Yachting World July 2020

At last, we are getting back out on our boats again and making new plans for the season. During lockdown, many with yachts lying idle were quizzed by about the idyllic notion of sitting it all out while living board. But the reality was disturbingly different from the fantasy. For cruisers sailing between islands or on a circumnavigation, the sudden lockdown caught them unawares, scrabbling for entry, or with diminished options for onward passage. An Australian skipper in the Maldives who writes on page 48, found his paradise visit turned into an imprisonment, and had a nightmare dilemma about the next thousands of miles. There are no neat lessons learned to be deduced from these exceptional experiences; they are straight from the category ‘stuff happens’. In this issue we also…

Cup race director appointed Iain Murray has been appointed as regatta director to the next America’s Cup in New Zealand in 2021. Murray held the same post in 2013 in San Francisco, has a long history with the Cup, racing for Australia three times since 1983 and competing in the Star class at the 2008 Olympics. Pacific race goes online Despite being cancelled in real life, the 3,570-mile Transpac Tahiti Ocean Race due to leave Los Angeles in May has been replaced with an online alternative. The organisers are teaming up with Virtual Regatta to offer a simulated online version of the race to challenge all sailors. Read more about the eSailing boom from page 110. Dutch in for Ocean Race A Dutch entry has been announced for the Ocean…

A new race to the Arctic in July is to be run for the IMOCA 60 class as a qualifier for the Vendée Globe round the world race in November. It takes the place of the Transat Race from France to the US and the New York to Vendée return event, both cancelled due to COVID-19. The Vendée-Arctic-Les Sables d’Olonne race is a radical format that takes solo skippers on a 3,600-mile route heading from the Atlantic coast of France on a course that reaches the limits of the Arctic Circle. Antoine Mermod, president of the IMOCA class, explained: “We’ve got 11 skippers who need to finish their qualifying process [for the Vendée Globe], but to be honest the main goal of this race is to challenge all the skippers.…

All events due to take place this year in Russell Coutts’s grand prix circuit SailGP have been rescheduled for 2021. The ‘Season 2’ series planned for San Francisco in April, New York in June, and in UK and Denmark in August and September are all being moved to the same venues running from April next year. The cancellations are a huge blow for a series attempting to establish itself as the commercial parallel to the America’s Cup, based loosely on the concept of Formula One and with a focus on the value of TV rights. These had been secured for the 2020 season, and earlier this year a minority stake in the company was bought by global entertainment company Endeavor. SailGP has been underwritten by Larry Ellison. Teams have several…

Two beautiful and classic yachts are to be sold at auction on 25 June. The 1926 Herreshoff NY40 Marilee and the famous S&S-designed 12 Metre Enterprise are to be sold individually, without reserve, to the highest bidder. A dozen NY40s were built following a commission in 1920 by the New York Yacht Club. The class raced for only two seasons before World War I put a halt to sailing, but when competition resumed afterwards two new yachts were built, including Marilee in 1926. In the subsequent decades she was cruised, raced and updated, and her original gaffrig was changed to Bermudan. In early 2014 a full restoration got under way to return Marilee to her original shape and lines. A portion of the keel was renewed and approximately 80% of…

All the early transatlantic races were extraordinary quests, as the history of Yachting World relates, writes Nigel Sharp. The inaugural transatlantic race predates our first issue (in 1894), taking place in the winter of 1866. It was arranged, so it is said, after an enormously drunken dinner at the New York Yacht Club. Three schooners competed for a stake of $90,000 and the winner, James Gordon Bennett’s Henrietta, finished at the Needles on Christmas Day having sailed all the way from Sandy Hook, Connecticut, without tacking. The second boat, Fleetwing, lost six men overboard on the eighth day out – there was no hope of retrieving them. Four years later Dauntless, another of Gordon Bennett’s schooners, raced from Ireland to America. Her only opponent was Cambria, sailing across to challenge…