Sailing World Spring 2021

On any given winter weekend, there are nearly 30 diehard sailors eager to race in Newport YC’s Turnabout Frostbite fleet, which continues to be my winter sailing outlet. Problem is, there are only 12 boats. The fleet is divided into A and B divisions, and sometimes there are more sailors than boats when we draw for boat assignments. If you draw an X from the bag of numbered wooden cubes, you sit out one race. Drawing the X is an absolute buzzkill. Nowadays especially, once Sunday morning rolls around, I’m amped to go sailing. For me, being on the water, no matter how cold or brief, is an escape from the cooped-up anxiety of my house. The simple pleasure of breathing fresh ocean air, socializing with new faces (albeit, behind…

My alarm goes off. I roll over to grab my phone. The bright light pierces my eyes. It’s 5:00 a.m. Half asleep, I silence it and continue to drool all over my pillow. Next, a knock on my bedroom door. “Erika, are you up?” It’s my teammate, Lucy. I want to reply with a yes, but only gibberish spews from my mouth. I know it’s time to get up. We’re launching in two hours. Having arrived home from racing the previous night 10 hours earlier, we’re both dazed and confused as we organize our belongings. It’s my job to get the coffee going, to whip up a breakfast, pack the cooler, and fill our water jugs. On this particular morning, however, we have a bit of a role reversal. I…

My wife, Sarah, is my secret weapon for a lot of things, especially when it comes to mark roundings on Barnegat Bay, where she learned to sail. About 60 years later, she and I are racing our brand new Melges 15, and we’re in the hunt. We’re nearing the top mark somewhere between Marjorie’s Bar and Barrel Island, where locals know tide will be a factor. “You’re going to want to overstand,” she says in a tone that means business. The port tackers coming into the mark from the left are facing an adverse 2-knot current, and there’s a notable cluster developing where we don’t want to be. Summoning her years of local knowledge—learned in the pressure cooker of the Sneakbox fleet and passed down like the tablets from her…

The Sunfish. For thousands of sailors around the world, it’s an iconic name that conjures memories of beautiful beaches, colorful sails, whipping winds and a freedom that only comes from such a simple small craft. Many sailors have centered their love for the sport on a Sunfish—at summer camps in the lakes of the Midwest, along coastal stretches of both American coasts, and on pretty much any stretch of water between. First offered as a DIY wood kit in the 1950s, the Sunfish has been a staple of the recreational sailing and racing scenes for decades as a relatively inexpensive one-design dinghy. The ubiquitous and colorful singlehander has stood the test of time, but today it is at a performance crossroads. Technology has long surpassed the boat’s one-design limitations, and…

Nicolas Henard, president of the French Sailing Federation, was charged by the Paris 2024 committee to be bold and brave in his promotion of new Olympic sailing events. Like the dramatic gold-medal design of Marianne—the female symbol of the French Republic blended into the Olympic flame—the slate of events Henard and his colleagues at World Sailing voted in for 2024 is bold indeed. Nearly half of the sailing events will showcase hydrofoils. I witnessed that 2018 vote, and there were many arguments for and against moving so swiftly toward the future of foiling in the Olympics, but the door was thrust wide open, accelerating the inevitable evolution in high-performance sailing we are experiencing today. Predictions that “everything will have foils” in the future, however, have yet to materialize. What’s missing?…

I had been speaking with Sailing World’s Dave Powlison about a potential series of articles highlighting the major generic controls on most keelboats to control the rig and sails, when it suddenly occurred to both of us that we could do this series in parallel to my involvement in the creation of two 5.5 Metre class yacht builds taking place in Cowes, on the Isle of Wight in England. Why the 5.5 as a platform for this discussion? For starters, there are no fewer than 46 control points. This is where a control line is directed to a crewmember. Believe me, I have “simplicity” going through my mind at every moment—we are doing all we can to minimize complication. At every step of the way, we debate what we do…