When I walk out onto the bustling Catamaran Club dock a few hours before the start of the Royal Ocean Racing Club’s Caribbean 600, I’m surrounded by the broad-hipped carbon transoms and graphics of the world’s shiniest race boats. Wide decks swarm with sailors rigging up for a unique 600-mile romp around a dozen island “marks,” so I dutifully admire their prods, wraparound bows, and swept-back spreaders. But my gaze quickly strays to a far different profile: the slim waist, long overhangs, and immaculate varnish of Hound, tugging at its dock lines in the building trade winds, anxious to bound into open water. 

Casual boat-gawkers might assume that this 1970 Aage Nielsen design is just a poster child for a bygone era of yacht design, with race glory a distant memory. But there are 15 crew swarming its teak decks: loading sails, rigging sheets, removing the large boom tent. And the competition recognizes most of them because this is the same core team who won not just the classics ­trophy in 2023, but also IRC One. 

“Hound is a great all-around boat,” Taylor North explains, when I drag him away from prerace chores to ask why a sought-after bowman would choose to sail on a boat old enough to be his mother. Instead of rolling his eyes about the generational gap, he quickly ticks off Hound’s assets. “She looks good at the dock. And she sails really well. Some modern boats, you get into certain conditions where the boat just feels sticky. Last year, we held off boats that were much quicker than us on paper. We’re not going as fast, but we are going pretty well all the time; there aren’t very many times where we’re ­saying, ‘This is not our conditions.’”

He then glances out at the glorious trade winds, which are forecast to die away to nothing and then veer all the way around to the north. “Obviously, if it turns into light-wind running…maybe on Friday, I might have a different opinion.”

Hound (née Pleione) was commissioned by Arthur Santry Jr. and launched by Abeking & Rasmussen in spring 1970. Santry raced it to Bermuda, introduced the family to cruising, and gained a new sail plan and underbody before Frank and Delphine Eberhart took ownership in 1984. The new owners cruised extensively, including a historic 1991 passage to Leningrad with four kids under 9, just as the Soviet Union was collapsing. In 1998 and 2002, Hound posted its first two Bermuda Race class wins.

The boat sailed south almost every ­winter, and once Eberhart discovered the Caribbean 600 in 2012, it became his favorite race—despite finishing last in class that year. When the family-run and -raced boat returned in 2013, the official preview included a quote from its owner: “Hound has been sailing the Caribbean for nearly 30 years,” Frank Eberhart said. “This race is a unique opportunity to enjoy Caribbean sailing with a twist, while experiencing the beauty of the Leeward chain.” 

Two of Hound’s current crew raced the Caribbean 600 with the Eberharts, and though former captain Owen Johnson accurately describes the boat’s results as “horrible,” Hound missed only one of the next four races.

Dan Litchfield, of New York City, bought the boat in 2020, and he and Capt. Tom Stark immediately developed a long list of desired changes. Litchfield had admired the boat for years and knew that Eberhart was not into upgrades. “He would say, ‘It’s fine the way it is; everything’s great,’” Litchfield says. The new goals were to both ease boathandling and sailhandling and improve performance without ruining its classic status.

The most obvious upgrade was to replace the aluminum mast and its extremely top-heavy 1973 extension; the new carbon section reportedly weighs less than the old boom. They also added a short sprit to carry asymmetric kites. Over the next two and a half years, rudder and keel were replaced—21st-century sail plan, meet 21st-century righting moment. 

Hound won its class (again) in the 2022 Bermuda Race, but the first race with its third keel was the 2023 Caribbean 600. After hovering in second or third around most of the course, the crew sailed an excellent final beat to win IRC One.

Since that victory, they have continued to make incremental improvements. The original coffee grinders are finally working smoothly after chasing and strengthening a series of weak links between Barient and Harken technology. There’s a second tack attachment point on the bowsprit, better coordination between various navigational readouts, and the boom vang has been carefully inspected—to avoid a repeat of its breakdown last year, only 20 minutes before the start.

 Though the boat was undoubtedly as eye-catching during the Eberhart era, bowman Sumner Fisher says that Litchfield’s program is far more professional. He first raced on Hound in the 2015 Caribbean 600. “The crew were all friends of the captain. Really good kids but not a put-together group,” Fisher says. “We had no ­reaching sails, just a symmetric kite.” When they broke a halyard in the middle of the night, he doesn’t remember replacing it.

Perhaps the biggest contrast was race dinners on board. “Frank would sit in the corner of the salon, where that new toolbox is now, with the watch before the dinnertime change,” Fisher says. “Then you’d go on deck and the other watch would come down, and he’d still be sitting there, so happy.” 

Brianna Johnson, who met her husband Owen in 2013 when he hired her as Hound’s cook, confirms that dinners on board were always quite elaborate, even when racing. “We always had to set the table: place mats, silverware, the whole bit. I’d place the wine bottles on the middle gimbaled section.” 

This year, Johnson has premade the first race dinner; after that, it’s freeze-dried. Taylor North says he really likes the food, which is supplemented with a wide array of toppings. “And not cooking a meal down below when it’s hot is really, really beneficial.” 

The Caribbean 600 loops around 11 islands between a start and finish off Antigua’s English Harbor. “I’m just super flattered to be sailing on the Hound with Dan again,” navigator Ed Cesare says. This will be his ninth 600, including an overall win in 2013 on the Cookson 50 Privateer. “One really cool thing about the race is even though the wind almost always is from somewhere between 80 and 120 degrees, it’s a little bit different every year.”

The 2024 forecast is more than “a little bitdifferent,” thanks to a strong low that will seriously disrupt the trades. “The start will be more moderate than usual, and then it gets lighter through the race. Which might not set up so bad for us…those lighter breezes will keep the planing boats in the water.”

Cesare says that the most important tactical decisions are how close to round each island (a balance between minimizing distance and avoiding the worst wind shadows) and navigating the wind “potholes” left behind by squalls. This year, those might be lurking in unusual spots.

When I ask North how many sail changes they did last year, he shrugs. “Maybe 50? It’s something that you need to carefully manage. You’ve got a finite number, just from an exhaustion perspective. Sometimes the strategic minds in the back don’t necessarily consider the human capital that’s expended on a sail-change decision.” Which reminds him of another Hound asset: better sleep. “The boat is really quiet down below,” North says. “When you’re off watch, you can’t tell if it’s blowing 5 or 25.” 

Cesare prefers catnapping on race-boat sails to crawling into Hound’s snug navigator’s bunk, but he really appreciates the proper nav table. “I can occasionally go below and work in private, rather than exclusively on the tablet hiking off the back of the boat. So, less comfortable sleep but more comfortable navigating.”

Antigua’s Shirley Heights offers race fans a ­bird’s-eye view of the start, and despite Cesare’s memories of “squally and rough, lots of chaos, no one knows quite where the line is,” the sky and sea are Caribbean postcard-­perfect as Hound crosses the line. Though they are uncharacteristically late, the boat’s distinctive Nielsen bow parts turquoise swells just as cleanly as Nielsen intended, and they power past several stubbier competitors before disappearing around the northeast corner of the island. Soon afterward, the crew gets a heart-stopping taste of what can happen when the fastest boats start last: One of the three MOD70s, trying to thread the needle between Hound and a helicopter full of photographers, comes close to hooking their windward T-foil on Hound’s backstay.

The new goals were to both ease boathandling and sailhandling and improve performance without ruining its classic status.

For almost two days, “we were pretty much on last year’s pace,” Cesare says after the finish. “We sailed a good beat from Saba to St. Barts, had a smooth rounding, and then sailed another good beat up the Anguilla Channel, picking shifts and sticking to the right side of the course.”

But the long reach to Monserrat is a tighter angle than usual, and he calls the disturbed air east of that tall island “the first hiccup.” Three JPK 11.80s take a flyer west, but Cesare says only Cocody, the boat that will eventually take IRC One honors, makes it work. Once Hound is romping again, the beat along the southwest corner of Guadeloupe is “both beautiful and fun, bouncing off the shore there.” 

It’s rounding Les Saintes where they stumble into a more costly windless pothole; shaking his head afterward, Litchfield says, “I’ve learned a lot about squalls.”

Cocody is soon out of reach, but they sail the next two legs in lockstep with the JPK 11.80 Sunrise III, a starkly different design. Spinnaker running to the Barbuda mark in a very patchy southerly, mastman Owen Johnson says: “We’d get a puff and sail away, then they’d get a puff and catch up again. But when the wind shifted suddenly to the northwest and the kite backed into the rig, we got a jib up really fast. An hour later, they were 7 miles behind.” 

Once around that mark, they enjoy a ­rollicking spinnaker reach to Redonda, ­surfing down waves in the puffs and holding high of the rhumb line in the lulls to make sure they fetch the final rocky island. After a jibe and douse, they sail intentionally into its lee to put in two reefs for a two-­headsail reach to the finish. “That rounding was maybe the highlight of our race,” Cesare says. “Redonda is kind of ugly [rock-wise], so it was a high-stress situation. Everyone was clicking and doing their job, and the comms were great.”

With an elapsed time of 3 days and just over 15 hours, they secure 12th overall and the final podium spot in IRC One, behind Cocody and the Marc Lombard 46 Pata Negra. “Dan’s got such a great boat and crew,” Cesare concludes. “It’s a really good program.”

After the race, bowman Taylor North stands by his earlier assessment of Hound as a great all-around boat. “Very predictable, very tolerant,” he says. “She’s definitely not going to snap-broach on you! When the wind shifted northwest on the leg to Barbuda, we got the jib up, and I went out on the sprit to spike the kite away—and right after, there was this sudden quiet.” He smiles. “Pretty cool moment.”

When Hound returns to the Catamaran Club dock in the very wee hours of Friday morning, the almost-full moon is not quite bright enough for photos—but it does illuminate 15 smiles above a gleaming cap rail. The biggest grin of all comes from project manager Jason Black, because their podium finish “proves that last year was not a fluke.” Even in a light-air race, this well-sailed classic can pose a real threat to the far more modern offerings surrounding us—while catching far more admiring glances. Only hours after the finish, Litchfield and his team are already drafting work lists for the 2024 Bermuda Race and 2025 Transatlantic Race. Not just an eye-catching poster child for the “before times” of yacht design, these days, Hound is once again a racing thoroughbred. In a quiet corner of heaven’s yacht-design office, Aage Nielsen is ­definitely smiling.

The post Hound Still Running With the Pack appeared first on Sailing World.

The French are different from us. After years of covering offshore sailing, particularly the shorthanded scene, that’s always been my take. What event could possibly be more French than the Vendée Globe, the quadrennial nonstop solo race around the planet on foiling IMOCA 60 rockets that’s front-page news in France for months on end, mainly because impending catastrophes and daring Southern Ocean rescues are seemingly daily occurrences? From ports along the Brittany coast and elsewhere, this nation produces the best ocean-racing specialists, and in my opinion, the greatest among them is ironman Francis Joyon, who holds or has held almost every major voyaging record, including winning the Jules Verne Trophy in 2017 for circling the globe in just over 40 days.

Surprisingly, given their prowess across multiple racing venues, the French have always mounted horrible America’s Cup campaigns, but even there, they’ve put their personal stamp on it. When ballpoint-pen magnate Baron Bich was consistently getting smoked in his four challenges during the 12-Metre days, the old joke was we could always tell that the French were about to tack when the crew flicked their ­cigarettes over the side.

All that said, other than ­occasional boat reviews with French sailboat manufacturers, I’d never really gone ­sailing with an all-French squad. That changed early this past February, when I score a ride with legendary competitor Marc Guillemot and his team for a day of racing off St. Maarten in the annual Caribbean Multihull Challenge Race and Rally. I’m eager to discover if the French boys are really playing the game differently. 

Guillemot has enjoyed a long and productive career, the ­highlight of which was his third-place win in the 2008 Vendée aboard his IMOCA 60, Safran. Now in this mid-60s, his latest boat is a Christophe Barreau-designed 53-foot MG5 catamaran called Dazelad, roughly translated as “alternative” in English, as a nod to its innovative carbon construction and upcycled components.  

“He’s won a lot of stuff and wanted his own personal boat, his home; it’s not about sponsors,” says French yachting journalist Emmanuel van Deth, who’d hooked me up with Guillemot. “It’s a compromise, so he can cruise with friends or race with friends.”

As a compromised “retirement” vessel that Guillemot plans to charter occasionally to offset expenses, it’s still pretty quick: He nabbed an impressive third place on its maiden voyage in the 2022 Route du Rhum.

Like jockeys and movie stars, it’s always a little jarring to meet French solo sailors in person; Joyon is a certified beast, but most of them are of rather diminutive stature, as is Guillemot. His English is spotty (but way better than my French), but he has an easy, elfin smile, and an extremely laid-back demeanor. I like him immediately. His extremely cool boat, in spirit and execution, is a crazy work of nautical art, the sum of many disparate parts.

Guillemot conducts a quick tour, which is fascinating. Much of the gear is stuff he scavenged from Safran. But that is just the start of it. It is in many ways a history of and tribute to the French singlehanded racing scene, with contributions from Guillemot’s many IMOCA pals. The rudder is from one of Jérémie Beyou’s old boats; Damien Seguin supplied the daggerboards; the running rigging is off Loick Peyron’s Gitana; Jean Le Cam donated an old spar. If Frankenstein’s monster were a boat, it would be Dazelad.

The crew of close friends, including Guillemot’s brother, Regis, who dinghies over from his big cruising cat, is also notable. Longtime pro sailor and sailing writer Nicolas Raynaud is a jolly, Falstaffian character with a ready laugh and a twinkle in his eye who definitely seems like a kindred soul.

His polar opposite is ­tactician Bruno Jourdren, quiet and studious, who’d suffered a serious accident in his youth that had permanently damaged his right arm; he sails with his hand always in his pocket. A three-time Paralympic sailor, he has also cleaned up in dedicated one-design classes such as the Melges 24, where he is a former national champion.

Before the day’s first race, Guillemot and Jourdren, huddled prerace over an iPad with the sailing instructions, are clearly very tight. Van Deth speaks of the latter in almost reverential terms: “They call Michel Desjoyeaux ‘the ­professor’ because of his navigational approach, but when it comes to tactics, Bruno is also considered an academic. If he says, ‘Go left,’ you go left. You do not question him.”

The most I can get out of Jourdren is a raised eyebrow, which is pretty much in keeping with all the previous professors in my life.

It is a strange day, weather-­wise, for the Caribbean; the generally pumping, reliable easterly trade winds are on hiatus, replaced by an unusual northwest breeze of 10 knots. With a downwind start, there is a short debate about the merits of an asymmetric kite versus a code zero headsail, with the latter getting the call. I am relegated to the foredeck with Regis and Van Deth to furl and then unfurl the code zero through tacks and jibes. Foolishly, I’ve brought only flip-flops, thinking I’d sail barefoot, as I often do in the islands. But the trampolines on Dazelad are like razor wire, and footwear is a must. Rookie mistake.

Thanks to the headsail discussion, we are slightly late for the start, but once the code zero is sheeted home and Dazelad begins manufacturing its own apparent wind, we take off, easily notching 12-plus knots, and Desjoyeaux carves through the pack and picks off the competition (though there was no catching the HH66 and Gunboat 66 at the front of the fleet). The French are cooking.

There is a refreshing squall on the last tack to the finish line in a race with a little bit of everything, including a couple of lulls in the breeze. Guillemot seems pleased and philosophical with the midfleet result. “Under 12 knots [of wind], not so good,” he says. “Twelve or more, that’s when we go.”

The sun pops out and the breeze pipes up for Race 2, and Dazelad is in jailbreak mode off the starting line, ripping around the racecourse with average speeds in the midteens. The cat spins through tacks and jibes like a Hobie, and noticeably accelerates in every puff. The results aren’t any different from the first race, but the ­sailing itself is fantastic.

And then comes lunch. In this aspect of actual French cooking, there is no question that they will raise the bar. Raynaud has effortlessly whipped together a fresh pasta dish brimming with cucumbers, melons, avocado and cheese that is nothing less than magnificent. An obligatory break for a cigarette caps off the meal. Très bien, mon ami.

It is apparently an inspiring repast as Guillemot crushes the start for the third and final contest of the day. At this stage, spinning around the same triangle course off the southern coast of St. Maarten, the entire exercise is beginning to feel a little like Groundhog Day. By this time, however, we’ve become a pretty well-honed team, and our maneuvers are fairly flawless, if I do say so myself. For this race, the only cats ahead of us at the end are the pair of 66-footers. In surfing, it’s often been said that the best surfer is the one who’s having the most fun. If that’s also the case in sailboat racing, Dazelad is the day’s clear-cut winner. Raynaud, who is rapidly becoming my idol, passes out cold beers all around.

And then, at the literal end of the day, Guillemot and his mates hastily put away the boat. They have another important appointment. The French rugby team is about to play an international match with Ireland, and they are eager to get to a bar in Marigot on the island’s French side to watch the action. Yes, they are on their merry way to guzzle brews and basically watch football. Hmm. That’s when it hits me: Maybe these French dudes aren’t so ­different from us after all.

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With its long history producing good-looking fast cruisers, in recent years, Nautor Swan has consolidated its performance yachts into its ClubSwan range, spanning the giant 125-foot Skorpios and the 80-footer My Song to their fleets of ClubSwan 36s and 50s. All designs by Juan Kouyoumdjian, the latter saw 11 and 15 compete in their respective five-event annual championships (Nations Cup) in 2023 and are set to be joined by the ClubSwan 43 this year. But Nautor Swan has another new development: While its smallest boats have been the ClubSwan 36 (plus the original Swan 36 back in 1967), its latest launch is its smallest ever, the ClubSwan 28.

This new model is not surprising given that Swan is sailing’s most prolific premium brand, with more large performance sailing yachts in existence than any other manufacturer. Its range firmly extends into the superyacht stratosphere, so why not lure new owners into the fold, earlier, with a modest offering? Federico Michetti, head of sports activities and product manager at Nautor Swan, explains, “The concept of the 28 is to have an entry-level Swan that allows owners to enjoy the journey with Nautor and our events.” He expects that the 28 will entice younger sailors, even those new to sailing, into the ClubSwan realm.

Among race boats today, 28 to 30 feet is the cusp between sportboat and yacht, and the ClubSwan 28 is more the former, given its light weight (displacing sub-1,200 kg versus 1,600 kg and 1,800 for the more yachtlike Farr 280 and Cape 31, respectively); outboard engine rather than inboard; and low freeboard and minimal interior, accessed via the foredeck hatch. The ClubSwan 28 is neither an excessively high-end carbon race boat nor a high-­volume J/70, but rather somewhere between. “Our aim for it is to race well in 6 knots or 20. It is a powerful boat but not extreme,” Michetti says. 

Kouyoumdjian adds: “We incorporated everything that modern boats have to perform very well but didn’t go extreme on any of them.”

Fundamental to the boat’s ethos is simplicity, and for it to be fun to sail, but as Michetti puts it, “at the same time being safe, a boat that can fit the needs of everyone from ­beginner to expert.”

Aside from its performance, the best demonstration of this is that while most sportboat crews must hike and hike hard (it being so vital to stability on boats of this size), the 28 is a “legs-in” boat.

“We would like to avoid a ­hiking contest. It is much more social too; sailors can enjoy what is happening around them,” Michetti says. Everything is optimized for this—the sheerline and cockpit arrangement to make maximum use of the weight of the inward-facing crew, while keel draft and ballast make up righting moment lost due to no hiking and crew not moving fore and aft.

Compared with the ClubSwan 36’s advanced hull shape and fixed-keel/C-foil combination, the 28 is far more conservative. The hull has a low wetted surface area and rocker aft to minimize bow burying. Its modest 8-foot beam means it can be towed legally throughout Europe without having to be inclined. It also allows the boat and trailer combined to fit into a 40HQ container for shipping farther afield.

The hull shape is quite ­complex, with flared topsides at the stern, above a substantial chine. Going forward, the topsides turn vertical and then evolve into a deck chamfer ­forward of the mast. The bow has a slight reverse sheer and a retractable sprit.

The rig breaks new ground, but again, simplicity is the focus. Developed between Kouyoumdjian, Southern Spars’ Steve Wilson and mast-builder Axxon Composites, it is skifflike, with no backstay or runners, and with swept-back spreaders and a GNAV (inverted vang) to keep the cockpit clear. “Imagine a 49er rig that is set up by the headstay,” Kouyoumdjian says. “The prebend and the tension you have in that kind of rig usually comes from presetting the headstay and then you deal with it with the vang and cunningham. But we wanted something variable that could simulate what you could otherwise do with the runners.”

The solution is to have a ­permanently attached mast ­ram that can be operated while ­racing via a pump in the pit area. “It brings a lot of things together—not only the tension on the headstay, but also the tension on the rig,” Kouyoumdjian adds. “And when you tension the rig, you bend the mast.”

Therefore, powering up the rig comes with just two or three pumps and an inch of movement of the ram. “Everything on the rig is simple and has been done before many times successfully,” Kouyoumdjian says. “We added the mast up-and-down function. I imagine crews using it on medium-light days: When you get into a luff and you’d ease the runner, instead you’d drop the mast, or anticipating a puff, you’d pump it up. As soon as the wind gets to 10 to 12 knots, then you’d be maxed up, like you would be at ­maximum runner on a typical boat.”

The ClubSwan 28 will be a strict one-design class. Like the ClubSwan 36, it is being built in Cartagena, Spain, by Sinergia Racing Group. Tooling for the 28 is CNC milled to fine tolerances, and like most other boats in this size, it is a glass boat, built with vinylester resin, although naturally its mast, bowsprit and rudder are full carbon. The keel fin is stainless steel.

What appears to be a 1990s retro feature is the 28’s L-configuration keel, as featured on many vintage 1990 one-­designs and early VO60s. Aside from positioning bulb weight aft, this lengthens the keel’s leading edge by 15 to 20 percent, increasing its efficiency and improving, for example, lift to windward. Kouyoumdjian is enthusiastic about this and says that he would readily recommend L-keels on other race boats, but warns that the shape of the bulb’s front must be correct. To enable easy trailering, the keel can be raised, and the rudder assembly lifts out within its own box. A full derig, from water to motorway, is expected to take around three hours.

Production for the ClubSwan 28 will be modest, initially at least, with the yard in Cartagena expected to roll out two per month, with the ready-to-sail price forecast to be around 200,000 euros. The aim is to have international fleets, with boats built by local yards. After Europe, Michetti says, its focus will be the United States, although as yet there is no time frame for this. At the time of this writing, six 28s had been sold, with the first boat due for launch in late May, with all six expected to compete at the Rolex Swan Cup in Porto Cervo in September.

The advantage of the 28 is that the owner is buying into the ClubSwan world, with its established circuit, Michetti says. “If you are building a new class, people need to trust you. You need to create momentum, you need to have sponsors and find locations and organize regattas,” which the ClubSwan management already has, with its comprehensive circuit, mixing established regattas and ClubSwan’s own in the Med, UK, Baltic and US. Aside from enticing new sailors and teams into the ClubSwan family, Michetti also imagines that some teams with larger race boats might acquire a 28 for crew training.

There is currently no class crew-weight limit, which risks enticing larger muscle-bound types on board, but Michetti explains: “We want to avoid this crazy ‘saunas before the regatta’ thing” (in other classes, crews typically duck just below maximum weight at weigh-in). ClubSwan 28 crews will ­comprise four or five with a World Sailing Group 1 (amateur) owner-­driver and probably one mandatory female or youth crewmember.

For the 28 this year, there are a number of events, including a kick-off event from Nautor Swan’s base in Scarlino, Italy, in July, plus September’s Rolex Swan Cup and the Nations League 2024-ClubSwan 28 Invitational Sardinia Challenge, taking place in Villasimius, Sardinia, in early November. Given its trailerability, the ­likelihood is that the 28 will also race inland, for example, on Italy’s famous Lake Garda. Naturally, as numbers grow, there will also be the opportunity for the ClubSwan 28 to get its own start in the world’s top ­multiclass regattas.

The post Sporty and Simple is the ClubSwan 28 appeared first on Sailing World.

I’d love to look around and enjoy the scenery, but I can’t take my eyes off the leeward bow that’s slicing through the Caribbean at 20 knots. I’d been advised earlier: The fine line between full-tilt and pitchpole is somewhere right around the chine on the wave-piercing bow. The warning also came with a caveat: “The faster we go, the safer we go.”

That’s the wisdom of Pierre Altiere, a master of the Diam 24 trimaran, with whom I’ve scored a ride for the St. Maarten Heineken Regatta. The point of the exercise is to experience firsthand the hottest one-design fleet in the Caribbean. Altiere’s boat is named Cry Baby, which I may eventually come to understand, but right here, right now, all I can think about is the gust breathing down my neck.

I ease the gennaker sheet in my hand and watch the bow submerge. Oh, sh-t, I think. Here we go. I’ve seen pictures of Diams tumbleweeding, but the bow porpoises. A ball of seawater smacks the forward beam and explodes into a cloud of sunlight sparkles and foam.

With a jab of the tiller bar, Altiere redirects the boat and reloads the sails. The daggerboard hums a few octaves higher as we skim across the shallow blue flats of Phillipsburg Bay. It’s thrilling and a little terrifying, and thankfully, we’re just getting started.

It’s an early March morning on St. Maarten’s Kim Sha Beach, on the bustling Dutch coast where six identical 24-foot trimarans sit under palm trees, surrounded by umbrellas, chaise lounges and rental kayaks. Four other Diams swing on their anchors a doggie-paddle’s distance from the beach. This is the homegrown Diam 24 One Design fleet, which in a few short years has multiplied from three to 10. Soon enough, Altiere promises, if his Diam dream scheme pans out, we will be looking at as many as 20.

Altiere, I’m told, is the spark, the one who started it all, and judging by the parade of sailors seeking him out for advice, parts, assistance and you name it, it’s obvious that not much happens without Altiere. As we rig our own boat, interrupted by phone calls and favors, he gives me a quick lowdown on the Diam, which was created by Vianney Ancelin, a French multihull sailor and boatbuilder. Ancelin’s vision was a recreational multihull that average sailors could handle—sporty but not lethal, high-tech but not overpriced. That was the idea before the Tour de France a Voile—a multistage regatta—adopted the Diam as its official one-design. Pro race teams with million-dollar budgets promptly priced amateurs out the class, and then the pandemic put a fork in the Tour. The builder, ADH Inotec, stopped production at just north of 100 boats. With the Tour on hold, however, there was suddenly a pile of secondhand race-ready boats, many with containers full of unused spares, most fetching $20,000 to $30,000.

Enter Altiere, the tall, jovial and hard-charging Frenchman who taught at a sailing school as a young man and then opened his own in Tahiti before landing in St. Maarten, where he operates a thriving private catamaran charter business. As a top-level F18 catamaran sailor not far back in the day, a friend once invited him to race a Diam in France. He knew little to nothing about the boat at the time. “As an F18 sailor, I knew what I was doing,” he says. “I hadn’t raced [in Brittany] in 20 years, but we somehow made it onto the podium, everyone applauded us, and I enjoyed it so much that the next day we started talking about becoming an agent for North America.”

He did, but the big continent was impossible to crack, so he pivoted to a better plan: bring potential buyers to the boat and give them a taste. Step 1: Establish a Diam base at home in St. Maarten and show off the boats. Step 2: Enter them into the region’s big-draw regattas: the Heineken and Les Voiles de St. Barth.

“There’s nothing better than an easy flight to St. Maarten, throwing your bag in the hotel, and jumping onto a Diam that same day,” Altiere says. “Just like me, I was offered a chance, I had a great experience, and right after that, I bought a boat. That’s the easy-regatta concept here: Fly in, race, celebrate, fly out.”

And that’s how “sort-of” New Yorker Adam Holmes and his buddies Ben Ferraro and Bob Young were lured to Kim Sha in late March for the Heineken Regatta. Holmes, an advertising executive and Long Island-based racing sailor, had heard about the Diam fleet through a friend in St. Maarten, who connected him with Altiere, who had one charter boat available for the Heineken Regatta.

How much for a good time?

Five-grand—tops—according to Holmes’ mental math, and that was with a top-shelf condo, on the water, for a week. Altiere’s charter fee, which included four days of racing and two days of practice, was only $3,700—worth every penny on the speed-to-dollar scale. For months, the three of them exchanged Diam sailing videos that they found online. “That was like the start of the adrenaline rush,” Young says, and when they jumped on board for their first figure-it-out-yourself session in St. Maarten, the real thing was a real rush.

“We didn’t get a very detailed briefing before our first sail,” Holmes says. “At one point on the first practice day, we were sending it at like 19 knots, and the hull was so far underwater. Bob had the kite strapped in hard and we were just flying…like really, really on the edge. The Diam guys following us in the RIB and yelling at us in French were freaking out because we hadn’t yet signed any paperwork.”

“At the time,” Ferraro adds with a laugh, “we had no idea we were on the edge—we didn’t know any better.”

But with a few more hours of practice and less than 30 minutes of one-on-one with Altiere, they were ready enough to throw themselves straight into the races. Ferraro was nominated to drive, Holmes got the back-breaking main trimmer’s spot, and Young took on the busy end at the front of the cockpit. 

On the first morning, the breeze is up to 15 knots, and even though the start is in 90 minutes, the vibe on Kim Sha is bizarrely relaxed. Beach attendants rake the sand for the inbound tourists while sailors wander about in farmer-john wetsuits, surf trunks and rash guards, most of them conversing in fast-paced French and tinkering with their boats.

Among them is Erick Clement, one of the originals. He is a master of the Caribbean multihull racing scene and enjoying his retirement from F18 catamaran racing. Daily yoga, and healthy eating keep him young and in Diam-worthy shape.

“The speed is good and the boat is not complicated, but you have to get a feeling for it,” he tells me in his best broken English. “When everything is right, the steering is balanced perfectly, and you listen for the noise of the daggerboard—that helps you know when it is right.”

As a simple three-crew boat, the roles are straightforward. Whoever has the pleasure of helm also gets the traveler—the capsize preventer. The middle crew manhandles the insanely loaded mainsheet, trims the gennaker, and assists with dousing it. The forward crew is responsible for the self-tacking jib sheet, sail controls (outhaul, cunningham, mast rotator), gennaker hoisting and the daggerboard. Between calling tactics and jibing angles, housekeeping the trampoline, and watching for traffic, it’s an active boat for all involved, especially when big-breeze buoy racing in St. Maarten.

“All crew are super-important,” Clement adds. “If one is not playing the game, you can’t do anything. You have to have a good balance with each other.”

That will be a problem for us on Altiere’s Cry Baby because we are rotating new teammates every day. With us for the first day is a strapping young Frenchman named Corentin, who goes by Coco. He’s one of Altiere’s charter boat captains and has some Diam racing experience, which is good because we’re straight into the first start without a lick of practice. It’s a chaotic five minutes of weaving through rush-hour traffic: big custom raceboats, cruisers, bareboats and two 100-footers, all pinging the starting line.

The Diam will go from zero to 15 rapidly, but it’s not the kind of boat you can luff-and-hover on the start. Full speed is Altiere’s preferred approach, and with 45 seconds remaining in the opening sequence, he is stalking next to the committee boat, mentally calculating the layline and time to kill. But the other boats are stacking up at the starboard end, making what looks to be an impossible entry. But, hey, Altiere is the man and the defending champ. This is his domain. Who am I to doubt?

At 30 seconds, he booms, “OK. We go!”

And go we do, bearing away to full hum, straight toward the big catamaran committee boat. Just when it looks like he is going to pull off a high-speed barging start, Holmes and his crew tack in front of us and stuff the boat into irons—three sun-creamed deer in our headlights.

It’s either them or the committee boat, but Altiere pulls the hand break, and we coast to a near stop. The bow of our center hull disappears beneath the catamaran’s bridge deck, and the starboard bow just clears the cat’s starboard transom. I run forward and push off, and Altiere apologizes while cursing the New Yorkers for their erratic driving.

“I mean…it was our first race, and we were still trying to figure out how to tack the damn thing,” Young says. “That was a little nutty.”

“OK, let’s go,” Altiere shouts once again. More trim!” And with that, we’re chasing down the fleet. I pull the mainsheet as hard as I humanly can. The sail is board-flat and the telltales are streaming.

“More trim!” he shouts again. “We do it together.”

He reaches forward with his big right arm, grabs hold of the sheet with one hand, and together we grunt another 2 feet. The weather hull rises higher, and then the center hull breaks the surface. I’m staring at the line that Altiere had drawn on the bow with a Sharpie. That’s my fine-line guide for the week.

“More speed,” he says. “We will get them.”

I pull but get only another inch. He reaches in and gets another 6, finds his gear, and lets it rip.

The collective opinion on Kim Sha is that Altiere is the best sailor in the fleet, and I can see why. He effortlessly threads the trimaran around oncoming traffic, across big waves, and through giant puffs that pin other boats on their ear. He will dive to leeward of another boat and sail right through its lee. Downwind, he sits inside the center hull, hunched, with his hand behind him on the tiller bar, laser-focused. He senses every subtlety of the boat and knows what it will do before it does it. And more than once, when we sail into a lull and our speed drops, he puts his hand up in the air and says, “Bwaah…come on, wind, what is wrong with you?”

He’s seriously annoyed with the breeze for denying him his speed.

The first race is a windward/leeward blur, and we somehow manage a midfleet finish. Same for the others that follow, but our mishaps reflect our thrown-togetherness. We’re fast in a straight line thanks to Altiere’s skills, but every slip-up is a dozen boatlengths lost—and that’s no lie.

Back on Kim Sha, there’s a beach bar 10 feet from the boats. It’s got reggae, cold beer and cheeseburgers in paradise. The fellas from New York are happy to be back on the beach with their recovery juices in hand.

“That was kind of devastating,” Ferraro says. “We were miles behind on all the races, like it was not even close. We weren’t going to drink, but then all of sudden, we’re standing there with a drink in our hand and were like, ‘What just happened?’”

Young isn’t bothered at all about the results. He’s whipped, but it’s worth it: “All I remember was thinking, I’ve never gone that fast on a sailboat. I think our top speed was 20.7. The sound of the boat and that hum going at that speed was just like, holy sh-t. Let’s just hold on.”

With the wind forecast to peak into the mid-20s, the St. Maarten Heineken Regatta’s legendary around-the-island race is next on the to-do list. Big island, big breeze and it’ll be big-time fun, Altiere promises me when we meet at the beach and introduces me to Camille, another of his charter boat captains. She’s petite, and Altiere confesses he had miscalculated the wind forecast when lining up crew for the regatta.

“We will struggle a bit upwind because weight is very important,” he says, slapping a big hand on my shoulder and cracking a big smile. “But we will be very, very fast on the reaches.”

And he isn’t kidding.

To start our circumnavigation, the race committee dispatches us on a short upwind leg. Once we turn downwind and deploy the gennaker, we’ve got many miles of open-ocean high-speed tropical send. In these conditions, Altiere is in his element and sails right up to and past boats that got ahead of us on the upwind leg. Our top speed, according to my watch, is 22.9.

But every downhill has uphill, and way too soon we’re furling the gennaker, lashing it to the trampoline, rounding an orange tetrahedron, and pointing three bows into steep, wind-whipped waves.

“More trim!” is all I hear for the next hour, or “More speed!”

Each time, I pull with everything I’ve got, the rope shredding the palms of my cheap gloves. With only the leeward bow in the water, Cry Baby kisses wavetops, making this upwind slugfest that much more enjoyable as we short-tack the island’s coastline. After one final tack to port at the top of the island, Altiere gives us the command we’ve been waiting for: “Go gennaker, now!”

The moment that sucker fills, the daggerboard is singing, water is exploding through holes in the trampoline mesh, and we’re cruising at 20 knots. Altiere carves up and down following seas and reels in the boat to leeward of us as if it’s dragging a drogue. The three of us are pinned to the aft beam, weight back as far as it can possibly go. There will be no pitchpoling today. Lush green island to starboard, sparkling blue sea all the way to the finish. It’s heart-racing tropical sailing the likes of which I’ve never experienced.

Later, as I shuffle to a hotel shower, I get a pop-up alert on my Garmin watch that I’ve never seen before: “Recovery Time Delayed. A high level of activity today slowed your recovery.”

As if I need reminding.

The New Yorkers had a heck of time getting around, unaware of water pouring into an unsealed cockpit hatch, enough to have their Torquedo floating inside the hull. “We were hanging with everyone until we got to the top of the island,” Ferraro says. “But once we got around the top of the island, everyone just peeled away from us. We had no idea why.”

Hundreds of pounds of water sloshing around the center hull will do that to you.

Regatta organizers serve up a feast for the next day, with a full menu that includes a 20-mile distance race to Marigot Bay on the French side of the island, a windward-leeward race in the bay, and a return distance race. Our new crew for the day is 13-year-old local Optimist champ Sarah Micheaux, tiny and timid, but seemingly game for her first Diam outing. She speaks only French, so Altiere explains the ropes.

Before we even strike the line on a high-speed gennaker reaching start, Micheaux is shivering, puking, and white-knuckling Altiere’s leg. While redlining at 20 knots, he pats her on the back like a tender father, assuring her that all is well.

We round the reach mark with Micheaux out of commission, so he hands the tiller to me so he can go forward and rotate the mast by hand. It’s my first go at driving, and my tendency is to drive it like a monohull—oversteering through waves and feathering through the big gusts. Altiere corrects me and keeps goading me: “More speed. Even more speed. Good.”

All I have to do is bear away a few degrees, get the center hull unstuck, and the boat levitates with only the leeward bow punching through the waves.

“See?” he says. “Speed. Always more speed.”

After the ensuing and harried one-lap windward-leeward race in the bay, we’re lining up for the 12-mile return sprint, which is another shot-out-of-a-cannon gennaker start. Thankfully, this race has zero upwind sailing. This one’s a reach-fest, and this is why we reach through life.

“The sail back from Marigot was just epic,” Holmes says. “Just screaming. Unbelievably fun. We were finally starting to get a handle on the boat.”

On the fourth and final day, we’re back to buoy racing, and while there’s more tears than cheers on Cry Baby, the sort-of New Yorkers are feeling their mojo.

“We were in the mix,” Holmes says. “We had good starts, and we were with the group upwind. There are some cool photos of us kind of like leading the bulk of the fleet around the course—at least that’s what it looks like.”

Ferraro agrees that they were sharp upwind, “but downwind, we just couldn’t find the low and fast mode. We couldn’t figure that out.”

That’ll be next year’s challenge.

 “I’m looking into buying one,” Holmes says, weeks later, back in the office and scheming with Young to go in on it with him. “It’s easy to get to St. Maarten, and from what I’ve seen, they have these cool regattas and beach parties, the sailing is amazing, and it all looks like so much fun. I think about that boat every day, so I definitely have to get back on it.”

Ferraro is hooked as well. “I can honestly say that after all the stuff that went on during the week, good and bad and stuff like that, even with all the chaos and stuff. That was still the most fun sailing I’ve had in a really long time.”

When, and if, they do get their hands on a Diam, there’s only one place they plan on putting it. “If you’re going to do it right, you gotta keep it in St. Maarten,” Young says.

And that’s how Altiere and his St. Maarten crew will get to 20 boats soon enough. If space on Kim Sha becomes an issue, no problem, he says. There are plenty of beaches on St. Maarten to spread the fun around.

“We’ll figure it out,” Altiere says. “I know we can make this work. The dream is real, and there is room for this kind of full-service experience. It’s a gateway to a sailing vacation.”

Sold. More speed coming my way.

The post The Caribbean’s Hot One-Design Fleet appeared first on Sailing World.

Within a day of setting out on the Global Solo Challenge, Cole Brauer wakes up from a nap with an urge to puke. She’s never been seasick in her life, so she assumes food poisoning. Whatever the cause, there’s no stopping it, and as vomit turns to bile, she can’t stop crying. The rigging of her Class 40, First Light, shrieks as she lies fetal on the cockpit floor, the boat pitching in 10-foot seas and 50-knot gusts. She’s not far from shore, but she’s never felt so alone. 

Then, like a guardian angel, a voice comes over her phone speaker. “Get up, Cole,” says her onshore weather router, Chelsea Freas. “You have to tack the boat.”

“There’s no way on God’s green earth I can tack this boat right now,” Brauer gurgles, lying face down in her last meal. 

“I don’t care what you have to do,” Freas says. “Get your shit together and tack the boat. You are pointed toward Greenland right now.” 

But Brauer doesn’t care which way the boat is headed. It might as well be pointing everywhere and nowhere at once. The seas surge, her body floats in nothingness. A gray wind. A gray ocean. One wave comes, then another. 

“Get up, Cole!” Freas repeats. “You didn’t come all this way to quit now.”

Brauer takes the comment as a challenge, and like so many times before, she answers it. She sets down her phone, gulps, and gets to work transferring the sail stack from one side of the boat to the other. When all the sails have been shifted, she readies herself at the back of the boat, one hand on the tiller, the other on the winch, ready to break the jib. She times the turn on a wave, and once the sails refill, she collapses again.

“Cole?” Freas asks. “Are you still there?”

“I’m here,” Brauer responds. “Where else would I be?” 

four months earlier, in June 2023, Brauer is on a call with her sponsor, F.K. Day, to negotiate the next phase of her racing partnership. She has just won the Bermuda One-Two, and when she floats the idea of entering the Global Solo Challenge, she is using it primarily as a bargaining chip. She figures there’s no way Day will pony up $1 million for an audacious around-the-world campaign, so she hopes he will settle for her second choice: the Transat Jacques Vabre, a doublehanded trans-Atlantic race.

But Day surprises her with a simple question: “Which one do you think you can win?”

With their vintage 2008 Class 40, racing against the new-generation boats of the TJV and expecting a win would be a fool’s errand. The Global Sailing Challenge fleet, however, is beatable. “Let’s go big or go home,” Day says. “If you want to race around the world, this is your chance right now.”

On the Fourth of July, Brauer has less than 90 days to outfit her boat in Newport, Rhode Island, and deliver it to the start port in A Coruña, Spain. She has never led a project of this scale before, and what was a $300,000 program is now a million-dollar effort with a full support team in tow.

“We realized very quickly it was going to be more,” Brauer says. “From flights to lodging to food and people’s salaries, plus the boatwork, to run a fully professional program was going to cost a lot of money to do the right way.”

She assembles her squad in a few different phases, starting with her media team: photographer, videographer, and a social media and marketing manager. She then hires a project manager and buys 10 brand-new sails. She retains a medical team to stand by 24 hours a day during the race, and after replacing all the batteries and electronics and loading the boat with spares, the only thing left to do is make the start. 

The Global Solo Challenge features a pursuit-start format, and by the time her starting window opens on October 28, a few of her competitors are already well down the Atlantic. The day she is scheduled to set out, a low-pressure system with gale-force winds keeps her in port, but after a day of waiting, she crosses the starting line at 5:38 a.m. local time through a shroud of morning darkness, thrashing upwind in the remnant gale. 

“I had a good idea of what I was getting myself into,” she says. “I felt strong and quite confident and not nervous whatsoever about leaving.”

Elation turns to nausea, and then she’s on the cabin sole. “Thank God my medical team was there,” she says. “They were shoving me with drugs, trying to get me to stop throwing up. They were talking me through it, reassuring me that everything was going to be OK.”

Brauer eventually ­administers herself an IV, sharing the experience with her Instagram followers in what will be one of many brutally honest and emotional “shares” with several hundred thousand people she does not know. Despite well wishes inundating her social media feeds, tears flow daily. Not all day long, but every morning, she thinks about her friends in Newport or her parents in Maine, and sure enough, the tears come again.

“I had such a good community, and then, with no weaning-off period, I was just shoved out into the middle of the ocean all by myself,” she says. “That was probably the hardest thing I’ll ever do. I was having a really rough time.”

Over the next month, Brauer is jockeying for position on the way south, past the Cape Verde Islands, through the Doldrums, and straight into the Southern Ocean for her baptism of fire. “The waves in the Southern Ocean have a different level of violence not trainable anywhere else in the world,” Brauer says.

One broaching wave in particular gives her a true taste of more to come. She’s thrown clear across the cabin and lands on her right rib cage. Video of the incident, shared around the world thanks to her Starlink terminal, goes viral, but harder moments are ahead. The boat’s autopilot ram blows a gasket during the broach, so she heaves-to and crawls into the cramped rudder compartment to fix it. With her ribs throbbing, she replaces the primary autopilot ram with her secondary unit, but a few days later, she discovers that a piece which attaches to the quadrant has unthreaded itself, so she’s spelunking for another fix. “Everything that could go wrong was starting to go wrong,” Brauer says. 

At this point, she’s in a part of the Southern Ocean they call “The Train,” where ­low-pressure systems come one after another, with dramatic changes. “The northwesterly [wind] is a lot calmer,” she says. “A lot less shifty, a lot less cold. And then it switches to the southwesterly, which comes from Antarctica, which is the scary breeze. The way the wind comes down from the upper atmosphere makes it super-violent and unstable.”

Here in The Train, she soon discovers water pouring through the rudder bearings and onto the electronic rudder unit, which eventually dies. “The last 24 hours, I’ve been so angry,” she shares on a video dispatch. “And not angry at one thing in particular. Just angry. Angry that things keep going wrong. Angry that the rudder reference thing has happened. Angry that my ribs hurt so bad.”

She has to wait three days for the wind to abate so that she can calibrate the new rudder reference, which is something people typically do at the dock. She has Freas route her to a calm spot, allowing her to stop the boat completely, and even then, she isn’t happy with the job, given how bad the sea state is.

“I was nervous because there was still so much water coming through the rudder bearing, so I made a little raincoat for the rudder reference, which was just a Ziploc bag and some tape. I poured baby powder on top of the unit so that I could look into the bag and see if the powder was still dry, then I knew I didn’t have to replace the plastic bag.” 

Through weeks of hard work and grit, her rib injury subsides and rudder issues wane. When she rounds Cape Horn on January 26, 2024, she is the first American woman to sail past the three great capes. She announces her procession to her Instagram following, which will grow from 2,300 followers to nearly half a million by the end of the race. Her unique ability to make hardcore ocean racing look fun and sometimes silly is resonating with an audience who likely doesn’t know bow from stern. With quirky videos of her vibing on the boat, she manages to captivate followers well beyond the sailing bubble.

“We didn’t do it for the numbers,” Brauer says. “We didn’t go out and buy our followers. We just wanted everything to be organic, and I think we got a big following because we weren’t too pushy about anything. Every day, we made between 2,000 and 7,000 followers steadily, until I got to the finish.” 

On March 7, as first light pokes through the clouds off the coast of Spain, Brauer stands on the back of her boat with a pair of marine flares, per tradition, and crosses the finish line, second overall to Frenchman Philippe Delamare by 11 days. She’s celebrated as the first American woman to race nonstop singlehanded around the world, and the reception in A Coruña is a flurry of hugs, kisses and champagne. With superhuman adrenaline, she powers through a daunting schedule of network-news interviews—an overnight media darling featured by every major news outlet in the US. Her and her media manager’s phones are ringing off the hook: endorsements, book deals, documentaries, and ­speaking arrangements all in demand. Reporters ask her ad nauseam what it means to have finally achieved her goal. She talks about how great everything was, but in truth, all the attention just makes her want to get back on the ocean and do it all over again.

The post Cole Brauer’s Voyage of Influence appeared first on Sailing World.

One of the coolest aspects of our data-rich world is the ability to send information over long distances. PredictWind, the New Zealand-based wind forecasting company, has long traded in their ability to deliver high-quality marine weather-forecasting tools and a curated selection of weather models. Now they’re pushing data farther offshore. 

PredictWind’s DataHub ($300, plus $50 for an NMEA cable) is a GPS tracking system that allows friends and family to track your position, globally, via the vessel’s agnostic internet connection (e.g., Starlink, 3/4/5G/LTE or Iridium), but this only nicks the gelcoat of the DataHub’s capabilities.

The Automatic Identification System allows vessels to exchange navigation data—via VHF-FM frequencies—to avoid collisions. While AIS data is near real-time and extremely accurate, its reach is limited to line-of-sight ranges. Enter internet AIS data, aka over-the-horizon AIS.

For years, port authorities, government agencies, and private companies have built shore-based AIS receivers that collect AIS-VHF data from passing maritime traffic via tall antennas (read: far greater range than ship-to-ship AIS communications). This data is aggregated and sent to internet servers, where third parties can leverage it. Additionally, low-earth orbit satellites can receive some AIS transmissions, which they aggregate, process, and transmit to a ground station, which in turn pushes it to internet servers.

PredictWind acquires this data from third-party vendors and places it on servers where DataHubs can access it. Once downloaded, DataHubs convert internet AIS data into NMEA sentences, which allows a race boat’s networked chart plotter to juxtapose internet AIS-derived targets with AIS-VHF targets. DataHubs can also mimic terrestrial AIS stations, collecting your vessel’s networked AIS-VHF data and sharing it with PredictWind’s servers. 

Internet AIS data, however, is older and less accurate than AIS-VHF data. For example, if there’s a delay of 15 to 30 minutes, a ship sailing at 18 knots will cover 4.5 to 9 nautical miles. Also, commercial-level Class A AIS transceivers broadcast at 12.5 watts every 2 to 10 seconds while underway; for comparison, Class B-CS broadcasts at 2 watts every 30 seconds, while Class B-SO broadcasts at 5 watts every 5 to 30 seconds. While these AIS signals are interoperable, power equals range, which means that Class A and Class B-SO broadcasts are often heard over Class B-CS messages. 

Here it’s incumbent upon every navigator to understand the important differences between AIS-VHF and internet AIS data, and to treat internet AIS data with healthy skepticism. That said, DataHub users can set their range from 5 to 300 nautical miles, allowing navigators to monitor distant targets without overcluttering their screens. 

Better still, DataHubs can also create automated AI polars. Here, DataHub collects information from the vessel’s NMEA network, which it sends to PredictWind’s servers, which, in turn, leverages AI to create bespoke polars. 

Unlike polars that are created by a yacht designer, Nick Olson, PredictWind’s marketing business development manager, says that PredictWind custom-­builds its polar based on how individuals sail their boats. These polars evolve as time elapses, however Olson doubts that the system could immediately detect if a crew blew out their headsail during a distance race. “Over time it would adjust, but not in the short term,” he says.

While some advanced features—including PredictWind’s proprietary over-the-horizon AIS data and automated AI polars—require a Pro-level PredictWind subscription, all users can leverage DataHub to track their vessel and monitor its live NMEA data globally. Additionally, DataHub provides firewall protection and optimizes email (read: compression), while its Anchor Alert App adds peace of mind for those on the hook.

So, if you sail with connectivity and are seeking a cost-­effective way of tracking your boat while also accessing internet AIS data, automated AI polars, and other data-rich features, DataHub offers another tool to your race electronics toolbox.

The post Smart Polars Are Here appeared first on Sailing World.

For those who appreciate waterborne technological marvels, the details that slowly emerged from Baltic Yachts of a top-secret project—what appeared to be a 111-foot-long fully foiling race boat—had us salivating. Would it be like Roberto Lacorte’s foiling Flying Nikka but twice the size? How many race line honors and records might it scoop up? What kind of daily mileage might such a beast achieve? All good questions, with answers to come in due time. The extraordinary all-carbon Raven certainly has its race boat traits: an AC75 foil configuration, sleek lines from Finnish stylist Jarkko Jämsen and naval architects Botin Partners, and a high-­caliber crew, but those behind the project say that it is not a race boat. They prefer “the ultimate performance superyacht.”

Since the beginnings of yachting, there have been all manner of yachts that might have been described this way, from the early America’s Cup challengers and J Class, Robert Miller’s Mari Cha III and IV to Gianni Agnelli’s Extra Beat and the more recent supermaxis like the ClubSwan 125 Skorpios, or even the 219-foot ketch Hetairos, to name but a few. Yet none before Raven have ever combined such extreme performance hand-in-hand with this much style and luxury. With the high-end composite-work and fit-out that one would expect from Baltic Yachts, Raven truly sets a new benchmark for fast superyachts. As Raven’s owner says: “We just wanted to do a superyacht, but a fast one with foils; to try to do something different; and with an interior that you can sit inside, and is comfortable and nice.”

While Raven does have a similar articulating foil arrangement to the AC75s, the boat is not designed to fully break free of the surface. Instead, like IMOCAs, its optimal sailing condition is “skimming mode.” Its giant foils are designed to reduce its displacement by up to 40 or 50 percent. As Raven’s sailing team manager Claes “Klabbe” Nylöf explains: “It is a displacement boat with the asset of having the foils. The foils are like a turbo boost.”

Similar to Lacorte’s 60-foot racing foiler, Flying Nikka, Raven also has a modest fixed keel, albeit with a groundbreaking carbon-­fiber foil, so, unlike AC75s, its lifting foils are not additionally ballasted. Rather than elevators on the twin rudders, interceptors fitted on the transom provide fore and aft trim. For those unfamiliar with these, they are essentially powerboat technology comprising a large plate (or several plates, in Raven’s case) that can be lowered by 30 to 50 mm. At speed, these generate lift at the transom, pushing the bow down. They are rare, but not unique, in the sailing world. For example, a single large interceptor plate was fitted to Mike Golding’s Ecover 3 IMOCA 60 for the 2008 Vendée Globe.

Yacht-racing pundits took one look at the first photos of Raven and assumed it would be gunning for line honors in the major offshore races or attempting to break records. But neither is true—in the short term, at least. Raven’s owner already has an impressive fleet, spanning a 414-foot Lurssen superyacht down to a ClubSwan 36 that he enjoys sailing doublehanded in his native Sweden. In between, Raven’s intended present use is as a daysailer. The owner very much enjoys sailing his mighty boat at blistering speeds, but as important to him is Raven’s ability to stop somewhere nice where he can relax and enjoy life on board. He also enjoys being involved in the innovation that Jämsen, Botin Partners, he and the team have incorporated into their 111-foot skimming masterpiece.

One of Raven’s most interesting technical aspects is its structure and the vital figure of its maximum dynamic righting moment, as decided between Botin Partners, Southern Spars, and Pure Design & Engineering. To give some idea of the numbers involved with Raven, its righting moment with water ballast only and no foils is 100 tons per meter, and with foils and no ballast it’s 180 tons per meter. The issue with Raven is that it is oh so tempting, and so easily possible, to exceed limitations, at which point the weakest link will be found and extreme catastrophe could well result. Naturally, there are all manner of alarms to warn of this, at which point Raven is depowered simply by dumping the mainsail. This predicament has been known and considered on superyachts and especially large racing multihulls for decades, requiring a sympathetic approach to how they are sailed, so it is fortunate that Nylöf has previously skippered ORMA 60 trimarans, while Raven’s hugely experienced French captain, Damien Durchon, has also been captain on Comanche and a regular hand on both Mari Cha III and IV as well as Hetairos.

While it is tempting to think speed, speed, speed with Raven, comfort is also important to the owner—not just when moored, but underway too. Fully foiling racing boats, with their massive accelerations and decelerations, are among sailing’s least comfortable yachts, requiring crews to don crash helmets and body armor. This is not the case on board Raven. Due to its weight and inertia, it has moderate acceleration and only ever sails in displacement or ­semidisplacement modes. Water ballast provides righting moment upwind and, when down-speed, the foils provide minimal lift, and they also can be used to stabilize the boat in rough conditions. Off the breeze at speed when the foils are operating, they have the effect of locking the boat to the water, reducing pitching and heeling. The flaps on each foil can also be used as lateral trim tabs to dial in more lift to leeward, thereby reducing heel from, for example, 25 to 5 degrees, again improving comfort. However, this also encourages bow-down trim, which in turn can be countered by adding water ballast or increasing lift from the interceptors. Figuring out how best to combine all these variables (not to mention the rig setup and sail combinations) for differing wind conditions and sea states is an ongoing project, with the aim of automating many. This would enable Raven to be sailed with reduced crew for cruising and deliveries (from the 16 crew that Durchon expects will be their typical number when sailing properly).

As ever with large, fast boats, peak speeds are of little interest (especially because they would involve exceeding structural limits). However, high average speeds are desirable. Raven is already sitting on speeds of 25 to 27 knots and has topped 30 knots. Once fully optimized, in the right conditions, 600-plus miles per day is realistic, making it one of the world’s fastest offshore monohulls, and certainly the fastest on which there is a fully stocked bar, a washing machine and so much more.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, speed in light winds has also been considered. Botin Partners’ Adolfo Carrau says that in the light, both foils can be raised. It will be rare not to have one deployed, and in this configuration, Raven benefits from a narrow waterline hull with a chine that causes it to rapidly gain stability when heeled.

The boat’s light weight is vital to reaching optimal skimming state in the least amount of wind, and while Raven has amenities from air conditioning to a fully fitted-out galley, Jämsen’s interior is otherwise supremely light in order to achieve an overall displacement of roughly 50 tons (i.e., only marginally more than the 100-foot nonfoiling Leopard 3 and Wally Cento superyachts). In achieving this, Jämsen has been highly creative. For example, composite decking, as you might find on a TP52 cockpit sole, is used below—not just on the floor, but also as a wall covering. There is much use of rattan-covered carbon-fiber frames for ceiling panels, while Jämsen has not feared making features of the tech. For example, two hydraulic rams operating rig functions are located on either side of the washbasin in a guest cabin.

On deck, Raven has twin cockpits—the working cockpit aft for the crew, including twin steering positions, while forward is a giant guest cockpit. Here there is yet another of Raven’s great features: The guest cockpit is open to the elements, but if it starts getting wet, the cockpit’s entire aft half folds up and over, dropping down over the cockpit’s forward half to form a large doghouse.

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Sometimes our sport can be frustrating, while other times everything just falls into place. I experienced the latter one recent evening while racing my Aero dinghy. This particular Thursday-night race featured a classic 12- to 18-knot southerly blowing off Shilshole in Seattle. The tactics can be tricky in this wind direction, but it is understandable and intuitive to someone who has raced these waters for 50 years. This night favored the right side of the racecourse, and I managed to clue in to that. My upwind speed is usually not great, but this evening, I got the sail flat enough and worked on steering precisely to control heel, and I was in the hunt. One thing that really helped was spending a solid 20 minutes going upwind and downwind before the race with another boat. I burned a bunch of my limited energy, but I got myself in the groove. It helped that the waves were skewed and moderate, so staying fast was not that hard, as long as I could hike effectively.

I missed the first start because I thought we were using a five-minute sequence instead of three. This was not a great way to start the night, but I didn’t get down, and after that, I got good starts and sailed pretty well to get three top-five scores. Driving home, I was really happy. Maybe I was finally figuring out how to sail the Aero.

The following Thursday night, I arrived with high hopes, confident I could pick up where I’d left off the previous week. But it was not to be, and as it is with solo sailing, there was no one to blame except myself. On this occasion, a 14- to 18-knot northerly combined with an ebb tide was kicking up huge waves off Shilshole. It was going to be a fun night, I told myself. Well, the downwind legs at least. A few more good sailors showed up to play, so the field was a little bigger and deeper.

Unlike the previous week, I had a good first race thanks to a decent start and average speed. I went the right way, so I rounded the top mark in third and finished fourth. It was a happy start to the night, but in the next two races, I was hopeless: terrible starts, slow upwind, bad tactics, and nothing special downwind. I could barely see the leaders.

What the heck? One week earlier, I was right there. Did I just suddenly forget how to sail?

Let’s face it: Sailing is a complex sport with a lot of variables. To succeed, we have to get a lot of things right. On the first Thursday, I got most of the big things correct—good starts and tactics, and enough speed. On the second Thursday, I got most of the important things wrong—poor starts and bad speed, which contribute to bad tactics. Next thing I knew, the leaders were way ahead. It’s not magic.

Contrasting the two nights, I have my takeaways:

1. Warming up is important. I need to make and take the time to sail hard before the start, both upwind and downwind.
2. Boatspeed is king, especially in bigger waves. I need to learn to make the boat easier to drive in waves, and I need to be able to hike more consistently. It’s as simple as that.
3. Starting is a weapon. Even if I’m slow, the race will always be a lot easier with a good start. So I need to make this a focus and do my practice starts every time.
4. It’s difficult to have great tactics when I can’t hold my lane, but I must keep trying to go the right way and not get desperate.
5. When the level of the fleet gets higher, I must adjust my goals accordingly. I can’t let disappointment dictate my decisions when good sailors are beating me. I have to accept that it is a privilege to have them to race against, and use them to get better myself.

What’s great about a long weeknight racing season is that there’s always a next week. We can use the time between races to put a bad result behind us and make our plan to move forward with what we learned. Come Monday, I am already thinking about Thursday night’s race, reminding myself that I can do better. I can follow my own advice. I can leave behind any doubts. I can even go out and practice earlier in the week to stretch out my hiking muscles, get better at tacks, work on my technique—upwind and downwind. I can play in the waves and find my groove. I can feel it now; Thursday’s going to be great. And if it isn’t? Well, there’s always next week.

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The phone rings with an incoming WhatsApp call from Stuart Bannatyne. I’m at my desk at Google, so I jog to a conference room to have a private conversation. Bannatyne, from Doyle Sails, is a legend in the sailing world—and that’s no hyperbole. When it comes to leading successful grand-prix race programs, there’s nobody better. He cuts straight to the chase: “Lewy, you interested in going racing?”

“Yeah, Stu,” I answer. “Always interested to hear what you have on the boil.” 

He’s got a new program shaping up for the 2024 Newport Bermuda Race, a TP52 named Summer Storm, a boat with a solid winning record and a new owner in Andrew Berdon. My excitement is building, but I keep my cool while mentally running through the checklist of elements needed for a ­successful program.

My next questions are about the sails and the crew. Bannatyne rattles off from memory every sail that the boat will come with and what new sails we will need to be competitive. The crew are not only top-shelf sailors, but most of them won line honors and the corrected win in the Gibbs Hill Division with us in the previous Bermuda Race (Richard Clarke, Mal Parker, Chris Welch, Dylan Vogel and David Gilmour) as well. That’s all I need to hear, and I give Bannatyne an emphatic “I’m in!”

A few days later, a FedEx package arrives at my door from boat captain Alec Snyder, and my daughter asks, “What’s in it?”

“It’s a present from the new boat,” I tell her.

“Is it a puppy?” she asks.

“No—it’s even better. It’s the boat’s computer, and now I can start digging into the polars and sail charts.”

We all know that polars and sail charts matter. That’s why we have them laminated and mounted in the cockpit of our race boat. One chart tells us our target speeds and angles (which are derived from polars), and the other tells us which sails we should have up.

Understanding these two crucial pieces of information can be the difference between a podium finish and a participation award. We’ve been using them for a long time, and much has been written about how to use them, but today the importance of understanding a boat’s polars has added significance with the adoption of the new Forecast Time Correction Factor rating system.

Iconic ocean races such as the Transpac and the Bermuda Race recently announced that they will use the new F-TCF system to calculate race results, which will rely on meticulously calculated polars using a velocity-prediction program. This new scoring adaptation underscores the necessity for skippers and crews to have an even deeper grasp of their boat’s sail plan and polars. No matter what boat you’re racing this year or next, your first priority in preparation should be refining your polars and sail charts.

Digging for Oil

My technologist neighbors in Silicon Valley celebrate the principle that “data is the new oil,” and this is true in sailing as well. Nowadays, it’s easy to collect treasure troves of data from every sensor on the boat. With the powerful navigation tools at our disposal, it’s easier than ever to take our polars, which forecast a boat’s performance at every wind angle and every wind strength, and crunch them with accurate weather files and racecourse mark information to produce optimal routing. We can also repeat polars to our displays, in real-time, with target speed and angles as well as polar boatspeed percentages. With this level of ­functionality accessible to virtually every boat, it’s fair to say that polars are more important than ever. 

Gone are the days where a professional sailor could eyeball a headsail and make some profound-sounding ­recommendation that no one could challenge because of their years of experience and enviable track record (even if the comment was just an assertive hunch). With today’s tools, BS is replaced with real science. Remember the scientific method you learned in high school? It still matters, and we now have the tools to ­confidently test whether A is faster than B. Unsure whether the J1, J2 or jib top would be faster at a deeper true-wind angle? Well, test it. That’s science, sailing’s new “moneyball,” which ­translates into speed. 

Granted, while all this new ­science might be easy for top-end navigators, it can be daunting for amateur programs to take a data-based approach to performance improvement. But it’s absolutely possible. The crux of sailing moneyball is to make use of your log files and process them into analyzable and actionable data. Thankfully, Expedition—the gold standard of navigational software—has this functionality built in, and so do other analytics platforms. Without the tools to notate and process log data, all you have is a pile of files on memory sticks, which do you no good. If you want oil, you have to go digging.

Once you have the ability to analyze your data (and there are plenty of webinars and seminars to get you there), the next big hurdle is determining your data quality or data hygiene. In this category, the first two considerations are instrument calibration and data labeling. Instrument calibration is probably the most obvious.

Science demands that if you are comparing boatspeeds, then your boatspeed calibration needs to be spot-on for both. That’s also true of your wind calibration. You can’t compare apples, oranges and ducks. Data labeling is not obvious at first, but there are fundamental best practices: keeping track of when you were racing and when you were just motoring around between races (imagine how good your light-wind polars would look if you had your iron jib helping); logging which sails you had up and when; and keeping accurate real-time notes, like when you might be in the sweet spot of a sail, for example. You have to be meticulous and disciplined with your data-collection practices, even while you are doing your primary sailing jobs. Make it a priority.

A few examples of ­next-level considerations would be noting wind shear (which is especially noticeable on cold mornings where there’s 8 knots at the masthead and nothing on water), boat weight and balance (don’t compare numbers with a laden boat prepared to go to Hawaii versus a light boat set up for daysailing), and variables such as who was driving and when. Good science is about eliminating variables so that you see the signal, not the noise. 

Speed Is in the Percentage 

My personal catchphrase is “speed is all about finding 2 ­percent” (even though it could be a bigger or smaller percentage). Imagine a beautiful sunny day where you have flat seas and 12 knots of well-mixed wind. On such a day, we’ll have a wish list of things we want tested, and high on the ­priority list might be the edges of a sail’s coverage. For example, how deep can we sail on the J1 or J2 before performance percentages plummet versus how high can we sail a reaching sail?

In order to find out, we sail in the same direction with the J1 at 80 degrees true-wind angle for 3 minutes. Then, we drop the sail and ­continue with the J2 at exactly the same true-wind angle for the same 3 minutes. Finally, we do the same with the jib top. Assuming that the wind conditions don’t change during this window, each test will produce a polar boatspeed percentage; imagine the results are that the jib top is 97.2 percent, the J2 is 95.1 percent, and the J1 is 94.8 percent. We have the answer of which is faster in exactly those conditions and we found our 2 percent.

Once decisions are made about which sails to bring for the race, you also have to figure out the best ways to fill any gaps in your sail plan with other sails you are taking.

The reality, however, is that not all of your tests will be perfect, so scientific excellence would dictate that you’ll want more testing data points to prove any conclusion by ­repeatability. Once you’ve successfully proved something, you can nudge the potato shape of the sail chart to implement what you’ve learned. Now imagine doing that for every square of your sail-chart grid by building out an entire database of carefully curated data points from racing and testing conditions. You’d be 2 ­percent faster all the time and you’d be able to dial-in polars with high quality data. It burns me up to imagine that during a race, I might be sailing 2 percent slower for hours by having the wrong sail up in a distance race.

The reality is that even the most sophisticated grand-prix programs can’t test everything, so apply judgment to your own resources and prioritizing tests for what matters most. The same methodologies can be used to test anything—rake settings, staysails, rudder, outrigger, water ballast, etc. The list is limited only by your curiosity.

Pre-race Sail Optimization

While much has been written about how polars and sail charts are used while you are racing, they also play an important role before crossing the starting line, or even before locking in your rating certificate. While your boat weight and design might not change much, your declared sail selection can have a significant impact on your polars. The first step in optimizing your sail quiver is typically consulting your sailmaker, but if you want to level up, there are consultants who can help run and analyze trial certificates to help find advantages.

Sail optimization is ­essentially the science of trying to find ideal sail combinations for the course and your particular boat—combinations that allow you to sail faster than the rating agency’s VPP predicts you can. Said differently (and perhaps more traditionally), you are looking for sail combinations that are favored, or have a sweet spot under a rule, while avoiding sails that are punished disproportionately.

I like to look at the delta in each cell of the polar table to see how a particular sail will change the predicted polar speed. Then the game is to decide whether actual performance exceeds or misses the predicted changes, so you can then decide whether a particular sail is worthwhile from a ratings perspective.

Once decisions are made about which sails to bring for the race, you also have to ­figure out the best ways to fill any gaps in your sail plan with other sails you are taking. Of course, the best way to do that is sail testing, using the very same methodologies ­previously ­discussed to determine the answer to each question with cold, hard data instead of speculation. 

Whether you’re racing for a local trophy or tackling an iconic offshore challenge, ­understanding polars and sail charts is the key to ­achieving the highest level of performance in which your boat is capable. Trophies are there for the taking for those with ­insatiable curiosity for ­unlocking the secrets to speed in their boats.

The post How To Refine Your Polars and Sail Charts appeared first on Sailing World.

We’re only three races into the regatta, with plenty more to come at the inaugural RS Fest in Miami, but Michiel Geerling is already tallying points in his head to determine where we sit in the results. He’s got us tied for first in the five-boat RS21 fleet, and third is only one point back. “Not that the results matter,” Geerling says with a sheepish grin. “Because we’re here to have fun, right?”

Right, but it’s obvious that Geerling, whom I met only hours earlier, has real intentions of winning the regatta he’s hosting—even if that means beating customers. Racing is racing, and all is fair on Miami’s sparkling Biscayne Bay on this early spring weekend where sailors young and old and from far and wide have gathered to race under the sun and the hot-­magenta banners of RS Sailing.

As the world’s biggest manufacturer of sailing dinghies, with headquarters in southern England, RS has long enjoyed a global cult following, but while they’ve been selling boats into the States for a long time, they’ve never enjoyed the full and warm embrace of the American racing scene. Thus, the inaugural RS Fest Miami—their first go at an annual family reunion of sorts. This gathering is relatively small, at 49 boats, but it’s a start.

“This is the beginning of something more—the start of a tradition,” Geerling says. “RS Sailing was born out of a desire to use the latest technology to build racing classes, to simplify life for the sailors to be racing and create these sailing communities.”

Employing a playbook of focus-on-the-fun racing and hip social events, they’ve grown a plethora of one-design classes in Europe, and Geerling’s intent is to do the same in the US: “This is what I want to build [with the Fest], and I believe we’re onto something here.”

Geerling joined RS after breaking out of his self-­described “golden cage” in the international coffee trade, he tells me. The money was good, but the sailing lifestyle was not. Before adulthood landed him in his cage, he once bandied about Europe as a strapping lad from Amsterdam with a collection of RS dinghies attached to his van. Those were happy years of high-performance sailing and living, he tells me, and that’s why he now sits in the commercial director’s chair at RS. He’s far more content selling what he loves, and what he loves most is the dinghy sailing life. That’s also true of most other RS C-suite occupiers—all middle-aged ­dinghy-sailing fanatics.

The four-day festival, which is staged out of Miami’s Regatta Park and hosted by the Coconut Grove Sailing Club, has four of RS’s most popular racing classes: the tyke-friendly roto-molded singlehander known as the Tera; the doublehanded and RS Feva, which I’m told is the world’s largest doublehanded racing class; the all-glass-and-carbon RS Aero singlehander; and the RS21, their flagship keelboat. It’s lightweight, sporty and simple, and that’s what I’m sailing on for the RS Fest, managing the front of the boat while Geerling drives. We have a rotating cast of first-time crews, including Katherine Fry. She’s a J/70 sailor and a ­high-powered lawyer from London. Her husband, Alistair, a big-time doctor, is racing in the Aero division. And more importantly, their two young daughters, Trinny and Alexa, are teamed up in a Feva.

“We were trying to plan an Easter holiday and learned about this regatta,” she says. “And we thought, Why not? It’s Miami—somewhere we’ve never been to and that’s easy to get to from London—and everyone gets to sail. It’s lovely, really.”

Once, as we loiter near the starting line shared by all the fleets, she points out her husband, who’s checking in with the girls. She hastily extracts an iPhone from her PFD, snaps a picture and beams with happiness, adoring this family postcard moment. Later, when we just so happen to be near the Feva’s leeward gate mark, she spots her daughters again. They have a commanding lead and a tidy drop of the little asymmetric spinnaker, which quickly ­disappears in its deck sock.

“Great job, girls!” she shouts aloud with glee and a golf clap.

They’re too preoccupied with the douse to acknowledge her praise, or thinking, Geez, Mum, please. You’re embarrassing us. Still, the moment is poignant: mother, father, daughters—all out playing on the same racecourses on a warm spring day in Miami.

This is also the case for Peter Cozzolino, of Milford, Connecticut. He’s driven the family’s GMC Sierra 2500 from Connecticut with plans to race, and then take two brand-new Fevas back north and start a local movement at Milford YC. He’s paired up with nephew Evan Davies, while his son Peter is sailing with Cozzolino’s other nephew, Grayson Davies. Though he originally planned on leaving Miami with two boats, he ends up filling the empty rack in his triple-stack trailer with a charter boat to seed in Milford [Which has since grown to more than a half-dozen Fevas at Milford YC, Cozzolino says—Ed].

Cozzolino, who co-chairs Milford YC’s junior sailing program, had rented a Feva last summer for the sole purpose of keeping his son and nephew interested in sailing, but he discovered how much fun it was to be in the boat with the kids himself. “My son had sized out of the Opti, and Peter wasn’t happy being by himself in the Laser,” Cozzolino says. “When I sailed with both of them in the Feva, they loved it, and the bigger Opti kids wanted to sail it too.”   

That was enough to ­convince him to buy two boats from RS, and the deal was he’d take delivery at RS Fest Miami. “They were the ones who suggested we come to the regatta, and I’m glad we did,” Cozzolino says. “It was the first time where I, as a parent, was able to sail in an open class with the kids.”

Granted, he was the sole 42-year-old among teens and preteens, but he plans on doing it again in Miami next year with his 9-year-old son, James. “Sailing together, parent and child, is a game-changer,” he says. “This was the kids’ first travel event, and they thought it was so cool to have the other kids, the giveaways, the games, and having the Aeros and the 21s around them. It gave them the excitement to see what’s next and to stay in the sport, which as a parent, I love.”

The unpretentious Coconut Grove Sailing Club off Bayshore Boulevard is where the sailors and families gather nightly after racing, enjoying the buffet, music and games. International flags for the regatta visiting sailors (India, Ireland, the Netherlands, Britain, etc.) line the seawall for an Olympic-esque touch, and the club’s Astroturf lawn is partially covered by neon magenta shag carpeting, white tables and chairs, pingpong tables erected from shipping pallets and plywood, and two aluminum-framed hiking benches for the RS Fest Hiking Challenge. And here, at the final awards, Geerling extends his gratitude to the sailors and promises that the RS Fest will be an ongoing thing somewhere and sometime in the near future.

He invites all in attendance to come again, and Dan Falk, the towering, white-bearded Aero sailor from Seattle, shouts, “Only if it’s Miami!” The crowd cheers in agreement, and with this show of support, planning is ostensibly underway.

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