Sailing World November - December 2015

THE NEW YORK YACHT CLUB has an excellent thing going with its Invitational Cup. There is nothing like it today — amateur sailors racing for club and national pride. The regatta’s organization, hospitality and race management are exemplary. A few teams are always top-shelf and practiced; midfleet teams are quick but prone to shockers; and there are always a few that put in the honest effort only to drift to the back of the fleet every time. Regardless of where one stands after 11 races, the experience is the same: a week of intense, big-boat fleet racing in Newport, Rhode Island, in September, the primo sailing days in the sailing capital. Now six years and four editions complete, the Invitational is the club’s signature event. The guest list has 17…

SINCE TAKING OVER management of Quantum Key West Race Week, the Storm Trysail Club has implemented changes designed to re-energize the iconic regatta. The most controversial is the scuttling of PHRF classes, to be replaced by Offshore Racing Congress classes. Race committee chairman Dick Neville says the move is precipitated by declining interest in PHRF racing at the 28-year-old event. At its peak in 2004, Race Week attracted 111 boats in 11 PHRF classes. In 2015, there were only 13 PHRF entries. In contemplating a replacement rule, STC preferred solutions offered by the Offshore Racing Congress, a rule used in more than 40 countries and sanctioned by the International Sailing Federation. “We had to face the reality that PHRF boats have been disappearing from the regatta, and the logical response…

MY FAMILY HAS a beach home in the San Juan Islands, north of Seattle, right on Fisherman Bay. Naturally we have a collection of small boats there, including a pair of 11-foot singlehanded Europe dinghies. I was at the house with my wife and kids recently and got itchy to go sailing, so I rigged one of the Europes and headed out on the water. At about 12 knots, conditions were nice but not thrilling. I was having a lazy downwind sail, getting pretty relaxed, trying to see how high to pull the daggerboard, when I caught view of another small sailboat down the bay. For some reason I headed straight for it. It turned out to be a new RS Aero, a very cool and modern singlehander, like a…

THE 2015-2016 CLIPPER Race starting line is between Southend Pier, England, and an RNLI committee boat. The wind is swinging from the north to the west and back again every few minutes. Our course will take us east through the Princes Channel, past the Shivering Sands towers; east to Margate, keeping it to starboard; through the English Channel; and then south to Rio de Janeiro. It appears to be a simple course for the 22 crew on board ClipperTelemed+, though their route onto the boat was a little more complicated. They are alongside me because they chose to try a different routine from their 9-to-5 lives. They chose to depart from the simple route. The gun fires, and 12 Clipper 70s race across the line. Qingdao is the only team…

THE CHICAGO YC’S Race to Mackinac carries family and friendship for sailors who have traversed the course during its century of existence. The experience of this 333-mile freshwater competition is passed through generations. Jon Alvord of Royal Oak, Michigan, for example, has been bringing his daughter, Kaitlyn, sailing since she was in kindergarten. In the early years, she would often stay belowdecks. Today she’s a full-fledged skipper and crew. Competing on the Corsair 31 Triceratops in the 10-boat multihull division of the 2015 Super Mac — a 568-statutemile race that extends Chicago YC’s traditional racecourse into Lake Huron — Alvord knew Kaitlyn was ready to hold her own as part of the four-person crew that included multihull legend Randy Smyth. Taking the helm early in the race, Kaitlyn, age 16,…

ON SEPT. 5, 2015, 33 Gulf Coast yacht club commodores assembled at Mississippi’s Bay-Waveland YC for a long-awaited vote, a decision that would effectively reshape the one-design nature of an entire region. On the table was a choice between two very similar sportboats, the Viper 640 and the VX One. Only one would be anointed the official boat of the Gulf Yachting Association’s interclub events. To only one of the two rival builders would come the spoils: new orders and a vast new territory. The Viper 640 won by a single vote, 17 to 16. Consisting of 39 member and affiliate yacht clubs spread from Houston to Sarasota, Florida, the GYA has held interclub one-design regattas, known collectively as Capdevielle Racing, since 1920. Member clubs are required to own at…