Indice dei contenuti per Spring 2023 in Sailing World

THIS second Thursday in January is a perfect Florida winter morning, the sort of weather the local chamber of commerce dials up regularly—a light easterly breeze barely ruffling the shallow, pristine waters of Sarasota Bay. Along the beach that fronts the busy Sarasota Sailing Squadron, there is commotion; like every early Thursday morn from September through May, several dozen seasoned gals known as the Luffing Lassies, almost all with their diverse and accomplished working lives in the rearview mirror—and none of whom will be remotely mistaken for college kids—are rigging up their prams, 420s and Sunfish for their weekly fix of sailboat racing. This particular Thursday, however, is somewhat different: It is the running of the 24th Annual Lilly Kaighan Memorial Regatta, so named for the Lassies’ founder, the somewhat…

USING the term “epic” too often makes one a kook. It’s equally uncool to overhype one’s sailing experiences because, let’s face it, there’s always someone who has won more, sailed faster or gone to a cooler place. The summer of 2022, however, was truly epic for Jesse Andrews, the Pied Piper of Hawaii’s Kaneohe Bay, whose followers stormed North America and Europe, and ascended to performance sailing’s world stage. Under Andrews’ direction, these young sailors are charging hard in the Waszp and Olympic iQFoil classes today, and getting serious looks to fill slots on the rosters of youth and women’s America’s Cup development teams. Kaneohe sailing’s epic and timely ascent into everyone’s collective radar has been a long time coming, but the whole phenomenon was accelerated when the US Sailing…

THERE must be something in the soil at Point Farm in Warren, Rhode Island. On this land, Steve Clark has reaped everything from traditional dories to C-class catamarans to International Canoes, and all sorts of genetically modified vessels in between. His latest crop is a brand-new International 110 crafted from sheets of mere marine plywood. Members of the International 110 class talked about the creation of a kit boat for decades. When Clark rejoined the class, the dream became reality in short order. As the previous co-owner of Vanguard Sailboats, Clark was accustomed to building 3,000 sailboats per year. In the glory days, it took his firm about 18 hours to build a Sunfish. Why is he putting his time and talent into building a kit for a one-design first…

Karl Anderson is working in his shop when he stops to answer what should be a straightforward question: How many boats do you own? After a lengthy pause, the 64-year-old responds, “I don’t even know.” Yet the answer can be found with a thorough inspection of the grounds outside the door of Karl’s Boat Shop in Harwich, Massachusetts. What a passing motorist on Great Western Road might assume is just another Cape Cod nautical junkyard has an eclectic collection of vessels ranging from beautifully maintained racers to unfinished projects. Anderson owns a lot of them—some by choice, a few by trade, but most by chance or unpaid invoices. When I pay him a visit, and our discussion turns to an obscure design by Ray Hunt, Anderson perks up. “I have…

WITH big breeze, blue water and waves, Key West has long been an ideal stage to spotlight the newest grand-prix sailing toys, which now include the emerging Cape 31 One-Design class. At the Southernmost Regatta in January, five crews of these 31-footers marked its North American arrival, and the class stole the show. The Mark Mills-designed and South African-built sportboat has gained international attention as a high-performance speedster that is competitive in all breeze conditions. “The inspiration for the Cape 31 came from renowned Scottish yacht racer Lord Irvine Laidlaw, who wanted to provide a boost to the Cape Town yachting community with a cutting-edge boat that could be built locally and offer youth sailors a compelling reason to step up to big boats,” Mills says. “It needed to offer…

FOR sailing fans visiting from outside France, the Route du Rhum is a cultural shock, barely to be believed even once seen. It is France’s oldest singlehanded race, first held in 1978, and run every four years from St. Malo in northern France 3,500 miles across the North Atlantic to Guadeloupe. The fleet of 138 boats that assembled for the start in November 2022 was incredible, with an estimated value of 260 million euros—from the implausible 100-foot Ultime trimarans to a record fleet of 38 IMOCA 60s and a similarly impressive fleet of 55 Class40s. Dock sides are crammed with spectators, many hoping to catch a glimpse of the top skippers—some are genuine sports stars. Had the 2022 start not been delayed, French President Emmanuel Macron was to have attended.…

FORTY-FIVE years into college sailing as a head coach, Ken Legler is clear: You can coach starting technique, but only experience can teach it. And nobody wins much without it. And I’m clear that nobody argues much with Ken Legler. So, if you feel a trembling in the power of the Force toward the end of this spring semester, you will know that Legler really has followed through and hung up his coaching tools after dishing out experience to generations of Tufts University Jumbos. Forty-five years, including 43 at Tufts and even more before he became head coach? Heck, he was already coaching when he was still in school. The rest was as natural as learning to smell a windshift. As a coach, Legler’s results speak for themselves. But we…

TRAINING alone in their International 470 off the south shore of Long Island, New York, in the summer of 2021, Louisa Nordstrom and Trevor Bornarth were a world away from the spectacle of the Tokyo Games. There, Olympians Stu McNay and Dave Hughes rolled their sails together for the last time, marking the end of the individual men’s and women’s Olympic 470 disciplines and the beginning of the new Mixed Olympic 470 era. For Nordstrom and Bornarth, and many young sailors looking to reach the pinnacle of dinghy sailing, this new coed medal provides a unique opportunity to compete in the Paris and Los Angeles Games. “It (the switch to a mixed class) does level the playing field a little bit for a new sailor coming into the fleet because…

SAILBOAT racing is all about choices. Go offshore or hug the coast? Change the jib now or wait till the turning mark? Do we spend the budget on new sails or a coach? Every choice is a risk. Get it right and you gain; get it wrong and you lose. But this is sailing, and there is an existential element to the sport that exists in few others; sometimes the choices are more serious, and coming last in the race is the least of your problems. Just such a decision came up on the third leg of the 2017-18 Volvo Ocean Race from Cape Town, South Africa, to Melbourne, Australia. It was December 12, 2017, and the whole fleet was sailing east, tracking the movement of a low-pressure system, when…