You can take the sailor out of racing, but you can’t take racing out of the sailor. So, when Nicolas Berenger, product and commercial director of Dufour Yachts, tells me that we might have to tuck in a reef as we head out for the afternoon on the new Dufour 41 on the Bahia de Palma in Mallorca, I’m …
DetailsI was launching a one-person plywood dinghy named Loner that a friend and I had just built, when the original boat girl walked by on the city dock in St. Augustine, Florida. Clad in a tennis skirt and yacht brokerage T-shirt, with bleach-blonde hair and her equally blonde little daughter in tow, …
DetailsWhen Marvin Creamer, a retired geography professor and lifelong sailor, set out from Cape May, New Jersey, on Dec. 21, 1982, aboard the Ted Brewer-designed Goderich 35 Globe Star, the voyage upon which he was embarking “should have been the fiasco that many had predicted.” Creamer intended to …
Details“Vous parlez Français?” An elderly man was addressing me over breakfast at an inn in the French seaside village of La Trinite-Sur-Mer. “No, désolé, just English e un po’ d’Italiano.” I made an apologetic face. He shrugged, and I poured myself some tea. The quilt of fog from the day before had …
DetailsThe 2023 Marion to Bermuda Race, which departed Marion, Massachusetts, on June 16, will be remembered for a new course speed record and as one of the toughest endurance tests in the race’s long history. While line honors for sailing 705 nautical miles in 2 days, 17 hours, 16 minutes, 14 seconds …
DetailsLeg 7Leg 7 started off with a bang—literally—when Guyot-Environment hit 11th Hour Racing Team. Visibility is limited on IMOCA 60s, and a simple port-starboard crossing ended in disaster, when Guyot-Environment was unable to avoid the American boat. Both teams were forced to retire from the race, …
DetailsFor certain sailors, boats from Swedish builder Hallberg-Rassy are the stuff of dreams, synonymous with stout, go-anywhere yachts delivered in a gorgeous, thoughtful package that makes sailing a pleasure. Hallberg-Rassy’s newest addition, the 400, more than meets this expectation in a powerful, …
DetailsIn 1942, Ray Greene and Company changed the face of boatbuilding when they built the first viable polyester-fiberglass composite boat. These materials meant that boats could be built cheaper and faster than traditional wood hulls, and new shapes became plausible. The decades that followed were …
DetailsIn Cape Horn: The Logical Route, Bernard Moitessier wrote about the joy of sailing into a harbor at night. Not just entering a harbor, but sailing in. “It is wonderful to enter a harbor at night. A hundred times better than in the day,” he wrote. “For in daylight, you’re always a bit inhibited by …
DetailsYou know you’ve nailed the start of a race when, after just one tack, you’re crossing the rest of the fleet’s bows. That’s a familiar story for Chris Maas and his brother, Alex, when they race Slipper, a tantalizingly elegant and wickedly fast 27-foot wood-and-carbon daysailer that Chris designed …
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