Table of contents for Spring 2020 in Sailing World

There are mere inches between us as we round the leeward mark, aligned bow to stern. I’m first around and arc gracefully through the turn, onto port tack. My turn is a good one; I pull the mainsheet, the sail loads, and I can feel the acceleration. It’s a beautiful feeling. The play is to get right where there’d been more breeze earlier in the day, as well as the occasional right shift. My bow is pointed toward the open course, and Adam is right behind me. All I have to do is stay between him and the next mark, and I’ll have my first race win of the season. I tell myself to exhale, relax and stay in tune with the boat. Don’t get slow, pay close attention to…

Ken Read, one of the biggest names in sailing, admits he’s seen the light. Looking out from his ivory tower at the top of the sport, the 58-year-old yachtsman’s view has been clouded by the ease of his grand-prix lifestyle. Jetting into superyacht regattas in the Med and tearing across open oceans on a 100-footer was easy for this guy. In the distant past are the experiences that made him the natural sailor he is today. Back when he was making a name for himself in the J/24 class and racking up world championships and scoring a Rolex or two, he and his buddies had to do things themselves. Then came America’s Cup gigs, big-boat programs, two Volvo Ocean Race campaigns, and his ascent to the top of the food…

Meat, meet rail. Rail, meet Meat. It’s a tongue twister for sure, but that’s the essence of John Madey and Marco Heuer’s crew-management website, RailMeets, which aims to take the hassle out of team building and management, and essentially put—and keep—butts on the rail. Think of it as Match.com for sailboat racers and as at least one reason why boat owners can no longer say, “I can’t find crew.” Madey, a past Chicago Corinthian Yacht Club commodore, heard the same complaint plenty of times over the years, as did Heuer. Existing crewfinder boards are one way for sailors to connect, but Madey and Heuer felt most are limited, with “old technology and not pretty or functional.” Madey, who races his J/92 Cyclone in the Chicago area, says Heuer came to…

It might be the first time I’ve laughed from absurdity, with uncontrollable amusement at my surroundings and the general state of things. The instruments have us consistently zooming at 30-something knots, but it’s blowing only 20-something outside our vomit comet. We’re not surfing waves. The Atlantic is flat, and our performance is 100 percent by design. We are foiling through a dark, moonless night at optimal speed in optimal conditions somewhere off the coast of Brazil, bound for France. It’s 2 a.m., and I’m lying on top of a pile of unclaimed gear bags and a thin foam pad that is supposed to be used on a bunk. But there is no bunk on this vessel, and there is nowhere else to go inside this 60-footer designed for one sailor.…

On Wednesday, June 20, 1979, while sailing in a qualifying race for the OSTAR (Original Single-Handed Transatlantic Race), Jan Gougeon’s self-designed and built 31’ trimaran FLICKA was capsized by heavy seas in the North Atlantic. Jan survived on the overturned plywood/epoxy multihull for four days before he was rescued by a passing freighter. The following is the transcript of a phone call between Jan, his brothers Meade and Joel, as well as fellow multihull designer/sailor Mike Zuteck. Their discussion takes place on June 26, 1979, just hours after the freighter that rescued Jan delivered him to dry land. FLICKA was never recovered. We’ve divided their lengthy discussion into two parts. In this first installment, Jan discusses FLICKA’s capsize, what it was like surviving in the upside-down trimaran. Jan Gougeon: The…

Small communities benefit when local groups work together to produce results greater than the sum of their individual efforts. Three organizations combined their efforts to create such synergy in a coastal county on Lake Huron. The Iosco County Family Court, local Elks Lodge 2525 and Heritage Coast Sailing and Rowing (HCS&R) combined efforts to develop a positive training program for youthful offenders and provide a staunch safety boat for the new not-for-profit sailing school. The Juvenile Enhanced Accountability Program (JEAP), a Family Court Program, gives youthful offenders a chance to complete their court-ordered community service, in this case, by building a boat while increasing their manual and group skills. Elks Lodge 2525 has a long and laudable community service history. They have worked with the JEAP program for several years…

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We’re now 10 days into our immersion in the M32 catamaran scene. We’re walking down the dock at Shake-A-Leg on the second day of the M32 Miami Winter Series. The boys—Gordon, Chris, Riley and Key—all sporting their Young American team shirts, stroll past the other perfectly polished and vinyl-wrapped race boats. I can sense their anticipation and excitement growing as we make our way past. As I walk behind them, I notice a little more pep in their step, the soreness from the previous day’s racing barely noticeable. Berthed at the far end of the dock is our boat—two starkwhite hulls with light-blue decking and black trim. The boat is owned by Sail Newport, the community sailing organization in Newport, Rhode Island, so it’s not technically “ours,” but we’re campaigning…

As we stand outside the doors of the Pewaukee YC bar, a voice booms over the loudspeakers. “And now… the moment you’ve all been waiting for…the infamous E Scow Blue Chip bar walk.” As per tradition, the lastplace team going into Sunday of the regatta must walk across the club’s bar in their underwear. Unfortunately for my crew and me, no races Friday and a horrific Saturday means we’re the night’s entertainment. Anyone who’s been in the game long enough knows that sometimes things just go wrong out there on the racecourse, but I’ve never had more go wrong than my first day at the Blue Chip. On the first beat of the first race, our outhaul shackle snapped, and one of our crewmembers sliced open his thumb trying to…

The wind is howling through Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli Team’s base in Cagliari, Italy, in mid-January. There will be no sailing today, but they’ve already had plenty of whitecap sessions, validating their sleek, black 75-footer all the way to the top of what is yet to be determined as the raceable wind range for America’s Cup in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2021. “We’ve been pushing pretty hard,” Luna Rossa helmsman Jimmy Spithill says. “Most days, we’re off the dock at 7:30.” A few weeks later, a rigging failure resulted in the team’s entire rig timbering over the front of the boat. It’s a new boat—it happens. Better now than later. “We have to take everything to maximum loads,” Spithill says. “The rig, the foils and the hardware—all that takes time.…

AT the 2019 Snipe Worlds in Ilhabela, Brazil, I’d heard a lot about the Brazilian sailor with the nickname “Gigante.” Given the crew is usually the smaller of a Snipe team, and with a name like that, I’d always assumed he was the bigger of the two when I saw them together. Two months later, however, as we walk side by side across the parking lot of the Nassau Yacht Club in the Bahamas, we’re practically eye to eye. It’s Brazilian sarcasm, he tells me, with an engaging grin. “I’ve always been small, since I was a child. So, it’s a kind of joke.” Henrique “Gigante” Haddad, the relatively unknown 32-year-old Snipe World champion, groomed in the rich South American one-design sailing scene, is one of several rookies in the…

“Transformational” is only a word—unless it sticks. Tom Siebel wouldn’t aim lower. He’s had a great run in tech, lately in artificial intelligence, and he’s out to make a difference. Typical of tech-sector folks, Siebel is fond of another word: disruption. Here’s a guy who has sailed all his life, raced MOD70 trimarans, campaigned a J Class yacht, raced whatever because “sailing is magical,” and now, in partnership with US Sailing, he’s launched a nationwide initiative funding quality boats and quality coaching for community sailing venues: the Siebel Sailors Program. Two more words—opportunity and diversity—are also in play. Familiar words. Some people hear them too often, to no effect. What we haven’t seen before is what is on tap now—well-funded levels of resource and support. Maybe, just maybe, this has…

After a successful day of one-design racing, I’m often asked: “What base numbers do you use?” and “What were your rig settings today?” These are common and valid inquiries, and like tuning guides, they’re a great place to start when initially setting up your boat. But at the end of the day, your better-than-average speed usually comes down to knowing how to adapt, on the fly, to changing conditions. It sounds pretty simple: First, identify the problem—inability to point, lack of speed—and then look critically at your setup to find a solution. But there’s a lot more to it than that. Let’s start with a basic principle: A boat is either looking for power, in perfect power or overpowered. You must be able to recognize which is the case in…

In late 2018 my son and I were given a unique opportunity by the Michigan-based Water Wonderland Chapter of the Antique and Classic Boat Society (ACBS) to build an 8' MiniMax hydroplane based on original plans from the early 1960s. Almost anything from that era seems to be popular again. Maybe it’s nostalgia or maybe the designs of that groundbreaking decade were just ahead of their time. Either way, the MiniMax’s appeal seems as relevant today as it did in 1962. We accepted the challenge without hesitation. The youth-centric building project commenced in February 2019 at the Grand Rapids, Michigan Boat Show. We were in front of a live audience, and ACBS members generously donated wood and fasteners. Sons and daughters participated and even younger siblings got involved. Those initial…

Many products, especially boats, are now being manufactured with a process called Vacuum Assisted Resin Transfer Molding (VARTM), also frequently referred to as infusion. The main topics of this article are: what infusion is, how to repair an infused part with vacuum bagging vs. infusion, and the results of our study comparing a vacuum-bagged repaired laminate and an infused repaired laminate. What is Infusion? Infusion uses a vacuum to create a pressure differential between the part and a resin bath which pushes the resin into the dry laminate, wetting it out. To make an infused part the reinforcement fabric and coring are laid dry into a mold with vacuum bag, release fabric, flow media, etc. laid on top of the laminate. Then the vacuum bag is sealed and vacuum is…

Paul Sevigny is on a mission. He wants to slay giants and, along the way, revolutionize the handicap racing scene in America. How’s he going to do that? Win a world championship in a sporty 26-footer, taking down the most expensive and best-prepared racing machines around. The arena for this sailing battle of the ages will be Rhode Island Sound, venue for New York YC’s 2020 ORC/IRC World Championships in early October. He will be stepping onto the battlefield not only for himself and his teammates from Noroton, Connecticut, but also for the good of the common beer-can racing sailor. Should he emerge victorious, he hopes to inspire local handicap racing teams to step up and travel to race weeks, as many big-boat teams did 20 to 30 years ago…

“Mechatronics engineer.” That’s one job title that never existed back in the America’s Cup’s 12-Metre era. But today, every Cup team has a few on payroll. These are the unknown wizards tasked with ensuring that every adjustment on the AC75 is precise. From micro to macro, from the top of the rig to the tip of the foil flap, when and if someone presses a button or pushes a toggle on these complex flying beasts, something logical better happen, and it better be right. Such is the new high-tech domain of modern America’s Cup sailing, one in which software, hardware, electronics, hydraulics and human input interplay through intricate systems. “It is the crux of performance,” says James Lyne, head coach of the New York YC’s American Magic challenge. “The Cup…

THERE IS AN EYE-OPENING video clip posted online from the last day of the 2019 Moth Worlds in Perth, Australia. The drone follows Tom Slingsby as he tears across the finish line, winning the whole enchilada with two races to spare. In a class now populated with high-net, young professional sailors, to win 12 straight races is mind-blowing alone, but the most incredible part of this visual is the outrageous speed. Slingsby’s foils are just shy of perching the surface; there’s minuscule drag, there’s a slight twitch on the helm, and his go-for-it hiking posture is inspiring. In 20-plus knots of breeze, Slingsby, in this moment, and the entire week, is redlining his torpedo-shaped Exocet Moth. Talk about sending it. This is a big deal. Slingsby and the rest of…

The spinnaker provides an excellent cue to driving well downwind. With its light material and large projected area, it can tell you a lot. Does it look powered up and smooth? Is it falling out of the sky and wrinkly? Is there a sudden luff curl with no ease? Is the kite trimmer easing with no curl forming? Vince Brun once told me that the spinnaker is designed to have a flying shape, and you always want to keep it powered up enough to maintain that shape. If you’re going really low in lumpy conditions, and the kite’s bobbling all over the place and it looks distorted, you’re not sailing it how it was designed. Conversely, if you’re sailing too hot of an angle, you’re not only sailing extra distance,…

After a few years of racing on the J22 This Little Piggy, the owner was ready to take a step back and gave me the first option to purchase it. I took advantage of the opportunity. As with many boats I’ve owned over the years, the first couple winters I plan on spending money upgrading and doing repairs. Not that a lot has to be done, but a few changes in hardware placement and re-bedding the deck hardware are at the top of my list. The sea hood of the J22 is the control center with mainsail, jib, and spinnaker halyard cleats along with the pole topping lift and cunningham. In the early days of J22 sailing, everyone was sorting out the best placement for hardware on the sea hood.…

Nonskid surfaces may need to be replaced because they are worn down from years of use, or were removed during a deck repair. If you want to match an existing pattern, flexible molds are available for matching a production boat non-skid pattern or for use if a molded appearance is desired. Molded non-skid surfaces are often very open making them easier to clean and they have a more finished appearance (See Epoxyworks 22, “Repair Non-Skid and get Professional Results”). For applications where it is not practical to use molds, or a simple and functional non-skid surface is desired, there are some easy options. It is important to note that when applying a nonskid surface with epoxy, you’ll need to make it pretty rough because epoxy requires a UV-protective topcoat (typically…