Author: Chris Szepessy

In February, our friends at Clagett Sailing announced the members of Team Clagett for 2025. These five sailors will be representing Clagett Sailing at the 2.4mR World Championship, hosted by Fraglia Vela (Sailing Brotherhood) Malcesine in Veneto, Italy in October. Among those who’ll be racing these “one-person keelboats for all” on spectacular Lago di Garda is longtime North Sails Sales/Ops representative Chuck Allen. © Will Keyworth Photography “I grew up in Wickford, Rhode Island,” says Chuck, who…

By Gail M. Martin   Roger Francis Winiarski learned to love sailing at an early age. His parents relocated to Tiverton, RI from Fall River, MA in 1953, a couple years before the Tiverton Yacht Club moved into its new building a few steps from his parents’ house. He could probably see the colorful Candy Class sailboats sailing around the Tiverton Basin from his yard! He learned to sail by going with other kids after his first…

By Gail M. Martin   In the early 1920s, sailing and racing began in earnest for one-design classes. Among them was a small Marconi rigged catboat called the Candy class. The designer, T. Elton Wood, had children of his own, and his daughter Virginia was already an accomplished sailor at 14 years old. However, he envisioned other young people would also be attracted to this sport, so he designed a small, sturdy 13-foot boat with a hard…

It’s more of a red teardrop, actually, plotted almost exactly on a dot-and-dashed line that splits Cold Spring Harbor in half, the Town of Huntington in Suffolk County, NY on one side, the Town of Oyster Bay in Nassau County on the other. The story this spot tells is the water quality history of monitoring station FB-1, location at 40.87277778 degrees latitude, -73.47361111 longitude. In a few clicks, you can find the results of a few hundred…

Our friends at Sound Sailing Center won their class at the 51st St. Thomas International Regatta in their Caribbean racer/cruiser Tatihou, a 2012 Jeanneau 409. Club members had sailed Tatihou from Connecticut to Bermuda and on to St. Thomas in December, as they have done for many years, and have now notched their second win in the Jewel of Caribbean Racing, hosted by the St. Thomas Yacht Club March 28-30.   “I had Tatihou remeasured this year…

By Aurora “Rory” Meunier Mott Photos by the author and Erica Lush     Who knew that a meeting over coffee would lead to a plane ticket to France? At the end of December 2024, I was invited to a breakfast meet and greet with my friend Ellie Menezes (with whom I’ve been sailing for about five years), Joe Cooper (my Prout Sailing coach) and shorthanded offshore racer Erica Lush. I’d heard of Erica and wanted to…

Editor’s note: In mid-March, four sailors from Connecticut and Rhode Island traveled to the Principality of Monaco to compete in the Tropheé Virginie Hériot, an all-women’s regatta hosted by the Yacht Club de Monaco and sailed in J/70s. The event celebrates Virginie Hériot (1890-1932), who was known as ‘Madame de la Mer.’ She is the first woman to win an Olympic Sailing gold medal, as part of a mostly male 8 Metre team at the 1928 Amsterdam…

The 4th Annual CT Sea Music Festival will drop anchor in historic downtown Essex the weekend of June 6-9. This family-friendly weekend includes a Symposium on the Music of the Sea, free daytime workshops and concerts featuring local, regional, and international maritime performers, a family stage, demonstrations of sailor skills, sails on the Connecticut River, a Sunday morning revival-style hymn sing, and late-night Chantey Sings in the Griswold Inn and the Essex Corinthian Yacht Club. Evening concerts are…

Aquador Boats, known for their premium Scandinavian design and exceptional craftsmanship, are now available in the U.S., exclusively distributed by SailTime. This marks a major milestone for boating enthusiasts seeking stylish and high-quality vessels     Aquador models will be available for direct retail purchase as well as through PowerTime, SailTime’s powerboat ownership and membership program. PowerTime members can enjoy hassle-free boating with access to a fleet of premium powerboats at locations nationwide. The latest PowerTime base…

New “club” boat is versatile, affordable and fun Bill Crane, Karl Ziegler and a group of influential marine industry experts and professionals launched the Storm Marine Group last year to take institutional boat building to the next level, and the Storm 18 is their first major product. Their 18-foot lifting keel sloop will be formally released soon, fulfilling the need for a new Ideal 18.     Institutional (or “club”) boats are typically acquired as fleets by…