For the 1983 America’s Cup, our plan was to do two new boats and to trial them against each other. We already had two decent boats, Freedom and Enterprise, for comparison. We suspected that the Australians would be competitive and planning to do something special following their clever bendy rig in 1980. Don’t forget that the Americans had won forever, and the foreigners were predisposed to losing—which might not be fair, but I think it was realistic.

We thought that if we designed and built two new boats that we would have the landscape pretty well covered. We decided to have Johan Valentijn design one boat and Olin Stephens and his Sparkman & Stephens office design the other. The Valentijn boat, ironically, would not have been able to race in the Cup because it was too short on the waterline and didn’t fit the 12-Metre Rule.

For the S&S boat, Olin Stephens was getting older, so some others on the S&S team were probably involved, such as Bill Langan and the team behind him. They designed a fairly large boat. Normally, a large boat would be fighting for enough sail area, but they got it by pushing the girth profile pretty hard to gain back some rating under the 12-Metre Rule. It pushed the rule on girth hard. It was large, and the reason it did not have a smaller sail area was because the girths were not penalized. It was V-shaped and not wine-bottle-shaped. You would think with that configuration it would be slow, but it needed to be that way under the rule to get a large boat with a larger sail area.

We tested it against Freedom and Enterprise and realized that the design did not work well. We decided that we needed to either build another boat or rely on Freedom to be a good boat. We decided to have another boat designed and built, and based on some of the innovation that Valentijn had shown with his design of Magic, we let him do it. He designed Liberty, but it was not a great boat. 

The first day, we sailed Freedom against Liberty—mind you, I hate to go swimming, but I said I would go swimming because there must be something stuck on Liberty to be this slow against Freedom. So that did not bode well for our future.

We decided that we would also let Valentijn make changes to Freedom because she was sticky in the light air, and we thought that would improve with more sail area. We decided that we would let him make Freedom a little shorter so that we could add sail area. However, Freedom had the lowest freeboard of any 12-Metre, and that had been grandfathered in because the rule on freeboard was changed in 1983.

Freedom had a low ­freeboard and was quite wet, but it was the low freeboard that gave her better aerodynamic and hydrodynamic qualities. Valentijn did not interpret or misread the rule, so in making the boat shorter to gain sail area, we lost the grandfathering of the freeboard. We ended up with a shorter boat and without any additional sail area. It made Freedom worse in light air without added sail area, and worse in stronger conditions because it was shorter and it rated the same. So Valentijn designed Magic, which could not race for the Cup because its rating was too short; he designed Liberty, which was not a special boat; and he negatively impacted Freedom, which was our best boat after all of this. We ended up having to race Liberty.

In the meantime, the Australians had built two boats: One was Challenge 12 and the other Australia II. They were identical except one had a ­regular keel and one had a winged keel. The winged keel ended up being the better boat. It was the shortest boat you could design and still race, which, if I remember right, was 42½ feet on the waterline.

The problem with a small boat is that it isn’t very good in windier conditions. They figured out how to make it better by turning the keel upside down. They attached the short part of the keel to the hull and had the longer part at the bottom of the keel. That made a short boat with a lot of sail area very stable in the breeze. The tank testing was done in Holland and the idea came out of Holland, which made it illegal, but that’s another story.

The problem with the long keel at the bottom was that it made excess tip vortices—or, in layman’s terms, there was too much drag. They figured that if you added winglets to the keel, it would reduce the vortices. They started thinking that if you were going to add winglets with that drag, you might as well make them out of lead, which would give even more stability. And, if you were heeled over, one of the wings would be more vertical and add lift. So, for Australia, it was all a gain—aside from some additional drag downwind—but the boat was short and had plenty of sail area, so it was not that bad. 

The fact that we were up 3-1 after four races was a ­miracle. But it was a combination of them having some bad luck and not sailing well at the beginning and us having some good fortune. Once they figured out that they were fast, they became formidable. They got stronger and stronger, and John Bertrand got less nervous; they had a good crew and a good boat.

We broke down in the fifth race when the jumpers blew off the mast, which was too bad because those were our best conditions. They had good fortune in the sixth race and were faster. In the seventh race, we were kicking their butts—but the wind dropped quite a bit, and they got stronger and stronger and passed us.

Would I have done anything differently? Maybe knowing what I know now, but what I knew back then, probably not. They were a good boat.

The post America’s Cup 1983: Wrong Horse For the Course appeared first on Sailing World.

On the eve of the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup Match, the America’s Cup Media Center on the ground floor of Barcelona’s World Trade Center is relatively empty. Both challenger and defender alike are hunkered down and most of the accredited media are off exploring cultural gems of the city or taking a breather before the Cup rush.

The only action is the Puig Women’s America’s Cup qualifying races, and while I sit awaiting the delayed start I get a text message from Sabina Mollart-Rogerson, the international media liaison for the French Orient Express Racing Team. They’re taking guests sailing on its AC75 and there are two spots for journalists. Do I want to go?

She does not need to ask twice. “Must be present to win,” I mutter to myself.

With my laptop briskly shoved into my backpack, I hustle to meet Mollart-Rogerson waiting in a team courtesy car, hastily board a RIB at the base and then transfer to a chase boat sitting along the AC75. Alexander Smith, of Reuters, is getting his safety briefing from the team’s paramedic—a quick tutorial on how to use the PFD’s spare air system and the hand signals should the boat capsize and we end up in the drink.

Smith is first to get into this rare AC75 joyride and as we follow alongside I meet Enzo Balanger, the mustached young Frenchman who skippered the team’s AC40 in the UniCredit Youth America’s Cup. Today will be his first time onboard the AC75 and his first shot at driving the big beast of a foiler. He’s had a few runs in the simulator, but he tells me he’s eager for the real thing as he observes the boat intently from his seat inside the RIB.

After 20 minutes or so, the boat comes to a slow stop and parks head-to-wind. Smith gingerly steps off the foredeck and onto the RIB with the expected ear-to-ear grin. I take his helmet, slide it on, adjust it and clip the chin strap. It’s a heavy, bobble-head like feel. With my PFD zipped and snugged, I move to the front of the RIB and before I board I’m warned several times about the slipperiness of the foredeck, and not to step on the deck area above the jib track–it will break.

With bare feet on the polished white deck it is indeed slippery, but I find awkward footing on the non-skid decals and crawl crab-like toward the mast and into the port-side opening behind the helmsman’s cockpit. The cycling apparatus that once served to power the boat through the Louis Vuitton Cup races has been removed. What remains is a bike saddle on a post, foot pads and forearm handlebars with grip tape worn thin and shredded by cyclors giving their all. A puddle of water sloshes around in the bilge and in front of me is a small LCD screen and a laminated list with checkboxes and instructions in French that I cannot decipher. I can only assume it’s the cyclor’s pre-flight check list.

To be honest, I was hoping to push some pedals to see how hard it could really be, but I’m OK with the cruise.

Behind me is one of the team’s cyclors, and helming in the opposite side of the boat is starting helmsman Quentin Delapierre. Balanger slides into the cockpit in front of me and scans the many displays in front of him, presumably doing his pre-flight checks and orientating himself. He slides his goggles down over his eyes and adjusts his facemask as the boat bears away and starts sailing on port tack.

All I can hear over the headset built into my helmet is the chatter among the cyclors. I’m on a closed loop between them, and even if I could listen to Delapierre coaxing Balanger, I would have no idea what was being said. I don’t do French, so I’m well and truly along the ride.

As the boat slowly accelerates, both foils in the water, a rush of wind across the deck is immediate. Hydraulic pumps inside the boat groan and I can hear and feel the whir of the cyclors pushing oil throughout the boat. The jib tack slides out to the outboard end of the recessed foredeck track, the foot deepens and rounds, the luff slides up the forestay and powers the front of the jib.

A small green box on the LCD display in front of me reads 12.3 knots as the boat heels briefly to weather and then comes level as the boat lifts free of the surface. The jib clew quickly comes inboard, the leech hardens, and what was once a deep-cambered sail is now board flat. I peek over the rail and stare with wonder at the foil wing gliding just below the surface, its pointed upward-curved outer tip zippering the water.

From my vantage point, I can easily see approaching puffs through the jib slot, and find myself counting them down in my head and watching how the boat and the sails react. The jib car is constantly moving inboard and outboard, inches a time. Behind me, the traveler is hyperactive.

In a blink we’re doing 28 knots in 9 knots of wind before Delapierre drops the windward foil and starts the turn through our first foiling tack. I watch Balanger scan his displays through the turn before looking forward over the bow and at the straight horizon. I can see video screens showing camera views of both foils, but there are other displays in front of him with a jumble of numbers.

Once settled on the new tack the windward foil rises free of the water and the speed loss is barely noticeable. With Balanger now on the helm the boat lumbers and bounces like a large prop-plane through turbulence. At full tilt, there’s just wind noise through my helmet, the hum turning cranks and pumps pushing oil. Telltales along the bottom of the jib and mainsail stream straight back as if glued to the sails.

Balanger seems plenty smooth on his first long port run, the windward board’s tip only dipping occasionally. The display in my cockpit is blinking with colors, numbers I don’t understand, power data from cyclors, and percentages for the jib sheet and the mainsail traveler as the true-wind angle bounces between 40 and 50-something degrees.

After a few minutes of straight-line sailing at 29 knots it all starts to feel pretty relaxed, and it’s only when we bear away to somewhere past 100 degrees true that the rush of the AC75 becomes real. Suddenly, it’s 37 knots, a cheeks-flapping, head-swaying sort of pace, a sense of floating on air.

We glide through a few more jibes and speed runs before turning into the wind and coming to a slow stop. The ride is over and with it, the same sort of let down that comes after an epic roller coaster ride. That feeling that you want to jump right back into the cue, no matter how long it is, for another go. According to my Garmin watch we’ve covered 6.87 miles in 20m:38s, at an average speed of 20 knots. Somehow, I’ve burned 127 calories just sitting on my saddle, a mere fraction of the cyclors who were doing all the heavy cranking.

Mine is the last ride of the day and after a fast and short tow back to the base, I get 5 minutes of one-on-one with Balanger before he’s whisked off to the debrief. While it seems to me his turns were just fine for an AC75 first-timer—no splashdowns or touches—he confesses that it was far from good, but it’s all part of getting up to speed and hopefully into a starting role when the French challenger returns to the next Cup.

“During my first tack, the traveler was a bit stuck in the middle,” he says with a chuckle. “I tried to turn the wheel but the boat didn’t turn.”

He was out of sync with the trimmers, but the next one was better: “When I didn’t get my first tack well, I just watched how Quentin did the next one, and then I just did the same. There is a lot of precision and coordination, and it is not easy.”

Recalling this first few minutes on the helm of the AC75 Balanger says that while it would have been tempting to focus on the array of displays in front of him, he instead drew upon his instincts gleaned from his high-level Moth sailing.

“I wasn’t too focused on the data,” he says, “just the heel and the feel of the boat and the wind. Of course, I was nervous but everyone was supporting me, the cyclors telling me to push a bit more, saying, ‘we have some power for you.’”

Although I could not hear Delapierre mentoring from the opposite cockpit, Balanger says, he wasn’t telling him whether he was doing well or not. “He was just telling me that it was my first time and that everyone wants to perform. He was giving me a lot of advice and told me it was good—but only at the end.”

The post Taken For a Ride on The AC75 appeared first on Sailing World.

Wingfoiling is a new and exploding addition to the world of sailing, and naturally it has a racing component built into its foundation. Wherever there’s wind and water these days, wingfoilers can be seen flying fast with light and minimal equipment, and when two ­foilers meet, who doesn’t want to see how fast they can go? And who’s faster? Even though wingfoiling is relatively new, there’s already plenty of racing developing, internationally and domestically. Whether you are new to wingfoiling and want to race for the first time, or you want to push yourself to the next level, here are my top-10 tips to make the most of your wingfoil racing.

Enjoy the racing. Wingfoil racing is a unique way to share the water with a lot of people. One of the coolest things about foiling is how silently you sail across the water. You can be very close to another person and have a conversation, which makes racing much more social and competitive.

Be open to learning new things. When I work with the kids on the Wylde Wind & Water Wingfoil Youth Team, I tell them that the best way to improve is to race. Racing teaches us so many invaluable lessons about equipment management, reading the water, sailing in a variety of conditions, and pushing our comfort zones. Every race will teach us something, so we have to remember to be open to learning from it. I learn as much from one regatta as I could from an entire month of training on my own.

Don’t stress the gear. The best equipment with which to start racing is the gear you have. Use it to participate in a local race series, and as you get more familiar with the racing formats and as your skills improve, then you can purchase more-advanced equipment for wingfoil racing. Don’t let your equipment be your barrier of entry to try something new.

Learn the different starts. There are three types of starts in wingfoil racing: traditional upwind starts for when you are ­racing windward/leeward courses; reaching starts for when you are slalom racing; and rabbit starts for when you are distance racing or marathon racing.

As your skills improve, you can purchase more-advanced equipment for wingfoil racing. Don’t let your equipment be your barrier of entry to try something new.

The start sequence is typically a 3-minute countdown. Because wingfoilers sail very quickly, you cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time, so calculate this into your prestart routine so that you know where to line up at 30 seconds before your start. The goal is to cross the start line going full speed—and in control. You always want to be on foil during the prestart sequence, so jibe or tack in puffs—whatever keeps you on the foil—so you can ensure that you’re foiling when you cross the line.

Pump for extra speed off the line. When pumping for speed off the start, use your whole body, starting with your legs, to compress the foil into the water to generate lift. As the board starts to rise, extend your arms and capture more wind in your wing, which will counter the lift of the foil and propel you forward. When pumping, engage your core, not only for strength and power, but for stability as well. Remember, you are the connection between the wing and the board. Be a solid connection.

Stay fast and tight. On the typical wing racecourse, there are two major obstacles to avoid: dirty air and dirty water. Dirty air can be really disruptive to your top-end speed and your upwind or downwind angle, so do your best to find lanes of clean air to avoid wing turbulence. Wing turbulence is one of the easiest ways to catch a wing tip in the water, which often results in swimming. Foils disturb the water and create turbulence from the introduction of air down the mast. Somebody else’s foil turbulence can knock you off balance or cause your foil to cavitate. Learn how to anticipate foil turbulence, and if you can, avoid it.

Somebody else’s foil turbulence can knock you off balance or cause your foil to cavitate. Learn how to anticipate foil turbulence, and if you can, avoid it.

Embrace different courses. Wingfoil racing can be short and intense, which keeps it exciting. Slalom races are anywhere from 3 to 6 minutes, course races are about 8 to 12 minutes, distance races are around 20 to 25 minutes, and marathon races are at least 45 minutes.

Enjoy the entire wind range. Wind minimums and maximums depend on the ­location and sea state as well, but race organizers typically aim to sail in 6-knot minimum. And the wind maximum? That depends on the race committee, however, I recommend getting a small wing because wingfoil racing in 35 to 40 knots is chaotic but a ton of fun.

Clean and safe mark roundings. It’s especially important to pay close attention to your exit angle from a mark rounding. You’re moving at a high rate of speed, and your exit angle can make or break your race. Also, just as you would off the starting line, pump out of the turns to accelerate.

Find your fleet. Where to wingfoil race? There are many race opportunities around the world, including the high-level Wingfoil Racing World Cup tour, GWA Wing Foil, X-15 Class races (one-design), and national and local races. Connect with your local sailing club or federation to learn more information about the upcoming races in your region, and if you don’t have a local wingfoil racing scene, start one. All it takes is another winger.

The post Wingfoiling Racing Beginner Basics appeared first on Sailing World.

Organizers of the 116th edition of the Chicago Yacht Club’s Race to Mackinac have announced a new registration policy for the coming edition of the race. Breaking from tradition, rather than issuing invitations, registration will open to all yachts after December 1, with a non-refundable deposit. Coveted docking assignments will be issued to completed entries in order encourage early entry completion, and entries will be capped at 325.

The 2025 edition of the race, which will begin July 18 and commemorate the founding of the Chicago YC in 1875, will coincide with the running of the “Ultra Mac,” which provides competitors an opportunity to connect July’s Bayview Mackinac Race from Port Huron, Mich., to Mackinac Island with a continuing leg to a finish Chicago. The Ultra Mac has only been held once in the past 25 years.

“The Race to Mackinac is a bucket-list race for sailors across the country and around the world, and we want to bring as many competitors together to celebrate this special running of our iconic race in honor of the Chicago Yacht Club’s legacy,” said Race Chairman Winn Soldani, in a news release.

In honor of CYC’s 150th Anniversary, new entries (those who have not previously entered the race) may qualify for $150 off their entry fee. According to Soldani, all competitors and fans of the 2025 Mac Race should expect an unforgettable, milestone event complete with many more special events and awards yet to be announced, and culminating in a firework display at Mackinac Island to punctuate the momentous occasion.

“We’ve designed this year’s race to be unforgettable and we hope to welcome sailors to a special running of one of the greatest races in the world,” Soldani said. “Whether you’ve competed in the race before or you’re thinking about trying it out for the first time, this is the year to do it and we want to do everything we can to help you get to the starting line.”

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The Swan One Design Worlds came to a dramatic conclusion in Palma de Mallorca over the weekend with the world champions crowned in three ClubSwan Racing classes—two by a single point—and the season-long Nations League ultimately decided.

In the ClubSwan 36 fleet, teams from Brazil, Germany and Spain took the top spots with Haakon Lorentzen’s Mamao, of Brazil, claiming the ClubSwan 36 title after overhauling series leader and three-race winner Black Battalion. Edoardo Ferragamo’s Cuordileone completed the podium.

“I am feeling great, it is our second time,” said Lorentzen, adding the key to their success was never giving up and fighting to the finish. “I was 68 when I won my first world championship, and now I am 70 and have won my second.”

Mark Bezner’s Olymp, hailing from Germany, claimed the ultra-close ClubSwan 50 title by a single point from Raquel and Graeme Peterson’s Moonlight. Leonardo Ferragamo’s Cuordileone, the 2023 world title holder toke the final place on the podium. The level of competition was highlighted by the fact that the top-five boats in the 12-strong class were each only a point apart.

“It’s outstanding and a great reward for our team,” Bezner said. “We’re a new team and the first day was a bit rough but today we had two great starts—we like challenging conditions, we do a bit better. I have only been with ClubSwan Racing for four years, having never raced a regatta before, so you can imagine how I feel.”

Perhaps appropriately, given the Bay of Palma arena, the similarly tight competition for the ClubSwan 42 world title was an all-Spanish affair, with Pedro Vaquer Comas’ Nadir edging out Jose Maria Meseguer’s Pez de Abril—again by a single point. Adriano Majolino’s Canopo, the 2024 Rolex Swan Cup winner with two race victories on its Palma card, was third.

Back ashore Comas said, “We’re feeling very good, it has been a very competitive event for everyone. The 42 class is very strong at the moment and this is the second time we have won the Worlds so we will enjoy it. The team has been together 10 years so I am very proud.”

The teams in the Swan One Design Worlds experienced varied conditions throughout the week, providing a suitable challenge of their skills across the wind range, as well as a rather different challenge for the experienced race management team at the Real Club Náutico de Palma, host for the ClubSwan Racing regatta.

It was an equally close-run affair in the 2024 The Nations League ClubSwan 50 series with Moonlight — despite a strong performance in Palma and victory in the recent Rolex Swan Cup — ending the season as runner-up to Marcus Brennecke’s Hatari, with the German yacht adding to her winning streak.

“It is disappointing to have lost the World Championship, but Olymp deserved it,” said Brennecke. “On the other hand, winning the Nations League title for the fifth time in a row shows that we are sailing well. But it is so competitive and everyone can win — that is the beauty of ClubSwan Racing.”

Despite their third-place finish in the Swan One Design Worlds, Cuordileone was able to secure the overall season ClubSwan 36 Nations League title. Edoardo Ferragamo said, “It was a very beautiful season even if the weather wasn’t the easiest, but we managed to keep the team strong to the end, so we are happy with that.”

A similar tale unfolded in the ClubSwan 42 class, where earlier performances in the season secured the overall title for Jose Maria Meseguer’s Pez de Abril.

“We are very happy obviously as the Nations League is a very important trophy,” Meseguer said. “The highlight for me is that we have been able to hit our targets through the season. We have so many new people who are coming in and they are improving a lot — so everyone is trying very hard to get better and it is a lot of fun.”

While most of the attention has been focused on the action on the water, as ever the shoreside made its own contribution to the ClubSwan Racing atmosphere. A major highlight of the social scene was the Owners’ Evening which was held in the historic and famed location of the 300-year-old Gordiola glass blowing factory, whose architecture is inspired by the Castle of Perpignan, and is a candidate for UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Summing up the season at the celebratory Prize-Giving on Sunday evening, Nautor Group President Leonardo Ferragamo said, “This event marks the conclusion of a Nations League season which has seen friendly and competitive racing merged with the lifestyle and friendship at the heart of the Swan family experience.

“As ever the Real Club Náutico de Palma has been the perfect host allowing us to celebrate the season to date which has been full of so many special events.”

Head of Sport Activities Federico Michetti added: “This has been another exceptional year for ClubSwan Racing and I would like to extend a heartfelt thank-you to all the owners, their friends, partners and crews who have done so much to make it so special.

“We have all been privileged to have been able to compete is so many welcoming venues, here now in Palma de Mallorca, and earlier in the season in Scarlino, Bonifacio, Alghero and Porto Cervo. Their contribution has been fantastic, as has the ongoing support of our partners Rolex, Porsche, Randstad, Henri Lloyd and Banor. Together we have made it happen.”

The post ClubSwan One Design Worlds Play Out in Palma appeared first on Sailing World.

Along the beach fronts of Barcelona and the harborsides of Port Vell, remnants of the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup villages linger in stark contrast from a week ago. The racing is long over. Team bases are packing, the Estrella Damm container bars shuttered, the staging deconstructed, banners struck. The crowds have dispersed and the Catalonians have their waterfront back.

By all accounts, the America’s Cup summer was a fruitful one for the city of nearly 6 million residents and the government that forked over a reported 70 million Euros to host sailing’s pinnacle regatta. They may get their projected $2 billion in revenue, but whether they get the Cup back for AC38 is a question that lingers among those who want to know. And that includes the teams themselves.

Emirates Team New Zealand boss Grant Dalton, cagey as usual with the Cup’s next steps as he and others plot how to make the event more commercially viable, has indicated that he wants a quick turnaround—2026—making quick use of the hard assets that the six remnant teams now possess: AC40s, AC75, hydrogen chase boats, simulators and gym equipment. Never mind keeping the respective talent on retainer.

Barcelona remains a potential host candidate, but those in government may be less willing to accept a similar host fee arrangement for the second dance. Valencia, down the coast, is another strong contender having hosted twice in the past and reported to be eager, and the Middle East—perhaps Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, which hosted a preliminary regatta—is willing to pony up for the taking.

“The Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup has confirmed the America’s Cup as one of the unique properties in international sport, so it is our objective to build on the success of AC37 and continue the growth we have been seeing since we first won the America’s Cup in 2017,” Dalton said in a team statement issued several days after the team defended the Cup for a third time. “We are looking to increase audience and engagement across different regions, territories and demographics.”

Dalton is also expecting, or hoping for, additional teams in the next cycle, which would be difficult in the port space currently available in Barcelona. “We now have a number of valuable properties that we wish to continue building,” he said, referring to the well-received but flawed Youth and Women’s America’s Cup events. “We are keeping an open mind on how best to achieve this with a venue, or different venues, that can supercharge the 38th America’s Cup with increased global footprint, more teams and increased overall expansion opportunities.”

The statement issued by Emirates Team New Zealand reports that the regatta attracted 2.5 million attendees between late August to mid-October (a 59-day count). “These numbers are well aligned with those that were projected and estimated before the event and from initial indications we know we are well on track to reaching our growth targets of a 50-percent increase on total broadcast and media audience from the 36th America’s Cup,” Dalton said.

Talks between the Defender and its Challenger of Record, The Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron Ltd., will bear the next venue and details soon enough, and while the two played nice in the lead up and through Barcelona, several inside sources say it will be different this time around with British team principals looking for more say in how it all plays out.  

The post Where to Next with America’s Cup 38 appeared first on Sailing World.

It’s not the first mistake, it’s the second,” world champion sailor Bora Gulari once said while I was coaching him in the Nacra 17 for the US Sailing team. When asked if it was OK to quote him, he said, “In fairness, I got that from Terry Hutchinson.” Regardless of the origin, I like its message—that the unexpected is inescapable, and that it’s how we manage problems that matters. That doesn’t mean being complacent, however. It means finding solutions.

When I’m sailing, I make ­mental notes of any adversities such as “spinnaker takedown late.” Then, once onshore, I add details into the Adversity Spreadsheet that I keep. It’s an incredibly useful tool to keep those second mistakes from happening again. I recently added an Impact column to the spreadsheet, which is a measure of how many boats were lost due to a noted adversity. This is easy to estimate sometimes, such as our flubbed takedown cost us two boats, so the impact is simply “2.” But it’s harder to estimate the impact of a bad start. Did it cost me 15 boats at the moment, or five? All I can do is make my best guess.

The Impact column also helps me identify my repeat offenders, understand which ones cost me most, and motivates me to work on improving. It’s eye-opening that, for any given regatta, even in winning, I might have an impact of 30 or more. In losing, I might see just a few things I could have done better that would have made all the difference.

This Impact column has led me to pondering the risk ­versus reward trade-offs of an OCS. For example, I recently sailed a regatta where I pushed the line and was OCS in one of the 10 races. But the other nine starts were excellent. It’s hard to measure, but maybe my finishes would have been five places worse per race if I’d held back. Over nine races, that’s 36 points. But the OCS cost me 60 points. Without a discard, ­pushing the line risking an OCS is a major error, but if there were a discard, I get to shed those 60 points, so risking the line is the right move.

The whole point of ­gathering all of this information into the spreadsheet is to come up with solutions. For our poor spinnaker takedown, my teammates and I concluded that there were two solutions. The first is to start the process a little earlier when we are not fighting for mark room. But when we don’t have that luxury, we came up with a process change: When we need to carry the spinnaker late, we need to put the board down and jib up very early, then strip the pole and free-fly the spinnaker. The Solutions cell in the spreadsheet can be simple and to the point, or long and in depth.

Boathandling adversity is definable and mostly in our control. Practice is usually the solution, but in the long run, I think that the best way to reduce it is to empower each team member to succeed and equally empower them to be human and, with that, make mistakes. When I see someone on another boat lay blame and even yell at their team member, I cringe. I expect an occasional boathandling error from my teammates, and they expect the same from me. In the moment, the right response is to work together to recover. Then, after the race, the spreadsheet is a low-conflict way of defining problems.

Boat-on-boat tactical adversity is often our mistake. If I am on port tack and feel strongly about wanting to get right, for example, a mistake would be to lee-bow a starboard tacker instead of taking the big duck. Most tactical errors can be solved by the tactician clearly planning and communicating. A good comms example would be: “We are going right, so if anyone comes, then we are ducking.” It reinforces planning for specific moves with an if/then.

Strategy is an interesting study in adversity mitigation. We can put solid thought into our race strategy, but in the end, Mother Nature does whatever she wants. Suppose I identify the adversity in my spreadsheet as: “I went left as local knowledge dictated, but instead a persistent righty won.”

If, in looking back, I can see no way to have predicted the right shift, I can’t count that as an error. However, the error might be that I did not mitigate the damage. The root cause would be: “I did not see the righty soon enough.” The solution could be: “We need a team member assigned to regularly to check the opposite side of the course for signs of change.”

Boatspeed adversity is the most frustrating because the root cause is often hard to identify and elusive to solve. But it is always in our control. 

For adverse tactical situations over which we have little control, we switch our focus to mitigation. Suppose we identify adversity as “we were tacked on.” We might call it an error because “we tacked into too good a lane and it was inevitable we were getting tacked on.” The solution should be: “We should have tacked in a compromised lane, that way the odds of ­getting directly tacked on would be low.”

One easily identifiable adversity is a protest situation. Many fouls can be avoided with clear communication with competitors. Suppose the error was: “We thought it was obvious that we were clear ahead at the zone, yet someone jammed in anyway.” The root cause is: “We did not communicate that they had no room.” The solution is: “We should always start the overlap conversation 10 ­boatlengths out. Doing so establishes the overlap status in case of a protest situation, but more importantly, it leaves enough time for both boats to think things through and be mentally prepared to round in the proper order.”

Boatspeed adversity is the most frustrating because the root cause is often hard to identify and elusive to solve. But it is always in our control, and as such, is listed as a mistake in our spreadsheet. If the problem is: “We are slow in medium wind and chop,” and the root cause we might have to write is: “We have no idea why.” In this case, the solution is: “We need to ask some of our friends who are doing better in this condition, come up with a list of things to try, and then find medium wind and chop to train in with a tuning partner.” There is no simple solution to boatspeed woes, but to do well, we must be fast, so we must never stop working on speed.

An ongoing boatwork list, along with regular inspections and replacements, takes care of most mechanical adversity. But mitigation comes into play too. For example, born from things going wrong, I have added redundancy to some systems. For example, my outhaul broke once, and it’s ­impractical to inspect it often because it’s inside the boom, so I have added a safety line. I’ve busted my spin pole more than once, so now I carry a spare. While coaching, whenever my athlete asks, “Do you think I should replace my—” I interrupt with a “Yes!” before they can finish. It does not matter what they were about to identify, if they question whether it should be fixed or replaced, it should be. If ­nothing else, for peace of mind.

Managing adversity is a deeply personal mental game. For me, when something goes wrong, I take a deep breath, hold, then exhale. It probably takes only about 5 seconds for that full cycle, the amount of time my brain needs to move on. And with my breath held, I can’t possibly do something in the heat of the moment that I will regret.

I once coached an ­emotional team of three sailors, and we used the word “helicopter” to get the team back in focus. Anyone on the team could say it, and the agreement was that the others would each visualize being dropped into their boat from a helicopter, with no knowledge of how they got into their current position. The message was: “No blame, no bad history, just focus and hard work from where we are.”

Even in winning major events, I have never raced without plenty of adversity. Some clear mistakes, some completely out of my control, and plenty somewhere in between. I have learned to expect them, and with that, I am free to move on to managing whatever the problem might be. In the moment and with a clear head, I want to quickly come up with the best solution. Postrace, I want to identify the root cause and hopefully agree with my team on a solution. Even if I can’t identify the root cause, the solution will be to study it to find the root cause. Those that are squarely in my control, such as ­boathandling, I want to do everything I can to eliminate. Others, such as picking a side, are less in my control and I am only playing odds. For these, I work on mitigating their damage. But most importantly, when the inevitable problem does come our way, I want to empower my team to do the best they can to mitigate the damages and move on, ­avoiding that second mistake.

The post How to Manage and Measure Mistakes appeared first on Sailing World.

Seven to two—that is the final outcome of the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup in Barcelona following a decisive win for Emirates Team New Zealand, now third time defenders and supreme masters of the AC75 America’s Cup class of their design. While INEOS Britannia had high hopes and no lack of effort in trying, the Auld Mug remains firmly in the hands of Team New Zealand, now awaiting the next challenger and the next chapter of its dynasty.

On a warm and sunny afternoon on October 19, the New Zealand sailing powerhouse delivered its final and convincing blow to the British Challenger of Record on the sixth and final day of racing, stirring a black swarm of New Zealand fans into a frenzy along Barcelona’s waterfront. There were two races scheduled, but the Kiwis only needed one, and it was theirs from the first cross onward.

Scripted to perfection for a Saturday final race, the wind forecast was questionable with the remnants of the previous day’s northerly fighting the arrival of the sea breeze. At the morning race briefing, race officer Iain Murray alluded to the potential of a hard 3:30 cut off, but with only a slight delay, the sea breeze found its footing to the delight of crowds that worked their way to vantage points along Barcelona’s waterfront. To borrow a oft-heard phrase of Emirates Team New Zealand helmsman Nathan Outteridge it was, “all good.”

Going into today’s do-or-die race, the British knew their fate was not with better boat speed, but rather a bare-knuckle approach to the pre-start.

And with 8 knots of breeze, Emirates Team New Zealand entered on port with INEOS on starboard entry going immediately on the offensive, chasing the Kiwis to the bottom of the starting box. New Zealand was ready for it and knew a jibe and tack would set them up for INEOS’s next move.

The British came at the New Zealanders once again, but with the maneuverability that has been the hallmark of their series, the Kiwis tacked and then went right back at them. After a Kiwi push to the line, INEOS was just ahead off the start, but with a slight right the New Zealanders promptly tacked and went for a bigger piece of the shift.

The Kiwis on Taihoro had the first cross by 24 meters, and while the chase was on and close at times over the six-leg, 26-minute race INEOS had no passing lanes. It was wire to wire again for Team New Zealand.

“It’s a surreal feeling, to know we’ve won it again, and seeing the crowd and the cheering,” Burling said after racing. “Our whole team is incredibly competitive and we get along and get the best out of one another—everyone pushing forward and that showed on the racecourse.”

The push to seven started with four straight wins early in the series before the Kiwis stumbled on the fourth day of the regatta with two surprise losses. The team’s regroup from those missteps, Burling said, was his personal highlight of the Barcelona experience—he was happy to silence the critics and get the job done with authority.

Much will be debated and analyzed once the champagne has been sprayed and the sting of the loss fades for the British outfit, but if there’s one undeniable fact of this regatta—Team New Zealand’s Taihoro was the fastest boat of the third-generation AC75s.

Emirates Team New Zealand’s Dan Bernasconi, architect of the rule that produced the most technical sailing craft of a generation says there’s still more to come with the big foilers, whenever that may be.

“With the performance of these boats you’re fighting over 10ths or hundreds of knots, but the way you can sail them can make a huge, huge difference,” Bernasconi said about the team’s developments through the Barcelona series that began back in August. “We’ve made real steps forward between the round robins and the final: how to minimize the losses in tacks and jibes, roundups, bear-aways, what you do in situations where the winds in a different direction for the waves, how you trim the sails, high modes, low modes, and positioning on the racecourse.”

Earlier in the series Burling had said they’d been modifying how they use the power team’s input and while Bernasconi declined to share specifics, he said, “there are a lot of decisions about where we direct the power. There’s a very tight limit of power to use, and you’ve got about 20 functions controlling the sails. There’s a lot of complex logic there, and we’ve been working on that way all the way through. It’s one of the few things you can change right until the end of the Cup, as to how you direct that power.”

Was maneuverability a real strength of the platform? “It’s been a massive learning curve for all teams where being able to minimize losses in tacks and jibes. I think we’ve seen these boats match raced very hard, and if you can save 5 meters in every tack compared to the other guys, that makes a massive difference.”

While much lip service had been given to the similarities of the boats in terms of all-around performance, Bernasconi—understandably—was perfectly happy with the package that got the job done in a wide range of conditions, but especially in the America’s Cup matches themselves.

“I think we had a slight edge in the conditions that we raced in,” Bernasconi said. “I think the two boats did target slightly different conditions. If every day had been in 18 to 20 knots of breeze would the results have been the same? I don’t know. You’ve got to pick your design and you have to put the target somewhere. Of course, we knew it could be 18 to 20, and we designed a boat which wouldn’t be bad in those conditions, but we wanted to be absolutely the fastest boat out there in 8 to 12.”

While the tradition of the America’s Cup is to have the next Challenger of Record step forward as soon as the Match is won, there were no such formal proceedings made known. Instead, the parade of yachts and small craft that had lined the racecourse to witness Team New Zealand’s historic third win on the water followed them into Port Vell, for the speeches, the champagne and the party over Kiwi Corner that will no doubt last until the sun rises again over Barcelona.

Whether the next Cup match remains in Spain or moves to the Middle East, as some rumors claim, is unknown, but one thing for certain is INEOS is not going anywhere, or at least not Ben Ainslie, who said, “See you next time.”

The post Emirates Team New Zealand’s Dominant Third Defense appeared first on Sailing World.

Simple, but race-defining mistakes got the better of Emirates Team New Zealand on Race Day 4 of the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup, bringing the series to 4-2 before the reserve day on Thursday, but today on the waters off Barcelona the Kiwi unit promptly snuffed the British momentum with two decisive wins that now has them one race away from a three-peat defense.

With the winds blowing offshore (northwest) for the first time in the America’s Cup Match, over the high hills on the outskirts of Barcelona and through the city of 6 million, conditions delivered a different sort of racecourse with flat water and the unpredictability that comes with an offshore wind flow. Ten-degree shifts and skittering puffs put a premium on being in phase, and more importantly, being out front to cherry-pick the shifts.

As it has been thus far in the Match, the first cross came down to the start, and once again Emirates Team New Zealand got the starts right and led both races wire-to-wire. In the first of the day (Race 7) INEOS Britannia had port entry and just got across the Kiwis as they entered from the starboard end and went straight into the chase, jibing to follow. Pulling off an impressively tight figure-of-eight, INEOS reversed roles and played the pusher as New Zealand dragged them into the bottom right corner of the start box. INEOS turned back to the line early, leaving plenty of opportunity for Emirates Team New Zealand to start at the weather end with plenty of space between them. Starboard helmsman Peter Burling knew the right shift was coming and they owned it when it came.

“The pre-start meant getting to the first shift,” Burling said after racing, “and INEOS made it easy for us.”

How easy was it? According to data from the boats, the breeze blowing across the Kiwi bow as they started was about 288 degrees true. Twenty seconds later, the true wind was wound up to 311 degrees and Taihoro was shearing off INEOS to leeward. When the British came off their left-boundary tack the New Zealanders planted a hard cover, bounced their opponents back to the left and a 60-meter lead grew to 240 at their next intersection.

While INEOS sniffed out a good shift at the top of the beat to close the gap, the New Zealanders were easily across into the first gate and connecting shifts and puffs down the run to pad their lead.

“These boats go quick,” said INEOS coach Xabi Fernandez after racing, “so if you go the right side, you get there fast, and if you go to the wrong side you also get there fast, so the shifts were super important today.”

—INEOS Britannia Coach Xabi Fernandez

There was nothing INEOS could do except try splits and get out of phase as the distance grew and were able to keep the race within a few hundred meters, but on the upwind Leg 5, Emirates Team New Zealand locked into a puff had that them charging upwind a good 10 knots faster at times to grow their lead to a punishing 700-plus meters.

“These boats go quick,” said INEOS coach Xabi Fernandez after racing, “so if you go the right side, you get there fast, and if you go to the wrong side you also get there fast, so the shifts were super important today.”

Exiting from the final windward gate, the Kiwis jibed onto a puff that carried them down the middle of the course to nearly double their lead, and two jibes later they were across the line with the British chasing from more than half a mile behind.

To say Emirates Team New Zealand made it look easy would be understatement, but the precision and consistency of their flight throughout the race was apparent. For that, Burling credited his four teammates pounding away on the pedals for 27 minutes, putting plenty of oil in the tank to allow for the constant adjustments to the sails through the wind speed changes.

“It was a shifty, dynamic offshore day and I think one thing that stood out to me is how good our power train is,” Burling said, giving a nod to the power team putting out the wattage required to keep the boat on rails and fast out of every turn. “How we use our power, that’s been improving all the time and made our lives easy today.”

With one win in the bag, the Kiwis went right back to work in the pre-start of the next race, this time entering on port, getting clear across and jibing back to the line with the British sailing past them and setting up well behind. It was a free pass that allowed Team New Zealand to control the charge into the start and control the race from there.

“It was satisfying to have them go past us, and for them to try and push us back to the line,” said Emirates Team New Zealand trimmer Andy Maloney after racing. “We did a good job defending that push from them and leading off in a tight position to leeward.”

That strong position set them up for the next big advance. INEOS’s clearing tack had them 140 meters behind after only 2 minutes of racing and early into the downwind leg, the British battled through rudder control issues that trimmer Leigh McMillan later said were “distracting” but not consequential.

“We managed it as best we could,” he said, “but it didn’t affect the outcome of the race.”

One touchdown had INEOS’s speedo plummet to 27 knots, momentarily, while the Kiwis extended away at 44 knots, doubling their lead to 400 meters in a blink.

The distance between the two boats never dropped below 300 meters, and on the third leg (downwind) Team New Zealand locked into a puff that had them streaming down the middle of the course and boosting the lead to more than 700.

Sailing the course as they wished, the Kiwis put another point on the board, and that was that.

“Our biggest issue was they got the critical first shift right,” McMillan said. “We came out strong in the pre-starts and showed we’d made some big gains there, but once they got control it was incredibly difficult to get past. Frustrating.”

It’s clear what the British challenger must do, should Saturday’s light-wind forecast allow the Match to continue, McMillan said: “We’ve got to win every race and the only way we can do that is to really take it to them. We’re ready for that.”

And so too are the defenders and the swarms of black-shirted fans that are swarming Barcelona’s waterfront. They can smell victory, and it’s only one race away.

The post Emirates Team New Zealand On the Cusp of Three appeared first on Sailing World.

While the America’s Cup has always been about the fastest boat, it is ultimately the people that make this ambitious event what it is—the captains, the sailors, the designers and engineers, the builders and the sailmakers, the storytellers and all those behind the scene. And each year since 1993, the Herreshoff Marine Museum, in Bristol, Rhode Island, has acknowledged the greats of the world’s oldest sporting trophy with its America’s Cup Hall of Fame. This week in Barcelona the selection committee inducted four new members.

At the ceremony, held during the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup Match at the Museu Martim de Barcelona, Herreshoff Marine Museum’s President and Executive Director, Bill Lynn, along with Hall of Fame Selection Committee Chair Steven Tsuchiya, and emcee Gary Jobson, presented the new class: sailors Josh Belsky, of the United States, Juan Vila, of Spain, Kevin Shoebridge, of New Zealand, and the late yachting journalist Bob Fisher, of the United Kingdom.

The Hall of Fame also recognized the contributions of Louis Vuitton and Italian sailor and team principal Vinceno Ricci, of Italy. Both were presented with Sir Richard Francis Sutton medals, created in 2018 to recognize individuals and entities that “exemplify the spirit of the America’s Cup.”

Ricci, the skipper and project manager of the first-ever Italian America’s Cup challenge in 1983, the campaign of Azzura, which finished third in the Louis Vuitton Cup during the famous Cup summer of Australia II’s historic win. Now 90 and unable to attend the ceremony, Ricci is said to have inspired Italians to pursue a Cup victory over a span of 40 years.

Louis Vuitton, title sponsor of the Barcelona edition of the Cup, as well as the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger series has been synonymous with the Cup since 1983, a relationship that started with a $75,000 sponsorship and the now iconic Louis Vuitton Cup Trophy. The luxury goods giant has sponsored every challenger series since then, with the exception of the 36th America’s Cup in Auckland 2021.

Pietro Beccari, Chairman and CEO of Louis Vuitton, shared his gratitude in a pre-recorded video message to induction attendees, saying, “I am very honored, humbled and proud to receive the Sutton Medal in the name of Louis Vuitton and personally. We are proud to have accompanied the history of this legendary trophy, sharing the same values as the America’s Cup: the ambition to surpass oneself and the continuous quest for innovation.”

Cup icon Bruno Troublé (inducted into the AC Hall of Fame in 2007) and instigator of the Louis Vuitton partnership has said, “Louis Vuitton has been the guardian of the temple…and if the America’s Cup has managed to preserve its character intact, drawing people and partners of high quality, while greatly expanding its aura, it is thanks to Louis Vuitton, which has in many ways protected it.”

Belsky, present to acknowledge his induction in Barcelona and surrounded by many of his peers in attendance, spent his formative junior sailing years in US Northeast, where he was first exposed to the Cup in 1974, but it was his post-collegiate sailing exploits on the international big-boat scene with American owner John Thomson’s Infinity programs that eventually propelled him to the Cup in San Diego in 1992, running the pit with Bill Koch’s America3 defense. That campaign was followed by an unsuccessful defense trials run with Dennis Conner’s Stars & Stripes in 1995, the year Team New Zealand’s Black Magic stunned the field and emerged as the force it is today.

Belsky’s legendary exploits in the Whitbread Race with Paul Cayard’s winning EF Language program then parlayed to Cup campaigns with AmericaOne in 2000 and both of Alinghi’s Cup wins in 2003 and 2007, earning him due recognition as one of the greatest pit bosses of all time.

Belsky, who now lives a mountain lifestyle in Colorado, acknowledged the value of relationships and connections that furthered his amazing career. “All of the people in here that I’ve sailed with I’ve taken something from you,” he said, before sharing a story from the 1995 Cup. “During the Challenger Series with Dennis, we had a windy day, the day that the OneAustralia sank. Our keel snapped off, was hanging by a thread, and we got towed in sinking.

“A bunch of us worked through the night to change keels, and our fearless leader, Dennis Connor, stayed behind with us and hung out on Betsy, the tender, and had a few adult beverages during the night. About four in the morning, we heard the scissor lift come up, and we heard somebody on deck, and that was Dennis. And he poked his head down below. He looked at us, covered in carbon dust and blood and sweat getting the keel off. And he said, ‘God, I love you guys working this late, it’s fantastic. We’ll get on the racecourse tomorrow. And just remember one thing, the more hours you work, the less I pay you per hour.’”

Vila, in Barcelona with the Alinghi Red Bull Racing Team for this Cup cycle, is a Barcelona native who is recognized as one of the greatest navigators of modern sailing. His affinity to mathematics and race electronics has allowed him to adapt to the fast-changing tools and software employed at the highest levels of the sport. His Cup career spans from 1992 with the Spanish challenger Espana ’92 to today with Alinghi Red Bull Racing. Vila has competed in five America’s Cup Matches, winning three times—twice with Alinghi and once with Oracle Team USA and his accomplishments span deep into the offshore and grand-prix racing realms, including the Whitbread/Volvo Ocean Race, which he won onboard the Whitbread 60 illbruck.

“In 1992 we were kind of a bit of a new team, young and inexperienced,” Vila shared. “It was our first time and we were a bit scared of the world and what was happening and paid our price for being newbies in the game. Quite a few of the crew were smokers and first thing we know we’re reading in the press that all of our competitors had figured out when we were going to tack or jibe because everyone was throwing their cigarettes away.”

Vila says his “big moment” and step up in his career was with Alinghi in 2003 in Auckland. “I was new to a winning campaign and didn’t know if I’d be up to the level required,” he said, “and they made it easy for me so that in the end it was like being at home. It allowed me to be able to continue and be involved in every edition of the cup afterwards.”

Kevin Shoebridge, a four-time winner of the America’s Cup, took the evening to step away from the management of Emirates Team New Zealand’s defense of the Cup against INEOS Britannia, an as expected, the ceremony crowd was dense with teammates and admirers from an incredible Cup career that has spanned more than 40 years.

Shoebridge stepped off on his long America’s Cup path as a sail trimmer with the Kiwi Magic syndicate in 1987’s edition in Fremantle, Australia, where the New Zealanders won 38 straight races before losing to Dennis Conner’s Stars & Stripes in the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger finals. That career has spanned through every New Zealand campaign ever since, with his role advancing beyond the sail trimming team and into the management of the most successful dynasty in Cup history.

“The Fremantle campaign was amazing,” Shoebridge said of his introduction to the crucible of Cup racing. “It taught us a valuable lesson…we were naïve and young. We won a lot of the pre-races, but we didn’t win the races in the end when we were taught a lesson by Stars & Stripes. But it certainly set us on a course. The America’s Cup is won by people, the team is everything and I’m lucky enough to have worked with the best in the world.”

The legacy of Bob Fisher, one of the greats of yachting journalism and a prolific chronicler of the America’s Cup, culminates in his two-volume work, An Absorbing Interest, published in 2007. The 544-page history became an authoritative work for every Match from 1851 to 2007.  It includes exhaustive extracts from correspondence between many Cup competitors, some made public for the first time thanks to Bob’s 15 years of diligent research in archives and interviews.

Fisher, a long time Sailing World contributor, was honored and two daughters who said, “Dad was dedicated to the Cup and therefore it is befitting that, being fortunate enough to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, he now be amongst those he revered the most.”

The L’Oreal Group, a sponsor with the French challenge Orient Express Racing Team was also acknowledged for its support of the gathering and for its legacy in the Cup with the America3 women’s team in San Diego in 1995. “Mighty Mary” crew members Linda Lindquist-Bishop and Suzie Leach were in attendance to share insights of the campaign and mark the importance of the Puig Women’s America’s Cup, along with the women’s sailing team with Orient Express Racing Team.

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