClubSwan 50, the judges say, is one way to go, here and now.

“It’s definitely more of a one-design-class racer than an offshore racer,” says Stewart. “With the big cockpit and the clean Euro styling, it’s a bitchin’ looking boat on and off the dock, and the class racing will be a lot of fun when you get to fleets of 15 or 20 boats.”

Considering two dozen owners ordered boats within the first year of the ClubSwan 50’s launch, and a robust regatta circuit is already underway in the Mediterranean, Nautor’s Swan is delivering to a demand in Europe for big-boat class racing — that’s where the one-design action is at. The challenge for faraway American owners, however, is the designer’s intentional disregard for any and all measurement rules. Handicap racing is not the point of the ClubSwan 50, nor its selling point. “The development of a one-design class in North America will be the ultimate success,” says Nautor’s Swan’s Tom Lihan, who is tasked with recruiting U.S. owners, “and that’s the goal.”

Roughly $1.3 million will put the boat on the racecourse, with 10 to 12 crew members to feed and dress. According to the judges, it’s a boat that demands a professional bowman and two good sail trimmers. The one-design sail inventory is robust — mainsail, four upwind and four downwind sails, as well as two storm sails — will require proper management on the boat and of the morning sail shuffle to and from the container.

As a wide, high-volume planing hull with twin rudders (scalloped trailing edges to make them unique), the ClubSwan 50 is also a yacht that requires the owner’s/driver’s undivided attention directed toward the instruments. With only six winches and the use of constrictors to free up winches at times, there’s a lot of dancing through maneuvers. There’s a lot to get right and a lot that can go wrong, but that’s the appeal of big-boat racing, right? Clean mark roundings and precision boathandling are what get you to the podium.

A year of development with first-generation hulls resulted in a 700-pound diet, which puts the class minimum weight at 18,086 pounds (“or somewhere around there,” says Lihan). The biggest weight savings were accomplished by upgrading to a carbon keel fin and trimming materials where overbuilt. Exploring Hull No. 3’s deepest recesses, Tom Rich found no flaws with the construction, and overall, the judges gave the build high marks. Back at Nautor’s yard in Finland, CNC machines cut pre-preg carbon cloth before vacuum-bagging and pressure-cooking the hull with all the interior components and structural bulkheads in place.

The deck-stepped rig sits atop a solid carbon interior structure (Lihan calls it the “phone booth”), which creates a clear centerline runway for sails going to and fro. The interior finish, while minimalist and easy to strip for regattas, says Stewart, is appropriate for the boat’s purpose while retaining just enough touch of Swan luxury.

There’s modern minimalism with the deck hardware as well, says Rich, pointing out that the boat has fewer winches than he’d expect on a boat this size. Two cabin-top winches are in high demand, especially during jibes. The big challenge is jibing in 20 knots of wind without a pedestal, Lihan admits. Consequently, ClubSwan 50 class management is exploring an electric option for the cabin tops, or a pedestal. “There is an option for a pedestal, but nobody has ordered one yet,” he says. “You can’t do reach-to-reach blow-through jibes, so you just do proper outside jibes, come out low to get that last bit of sheet, and then point it up again. It’s one-design, so as long as everyone is doing the same thing, does it really matter?”

In strong winds, the ClubSwan 50 will be a powered-up machine, says Allen, one that will be fun and forgiving to drive but demand solid crew work. With class rules in place, owners already taking charge, and sanctioned regattas scheduled in the U.S. in 2019, there’s now a turnkey platform into big-boat, big-boy, one-design racing.

At a Glance

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As if on cue, in the midst of our BOTY dockside briefing with J/Boats’ Jeff Johnstone, a middle-aged gentleman appears in the companionway, out of the blue. Johnstone introduces him as an owner, from Portland, Oregon, who is trading in his J/46 for a yet-to-be-built J/121. He climbs down the companionway stairs, interrupts the judging team’s Q&A session, and then promptly cites all the races he intends to enter when he takes ownership of Hull No. 14: the Swiftsure, the Oregon Offshore, the Van Isle 360, and even the Pacific Cup from San Francisco to Hawaii. Moments earlier, Johnstone had explained this very concept: The J/121 is a bucket-list boat. This guy is Exhibit A.

“We saw that signature events were attracting record fleets — the Fastnet Race, the Three-Bridge Fiasco in San Francisco, the Chicago-Mac, for example — all these types of short-handed, adventure-style races where it’s more about the experience than winning,” says Johnstone. “We thought that if we could eliminate half the crew on a 40-footer that’s purpose-built for point-to-point racing but still pass the beer-can and daysail test, we’d have people interested.”

Their research led Johnstone and his brother, Alan, to a design concept built around a crew of five. As for rail meat? No need. That’s what the water ballast tanks are for.

Extra hands to get sails up and down? No need there either. There’s an impressive quiver of headsails, most on roller furlers. With the entire inventory hanging from the rig on halyard locks, and sheets and furling lines spilling into the cockpit, the boat could be easily mistaken for a Class 40 — albeit, one that actually goes upwind.

The J/121’s five-sail inventory is designed for racing with a crew of five. The main has a 10 percent first reef, then a deeper second reef. The primary jib is 105 percent, and a heavy-weather inner jib is about 85 percent. For off-the-wind sailing, there’s a Code Zero and an A2 all-purpose runner.

“This is your classic J Boat in that everything is well-thought-out and works well, and it sails really nicely,” says Rich. “You can race the boat with five people, no problem, although I’m sure you’ll end up with more people who want to go.”

While an owner might have to leave a few friends on the dock in order to reap the benefits of 800 pounds of water ballast, Stewart was unsure the rating hit would be worth the trade-off at times. “ORR hits you on water ballast, at least a little,” he says, “so the question will be whether the water-ballast effect on the displacement will outweigh the rating impact. We’ll have to wait and see.”

Regardless, the point of the boat, the judges all agreed, is not windward/leeward racing but point to point where the tanks remain full for long stretches. The water doesn’t have to leave the rail to get a sandwich or relieve itself.

The 121 isn’t configured for cruising, and Johnstone says no one had yet ordered the optional V-berth package. “The interior is function versus form,” he says. There are proper passage-making berths, synthetic flooring, molded furniture and mahogany trim to make it homey enough while taking day-to-day race abuse.

The Johnstones labored long and hard over the deck-hardware mock-ups in order to accommodate the many leads, deflections and loads of the headsail sheets. There isn’t enough side-deck area for athwartships tracks, so the J/121 uses hybrid floating jib leads that allow in-hauling or barber hauling. On a long offshore leg, you can tweak all day long.

While cockpit ergonomics are excellent, says Stewart, and all the winches are well-positioned and easy to work at, the traveler system needs to be rethought. “With the 4-to-1 mainsheet, we couldn’t get the traveler to centerline. Changing it to 2-to-1 might solve that. The winches are plenty strong to allow it.”

The common phrase among the judges was, “There’s a lot going on,” when all the sails are on deck and ready to deploy. “It’ll definitely be a new sort of learning curve for owners in terms of when to use the water ballast and figuring out the sail crossovers. A couple of days of training with a sailmaker, and a good bowman, will be necessary.”

But any good sailor enjoys a good challenge, says Allen, who has sailed the boat in winds far stronger than those experienced during the BOTY test sail. “In 15 to 20 knots, the boat is really fast and stable, with or without the ballast. The rudder never loses its grip. It’s rock-solid in a breeze, a great boat all around.”

At a Glance

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As a unique foiling object, indeed the UFO’s most appealing aspect is the ability to sail it in conditions that have other foilers on the beach. Sailors new to foiling will be quickly rewarded with minimal effort.

Dave Clark is the UFO’s co-creator, builder, tweaker and apostle. When he explains the construction of his 10-foot catamaran contraption (“we use this apocalyptically thick triaxial fiberglass layup”) and its handling (“as you ask the boat to challenge you, it will continue to challenge you, but only when it’s asked”), his enthusiasm is as animated as the UFO’s behavior on the water, especially in flight. The UFO is otherworldly, the judges agree, with the potential to disrupt the dinghy-sailing scene as an all-access low-cost foiler.

Nowadays at Clark’s Fulcrum Speedworks factory in Bristol, Rhode Island, he’s cranking out these pint-size craft, shipping batches in cardboard boxes and containers with international shipping manifests. He’s taking orders over the phone, on credit cards, from impulse buyers dropping $7,600 for an “all-inclusive” sailing experience.

How’s the UFO built? It’s vacuum-infused, with carbon-reinforced vinylester for an all-up weight of 110 pounds. The wishbone spar assembly is a mix of carbon and fiberglass components; the foil struts are extruded aluminum; and the elevators are a mix of carbon, glass, foam core and stainless-steel parts.

“Complexity is the enemy,” says Clark, who developed the UFO with his father, Steve Clark. “I need it to be robust, and I can’t have parts go missing.”

That might be true of the UFO’s big pieces, says Allen, but there are still quite a few little pins and parts required for assembly and flight. “You’ll have to take good care of it, especially if you’re in and out of the water, and moving it around all the time.”

The carbon windsurfing mast tube that Clark uses is bendy, so he added a jumper strut system to stiffen it. The wishbone arrangement is then the most effective way to provide high leech tension and power in the sail, which is essential to the entire rig package.

The judges’ testing session in sub-8-knot conditions doesn’t allow flight for Tom Rich nor Greg Stewart, both of whom exceed 200 pounds. But Clark, at 170 pounds and with two years in the boat, has it foiling in a heartbeat, using an explosive kinetic technique he’s perfected to get liftoff. Allen is initially unable to get it foil-borne, but 2 knots more of windspeed and a little extra effort on the mainsheet is all it takes to get him flying.

The UFO’s tunnel hull is a simple and defining platform that allows it to be sailed home when the breeze gets to be too little or too much. Its T-Foils lift nearly flush with the bottom of the boat, for launching it from a shoreline or a dock. The ride-height wand is easily adjustable to the desired challenge of the day. “Low to start and learn,” says Clark. “Higher as you get better and faster.”

At the end of your UFO session, break it down and leave it on a dolly, or stuff the whole lot into your family wagon.

“That’s what makes this boat so cool,” says Allen. “It’s innovative, creative and inexpensive. I can see a lot people getting their first taste of foiling with this thing.”

Or as Clark pontificates, “You can use it across your entire sailing career — from your Opti until you’re old and dead.”

At a Glance

To watch video of the UFO in action, click here.
To read more about the genesis of the UFO, click here.

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● Twenty-five years ago, during my annual lecture tour, I made a few outrageous predictions about innovations in sailing. When I reflect on that list today, I’m surprised by how many of these outlandish ideas have become reality. For example, I thought someday we’d be able to use GPS technology to determine whether a boat was over the starting line, that a boat would exceed 50 knots, and that someone would sail around the world in less than 60 days. Of course, we now know that technology developed for the America’s Cup can determine when a boat is over the line (and doing so while the boat is reaching across at 20 knots, no less). In 2012, Paul Larsen’s Vestas Sailrocket 2, flew across a 500-meter stretch of Walvis Bay in Namibia at 65.45 knots. In late 2016, Francis Joyon’s IDEC 2 completed an amazing circumnavigation in 40 days, 23 hours.

Sixty days? Pshaw. I was way off. Without a doubt, the sport has evolved dramatically. But where does this leave us today, looking ever further into the future? As I did many years ago, I have a few ideas today.

Sailing administrators and naval architects have been forever searching for a fair handicap-rating system. There are several in use around the world, leaving potential and current boat owners easily confused as they try to decide what kind of boat to build or buy. With the use of supercomputers, we will achieve the unthinkable and launch a handicap rule that is reliable and fair for boats of all sizes. The system will be based on actual performance in all racing conditions. Here’s how: Every moment while racing, a boat’s performance will be recorded and analyzed against every other offshore boat in the world, in real time, and in every sea state and wind condition. Handicaps will be adjusted continually. Time on the racecourse will therefore be the key determination of success — not size, shape, displacement or modifications to the boat.

Today’s speed records will continue to fall as lightweight materials become ­stronger and control systems more refined. As a result, with the use of foils and high-efficiency ­aerodynamic rigs, boats will sail at extraordinary speeds — let’s now put the target at 100 knots on the 500-meter course and 30 days for a ­circumnavigation.

Outrageous? I think not.

One-design classes will be built using three-dimensional printing for hulls, rigs and parts. Everything will be made to exact standards, and boats will all have equal potential. The reduced manpower will dramatically cut the cost of production, and pre-regatta measurements will be greatly reduced. Thirty years from now, there will be so many different one-design classes on the water that very few boats will race in each class. Regatta organizers will recognize this trend and establish a conference to discuss the problem. The decision will be made to declare that only four classes will be sanctioned as one-designs. Each will have a different size rig depending on the age and size of the sailors. The boats will be fast, strong and easy to right after capsize.

On the technology front, batteries will be able to hold an extended charge. Solar power integrated into the sails and deck, along with a new concept of using a yacht’s motion, will generate energy to keep batteries charged, eliminating entirely the need for fossil fuels.

Miniature drones will be launched while ­racing to project aerial images around a 1-mile perimeter of the boat’s position, which will assist with reading the wind.

Lidar readouts will display wind speed and direction ahead of a boat. Lidar uses tiny laser beams to measure the flow of dust particles in the air. Small-scale instruments at the top of the mast will account for the movement of the mast as a boat sails through the waves, and sensors on the luff of the sail will record apparent wind speed and indicate how sails should be trimmed according to wind shear, in real time and in the next few boatlengths.

Here’s one we can all get behind: Protest hearings will be a thing of the past. Images from small cameras with position data from each yacht involved in a dispute will be fed into a computer. The resulting calculations will determine who wins the protest. It will save a lot of tension usually found in the protest room, eliminate the cost and need for international judges on-site, and keep sailors from pushing the rules.

Rigs will favor single sail plans with wing structures. Masts will bend in concert with wind strength, and the boat will sail at peak efficiency at all times. Helmsmen will constantly be tested on their performance versus a computer’s predicted numbers. This technology is in use today, of course, but the difference will be the ability to monitor a sailor’s vital signs, and fatigue. When a helmsman starts to stray off-course, the instrument package will set off an alarm, or speak to the skipper through a small in-ear device. While self-driving cars will become commonplace on land, sailors like to steer, so rules will be in place to prohibit self-steering boats while racing (autopilots for shorthanded sailing excluded, of course). Seasickness will be a thing of the past too. One small pill will work for several days, with no side effects. Lighter, more-breathable foul-weather gear will keep you drier and warmer, and their fabrics will sense dehydration, alerting us when it becomes detrimental to performance. A personal beacon will keep track of our exact location if we fall into the water. An EPIRB is used today to send a location ­signal, but the new version will be a small, wearable and waterproof strip customized for each sailor.

Telephone service will be less expensive, thanks to laser-satellite technology that works anywhere in the world. It will be small and light. If there is a health issue offshore, a sailor’s health information will be relayed back to a small wearable device. An integrated screen will be on the chest of each piece of clothing.

Computational fluid dynamics will be used to design the precise sail, hull and keel shapes for a given weather condition. An expandable membrane on the exterior of the hull or skin will change shape to maximize performance. Anti-fouling agents will keep all organic growth off hulls, and the film will be environmentally clean. Sustainability will be a regular feature of every sailing regatta. The environmental success in the sport of sailing will inspire other sports to follow suit.

Social media will help owners recruit crew for racing. Skill level, physical size, capability and even compatibility will be part of the equation. Naval architects and engineers will come up with ever-faster designs using IBM’s powerful computer, Watson. We will learn that early naval architects such as Nathanael Herreshoff (who had no computer assistance) were well ahead of their time with their creations. I suspect we will be going back to older designs to understand what might provide something new. Imagine if Herreshoff, Clinton Crane or Olin Stephens had the use of supercomputers.

In a 1972 edition of this magazine, a Princeton sailing-team member Tad LaFountain wrote an article about the advent of professional sailing, saying that it was made for television. At the time, his vision seemed comical. Today, however, professional sailing is prevalent, but in the future, there will be a return to amateur sailing. Television broadcasts will fade away entirely in favor of online delivery. Every team will have the ability to showcase its own boat on the preferred social platform of the day.

As technology makes decision-making easier, the intuitive skills of a sailor will fade. To retain the human element in the sport, some sailing events will forbid any outside or technological assistance. The America’s Cup will be one of the first major sailing events to emphasize a sailor’s skill over computing power. The boats will be sailed without any instruments at all. The event will become so interesting that millions of viewers (on personal mobile devices) will watch with great interest. This raises one final consideration: How far should technology take us before we lose the fundamental attributes of sailing? That too is up for future discussion.

Find out more about the SuperFoiler project here.

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