Racing

By Diane Kropfl & Eileen Campbell, Ms. Race Co-Chairs The Atlantic Highlands Yacht Club on the beautiful Sandy Hook Bay in Atlantic Highlands, NJ hosted their 15th annual Ms. Race on Saturday, August 17. This race is hosted by and for women sailors, with the support of the entire club and local community. This all-women event supports the local charity, 180 Turning Lives Around, that is dedicated to protecting, advocating and supporting victims of domestic violence and…

After an estimated 76,000 combined hours of fabrication and finishing work by the production and shore teams of New York Yacht Club American Magic, the U.S. Challenger’s first AC75 racing boat was officially named and launched at the team’s base in Portsmouth, Rhode Island on Saturday morning, September 14.   Named Defiant, the cutting-edge foiling monohull is the first America’s Cup class boat built to represent the New York Yacht Club in more than 16 years. The boat underwent initial testing on Narragansett Bay earlier in the week. Defiant was constructed at a dedicated…

By Kate Wilson, risingT Media It was a real test of patience for the 99 boats that attempted the 92nd Annual Conanicut Yacht Club Around The Island race on Sunday, Septemebr 1. Under a light northerly breeze, the Race Committee, led by Principal Race Officer Mark Grosby, started the first of ten fleets at 1100, but soon after the third fleet started, the wind completely shut off. The plan was to send the sailors counter-clockwise around Jamestown,…

By Barby MacGowan, Media Pro International For a 15th year, the Ida Lewis Distance Race indulged competitive racing sailors in an overnight sprint that proved both challenging and extraordinary. Thirty-one teams, in five classes for boats of 28 feet and longer, set out after noontime on Friday, August 16 to engage in a 110-mile course that took them from the start off Fort Adams in Newport, RI, past Castle Hill to Buzzards Bay Tower, then to a mark southwest of Block…

By Meg Reilly, Co-skipper Ocean Racers On Wednesday, August 28, a group of curious offshore sailors gathered at the Essex Yacht Club in Essex, CT for the second installment of the Essex Ocean Racing Forum. The quarterly meeting fell on a stormy summer night, providing the perfect complement to the event’s subject matter. The crowd was filled with commodores, various club members, Newport Bermuda racers, and seasoned blue-water cruisers. Hundreds of thousands of ocean mile experiences were…

By Rob Penner, 11th Hour Racing Team Communications Director Two-time Volvo Ocean Race participants Charlie Enright (Bristol, RI) and Mark Towill (Honolulu, HI), Co-Founders of 1 Degree, recently announced that they have formally renewed their team’s sponsorship with 11th Hour Racing for a long-term and visionary campaign, with their eyes set on the 2021-22 edition of “The Ocean Race” (formerly the Volvo Ocean Race). The team will be named “11th Hour Racing” after its title sponsor – Rhode…

By David Seabrook   I’ve served on race committee for the Indian Harbor Yacht Club Classic Yacht Regatta on and off since 2012, but this year’s edition, on Saturday, September 14, was the first time I’ve noticed a hipster millennial among the competitors. With a long, square-cut beard and a rail-thin physique, he looked right out of Brooklyn central casting. What was he doing at a classic yacht regatta in Greenwich, CT? Maybe he’d come to celebrate…

By Tom Darling Two classic Herreshoff designs, conceived Thanksgiving 1913 and born July 4, 1914. On August 18, 2019, they met on a racecourse for the first time in their sailing histories. This is the story of “The Herreshoff Twins,” a pair of Newport 29s named Dolphin and Mischief, and of their younger distant cousin, Rogue. The Twins are two of four Newport 29s, 35’ 6” overall, over eight tons displacement, and clouds of sail for inshore…

By Christian E. Hoffman MIDN USN, Varsity Offshore Sailing Team Captain Being the skipper of a service academy racing yacht, particularly on the United States Naval Academy Varsity Offshore Sailing Team (VOST), provides both challenges and hardships, but results in incredible reward. Each summer VOST crews depart from Annapolis, MD in vessels ranging from a Reichel/Pugh 66 to Navy 44s. Whether you are competing in an offshore distance race from Marion to Bermuda or buoy racing in…

By Nick Bowen The Twenty Hundred Club is a vibrant and growing sailboat racing club on Narragansett Bay that has a wide range of races including island circumnavigations, destination races and pure adventure races (spoiler alert – “Twenty Hundred [hours]” refers to the starting time of the club’s first race in 1946). The club is experiencing a growth spurt, with 60 boats participating in the 2018 season.   The season begins with the Around Aquidneck Island [Newport]…