Tabla de contenidos para Spring 2025 en Sailing World

NEVER before in our lifetime have we been so reliant on technology. For an aging Gen Xer, it’s a frightening and dangerous place to be. Our phones are loaded with apps that drive and distract our daily lives. We’re shackled to our computers for productivity, creativity and connection. And even on the racecourse now, once a place of digital escape, we’re less able to get around the buoys without staring at displays, or now having a screen to tell us how close we are to the starting line. Indeed, digital creep into every aspect of our sport is real, but when tech eventually glitches—as we know it will—we find ourselves either apoplectic, confused, angry or unsure what to do. We might ask ourselves what we did before we became so…

ON the morning of the final day of the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in St. Petersburg, Florida, sailors were pacing the new docks of St. Petersburg YC in anticipation of a high-wind outing on Tampa Bay. With flags whipping and rigging whistling, there was equal parts trepidation and anticipation. Ultimately, a few classes and individual sailors opted to stay ashore—A Class Catamarans, S2 7.9s, Windmills and Hobie 33s—but those who did rig up and venture out for final races were rewarded with spectacular fast races and stories to share. “I’m glad we went out,” said International Lightning Class champion and president Dave Starck. Starck and his teammates—brother Tom and forward crew Becca Jordon—were sitting on a 1-point lead, so the goal for the day was simple: Minimize their…

IN recent years, there has been renewed interest in the Universal Rule, introduced by Nathaniel Herreshoff in the late 1890s. The rule aligned with letters of the alphabet, with I being the largest class, followed by the infamous J Class down to the S Class, a small open daysailer still actively raced in the US. European preservationists have long maintained many of these yachts and their history. The P Class is one of the Universal Rule era that has attracted the strong interest recently from Europe. Over the past 10 years, four of these classics have been found, restored and shipped off to Europe. The class was originally designed to ply New York’s Long Island Sound, Newport and water north of Boston, in the area of Marblehead. The yachts came…

A ONE-DESIGN class fades away when either the building stops or the diehards and old-timers move on. Without sustained and creative efforts to replenish members, the outcome is always inevitable. That’s not the case for the International Lightning Class, however, which is unique because of its generational continuum and the efforts of its faithful to hatch schemes that freshen the bloodlines and get new faces into the slab-sided dinghy designed in 1938 by the late and great Olin Stephens. The class’s perpetual youth boat-grant program, which puts a competitive loaner into the hands of a young team for a season, is successful, but its impact is granular. To shore up another generation, in 2024, the class has cast a wider net with the creation of an “Under 32” movement. The…

THE first three fundamentals for consistent results are focused on tactical rules of thumb, and they are extremely important. No. 1 is to sail in more wind. After all, it’s wind that makes sailboats move, right? You could probably ask someone who’s never raced a sailboat before what would make a sailboat go faster, and they could tell you more wind. So it’s vital to look up the course before the start and, when you’re going upwind, to be obsessed with hunting for more breeze. When you’re going downwind, you will be looking behind you. As simple as this might sound, it’s amazing how many eyes on most boats are looking forward. Darker water texture is what you’re looking for. More wind creates a darker look because the wind creates…

The Royal Ocean Racing Club’s now-classic Caribbean 600, which starts and finishes in Antigua after snaking through nearly a dozen islands, once again provided perfect conditions. On start day in mid-February, the fleet set off in 16- to 20-knot easterly trades, beating toward Antigua’s windward side. On board Bryon Ehrhart’s 88-footer, Lucky—a machine that likes reaching more than beating—we couldn’t wait to get to the top, crack sheets, and show the fleet what this monster is capable of. After weaving through the early starters and swapping tacks with the upwind-oriented boats in our class, the moment came to get the fractional code zero on the stick. Our plan was to sail triple-headed to Barbuda, a 120-degree true-wind-angle reach. Lucky’s skilled foredeck team and sail-handlers got the required sails on deck,…

ABIE McLaughlin, age 38, had a breakout year in 2024, achieving a hat trick of North American championship wins in the J/88, Tartan 10 and S2 7.9 classes. Having quickly earned a reputation as a skilled and dedicated amateur sailor, she is now in demand as one of the best foredeck crews you’ve never heard of—until now. McLaughlin’s low-key personality has kept her under the radar. Based in Cleveland, Ohio, she’s been sailing with Trey Sheehan’s and John Evans’ Hooligan and Airplane programs for several years, racing shoulder to shoulder with professional sailors on the TP52s, Tartan 10s, J/70s and more. She’s often one of only a few amateurs on the boat she races and, more often than not, she’s the only woman. You’ll find her on the pointy end,…

THE times, they are indeed a-changin’, and that’s OK, but with sailboat racing, there’s one thing that should never, ever change: It has to be fun. No matter where we race, what we race, or how we race, the point of it all is to enjoy our time on the water, harnessing the wind and sailing to the best of our abilities. The “how we do it” is a hot topic today as clubs, classes, and regatta organizers adapt to changing demands on our free time and resources. While participation in bigger boats is declining almost every-where in our traditional weekend venues, there are many instances where participation is increasing or becoming more prevalent. Casual weeknight racing, for one, is a bright spot, as are pursuit races catering to newcomers…

WRONG over the nearly 30,000 miles of the Vendée Globe: routing and tactical errors, boat breakages, collisions, sheer bad luck—you name it. And that’s why Frenchman Charlie Dalin’s victory in the 2024-25 edition is indeed so rare. Four years ago, Dalin was first across the finish line but was relegated to second place on corrected time when runner-up Yannick Bestaven, of France, was awarded a time bonus for helping in the rescue of a rival and declared the winner. It was fair enough, but the result left a feeling of unfinished business for Dalin, a modest and self-effacing character from the French port city of Le Havre. But Dalin didn’t let it get the better of him. Instead, together with his team, he set about trying to do the impossible…

A FEW few days after I raced with Mike Toppa for the first time, I found myself still marveling at his quiet impact on board. Over two light-air days, he’d managed to strengthen and improve an already strong team of a dozen sailors—even though he’d raced on that particular boat only a few times before. Of course, this is a guy who’s spent the past five decades making a variety of sailboats go faster, so all of us were quite ready to listen. But still I wondered: How does he step into what is basically a new “office” every regatta and instantly improve the team’s performance? Most of our lively conversation during a sit-down focused on superyacht racing because big crews are Toppa’s biggest team-building challenge. But his approach can…

IT’S a cold winter day in Boston, but it’s also the first practice session of the season for the Harvard sailing team’s twin brothers, Justin and Mitchell Callahan. They’re anxious to get on the water, but the wind is gusting to 25, whistling through the city streets. The air temperature is 36 degrees, but the Charles River is frozen, so the sailors transport nine dinghies to Boston’s frigid harbor to practice. It might be a frigid one, but it is just another day in the sailing life of these 21-year-old juniors who have been racing since their earliest days. Both have high aspirations in sailing and their careers after college, and both are off to incredible beginnings. Justin and Mitchell grew up sailing in Miami and Newport, Rhode Island, and…

TONY Lush was in trouble—the deep, dangerous sort that you can get yourself into only when you race sailboats alone across vast oceans. It was late November 1982. Two weeks earlier, Lush had set sail from Cape Town, South Africa, bound for Sydney, Australia, on Leg 2 of the inaugural BOC Challenge solo round-the-world race. The night before, his 54-foot Lady Pepperell had pitchpoled in the Indian Ocean—“a somersault with a twist” is how he later described it—which he confirmed by noting that the masthead instruments on his cat-ketch rig had vanished. Those spars were still standing. The larger problem was the twisted keel that appeared ready to fall off. In a race full of characters, Lush stood apart. Several years earlier, he’d gotten into single-handed sailing as a student…

Close your eye and imagine yourself sailing hard on the wind in a small keelboat. Both jib and main are sheeted firm. One leg is extended, braced against the opposite cockpit wall. A warm cushion softens the hard deck. A carbon tiller extension lies weightless across your lap; your other hand cradles a cleated mainsheet. The boat is heeled, 10 degrees or so, the bow gently and rhythmically cleaving the chop. There’s a soft gurgle from the transom. Everything is so perfectly in balance—the way an exceptional sailboat should be—so you unhand it all to reach back to pull a cold one from its ice bath. Crack it open. Gaze forward to a straight horizon, let the wind blow across your face and allow the boat to sail itself true…

BEFORE we tackle the hardware phase of the Still 2 Crazy project, let’s rewind for a moment to its beginnings. My father, Jon Shampain, and his boat partner, Robert Plant—with my help—purchased and started a full rehab of a vintage 1996 Melges 30, a sportboat that had runners, an articulating bowsprit, and overlapping genoas. Dad and Plant started by stripping the boat completely, even removing the chainplates. Then every hole was filled, and delamination in the gelcoat was ground away, filled, and faired. Because the boat is now almost three decades old, we added knees under the stanchions and ribs under the genoa lead system to prevent the deck from flexing. We also added laminate under areas where we knew there would be high loads, such as under padeyes and…

THE tidy Vakaros RaceSense platform is gaining wider usage across many one-design classes and is universally lauded by the sailors. As a race officer with the New York YC, I and many others, have been working with engineers at Velocitek for several seasons to develop a similar system. The platform has gone from using the same L1-L5 GPS technology used in RaceSense to now using Real Time Kinematics technology. This, we’re certain, gives us next-level starting accuracy. Real Time Kinematics is essentially a GPS standard that achieves accuracy through using differential positioning. This requires the use of two separate receivers, a base station and a “rover” to correct errors in real time. The base station is set up in a relatively stable (onshore) environment within 12 km of the…

I’m told that “heel it ‘til you feel it” is the buzz phrase among young pro-sailing rock stars lately. But I’m pretty sure they’re not talking about the feeling of cold water rushing up your pant leg. This new obsession with heel angle might be too confusing for the average sailor. In the old days, the angle of horizon out in front of the bow was a perfectly useful reference. It wasn’t a precise measurement by any means, but somehow it translated just fine for a generation of seat-of-the-pants sailors. I suspect that nowadays the skipper’s reliance on a tiny screen at the mast displaying the boat’s heel angle is also a root cause of a lot of the distracted driving that we’re seeing on the racecourse. Get back to…