Innehållsförteckning för Yachting Year 2023 från Sailing Today

Jenevora Swann took this stunning photograph of sail boats anchored at Maupiti in the Society Islands, part of French Polynesia. Among the boats enjoying a slice of bluewater heaven down there is Jenevora’s own Lagoon 440 cat, in which she and husband Fergus Dunipace lived the liveaboard dream, taking their floating home, aptly named Two Drifters, around Europe and then across the Atlantic to the Caribbean, the US, South America and through the Pacific, before returning to the UK. Of Maupiti, Jenevora recalls: “We discovered the most fabulous underwater life, rich with eagle rays and coral pinnacles. The pretty little beaches are backed by coconut palms, with the main access often by boat.” If that’s not enough to make you sell up and sail for the horizon, then try more…

The year 2022 saw most of the world return to normality after two years of being battered by the gales of Covid. It was a great year on the water, with some classic regattas recording their best ever entries. More than that though, it was the feeling that the usual relaxed bonhomie had returned to sailing. So what of 2023? Well, more of the same, we hope. There are, as always, a number of centenaries and other landmarks that will create pockets of focus here and there, among them the centenary of Alfred Westmacott’s iconic Sunbeam class and the OGA (the Association for Gaff Rig Sailing) at 60. The OGA’s 50th was a big one, and it seems the 60th is going to be as well, and in similar vein.…

Many years ago in what seems another life I used to teach sailing in the Caribbean in Hobie Cats. To be brutally honest, there wasn’t a lot to do and, occasionally when the torpor got too much, I would take a Hobie out and play around in the waves; getting the boat up to maximum speed, then bearing away in an attempt to deliberately pitchpole. This was both exhilarating and extremely ill-advised, particularly as it was me who had to carry out any repairs. It was also great fun. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I enjoyed a similar sensation playing about in the waves in a 54ft cruising catamaran – obviously I wasn’t trying to pitchpole, but the feeling of dancing across the waves at full throttle was lifeaffirmingly similar…

If you can sell over 150 catamarans off-plan before the resin has even hit the glassfibre, you know you must be doing something right. Despite costing more than a million Euros once fitted out and on the water, Fountaine-Pajot’s new 51 has done just that. It is perhaps one of the most extraordinary marketing feats in modern boatbuilding. So when the chance came to sneak an exclusive test-sail on the first hull to be launched, I didn’t need convincing. With the promise of a balmy 12-14 knots and double-digit temperatures, I climbed aboard a train bound for La Rochelle. Now, there are some 5,000 boats berthed in the city’s vast Port des Minimes, but it didn’t take long to find the Aura 51. A towering mast allied to her principal…

CHARTER The best sailing area in the world? In my opinion, the Grenadines. Without a shadow of a doubt. I just can’t get enough. Every time I fly in, on a little twin-prop, gazing down at the blue paradise that is Tobago Cays, my heart skips a beat. The nervous anticipation of exhilarating sailing in the strong winds and Atlantic swell, is calmed by the lee of a picture-perfect island sheltering a tropical beach and a rum shack! What really makes the Grenadines stand out to me is how remote they feel. A far cry from the relative commercialization of the British Virgin Islands (BVIs), the islands all have their own, different, authentic Caribbean characters. Scattered in a sparkling arc, stretching some 60nm from the southern tip of St Vincent…

The magnificent sight of UandI – ‘you and I’ – shot by Paul Wyeth in the Solent. The boat was designed by William Fife in 1897 and today is believed to be the sole survivor of what back then was a fleet of 10 Belfast Lough class yachts. She was restored by Cornishman Alastair Garland to the highest standard, but anything original that could be saved was saved, leading to a patina that augments the boat’s perfection and saw her win a prize at the Classic Boat Awards. Classic Boat columnist Tom Cunliffe reported that the boat is not only spookily original, she sails like a witch. For more great stories about historic wooden boats and the thriving modern classic scene, read Classic Boat every month or visit classicboat.co.uk…

Emotion as crews finally finish Clipper Race A jubilant 180 crew arrived back in London at the end of the Clipper Race, for a parade of sail along the River Thames and a welcome ceremony at Royal Docks, with a huge crowd of family, friends, partners and spectators creating a memorable atmosphere. This edition of the race started in 2019 and was suspended in March 2020 as the pandemic struck, with crews flying home from Subic Bay in the Philippines. It restarted, after a week of crew re-training, in February 2022, with the remaining legs from the Philippines across the north Pacific to Seattle, then down the west US coast to Panama, before transitting the Panama Canal and racing on to Bermuda, New York, Derry-Londonderry and the final sprint back…

50 TH FASTNET Setting sail from Cowes on Saturday 22 July 2023 will be the 50th edition of the Royal Ocean Racing Club’s Rolex Fastnet Race. No doubt the anniversary event will sell out even quicker than normal, if that’s possible. Places in the Fastnet go quicker than tickets for Glastonbury Festival. What is sure is that the fleet, as it always does, will comprise the full gamut of yachting, from classics like Jolie Brise , which won the first ever Fastnet (pictured on the left here passing the famous Fastnet Rock), to the big Ultim trimarans like Sobebo (LOA 32m, beam 23m), pictured above, battling conditions off the Needles in the 2021 race. The first Fastnet Race was held in 1925, so there is another…

Distant shores and balmy waters are the stuff of bluewater dreams. Many of us have idly thought about escaping the rat race to explore. Perhaps fewer have actually managed to do it. But from our three case studies, one thing is clear: preparation is absolutely key. All three of those we interviewed had spent at least two years readying the boat. In the case of Hugh Mullens’ Oyster 565, the options were chosen with the yard and built in from the outset. At the other end of the scale, Elisa and Guillaume Guerrhit did much of the work on their Dufour 425 themselves in the years before setting off. Top of everyone’s list, after sails, seems to be onboard power – or tackling a shortfall thereof. There are three classic…

A CBS broadcast of this race, the Range Rover France Sail Grand Prix, was the most watched sailing event on US broadcast television in 30 years, averaging 1.609 million viewers. It’s new territory for sailing as SailGP breaks into mainstream sports coverage around the world. What sports fan wouldn’t enjoy seeing the world’s top sailors – here Sir Ben Ainslie on the Great Britain boat and Nathan Outteridge on the Switzerland boat – battling for water as they fly past a buoy at more than 50 knots off Saint-Tropez? Meanwhile SailGP’s wider initiatives are bold, with sustainability and gender equity top of the agenda and also a laudable programme to encourage young sailors. For monthly reportage from the front line of the sail-racing universe, read Sailing Today with Yachts…

The season of 2022 has in many ways been a glorious one for cruising sailors; an affirmation that islands over the horizon and the freedom all sailors crave is once more attainable. As such it has seen a frenzy of activity, as pipe dreams cooked up during lockdown become bluewater reality. So what does all this frenzied activity tell us about 2023? If there is one thing we have learnt from the last few years it is that life is unpredictable and that nothing should be taken for granted. Perhaps accordingly, the scramble to buy a boat shows no signs of easing in the coming year. Despite the dark economic clouds, boat manufacturers across Europe are reporting record waiting lists as they simply cannot build enough boats to satisfy demand.…

After starting out as a new and inexperienced sailor, I have been describing in Sailing Today with Yachts & Yachting how I have gained skills and expertise throughout the thrilling voyages of discovery that my partner, Barry, and I have made around the Mediterranean and Adriatic over the past couple of years. And, just when I thought I could handle anything the Med could throw at us, we had to cope with Covid, red and amber lists, jabs and double jabs, and a blocked Corinth Canal! This canal blockage meant the summer’s relatively short sailing trip expanded into an epic adventure. We spent almost three months island-hopping in the Ionian and Aegean seas, and we both completed our longest ever sailing stints. Throughout the voyage, the captain had to attend…

The story of the new International 8-Metre yacht Starling Burgess begins nearly a century ago, on a rainy autumn night in Maine. At least one light was on, as her eponymous designer W Starling Burgess burned the midnight oil on a new design brief for a client. Those who know anything of this great American polymath might already guess that this design, to one of history’s most fiercely contested rules, would be at the forefront of technology and design. Those to whom the name of Burgess rings only the most distant of bells should not be blamed: the legacies of sailing’s great designers have been alternately diluted by time, expanded by whim and disfigured by patriotism or enthusiasm. A 20th-century polymath It would not be unreasonable to argue that the…

There seems nowhere more apropos to test a new, traditionally built wooden boat than steps from the International Yacht Restoration School (IYRS) in Newport, Rhode Island. The coastal enclave’s maritime legacy is unparalleled in this part of the US, and its decades spent hosting the America’s Cup empowers Newport to bill itself the ‘Sailing Capital of the World,’ though other ports, both foreign and domestic, might dispute such a declaration. Regardless of self-appointed accolades, Restoration Hall, the heartbeat of IYRS’s three-acre harbour front campus, is buzzing literally and figuratively, as students sand rough wooden planks, one of the countless steps toward completing a vessel by the school’s annual launch day. In its shadow, Beetle Cats, dinghies, skiffs and sloops bob alongside the school docks, as well as a new power…

Wandering around your average boat show these days, you can’t help but notice something different – something with a lurid colour scheme, a mildy anarchic logo, something that carries words and stickers unintelligible to the average Hallberg-Rassy owner. This, plainly, is a foiling kiteboard. But what’s it doing in a boat show? The late and greatly esteemed Yachts & Yachting columnist Bob Fisher spent some time in the years following the Rio Olympics giving World Sailing a magnificently hard time. It was Bob at his best, firmly on the side of the ordinary sailor, armed as he always was with fact and history as much as emotion. Bob’s bugbear, or one of them, was the change in Olympic classes. The demise of the Finn as the men’s heavyweight dinghy was…