It was just after 0200 on a wild and woolly August morning, just north of Block Island on the rather thrashed waters of Rhode Island Sound. On the 58-foot catamaran Impossible Dream, we were about 12 hours into and a third of the way around our ­129-nautical-­mile racecourse during the annual running of the Ida Lewis Distance Race. We’d come to a crossroads: It was time to make the sort of decision one never wishes to contemplate in any offshore boat race.

Quickly closing in on Rhode Island’s shoreline, in deteriorating conditions with the wind rising and a crew scattered about in various states of blurry awareness or total incapacitation, should we 1) tack for the next mark, dead to weather, off Long Island; or 2) cut our losses, ease sheets, and head home?

Dream’s 15-person squad included owner Deborah Mellen, Capt. Jim Marvin, former America’s Cup racer Sarah Cavanaugh, my old Newport friend Harry Horgan, a four-person film crew making a documentary, and a handful of intrepid disabled sailors negotiating the race from their wheelchairs—an eclectic team if ever there was one.

At the wheel, cocooned in the cozy confines of the central inside steering station, as I watched a gust on the anemometer top 40 knots, I was quite aware that I was enjoying a false sense of security. I knew Impossible Dream well, having raced the boat from Key West to Cuba across a roiled Gulf Stream in the 2017 Conch Republic Cup, and was confident that the big cat could handle just about anything. But I also wondered, Was there even more breeze building? Because I understood that if I slipped up, the worst happened, the cat flipped and we all went swimming, it would be an unmitigated disaster. I had a definite opinion on whether to bail, but it wasn’t my call. 

“Hey, Jim,” I said to the skipper, “I have to turn the boat. Which direction? Montauk or Newport? I reckon you and Deborah need to have a chat.” 

For me, racing aboard Impossible Dream was not only unusual, exciting and challenging, but it also was personal. That’s because, for better and worse, I had more than a passing acquaintance with crewing alongside wheelchair-bound sailors. I was on a camping trip in the early 1980s with one of my best friends, a wild man known as Jack Mack, when he slipped on a steep ridge above a New Hampshire river, instinctively tucked for a dive, broke his neck and became a quadriplegic. In an instant, both our lives were forever changed. 

Not long after, one evening in my Newport apartment, the wail of sirens broke the silence, and the next day I learned that Horgan, another mate, had been in an automobile accident down the street and was paralyzed from the waist down. 

Neither Jack nor Harry took matters sitting down. Jack continued charging through life with his usual dry wit and fierce tenacity. And with a small fleet of specially designed Freedom 20 sloops, Horgan founded Shake-A-Leg, which was dedicated to helping folks overcome devastating injuries and disabilities through firsthand experiences at sea. In one of the very first Shake-A-Leg regattas, Jack and I went sailboat racing, a healing experience for both of us. The saddest thing about spinal-cord injuries, I’d come to learn, is that they’re largely incurred by active young folks, relative “kids” in the prime of their youth. Couch potatoes are immune. I also learned that the greatest things they have going for them are their hearts and resiliency. 

Eventually, Horgan and his wife, Susie, relocated to South Florida and started Shake-A-Leg Miami, which has become a vast watersports entity with world-class sailing facilities on Biscayne Bay that not only annually serves upwards of 10,000 disabled children, military veterans and their families, but also hosts numerous international one-design regattas. It was 2014 when Mellen, a Shake-A-Leg volunteer and local businesswoman who’d also survived a car crash, teamed up with the group to purchase the rugged offshore catamaran that exponentially expanded its breadth and reach. 

Impossible Dream was launched by extreme-sports enthusiast Mike Browne, a Brit who was paralyzed in a skiing accident and commissioned naval architect Nic Baily to design a boat on which he could still pursue adventures. Among its features are a wraparound deck that allows wheelchairs full access forward and aft, internal lifts for wheelchair boarding and access to the below-deck staterooms, and a deckhouse with special seating on tracks and all sailhandling lines led inside within reach of the enclosed helm station. 

In addition to offshore races like the previously mentioned Conch Republic Cup and the 2018 Regata del Sol al Sol from Tampa Bay across the Gulf of Mexico to Isla Mujeres, Mexico, each summer Impossible Dream embarks on an annual voyage up the coast from Florida to Maine (the late President George H.W. Bush once enjoyed a spin off Kennebunkport), introducing literally thousands of inner-city kids, wounded vets, and others to the singular joys of a day on the water.  

This past summer, there was an additional event on the cat’s calendar: the Ida Lewis Distance Race. There was but one hitch: There was no multihull division, but this was a trivial matter to the very persuasive Horgan. The club agreed to a start for an Exhibition Multihull Class, the sole entrant being Impossible Dream. What sealed the deal, Horgan believes, was the documentary. “It’s going to be an inspirational piece that’s going to inspire people to believe in their dreams and pursue them,” he told me. “For me, personally, Ida is where I learned to sail when I was 12 years old. We wanted to demonstrate that people with disabilities can achieve good things with the right team and technology, and be part of the Ida legacy.”

All of which put Impossible Dream on the starting line.

Tall and lean, with a cool demeanor and the striking appearance of a Rastafarian—and a pair of spindly prosthetic legs from the knees down—Bradley Johnson cuts an imposing, impressive figure. Before all was said and done, I was going to be very happy to have made his acquaintance.  

Among others, director Anna Andersen’s film—tentatively titled This Is Not a Dream—will focus on Dianne Vitkus, a former physician’s assistant who was paralyzed relatively recently in a fall, and Johnson, who was returning from the entrance exam to law school at the University of Florida in 1993 when his sports car hydroplaned on a rainy highway straight into a guardrail. “One leg was severed completely,” he told me. “The other was ­lacerated beyond repair.”

Some folks might’ve retreated to their basements. Not Johnson. “It was a choice,” he said. “What are you going to do? I can’t grow my legs back. I also can’t waste the valuable time given to me by being alive. All the efforts by the people who saved me would go for naught if I just shriveled up. I wasn’t going to hold on to something I can’t ever get back.”

Instead, he threw himself into sports, and was competing in volleyball in the 2000 Paralympic Games, when, by chance, he met sailing coach Betsy Allison in a hotel bar, who asked what turned out to be a life-changing question: “Would you consider sailing?”

It led to an international sailing career on Sonars, including a bronze medal in the Athens Paralympic Games in 2004, and eventually on to Impossible Dream. “The sailing’s been incredible,” he told me later. “I’d lose the legs all over again ­without reservation.”

Which is one of the most remarkable things I’d ever heard. Although our fun night on the Ida race might’ve given him some second thoughts. 

It was a scramble from the outset. For the first time ever, engine problems had forced ID to cancel most of the New England stops on its summer tour. Once in Newport, the generator conked out, and without power, there was no way to hoist the mammoth new North Sails in-boom furling main. The diesel mechanics were still working that out just hours before the start, which, thanks to a two-hour postponement for a passing front, we made with ­little time to spare. But the sporty weather was a definite preview of coming attractions. 

Horgan, with many miles behind him and a light touch on the helm, handled the start and the long beat out to the first mark in the rising southwesterly with aplomb. Already, however, the conditions had laid low a few wobbly souls, a handful of whom were experiencing their first ocean race. And an inaugural bout with seasickness. Another sign of things to come. 

I took over the driving on the next leg, thankfully a downwind run to Buzzards Bay Tower. It required sailing hot angles compared with our monohull brethren, which I later learned elicited much confusion with the folks at the yacht club tracking the fleet. But I also knew that the long boards and frequent jibes were stacking miles on an already lengthy boat race.

The conditions had laid low a few wobbly souls, a handful of whom were experiencing their first ocean race. And an inaugural bout with seasickness. Another sign of things to come.

At the tower, with the prospect of a 70-odd-mile overnight beat to Montauk ahead of us but with all bunks already accounted for, I grabbed a pillow and plonked down in the galley to catch some rest, but not before suggesting that we hug the coastline at the outset of the leg for current relief. About two hours later, I roused myself and was stunned to see that we were on an inshore tack directly toward Sakonnet Point, and on the wrong side of a government mark we needed to honor. Capt. Jim was on the cabin top sorting out a traveler issue, but I yelled that we needed to tack—like, now!—and luckily the experienced Johnson was on the helm and quickly spun us out to seaward, away from ­trouble. Close one. 

Shortly thereafter, I took back the steering duties. By this time, there were a few sentient beings among us, one of whom was Horgan’s son, Eli, riding shotgun and keeping me updated on boatspeed and windspeed, buoys and shoals, and so on. His company was welcomed, and though he was more or less a novice at this game, he has a future in it if he wants one. 

Meanwhile, a couple of miles or so to windward, a plethora of blinking lights, including what appeared to be a US Coast Guard cutter, suggested that someone was in major distress of some sort, though there was no VHF traffic to confirm it. The whole thing was starting to feel somewhat apocalyptic. 

That’s when we came to the figurative fork in the road, and I got the order that I was hoping to hear: Bear away to Newport.

I caught up with the crew at the awards ceremony, nobody looking the worse for wear, and explained that it wasn’t the first race I’d abandoned, and it wouldn’t be the last. Sometimes the winning move is exercising discretion over valor. We’d all learned something—about sailing and ourselves. It was all good. And a dozen other boats had retired, including a couple that had dropped their rigs. It was absolutely the right move. We all got a fresh sea story or two out of it.  

I had to laugh later on when Horgan referred to the entire episode as “The Impossible Nightmare.” But I think that they got the title of the film right. It sure as hell was not a dream.

The post One Wild Night At Sea appeared first on Sailing World.

Like most things in life, innovation is born of either necessity or discovery, and for Tamas Hamor, founder of Xquisite Yachts, the necessity after 11 years of bluewater sailing with his wife was profound: on most production boats it’s nearly impossible to access mechanicals and even more difficult to get after-sales service. One experience in particular following a Pacific Ocean dismasting was the final straw that sent him into the boat building business: “It took months to get a rigging drawing from the manufacturer,” Hamor says. “It got to the point where we said there must be a better way to do this.”

Hamor’s solution was to launch his own brand with a focus on building boats with “the highest build quality and design, where every component, every tank and every pump is accessible and serviceable.” The result over the past 10 years has been a fast-growing line of ever larger award-winning cruising sail and power catamarans and a base of operations in the Bahamas where owners are trained on all aspects of their million-dollar yacht before being cast out to the big blue sea. The company’s base has since grown to be an Xquisite Yachts Charter operation and a sailing school as well.

And to the point of innovation through necessity once again, Hamor and his expanding team—with builders in South Africa, Portugal and Poland—have now launched their new Xquisite 30 Sportcat as a means to upskill owners on the nuances of big-cat sailing by schooling them in a fast and nimble package. In Freeport, it’s envisioned, Xquiste owners and guests will be able to island hop on the Sportcat to familiarize themselves with the feel of a catamaran. And someday in the near future, Hamor says, there will be a fleet of them in Freeport, with inter-island one-design poker racing and a school for the local kids to get up to speed.

It’s been long since the heyday of the slick and fast Stiletto Catamarans that a production builder has offered a sporty mid-sized day sailing catamaran. The industry focus is trimarans with basic cruising accommodations, but the Xquisite 30 Sportcat does not claim to be a liveaboard cruiser whatsoever. Sure, you could take it overnight and sleep on deck or in one of the two small aft cabins, but that’s not the point. Hamor says this boat is all about day sailing and experiencing the sensations and movements of a big cat at a much smaller scale.

“I don’t believe we’re going to sell a lot of them, but Xquisite is not about mass manufacturing anyways,” he says.

The Sportcat 30 model nominated for Sailing World’s upcoming Boat of the Year testing is a 2,000-pound shallow draft version with kick-up rudders and skegs. Homas says the boat can be built with retractable daggerboards for those who are keen to race it or sail it in deeper waters, but again, day sailing and catamaran skill development for Xquisite owners is the priority.

At $285,000 all-in the Sportcat 30 is an expensive day sailor, Homas admits, but he never wanted to build it on the cheap, reasoning the better it’s built the fewer service calls he’ll get. The sailplan is plenty powered up with a North Sails 3Di inventory (main, self-tacking jib, and gennaker) on a rotating carbon spar from French spar maker AG+ and all considerations were made to keep the carbon-reinforced vinylester infused platform as lightweight as possible. “It costs as much as it does because it’s built right and has everything on it—all the top equipment and sails,” Hamor says.

The boat’s modular trailer concept is designed to allow the boat to be assembled on land before slipping it down the ramp or into the hoist with a lifting bridle. The rig, Hamor, says, can be raised with two people easily. Disassembled, the entire operation is designed to be packed into a 40-foot container for shipping or off-season storage.

For propulsion, an outboard bracket on the aft beam will accommodate a gas or electric outboard, and Homas likes the new electric engines from Mercury—which at the moment would be his recommendation over a gas-powered option.

Would be owners apprehensive about assembling, launching and sailing the boat for the first time need not worry, Hamor says. “We can do the training right here in the Bahamas and ship the boat in the container to wherever you are in the world. Or we can fly in a team to assemble it and spend a few days getting the owner up to speed.”

Because that’s the level of service he wished he always had.

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With St. Barts’ Gustavia Harbor disappearing behind us and the island’s mountainous terrain towering to our right, it feels so good to be sailing into the beautiful Caribbean Sea with a gusty 15-knot breeze and calm seas. Wind and spray rid us of three days of the sweaty boatwork we’ve put in to get our Formula 18 catamaran out of the shipping container, to the beach and meticulously rigged for the St. Barth Cata Cup.

We cruise the coast for a few miles and take in the sights, and suddenly find ourselves in the hard-hitting Atlantic Ocean. We’ve never sailed an F18 in anything like this, with 15-foot whitecapped rollers all around us. Launching off the crest and back down into the troughs of these giants is thrilling, but in the back of my mind, I’m starting to wonder how competitive we’ll be in these crazy conditions. As first-timers to this Cata Cup thing, we might just be out of our league.

The time comes for our first tack. My crew Matt Keenan, who I had pulled back into catamaran sailing after a hiatus, was rediscovering his trapeze skills when he swings into the boat, catches his foot in the hiking strap and tears it right off the trampoline. After a deep breath, I say aloud, “Well, we are going to have to do better than that.”

Keenan agrees, and a few heart-racing miles later we turn it into St. Jean Bay, point our bows toward the white, sandy strip, and run it up like a real beach-cat landing. We’ve arrived in the epicenter of the Cata Cup. It’s 2012, and I’m about to begin a 10-year run of participating in the best catamaran regatta in the world.

A truly one-of-a-kind event, the St. Barth Cata Cup began as a competition between Caribbean-based ­catamaran teams, but was reborn in 2008 as an open catamaran regatta. The switch to Formula 18s came a year later. This “modern version,” as sailors and organizers call it, is the brainchild of a group of locals who formed St. Barth Multihulls. This was the group with a vision to bring professional and amateur cat sailors from around the world to their island. But they didn’t just create another buoy-racing regatta. Their idea of fun is four days of exhilarating distance races, or “raids,” in big winds and big waves matched onshore by world-class social activities.

Competitive racing in a legit, high-caliber international class—in an exotic location and for an absurdly low entry fee—is too good to be true. For the roughly $1,200 entry fee, organizers house us, feed us, provide a rental car, and even ship our boat from Miami.

The hype surrounding the event is noticeable everywhere on the island: Local sponsors go all in, and the community ensures everyone has an amazing time, welcoming the sailors as if they were family. It’s been this way right on up to the 2021 edition, which hosted 62 teams, myself included for the fifth time since 2012. In 2017, only two months after a direct hit from Hurricane Irma, which destroyed buildings and stripped nearly every tree bare of its leaves, organizers made the event happen without missing a beat. Every year, they come back with surprises and changes—from the parties to the racecourses. The event is never exactly the same, and every competitor leaves wanting to come back for more. And it’s also why entry is a lottery, which opens seven months out from the regatta, with many teams not making the cut.

On the morning of my first Cata Cup race back in 2012, I recall the regatta’s principal race officer sounding a horn to gather the competitors around an easel with a big chart and an outline of the course explained in French. Our interpretation of the course is a bit confused, but given our rough delivery sail the day before, we agree to approach the first race conservatively. We have no expectations of actually leading, so our strategy is to follow the boats ahead of us. The only thing we’re certain of is that the windward mark will be set off La Tortue, an aptly named turtle-shaped rock. We’ll just sail in that general direction.

At the start, the wind peaks at 15 knots, and the waves are down to 10 feet. These are new conditions for us, and after sailing upwind for 20 minutes, we stare at a giant pile of rocks awash in the big waves. We realize then that there is no mark. The rocks are the mark. There is no one in front of us.

So much for following the boats ahead of us.

We forge on between La Tortue and the rock pile, oblivious to how close we can go before we have to tack. In this harried moment of uncertainty, Olympian and Volvo Ocean Race veteran Carolijn Brouwer is closing in fast. I’m pretty sure she’s telling us to tack, and I respond, “You first!”

It was a great lesson to learn the adrenaline and skill it takes to navigate the courses at this event, and that you can sail quite close to most of the rocks.

The local sponsorship works by partnering with a team and putting signage on the boats. As luck would have it, we scored the famous and posh Nikki Beach Club, which is right next door to the regatta headquarters, where the majority of the boats sail from. With one or two raids per day, all the competitors return to shore in between races for a satisfying supplied lunch, some beach recovery, and even a nap if needed.

It’s all very civilized, but well-deserved after beating up our bodies every race. Each year, the round-the-island race serves as the pinnacle of the event. Weaving in and out of bays and tearing out into the big seas, there’s a magical mixture of upwind crashing through waves, blast jib reaching, and cruising through pristine waters on the south side of the island. While an opportunity to take in the beautiful scenery, the competitive spirit remains tense to keep racing until the end. On this particular race around, we enjoy a tight battle with Olympian and catamaran legend Enrique Figueroa. Trust me, we’re more than ecstatic to place second to “Quique.” And to top it off, as soon as our bows tap the powder-soft sand, hostesses from our boat sponsor Nikki Beach serve us chilled Champagne. It’s all a bit surreal and unexpected, the overall theme of this event that you must learn to embrace.

While many regattas have a party, the Cata Cup sets a new bar after each day of sailing, with dinner served and followed by a concert from top entertainers. Daily winners are called on stage and given a bottle of fine local rum. And after the prizes are doled out, the band that’s been jetted in for the night ignites the dance floor. During their set break, a slick, professionally edited video projects onto an oversize inflatable screen on the beach. It’s a visual feast of tropical high-
performance cat sailing—as if we need to be reminded how lucky we are.

Every time I go and as soon as I step on the island, the smile on my face is permanent for days—no, weeks—afterward. All of us have regatta memories, but this has become a dream I want to relive every year. Thankfully, there are plenty of event videos to hold me over until next year.

The post Catamaran Racing In Paradise appeared first on Sailing World.

Gino Morrelli has a word for them: outliers. He’s referring to the community of sailors drawn to the ever-expanding fleet of high-end, high-performance, hefty-price-tag, no-holds-barred catamarans that he and his design partner, Pete Melvin, have unleashed upon the sailing world. Their eponymous Southern California naval-­architecture shop, Morrelli & Melvin, is responsible for the cutting-edge lines of Gunboat and HH production cats, as well as the late Steve Fossett’s globe-girdling PlayStation and the twin-hulled AC72 winner of the 2013 America’s Cup, Oracle Team USA, among many others. These “dogs,” as they say, know cats—and the dudes who sail them.

“It started with the Gunboats, which were almost like a cult,” Morrelli says. “Exclusive. Expensive. The brand attracted uber-wealthy guys that maybe didn’t want to play the normal IOR-type rule of the day. They were outliers in their ­professional space, where they’d had great success, and in their sailing too.”

The world has ­continued ­spinning in the decade or so since Gunboat’s bankruptcy and demise, and cats have evolved exponentially too: far lighter, way cooler, much faster. But the outliers remain. Which brings us to a pair of them aboard a set of high-strung performance cats, whose competitive rivalry did not emerge in the usual way—on the racecourse—but rather under the very same rooftop: introducing the brothers Slyngstad, Greg and Todd.

The fifth of eight siblings raised in the San Francisco Bay area, Greg amassed some serious loot during his stint at Microsoft and invested a chunk of it in his 53-foot all-carbon, Paul Bieker-designed Fujin, with a striking profile reminiscent of early Polynesian catamarans. Displacing a meager 7 tons (“Half the weight of a Gunboat 55,” Greg tells me), Fujin has been a consistent presence on the Caribbean circuit for several years now, and it is raced hard and well by a Pacific Northwest posse that includes Olympian and fellow SW columnist Jonathan McKee.

Todd’s the youngest ­member of the clan, who earned his dough in construction in Silicon Valley. He was bitten hard by the cat bug after racing with Greg aboard Fujin, and when he decided to enter the racing fray himself, he commissioned Morrelli to soup up an HH66, which became his Nemo—a basic platform was already under construction, all ready to get tricked out with lighter window glass, custom rudders and daggerboards, carbon furniture veneers and so on—with a quite explicit request in the design brief.

“Beating his brother was a very specific goal of Todd’s,” says Morrelli, who had the advantage of having already competed against Fujin in the islands aboard another HH66, Nala, and then had a good look at the smaller boat’s polars as he got to work. “I think it’s spelled out in the contract!”

It’s fascinating listening to Morrelli speak about the progression of production cats from those early, rather basic Gunboats to a string of M&M 65 custom cats to the HH carbon sculptures now rolling off ­production lines in China.

“The main, big difference is daggerboards,” he says. “As we started putting in these much deeper boards, my joke in the office is that I blame our evolution on North Sails. As they improved sail cloth and sailmaking, we went from Spectra pinhead mainsails—the old-fashioned, kind of rounded roach things—to fat heads. We have more carbon in the sails now than we used to have in the entire boat. I’m kind of kidding, but that’s really close. The first Gunboats were still fiberglass and Kevlar exterior skins. They weren’t even pure carbon boats when we started because everybody was still a little afraid of building an all‑carbon boat.

“Nobody ever talks about the ‘damage tolerance’ of carbon anymore. As North improved the sailmaking, the reachers got better, the spinnakers got flatter, the sails got stiffer. And as we started increasing the horsepower in the engine
—the 3Di sails—the boats went a little faster, but it wasn’t until we put bigger daggerboards on ’em that they really took off.”

Now the brothers have unholstered their respective arms—Fujin and Nemo—and the time to talk is over. A full season of Caribbean racing will kick it off; at press time, the brothers were scheduled to line up in the fourth running of early February’s St. Maarten Caribbean Multihull Challenge. It will be their ­second head-to-head battle: In last summer’s ­moderate-air, 240‑mile Vineyard Race on Long Island Sound and Buzzard’s Bay, Nemo was the handy victor, thanks to the combo of a longer waterline and more sail area. So, the conventional wisdom, at least thus far, goes that Fujin will require a small gale to take on the younger brother’s bigger vessel.

“In light air up to around 15 knots, as they showed, they’re going to kill us,” Greg admits. Which is why he is very much hoping for the staunch trade winds the Caribbean regularly serves. “Yeah, when the wind picks up…” he says, then pauses. “Well, we haven’t had that race yet. But that’s what I’m looking forward to in St. Maarten.”

But Todd is also ready for the duel and reckons Nemo may be a bit more competitive in windy conditions than his brother realizes. “I think we can still take them up to 18, 19, 20 knots,” he says. “We have the longer waterline, and when the sea state kicks up in heavier air, I’m not going to get kicked around like Fujin does; I’m going to accelerate through that stuff. I mean, it’s all ­speculation on my part, but I think we’ll do well on those 25-plus days. It should be fairly close. I’m anxiously ­awaiting to see what happens.”

And just what does the (somewhat) neutral observer, Gino Morrelli, reckon?

“I think it’s still TBD in a breeze, especially on a reach,” he says. “They’ll drive the living s— out of Fujin. I’ve seen it. I mean, they drive that boat completely underwater. And Nemo, being a taller rig, higher center of gravity, it’s definitely got the advantage in the medium and the light air. Once you start reefing, I think Fujin, because of its beam and its lower center of gravity, well, it’ll come down to who can keep their foot on the floor the longest.”

While the final outcomes in the regattas to come remain uncertain, on one matter there is no doubt, none whatsoever: One bro is going to teach the other one a lesson.

The post Brothers of A Cruising Catamaran Rivalry appeared first on Sailing World.

The M32 World Championships came to an exciting close on Sunday. Eleven teams came for 18 races in conditions ranging from 6 to 22 knots on the warm waters of Miami, Florida. When the spray settled, Convexity, with helm Don Wilson, was able to defend their world title.

Convexity smashed the competition with three races to spare. Despite their regularity at the top of the podium in the last year, there were some doubts going into this most recent competition. They finished mid-fleet at the M32 National Championships in October and though they improved to second at the Pre-Worlds, they were edged out by Anthony Kotoun helming Team Catapult.

Wilson erased any doubts with his commanding win this week. “We just focused on constantly getting better and finding little ways of getting the boat faster.” he said.

Team Catapult is usually driven by Joel Ronning, but the rest of the team stepped up to fill his absence this week, including Kotoun on the tiller. “There are some incredible teams here that are well polished and extremely talented and to be able to come and mix it up with them is a wonderful thing,” said Kotoun.
The comeback story of the regatta was that of Inga From Sweden.

“This is my best result ever at any Worlds. I am very happy,” said skipper Richard Goransson. Goransson finished second at the Nationals in October, but had an inauspicious start to the World Championships, finding himself in sixth place after the first day. His team chipped away over the course of the regatta, gaining places every day to finish third overall.

“Convexity is a step ahead of us still, but that’s not going to last forever. I hope they all come to Cascais,” he said.

This was Ryan McKillen’s first world championship with his Team Surge. “It’s tough,” he said even with a big smile on his face. “A lot of boats on the starting line. It’s pretty unforgiving out there if you don’t get off the line and we didn’t get off the line very well.”

Another fresh face in the class, Bill Ruh with his team Pursuit, showed consistent improvement throughout the regatta. Looking forward to 2022 Ruh said, “If we’re going to continue to strive to move up in the rankings we’re going to have to continue to put the hard work in.”

One of the specific things Ruh is looking to improve on is learning the fastest modes of the boat and how they change in different wind conditions. He plans on getting back in the boat in January for the Miami Winter Series.

In between the boat pack-up and the podium celebrations there was palpable anticipation for the coming Miami M32 Winter Series. “If I wasn’t so sore I’d want to do it again tomorrow,” said Ruh. Four weekends of racing are planned throughout January, February, March, and April; the best months to be racing in Miami.

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“Timing is everything,” the old proverb says, advising that success is related to the trigger of a certain chain of events. Be that as it may, as this relates to sailing fast and tippy boats, “Timing,” I would add, “is patience.” All sailors know the importance of a clear and audible countdown before anyone makes a break for the other side. We can think of “three, two, one” as our “ready, set, go.” When someone blitzes at “ready,” however, the outcome will inevitably be bad, as our careening catamaran crew can now affirm. Any good racing sailor will relate—it’s easy to get amped up in the heat of the moment, but next time, wait for the “go” before you go over the falls. —Dr. Crash

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Narragansett Bay turned on classic windy conditions, with shifting breeze and gusts over 27 knots, for the eight competitors on the racecourse, resulting in a postponement on day three as officials patiently waited for the sea-state to die down.

Despite the challenging weather, there was no shortage of action. All eight teams brought their A-game and battled for the podium with maximum intensity. Ultimately, it was Don Wilson’s Convexity Racing that took the top spot.

“I think it was a stressful day for everyone on the water yesterday,” said Taylor Canfield, tactician onboard Convexity, “but it was good to get out in some breeze. We haven’t seen a lot of breeze for this series, so it good to let the boat stretch their legs a little bit and get whipped up. It was fun to see the fleet is coming along.

”After day one’s racing, Convexity was firmly ranked third, with 6 points between the team and the leader, Argo. During day two, the team was able to pull through for the top-ranked spot.

Ted Hackney, of Team Convexity, said it was some of the most intense sailing the group has done all year, “The boats are about going fast and furious around the racecourse. Today it was just all about having clear communication because everything was happening so quickly. At this point in our racing, we know what everyone’s tendencies are and when to say certain things to make the right decisions. It takes time to build that sort of rapport with the team. So that’s probably our biggest weapon onboard Convexity.”

Notably, newcomer to the fleet, Catapult, dominated the racing for second place, an excellent finish for the team’s second regatta in the M32.

Convexity is still chasing down Argo for the season’s number one ranked spot.

Anthony Kotoun, of Argo, gave a rundown of the racing from their perspective. “Saturday was a bit of a hectic day from a shift standpoint. It was enough to drive a tactician crazy. We got more than our fair share of good lucky shifts and came out OK. I just stayed cool. Today, we just struggled a little bit, had some bad luck. We were over early, which allowed the other teams to climb back into it. It’s not all white sand beaches.”

He continued, “we’re thrilled to be leading this series. This is one of the most competitive classes in the world. This racing is very hectic and chaotic, stadium-style racing, and great to be doing so well.”

All the teams racing lauded Larry Phillips as the glue keeping the fleet together, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. Phillips’ has been ensuring the fleet can get on the water safely, and keeping everyone fed as a bonus.With the Midtown Racing Center coming together, and with another three days of sailing left for October, it’s too early to name a winner. In three days, anything can happen. Full results of Midtown Cup 3 and the Series.

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This week, coach and contributor Tony Rey checks in with some video from the local M32 catamaran racing scene, Jonathan McKee returns with a cruiser’s beard and we catch up with the rest of the crew to talk cancelled boat shows and low-key day racing with Gary Jobson.

The post Around the Sailing World, Episode 17 appeared first on Sailing World.

Ernst-Michael Miller glides to the dock at Shake A Leg Miami on his red foiling catamaran. What a cool-looking boat. Looks fast. Tricked out too. I walk over to chat with him about the boat, and I’m surprised to find out he’s the guy who designed it. Very cool. There, on the spot, he gives me a thorough explanation of the boat’s “FlySafe” foil-control system and the “Code F,” which is a light gennaker that promotes early foiling in light air. Curiously, it’s tacked to the ­leeward bow and has no boom.

I’m sure the guy could have chatted for days about the craft he calls an iFly. His enthusiasm for it is immediately contagious, and suddenly I can’t wait to have a go at it myself.

We agree to a future day and time for me to demo it, but in the meantime, I invite him to a house party, where we go deep into the topics of foiling, sailing and his 15-foot, 200-pound iFly. He’s an aviation engineer by day, whose profile lists Airbus and BMW. His intelligence is obvious. The guy is extremely smart, and even gives me a few good ideas for my Moth. He is excited for me to try his boat, which he’s been refining in earnest since 2016 and is now building one per week. He explains that he needs “someone good” to give him feedback. He shipped a container of them to Miami and has been running scheduled demos off the Miami Yacht Club’s beach through most of early winter, looking to spread the experience of foiling simplicity and a guaranteed easy flight. The company’s slogan is “We love speed while keeping control,” and that’s what he wants me to experience.

He tells me he’s not really a “good sailor,” so he wants to hear what professional sailors think about his invention. But later, I witness what a badass sailor he really is: foiling through maneuvers on his iFly alone, operating its lines like an octopus. From the trapeze no less. In 8 to 25 knots of breeze, the mainsail alone is all you need to fly; just drive and trim the main, no fussing with the foils. The Code F, Miller explains, is for extreme light air. If the breeze picks up; roll it away. If you know it’s going to be windy, leave it at home.

When it’s finally my time to try the iFly, he suggests that I bring a friend; which I do. Abbigail is new to sailing and eager to get on the water. She’s also a fast learner and far more athletic than me. But this is her first foiling experience, and first time trapping or sailing a high-performance boat. I’m a little nervous for her because the thing sure does look sporty. I’m always nervous when I give joyrides on the Moth because wipeouts can be dangerous, and I fear it will be similar on the iFly.

Abbigail and I board a RIB with plans to swap with Miller, on the water. Once we’re alongside, he gives me a quick explanation about the iFly’ s flight-control system, and off we go. As soon as my new crew is hanging from the trap, we pop up on the foils and start hauling, foiling upwind, downwind and reaching. The boat is very stable despite the chop. What’s most impressive is, however, how well it flies and how gentle the landing is when the bows touch down in waves while going downwind. I had no sense of danger of stuffing the bows and having Abbigail flung around the forestay. Throughout it all, she is super comfortable and keeps saying how much fun it is.

I also sail the boat alone and that is super fun too, especially trying to trap, drive, and trim the main and gennaker. With a little practice, the maneuvers feel more natural, and I get better pretty quickly.

When we pause, Miller gives me some more tips. I rip around for a while and get to play with the sail controls, the ride-height ­adjustment, and even the angle of attack differential between leeward and windward hull to create extra righting moment. I feel like I need every bit of it being 130 pounds and sailing alone. The boat is very responsive, which should be expected of a full carbon foiling cat. During one good run, I don’t know how fast I’m going, but it sure feels like more than 20 knots in 12 knots of wind. It’s an adrenaline rush, for sure.

The build quality is also noteworthy. There are a lot of parts, but they all look durable, which proved to be true when I had a “little” incident, sailing over a sandbar and running aground at 15 knots or more. My bad. I thought playtime was going to be over, but once we got off the sandbar, we started foiling again as if nothing had happened, and then foiled for the rest of the day. Miller had told me about an iFly being sailed across the English Channel from England to France, a 140-nautical-mile run in full-on conditions, and given my beaching incident, I believe him when he says it’s well-built. Let’s put it this way: I’m happy for the ­titanium reinforcement in the foils.

Ultimately, I’m impressed by how nimble and versatile the iFly is. For me, it’s a rush and plenty challenging to sail it alone. At roughly $30,000, it’s definitely a high-ticket, high-performance catamaran, and I’m excited to see how the one-design racing evolves. The one thing my Moth is not is forgiving and user-friendly, especially with two people. I can see myself having one in Miami, racing hard or cruising around Biscayne Bay with a friend. It’s a hardcore racer, but it’s also a hot rod to impress a date. For a couple looking to get into foiling together, it’s a unique option. I also wonder how it would be for some warm-water coastal racing. Maybe, I think, I could convince my friend Katie Pettibone, who is super skilled and fearless, to do a race with me, just sending it down the coast. Now that would be cool.

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We’re now 10 days into our immersion in the M32 catamaran scene. We’re walking down the dock at Shake-A-Leg on the second day of the M32 Miami Winter Series. The boys—Gordon, Chris, Riley and Key—all sporting their Young American team shirts, stroll past the other perfectly polished and vinyl-wrapped race boats. I can sense their anticipation and excitement growing as we make our way past. As I walk behind them, I notice a little more pep in their step, the soreness from the previous day’s racing barely noticeable.

Berthed at the far end of the dock is our boat—two stark-white hulls with light-blue decking and black trim. The boat is owned by Sail Newport, the community sailing ­organization in Newport, Rhode Island, so it’s not technically “ours,” but we’re campaigning it for the winter, thanks to the support from Sail Newport and the M32 Class Association. It’s been a long time coming with putting it all together and getting the boat down south.

We’re the “youngsters” of the class—a team of college students and recently graduated kids, looking to experience, train and compete in one of the top high-performance classes in the world. We’re sailing under the banner of the Young American Sailing Academy, which started in 2013 as a way to kick-start a new generation of offshore sailors. Highlights of the Academy’s achievements include racing in the 2016 and 2018 Newport Bermuda Races, where the team received line honors in 2016 on the Tripp 41 High Noon and competitively sailed the Reichel/Pugh 63-footer Gambler in 2018.

Some of us are recent ­additions to the Young American program, so we’ve had only a few days of practice as a squad, but we’ve quickly bonded into a tightknit team. Key Becker, who is the forwardmost guy on the M32’s rack, is our main trimmer. He’s tall and lanky and has bleach-blond hair that sticks out from his pink helmet. He shares a similar big-boat background to myself and sails for the College of Charleston’s Offshore Team. He’s my older brother, and yes, he has been suspiciously nicer since this boat came our way.

Behind Key is Riley Freeman, our floater. Riley is a big-boat sailor and surfer from California who is studying at the University of San Diego. He is the muscle on our boat and brings the laid-back West Coast vibe to the team. He matches Key with the long blond hair, making them the perfect rack buddies. Next aft on the rack is Gordon Gurnell, who ­skippers at Connecticut College and grew up sailing dinghies in Newport, Rhode Island. In his hand is the traveler line, the “big‑guy” job on the boat.

Chris Manson-Hing is on gennaker trim. Chris graduated from Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and is the one with experience in multihull and skiff sailing on the boat. He’s small, but he’s fierce.

As for me, I’ve come up through a wide variety of monohull big boats. I define myself as a driver, but I can run around and fill any position on most boats. I also grew up sailing dinghies and now sail for Boston University, and until our first event with the M32 class—this past summer’s Midtown Cup in Newport—I’d never been exposed to multihull sailing, or much of skiff sailing, for that matter. As you can imagine, the M32 came with a vertical learning curve for all of us. After only a few days of sailing on the boat, I’ve learned it requires a strong helm and a playful hand. The balance of the boat and the rate of acceleration when it’s loaded is far different than anything I’ve ever experienced.

As we arrive at our boat at the end of the dock, we prepare for the day ahead. The wind is drowned out by the latest recording of a Phish concert playing from a little blue speaker clipped to the rack. It’s our team anthem now, thanks to Key and his obsession with the band. We tackle the morning work list: Tighten the trampoline, put in the boards, situate the lunch, check the spares kit, and so on. Because we’ve had two days of practice canceled this week on account of too much wind, we’ve had plenty of dock time, making us a well-oiled machine when it comes to boatwork.

Soon after, as we pull off the dock and head out of the harbor, waves crash over our bows as we slam through the chop. It’s blowing a solid 18 knots, with gusts in the low- to mid-20s —conditions we have sailed in only once before. As we hoist the main, anticipation is building. Gordon, Riley and Key line up on the main halyard, as if they’re about to start a game of tug of war. They’re waiting for the “ready to go up” from Chris. As they hear the call, they lean in to every pull as the bolt rope zips up the mast track.

Once the main is up and the boys are ready to play, we take off for our pre-race practice. We head upwind but look for the first opportunity to turn ­downwind and get the gennaker unfurled. When it’s go time, I reach behind me, clip the tiller extension onto the tiller bar, pop up onto the back beam, and lock my front foot under the traveler.

Chris counts, “Three, two, one,” and I steer the boat down into a bear-away set. The gennaker rolls out, Riley leaps to the winch, puts his head down and spins the handle like a madman.

Our next move is a furl-and-jibe. Riley jumps off the rack as Chris prepares the gennaker sheet to be eased. Key and Gordon are waiting, ready to bounce into action. The call is made, and Key darts across the boat, bouncing his way toward the leeward hull. I watch the gennaker begin to furl, and then, unnaturally, I feel the hull beneath me begin to force itself out of the water. Both bows are fighting gravity and lift skyward.

The windward board must have been put down in preparation for jibe, but with both boards down, there’s too much lift. The boat pops a wheelie before the bows come crashing down with a thud and big splash. The boat then settles, as do we. The mistake with the board drop is identified—one of the many lessons we’ll learn.

For each race, we set up one step behind the fleet, hanging back and being conservative by not engaging with the more-experienced teams. But when the flag skies, signaling the last race of the day, our hearts are beating a little faster. I think we’re all feeling that it’s time to be closer to the fleet. We’re excited and more comfortable with this weirdly bouncy, wet and jerky boat.

Each race begins with a reaching start, followed by a power reach to a bear-away mark, transitioning the race into a downwind leg. That first leg is the most intense part of the race, and the outcome typically determines one’s positioning for the rest of the race.

“This is the race, guys,” Chris, our trimmer and tactician, yells. “Let’s get closer.”

As the countdown continues, we place ourselves in the same “safe zone” we’ve been playing in the whole weekend—to windward of the rest of the fleet, just below our layline to the race-committee boat. This time, we tuck ourselves that much closer to the pack. We want to play.

I pull on the tiller, the bows turn down, and I aim toward the orange triangle in the distance. Water rushes past the leeward hull, and the windward hull pops out and starts to fly. Expressions turn more serious, and the boys start howling, “Coms.” We are in the mix. We have a boat to leeward, and we are on the tail of the fleet.

Before we know it, the orange turning mark is upon us. “Hold on deploy,” Chris yells as he watches the leeward boat scream past the mark. Once we’re clear of their stern: “Deploy in three, two, one.”

I turn the boat down hard, the apparent wind builds, and I jolt the boat back up to get the hull flying, and we quickly watch the speedometer on the display climb into the mid-20s.

Someone on the rack screams: “Yeah, buddy! Let’s get her ripping.”

Shortly after boats ahead flop onto the other jibe, we pick our line and prepare to jibe ourselves. Chris, when happy with our positioning, yells out, “Jibing in three, two, one.”

Similar to earlier, Riley jumps off the rack and reaches for the furling line. Key and Gordon wait until the boat starts to turn. The gennaker wraps around itself, and the boys are already on their feet. I finish the turn, and the boys wrap up their jobs before getting back on the rack. Once the gennaker starts to make its way in, I turn the boat up and pop a hull.

The fleet leaves us in a frothy sea of wakes, but we keep working hard to stay as close as possible. Being the new team on the course, we have a lot to learn, but the learning has been the most fun and insane sailing we’ve ever been exposed to. The M32 catamaran is challenging and physically demanding, but we are determined to master this beast. As we cross the finish line of our last race, Key speaks for all of us when he says, “I’m officially in love with this boat.”

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