For a keelboat sailor, switching to a multihull, especially a performance type multihull, for the first time requires a significant shift in thinking about some of the fundamentals in sailing.…
Road to the America’s Cup podcast episode 2: How the AC75 will fly
America’s Cup teams first flew in San Francisco in 2013. The use of hydrofoils to lift the AC72 catamarans out of the water was a Team New Zealand innovation, despite…
Sailing Tasmania: Bucket list cruising across the Bass Strait
“No pizza today.” When this announcement is made at Port Cygnet Sailing Club, all conversations among members in the clubhouse stop. “The pizza guy says it’s too hot. He won’t…
LA 28: The modern trailable boat that’s cold-molded from mahogany
Appropriately, it’s a long train ride through thick, thick forest before I reach the LA Yachts yard on the banks of Lake Müritz in central Germany. This seems apposite because…
Jet stream: Everything you need to know about its effect on sailing
What is the jet stream? The jet stream is a ‘river’ of strong wind high in the atmosphere which is caused by the unequal heating of the spinning earth. It…
How to change sails at night: Pip Hare shares her top tips
Before dark As routine, discuss what sail changes may be required overnight then set up as much as possible before dark. This helps minimise snags and should include checking sheets…
Donald Crowhurst: The fake round-the-world sailing story behind The Mercy
It was while I was researching my book about madness at sea in 2015 that I first heard a movie about Donald Crowhurst was in the works. Several websites published…
Monofoil: The pocket rocket that can foil in just 8 knots of breeze
The spectacle of a flying catamaran, be it an Olympic Nacra 17, a GC32, the recent America’s Cup 50-footers, or anything in between, has become almost normal in today’s racing…
Dismasted at sea: What to do during and after a dismasting
During the 2017 Rolex Fastnet Race, my yacht Olympia’s Tigress, a Beneteau First 40, lost her rig through a simple split pin failure. We were 40 miles offshore at the…
Naish inflatable wing-surfer: The engine for a wing-foil
First came sailing and surfing, then windsurfing, before kiteboarding, paddleboarding and more recently foiling arrived to light up the watersports market. The trend for 2019 is this Wing-Surfer or wing-foil…
Sailing Antarctica: Record-breaking voyage around the southern continent
Many believe number seven to be lucky. The seventh day of February proved to be just that. It’s seven weeks since we dropped the lines in Cape Town; the Amundsen…
Revolver: Bruce Ritchie’s gentleman’s racer blends traditional and modern craftsmanship
“I wasn’t expecting this,” said Michael Ritchie when his 83-year-old father Bruce showed him the lines he had drawn up for his ‘gentleman’s racer’. “It was a nice surprise,” concedes…
Race countdown: How to time the starting sequence perfectly
Starting a yacht at the right end of the line at target speed is very much a team game. On boats longer than 40ft, vital input comes from the bow…
Monaco Yacht Show 2019 preview: First look at super-luxe Origin [sponsored post]
One would never be able to guess that he was days away from unveiling his brand new creation, Origin, at this year’s annual gala at the star-studded Monaco Yacht Show.…
How to avoid grounding: Top tips from pro sailor Pip Hare
The 2017 investigation into the grounding of a Clipper Round the World yacht in South Africa delivered some interesting lessons for us all. The most notable points were that: the…
Sailing South Georgia: The inside story of Skip Novak’s 2018 expedition
We were eight days out from the south coast of South Georgia and once again we had skied smack into a full-blown white-out. There was nothing for it but to…
Ràn VII: On board the Stealth Bomber of the Fast 40+ class
Some boats are the sum of their parts, but Rán VII is really the sum of the parts that aren’t there. It is characterised by a focus on reduction –…
Sailing across the Atlantic: Bluewater veterans share top tips for your first crossing
On the afternoon before we left the Canary Islands for the Caribbean for a transatlantic with the ARC, I struck a line through the final item on our jobs list.…
Road to the America’s Cup podcast episode 1: Imagining the AC75
There is no doubt that the AC75 is a remarkable boat; a monohull designed to fly, engineered to reach speeds that were inconceivable to sailors less than half a generation…
Fastnet Race 1979: Restored survivor Assent heads back to the Rock
It’s a gloomy, grey afternoon on the Solent and I’m in a camera boat taking pictures of a yacht sailing off Lymington. There’s a light breeze blowing and a moody,…