The launching of a new boat is always a special moment, especially for an America’s Cup team, because it’s a defining and major milestone in the campaign. Until the sequential revelations from Emirates Team New Zealand, American Magic, Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli Team and finally Ineos Team UK, development and design had happened behind tightly closed doors or through small-boat testing; we are now in a period of reckoning for the four challengers on a number of fronts.

Internally for each team, the next phase is about validating design tools and debugging many of the new detailed design features found everywhere on the boat. Externally, it’s checking in with the solutions of the other teams and understanding why they chose certain directions. Moving forward from the launches of these first-generation AC75s, design teams will adjust and simulate the different directions, if they haven’t already; but only when the sailing teams actually line up in Cagliari, Italy, at the end of April will we know who is on the best track.

To make an early assessment, we must first consider the overall package, starting with the hull and deck. Considerations of whether the America’s Cup races in Auckland in 2021 will be sailed in foiling conditions or how often or in what windspeed will a team drop off the foils when tacking is important. There is likely much discussion about the minimum true-windspeed in which these boats will race. One thing is for sure, the racing will be pretty boring to watch if these AC75s are not foiling.

Before getting into the details of the ­different solutions, however, it’s important to point out some of the hull and deck limitations defined by the AC75 box rule. The illustration above shows a perimeter line, which is the projected shadow of the boat’s ­outline, down to the measurement water plane (MWL). There are minimum and maximum dimensions that the perimeter line must pass through, or be within, which limits the shapes of the hull to a certain extent. The strictest limits are hull length—basically 68 feet—and beam, which is set at 16 feet.

The deck is also called the upper hull ­surface, and it is anything above this perimeter line. The minimum height of the bowsprit is 3 feet above MWL. The mast-rotation point is specified at 5 feet above MWL and a fixed distance from the transom, so the mast position is set. Another important parameter that affects the ­overall hull and deck shape is the ­cockpit sole, which must be at least 4 inches above the MWL. This leaves a roughly 4-foot ­cockpit cavity to hide the crew below the mast ball. A big, strong grinder (arm grinding is required this time) needs at least 5.5 feet to be mostly upright and efficient.

Other requirements are based on hull volume. For example, a minimum bow volume forward of the 31-foot plane is 40 cubic meters, in consideration of pitch-pole prevention. Similarly, for stability, the 90-degree capsized volume of the hull and deck in the water must be at least 32 inches above MWL, so there needs to be significant volume above the waterline so that the boat will have some tendency to right itself. There are a few other stability requirements to ensure a minimum righting moment with the boat upright, which keeps some level of required transverse waterline fullness.

With the AC75, we probably need to replace the term “sheer line,” which used to be an important aesthetic consideration even with race boats, with the “perimeter line.” The perimeter line, as mentioned earlier, is the outermost portion of the hull tangent to the tumblehome shapes we see on these boats. The packages of both Ineos UK and American Magic push the perimeter line down close to MWL, for a softer leading-edge bow shape and better lead into the airflow around the jib.

Emirates Team New Zealand and Luna Rossa have more slab-sided bow profiles. Three of the teams opted to put the aft perimeter point quite low. Team New Zealand and the Italians look the lowest, with American Magic and the outlier Ineos being the most radical by pushing their middle and aft points at least 1 foot above the mast rotation and carrying their ­maximum beams all the way aft, resulting in a barge‑like appearance.

Again, these are all aerodynamics-based decisions and directly connected with the deck layout, crew positioning and grinding-pedestal heights. Each team is trying to keep crews out of the free stream as much as possible and has chosen to create a centerline deck endplate aft of the mast that tapers down to a narrow trailing edge at the transom. This approach minimizes vortices as the airflow exits the hull.

Each team will eventually seal the mainsail down to this surface for the best efficiency from the mainsail.

The centerline cockpit structure ­essentially locks most of the crew into set positions, so it looks as if three of the teams have chosen to keep all eight grinders in permanent spots (four each to port and starboard), with the helmsmen and trimmer being the only sailors switching sides behind the traveler track. Ineos, in contrast to the other teams, placed two grinding pedestals forward of the helmsman station and two aft, allowing for all of the crew to be on one side of the boat to take advantage of the extra righting moment. This also explains why it carried its maximum beam all the way aft and high—to shield the crew­members and keep them outboard. Maneuvers on Ineos’ Britannia will require a bit more calisthenics and coordination transferring from side to side, as well as the additional weight of four additional grinding pedestals.

Below the perimeter line, differences between the boats are significant as well. Britannia has the fullest shape with the maximum beam extending right down to the waterline and carrying a U-shape aft to the transom. It’s also wider than the minimum 13-foot beam at the transom. It appears the boat might be close to the forward-beam maximum limits too. Britannia’s underbody is fair and smooth, with minimal rocker, which produces a ­shallow dish-like shape. It is by far the most stable hull, which should allow the sails to power up quicker and accelerate for takeoff, but the extra surface area might make it a bit sticky. This transition zone may become a critical area for all the teams.

American Magic’s Defiant has similar full‑hull sections and looks to be close to the maximum forward-beam limits, but with a narrower waterline than Britannia. It also has much softer sections and a strikingly different bulbous bow, which is likely aero-friendly. The transom section looks as if it’s close to the minimum beam limit and has a fairly low aft sheer line.

Prada Luna Rossa and Team New Zealand’s Te Aihe are the most similar with pronounced V-shaped sections blending into a rounded keelson, then blending forward and aft into the hull profile from stem to transom, deepest in the middle—with Prada Luna Rossa looking to be the deepest and sharpest of the two. One thought about the reasoning behind this is that distributing the required volume toward the centerline could allow for more windward heel before the hull edge touches the water. Certainly all hull touchdowns while foiling will be costly regardless of hull shape, but these shapes might reduce the effects of the touchdowns.

I suspect all of these hull and deck shapes are derived primarily based on computational fluid dynamics upwind-foiling velocity predictions. With some baseline sail shapes fixed, each team would have run through a matrix of different hull/deck shapes and crew positions that satisfied the rule limits and refined these shapes and crew arrangements to maximize overall straight-line performance. There are plenty of options here that give similar results. The full-foiling, dynamic simulations are complicated, but it is possible to include tacking and jibing with many assumptions and ­bottom-end limits.

Plenty of other work is being done on displacement sailing and transitions from partial-displacement sailing to foiling takeoff. Displacement foiling transitions require an extensive database to properly support the simulator’s velocity prediction and give useful results without too many assumptions. There is still a lot to learn from sailing these boats at full scale, especially in lower windspeeds. Compared to the AC50 and the AC72, the AC75 is a comparatively heavy boat with a short mast and no wing.

I’m curious to see how each package ­performs in 8 knots of wind—even 10 knots of windspeed—and how much the hull shapes contribute to performance in these marginal conditions. It all begs the question: What is the windspeed required to fly an AC75 around the entire racecourse?

The Foil Packages

From the early launches we’ve seen many different shapes emerge: straight wings, anhedral wings, fences, bulbs, no bulbs and winglets. Hardly surprising. Again, let’s first review the sandbox in which the teams are allowed to play. The trapezoidal area in the illustration below is the only zone in which teams can attach their wings and wing-control systems. Variations seen from each of the teams already are indicative of the many options available.

An additional requirement is ballasting in the wings. The rules mandate a certain level of stability, so the total weight of these wings must be at least 2,000 pounds.

Consequently, the boat’s overall center of gravity is low for low-speed handling. Teams are only allowed to build six wings, but are allowed to change up to 20 percent of the wing weight. Three of the four teams have elected to integrate bulbs into their wing designs. It’s conceivable that 80 percent of the wing weight is in these bulbs, which would allow the three teams to plug multiple wing designs into these same bulbs without them counting toward the six-wing limit.

Emirates Team New Zealand did not go in this direction, which means it could be more confident that it has enough options available and wants to develop shapes without bulbs to distribute the required volume into the foils. Steel has about 70 percent of the density of lead. The bulbs are likely to include lead, and Te Aihe’s foils are most likely all steel.

The flaps on these foils, like those on an airplane, control fly height, but it’s hard to glean much from the photos released to date. There are, however, flaps like those on Britannia that show a distinct line separating the main foil from the flap at around the last 30 percent of the main foil. Morphing foils have been around for some time; the rule requires a distinct axis of rotation for the flap, but allows for flexible material to act as the hinge. Some of the foil-flap ­intersections are indiscernible from the available images, so it is hard to tell exactly what Emirates Team New Zealand is doing here.

The one-design foil arms look pretty chunky, but have been structurally vetted through full-scale testing, which delayed the launches of these AC75s by about six months. The 2 to 4 feet of the foil arm are available for variation. Most teams have pushed to reduce the surface areas and thicknesses here, leading to steps or sharp reductions in the bottom of the foil arm, which will be in the water most of the time.

The above illustration shows the basic-force diagram of an AC75, looking from behind, in the foiling condition. Essentially, the boat’s weight working against the lifting foil provides an available righting moment against which the sails can push with heeling force.

A small portion of this heeling force is actually thrust forward, which is equal to the hydrodynamic drag of the foils in the water and the aero-drag of the boat in the airstream. The game is both maximizing thrust and minimizing drag.

These boats are interesting in that the foil arm can be rotated (or canted) to almost any angle. The farther outboard the foil arm is canted, the more righting moment the boat can develop, which can mean more speed. Many combinations of foil cant, boat-heel angle and fly height need to be quantified. Some early videos of Defiant and Te Aihe show the boats foiling with the hulls quite close to the water.

A boat’s distance to the water needs to be minimized both to increase the righting moment and to seal the lift from the sail plan against the water to reduce the vortices traveling around the hull. The foils need to be as close to the water surface as ­possible without ventilating.

What is under the hood—in other words, the parts we don’t see—might in fact be the most important aspect of the AC75. In the 12-Metre days of the Cup, some of the old guys used to say you could tell who was winning the race by the boat that was more heeled over.

With the AC75, it will likely be the boat with the smoothest flight and the ability to get settled quickly after maneuvers that will win in 2021. That said, all the internal systems controlling the foils and the sails are key elements to stable flight. All four teams promptly launched, sailed and foiled; however it appears that Team New Zealand and perhaps American Magic actually have significant air time.

Team New Zealand appears pretty stable, much like it was in the 2017 Cup with the AC50; no doubt elements from that system have been incorporated into its AC75.

While internal controls are unseen, some portions of the external sail systems show obvious differences. Defiant, for example, sports a conventional boom, as does Te Aihe. However, Te Aihe’s sails extend all the way down to the deck. Britannia and Prada Luna Rossa appear to be boomless, with something closer to battens controlling the lower sail shape. The twin-skin mainsails are on all of the boats as dictated by the rule, along with the one-design mast and rigging.

It also appears that all teams are ­experiencing some downtime as they debug their new boats. These are complicated machines, so technical difficulties are to be expected. Sailing time, however, is precious for continued system development; so the teams must balance reliability versus potential gains because some of these time losses can cascade into larger problems.

While simulators are great training tools, there is no substitute for time on the water, which can lead to further overall development. Deadlines for each team’s second and final packages are fast approaching, and the sailors are eager to be on the water sailing, testing the designs and developing the skills required to sail these boats to their full potential. The first Prada Cup in April will certainly be the first true reckoning of concept, reliability and performance.

The post Exploring The Generation 1 America’s Cup 75 appeared first on Sailing World.

“Windsurfing has been Cancelled.”

If you recall those brazen, arrogant bumper stickers from the early 2000s that sparked an outrage at the dawn of kite­surfing, then you’ll know what I’m talking about. That time Matt Nuzzo and Trip Forman took an Outside magazine writer out for a session, threw windsurfing under the bus and brainwashed the nation. Kiting is the future!

Their timing of that ­subsequent article in 2006, using the sticker’s moniker as a title, was perfect.

Windsurfing’s participation took a nosedive thanks to the equipment-heavy lust for big-wind short­boarding. Nuzzo and Forman, former windsurfers, were young, hip and with their fledgling REAL Kiteboarding operation in Cape Hatteras, were ready to receive a new generation of thrill seekers. Kiteboarding has been the fastest-growing wind-driven watersport ever since.

I was on the beach with those two radicals when they were first being yanked around by ram-air kites at the dawn of this millennium. And I left wind­surfing almost wholesale like many others did in the United States and elsewhere. Less gear, riding in 15 knots or 40 knots, boosting 20-foot airs at will, what could be more exciting?

Maybe those blasphemous marketers were promoting the sign of the times, but it has taken almost 20 years for windsurfing to find its new inspiration. With World Sailing’s election of Starboard’s iFoil over the existing RS:X class as the men’s and women’s Olympic windsurfing equipment for Paris 2024, I’m here to tell you: ­Windfoiling is the future.

Windfoiling is exploding in Europe just as SUP foiling is booming in the surf industry around the world, but windsurfing 2.0 is still in its nascent stages with regard to equipment development and participation. The first Formula Windsurfing Foil World Championships were held in 2018, and in the United States, only small pockets of board heads in the Chesapeake Bay, Florida and the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon are using foils. Why pick windfoiling for the Olympics when it’s so new and barely established?

The choice was ­obvious to World Sailing. We forget that more and more, the International Olympic Committee insists that our events have broadcast appeal. This is why representatives from both the Equipment and Events committees made up the Paris 2024 Windsurfer Evaluation Working Party that recommended the iFoil at World Sailing’s annual conference in November. The Events Committee focuses on race ­format and presentation.

Trials were held on Lake Garda with the RS:X and Glide representing the planing option (stuck to the water) while the iFoil, Windfoil 1 and Formula Foil were the flyers. The wind­foilers wound up being the clear choice of all the riders who represented professional, Olympic and youth windsurfing. Some of the athletes had never even windfoiled.

RS:X women’s world champion Lilian de Geus says she windfoils all the time in the Netherlands. Izzy Adcock, the youngest rider at 17, says she rips around with a large group of recreational windfoilers in her home waters of Portland Harbor.

“Portland Harbor is lovely and flat,” she tells me when we catch up after the equipment trials. “There’s almost always people out windfoiling. Not loads of youth yet. Most are focused on the RS:X.”

Adcock hints at an important point: Globally, the RS:X is used primarily for Olympic training and racing. What are top windsurfers doing for fun? Foiling.

“[Windfoiling] ­strengthens sailing’s position in the Games,” says Dina Kowalyshyn, Equipment Committee chair. She says she was excited to explore new slalom formats knowing the iFoil can hop up on foils in only 5 knots of breeze. Consistent jibing happens at 10 knots, and the equipment ­trials showcased the raw speed of foiling: doubling the windspeed in the lower wind range.

Kowalyshyn also accepts the lack of appetite for watching young, insanely fit RS:X windsurfers air-rowing their way around a course at 3 knots when the breeze drops below 15 knots. And let’s face it, there’s a lot of sub-planing ­sailing around the world.

“We knew it was going to be the iFoil by the time we left Garda,” she says.

Two-time and reigning Olympic gold medalist Dorian van Rijsselberghe, of Denmark, led an impassioned promotional campaign for windfoiling leading up to the trials, complete with a promotional video and a plea to the World Sailing council.

He says in a Twitter video, “The new generation of hydrofoiling is opening up a lot of places and conditions that normally, quite frankly, make sailing look a little bit boring.”

Legendary windsurfer Robby Naish stayed out of the selection fray, but he too has been doing his part promoting the new form of the sport in relaxed and inspiring YouTube videos of him flying around Kailua Bay with a tiny sail and no harness, proving that windfoiling doesn’t need starting lines and tetrahedrons to be fun and popular.

Starboard’s founder, the contagiously positive Svein Rasmussen, says windfoiling opens more days for exciting windsurfing.

“The rigs we now use are smaller for a given wind strength, so easier to handle,” he says. “The smooth ride is indeed easier on the body.”

Rasmussen predicts that in five years, windsurfing will be rejuvenated, with more kids, more women and more light-wind areas activated. “We already see 10-year-old kids foil,” he says. “The new thrill is ­exhilarating and more addictive.”

The criteria for Olympic equipment selection are straightforward: Cost, quality and availability are all taken into consideration. The ­suitability for multiple formats is also a criteria. If the equipment is a production one-design, that helps too.

The iFoil checked the latter box. With an 86-square-foot sail for women and a 96-square-foot sail for men, there are two “fuselage” lengths (the horizontal strut that supports both forward and tail foils) and a long fin for sailing in traditional “planing” mode. Kowalyshyn says this fin option allows the board to be used in high winds by novices until their foiling skills progress.

The Equipment Committee chose the iFoil because it was the simplest kit with the fewest parts and the most balanced feel. Watching any of the windfoilers slide effortlessly by the sailors pumping away on the RS:X made the current Olympic equipment look like what it actually is: painful and dated.

Adcock was a surprising and valuable addition to the test riders. She is petite at less than 132 pounds, and had been windfoiling for almost a year while racing Bic Techno boards in youth competition. She placed third at the 2019 IFCA Women’s Foil World Championships. Kowalyshyn says Adcock handled the 25-knot breezes better than most of the larger riders participating in the test event.

“I’ve always had an issue with weight differences,” Adcock says. “Once you’re overpowered, we are the same speed within reason, so it’s just about locking in. There’s a lot you can do to tune for weight. Rear foil angle changes power. Also, moving the mast track position forward when overpowered makes a big difference.”

The iFoil becomes the fourth Olympic event of 10 to use foiling equipment for 2024. This is pretty dramatic considering the Nacra 17 is the only foiling class in 2020. Of all the Olympic foilers, however, windfoiling is perfectly placed to boost viewership in sailing. It’s fast in all conditions. The athlete is also visibly linked to the equipment—as opposed to ­kiting where the kite is high and out of the camera frame. It can be raced on tight and variable courses, and it looks stunning. Better yet, it’s truly accessible and portable.

Windsurfing is exactly where kiting was in 2012, but the difference now is the windfoiling transition has already begun globally. If kiting was selected as an event then, the equipment would have been immediately behind the times. Looking at the Professional Windsurfing Association and Formula Windsurf trajectory at the moment, World Sailing—maybe for the first time ever—is right on pace with modern ­sailing-equipment developments by selecting a windfoiler.

Unlike many Olympic classes, windfoiling doesn’t need the Games to grow and spread its roots. Are there true 49er and 470 fleets in your town? Are people sailing these boats just to have fun? No. They need the Games. Tapping into an increasingly popular, inclusive and fun-focused community can only help the sport of sailing—and Olympic sailing by extension.

It’s too early to foresee how the iFoil’s selection for 2024 will affect windsurfing and Olympic sailing, but I suspect those now getting into windfoiling are doing so because they can go 20 to 30 knots in light or heavy wind. Older-generation windsurfers are ripping around again because it’s easier on the body, and they can get more days on the water in light winds. Kids are also picking it up annoyingly fast.

Remember, it took nearly 20 years for windsurfing to recover from a devastating blow dealt by the emergence of kiteboarding, but windfoiling has this wind-and-board ­community more excited than ever. World Sailing’s selection for 2024 couldn’t be more perfectly timed. Think of it as a multiplier, and more sailors on the water is better for us all.

And then, wonder what the new bumper sticker could read.

The post Windfoiling: Meet the New Olympic Discipline appeared first on Sailing World.

It’s a noisy August night in a tent full of jackets and ties at Great Harbor YC. Fourteen champion tacticians flank the podium, waiting to learn which skipper bid for them in the silent auction. As the checks are counted for the benefit of Nantucket Community Sailing, Dawn Riley introduces us with some friendly heckling and one by one we’re paired and dispatched to dinner with the team we’ll spend the next two days with aboard an International One-Design keelboat.

I join Team ’71, anchored by Cornell sailing team classmates of that year, Ted Moore and regatta co-chair Chris Gould. They’ve brought along two relative youngsters, Skip Beck and Phil Cox, but looking around the tent, our average age is up there. There’s plenty of race experience around the table—Olympic and international classes (Ted and Chris), both the keelboat team-race and 12 Metre circuit (Ted and Skip), and plenty of IOD racing (Phil and Chris). The regatta program reminds me that Ted and Chris already won this regatta in 2016 with a guy named Jud Smith serving as their ­celebrity tactician.

No pressure. Six weeks earlier, I was steering the winning boat at the IOD World Championship in Marblehead, Massachusetts, but tonight, my throat is a little dry. I’m going back to school with the Class of ’71. And there’s a lot to learn in a short amount of time.

Teach them or let them teach me?

This is not a long-term ­relationship we’re building. After one practice start, we’ll be racing for real. How can I make a difference? For a team that’s only missed the top four once in five runs at this event, the answer comes quickly. “You trim the mainsheet and make us go fast,” they tell me. “We know how to sail the boat.”

But still, there are questions to answer and a Team ’71 ­strategy to develop.

Where to start?

Ted tries to convince himself to go for the middle of the line—and I’m a believer—but after one terrible start there, he shifts to his favorite team-race position, the windward end. He doesn’t need a tactician here. He’s comfortable carving out a spot, and wins it more often than not.

As someone who rarely starts at the boat end, I begin to see the power of starting here after a few races, especially when the beats are a mile or less. If we can be one of the half dozen boats in the front row until it’s time to tack, few competitors to our left will gain the three lengths needed to tack and cross us later. And even when we have a bad start, we can find clear air quickly on the right.

Favored side?

“The land side of the course often sees good shifts or pressure,” I offer up, dredging up memories of previous Nantucket regattas. I know this is the norm in a southwesterly, but I also recall seeing the land side pay in a northeasterly breeze. That’s what we have on the first day, shifting ­gradually east over two days. That’s another good reason to start to the right of the other boats.

How far do we go to the corner?

In this breeze, which is ­unstable, the answer is: “not too far.” It’s shiftier than we expect, and there are a few holes waiting to punish greedy tacticians who go too close to the beach. Plus, if the other side wins out occasionally, it’s better to be digging back against the shift early to stay in touch and try to salvage a midfleet finish. More often than not, our strategy provides modest gains and minimizes losses, a key to doing well in this event.

How early to the lay line?

In heavy boats, we learn the hard way that taking transoms and getting to the lay line early is vital at the first, crowded mark-rounding of each race. The port tacker who takes our stern 200 yards from the weather mark will likely have our number at the lay line. We don’t want to be the boat that tacks to leeward and tries to squeeze around the mark with half a dozen other IODs rumbling up the starboard lay line.

Quick jibe after the weather mark?

In a 15-boat fleet, ­especially with an offset mark at the weather mark, the traffic and wind shadow from boats rounding behind usually clears up quickly, minimizing the initial loss of an immediate jibe. I’m a fan of the move for several reasons:

Keelboats such as the IOD go nearly straight downwind in 8 knots of breeze, and we can often jibe and aim straight at the mark while those on starboard tack sail higher, protecting their air. When things settle down, we often find an extra sliver of wind on the edge of the fleet that allows compression with the lead group; sometimes there’s a couple of extra knots and a nice big passing lane. In this regatta, the early jibe has the major bonus of setting us up for the inshore gate.

After two races on the first day, we’re solidly midfleet with a 5-12, but we’re figuring out our strategy and we hit our stride as the breeze eases to 12 knots. We’re starting better and passing boats regularly. Suddenly, Team ’71 hits overdrive and we win two races in a row.

Upwind, point or foot?

Ted’s head stays mostly in the boat, monitoring how the boat feels, giving feedback and glancing at the compass heading. The rest of us look at the sails, keep track of other boats and assess the wind across the course. Ted and I talk quietly, sometimes incessantly. He wants to point higher. I want to go faster.

“Take me up,” he says every time there’s the slightest pressure increase, and I nudge the traveler to weather, or Skip and I trim in the sheets a click.

At the slightest pressure decrease, I suggest, “Let’s keep the bow down.” If Ted doesn’t debate the point, we slip the traveler an inch or ease the sheets slightly.

After a while, I realize Ted has mastery on the high side of the upwind groove. I start to resist the urge to suggest sailing lower. If we can keep the pace, why give away height? We’re often going faster and higher than boats nearby.

Ted starts calling me “­doctor” because each time he complains of an ailment, I’m ready with a prescription using the traveler, backstay, sheets, crew weight, outhaul and halyard tensions. I can’t prove the value of any single adjustment, but all of us are feeling good when our patient is healthy.

“Do your job.” It could be straight from a Bill Belichick playbook. We’re in the zone on the first day, but after a fog delay on the second, we start at the leeward end and finish in double digits.

Ted shrugs it off. “Let’s go back to what works,” he says, and moves up the line to nail the windward end at the next start. Our maneuvers are crisp, and we regain our speed mode, going fast and sticking with the strategy we’ve built.

Most of us must be really focused on our jobs because we don’t even notice when the regatta leader sails a throwout in the second-to-last race. Ted doesn’t say anything, even though he admits later he’s ­running the numbers in his head.

The breeze is modest for the final race, and we sail a good first beat, rounding in the top three. We move up to second on the run and close to the leader. On the second lap, the two of us are out in front and extending when we realize all the other contenders are in the back half of the fleet, sailing another throwout. We’re about to win the regatta.

The good chemistry in our crew leaps up several notches, and Phil is ready to take a team selfie at the finish with all but one boat showing in the fleet behind us. Ashore, we learn that we’ve won by 6 points, which seems massive.

“We sailed steadily, and we blended well as a team,” Ted says a couple weeks later on the phone. “But the real reason we won is everyone else had two bad races.”

I resist the urge to remind him we had two bad races too, but I’ve absorbed the Class of ’71 lesson plan: Sail fast and don’t look back.

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Today, the only American to have completed three solo-­circumnavigation races is rarely seen in anything resembling a sailboat. To find him, you have to look skyward. Maybe he’s the guy buzzing the Low Country in a Beechcraft Premiere—because 51-year-old Brad Van Liew now prefers the open skies to the open ocean. It was back in 2010-11 when he last raced his Eco 60 Le Pingouin, taking victory in the Velux 5 Oceans race. Before that he won Class II of the Around Alone in 2002-03 with the Open 50 Tommy Hilfiger Freedom America. Those two victories came after a debut third place in the Open 50 class in the Around Alone in 1998-99.

The Around Alone started out as the BOC Challenge and was the premier solo ocean race until the advent of the Vendée Globe. This nonstop ­circumnavigation gathered momentum, public attention and competitors during the 1990s; by the early 2000s, it had eclipsed the Around Alone.

No French sailors competed in the Velux 5 Oceans 2010-11, but Van Liew could only beat the sailors who did show up.

It takes a great deal of persistence, talent, determination and sheer bloody-mindedness to get a commercially funded boat to the starting line of one of these races, never mind getting all the way around the world not once but three times. And yet Van Liew’s once-illustrious career in ocean racing ended badly in the wake of the 2010‑11 victory with Le Pingouin.

He suffered bankruptcy and the boat was repossessed—­everything that he and his first wife, Meaghan, had built together over those three races and 15 years was lost.

Since then, Van Liew has largely disappeared from the sailing scene. He did a few record attempts with Italian circumnavigator Giovanni Soldini and his Maserati crew in 2012, but that’s about it.

“That was a pretty great way for me to decompress right after the Velux,” Van Liew says. “I love Gio to death, and we had a lot of fun and did some really cool stuff; so, I was with him for a little while… And at that point in my marriage we had a lot of financial problems….”

They were “big problems,” he says, which led to his personal bankruptcy. The business, Van Liew Adventures, that he ran with his wife Meaghan, folded in early 2012. Divorce soon followed.

“Commuting to Italy and ­training there was probably a good way for me to process the transition in my life,” he says. “So, I did that for a while and then eventually ended up meeting my current wife and just settling back down in Charleston. I also decided that because my third back surgery was coming up, I was going to go back to flying.”

Today, Van Liew and his wife have a new residential real estate venture in Charleston, but over the past few years, his day to day was focused on flight instruction and flying charters. “I’d been doing that for the past number of years and helping my wife with her business; just kind of…quite frankly, hanging out in the woods, you know, at my place. There’d been a lot of coverage of me here, and it got to the point where I couldn’t even really go anywhere without having to talk about sailing with somebody I didn’t know,” he says. “It’s finally just kind of chilling out. I’m just really enjoying going out fishing and flying airplanes and doing what I do.”

The Velux 5 Oceans was expected to see a fleet of 12 or 15 boats, but only five made it to the start, with one of them pulling out soon after.

“I think the economy was such a hard part of the last chapter of my career and of the race. It was the end of me. It was the end of the race to be honest,” Van Liew says. “It was hard to have dedicated so much to the sport, to watch it all fold in on itself like that, including my own business and my own finances. It was a pretty hard pill to swallow.”

He’s not bitter, however. He was content managing, flying and brokering jet aircraft and airplanes, and now he’s in the real estate business. “It is what it is,” he says.

Life now is better than it’s ever been, he adds. He’s happily remarried, and all is well with his kids. “I have a beautiful home and a beautiful life, it’s great,” he says. “So, it’s not like I’m crying over spilled milk. It’s just the truth of what happened is—in the time frame that it had—some things are just bigger than anybody’s ability to make them go away.”

Van Liew’s story started with big dreams and great ambition. Born in Los Angeles, he grew up in San Diego, but sailing wasn’t a significant part of his early childhood. “I was more involved in motocross and horseback riding and stuff like that,” he says. “But when I was like 6 or so, I went to a summer camp up in Puget Sound; there was a lot of sailing, and I got pretty hooked. A large portion of my father’s side of the family lives on the East Coast, and in the Newport, Rhode Island, area, and they have sailing programs in the family. The Johnstones, of J/­Boats, are cousins of mine.”

Van Liew started to spend his summers in Newport, working on his uncle’s IOR boat [Alfred Van Liew’s Palmer Johnson-built two-tonner Fiddler]. “The family scene was a big influence because it was easy access to a fairly high-level program,” he says. “It was kind of a New York Yacht Club summer scene, you know…And then fairly early in the game we did a Bermuda Race, and I really enjoyed that. I think the first time I did that I was 14 or so, and just really enjoyed the long-distance ­voyaging component of racing.”

RELATED: Van Liew Is Unleashed Once More

What he remembers most, he says, is the sense of “really ­having gone somewhere.”

“One of the things that always attracted me to it was getting to a destination that makes you feel like you’re voyaging, something different: different cultures, different accent, a different language, whatever. So that’s when the long-distance stuff started, and it just blossomed from there until one summer—I think it was in 1987 maybe—the BOC Challenge was coming back into Rhode Island, and I thought it was the coolest damn thing I’d ever seen. So that’s when dreams of single-handedly ­winning those races started.”

There were a couple of other factors; the innovative mindset of the Open 60s was one; the great American solo star of the time, Mike Plant, was the other. “I was completely enamored with and motivated by watching Mike Plant’s development of his career. He had been very supportive; I worked for him while he was building his boats, while I was trying to make my thing happen. I really thought, ‘I’m going to get in on this, and I’m going to get in on it at a young age and make it happen.’”

By the time Van Liew decided he wanted to make a go of it, college was calling. “I was way too young,” he says, “and if I had accomplished my goal of doing the first one that I wanted to do, I would’ve killed myself.”

His first attempt was the 1990 edition, and it was, as he describes, “a disappointment, a huge disappointment. I thought I was one of those people that if I put my mind to it, I could do anything. And I failed. I had said I was going to do something that I didn’t do, so I had to tuck my tail between my legs and go finish college, get my life put back together after saying I was going to do this and not pulling it off.”

Van Liew went back to school and ended up following a path into the aviation industry. He started working as a flight instructor and flying aircraft charters from Santa Monica.

He met Meaghan, bought a 26-footer and joined the California YC.

“That was also the time frame in which Mike Plant was lost [Plant disappeared on his way to the start of the Vendée Globe in October 1992, his yacht Coyote was later found capsized], and so I had a lot of it on my brain. I guess it had been just enough time for me to heal from my disappointment.”

He married Meaghan in 1996, and decided, “You know what, I’m going to give it another try.” His new bride was a marketing professional, and the pair put together a program that got them a boat and got Van Liew around the world.

“It was a kind of…The Last of the Mohicans race, you know? And it felt like a family. I was just living on the outer end of sanity I guess. It was crazy. And I did a lot better—I think—than anybody would’ve anticipated. And I did it on 10 cents on the dollar. And I did it from the heart. It was just…it was me; me buried to my soul and proving I could do something I had said I was going to do and failed at.”

And then when it was over, he says: “I was like, ‘Well am I going back to flying? Or what should we do here?’ I sailed the boat up to Newport to put it up for sale, flew back to California…did some soul searching, and basically just said, ‘You know what, if I can, if I could really have a boat, could really have a program, I might be pretty good at this.’ And it’s all history from there.”

The clock has ticked through almost two decades since then. It’s more than enough time to get it all in some sort of perspective. So how does Van Liew feel about it all with the benefit of time and hindsight?

“That’s a tough one to answer,” he says. “I sure hope my son doesn’t turn around and say he wants to do it, I can tell you that…I mean, in some ways it really defines me. Mike Plant was a really important mentor to me. I’m honored to share the role that I have in the history of the sailing scene in the United States with a guy like Mike.

“I feel like I really broke the mold in some ways, because I had to be very corporate or European in the way that I had to do my programs because I didn’t have the money to do them without corporate involvement and without a corporate message.” Van Liew adds. “In some ways they’re the greatest memories I have. In some ways they’re the worst nightmares I have. I think it had a huge impact on my life and my marriage with Meaghan. And you know it’s…I’ll tell you, it doesn’t seem as important as it did when I was doing it.

“I wanted to bring more media to the sport. I wanted the story of these races to become familiar to a grander public in the United States. And it just never really did; it never clicked—it didn’t become what it is in England and France. And I wanted that to be my legacy. I was hoping that story would click and become a big deal. And it just didn’t.

“So, in that sense, I feel like I didn’t get the job done. But in the same sense, nobody else has done what I’ve done, so here I am,” he says. “It’s left me hurt: I’ve had three back surgeries; I’ve got a permanent limp; I’ll never run again. And you know, it comes with a price—it’s not a light way to live.”

These days, Van Liew doesn’t sail much. He and his second wife, Amy, charter a boat sometimes. “I don’t want to sound pompous or whatever,” he says, “but I’ve never really been a ­sailing-around-the-buoys kind of guy, so it’s never been my jam. I like voyages. Our biggest project right now is we recently moved into a house on the water that we really love. It was Amy’s parents’ place, and it’s just very peaceful.”

Would he ever pack the house up one day and head for the wide-open spaces of the Pacific? Not likely.

“Meaghan ended up ­passing away a couple of years ago, so that’s a big part of my current story,” he says. “She went in for a medical procedure, a ­transplant—and she never came out, January of two years ago. And my kids were, at that time, in ninth grade and sixth grade.

“That completely derailed my ability to make decisions without putting them first,” Van Liew adds. “And obviously, the type of sailing that I was doing…the solo voyaging and even the record-breaking stuff is pretty dangerous; when you’re a sole-surviving parent of two kids that you love a great deal, and you’re a husband, and a stepdad to another kid—all of a sudden none of this stuff that we’re talking about seems very important. So, I just shut all that down and enjoy being a dad and a husband.”

The post Van Liew: The Last American Soloist appeared first on Sailing World.

The “Members Only” syndicate, formed by Jay Cross, Hannah Swett and Brian Kinney, won the first major regatta for the new one-design IC37 keelboat class. While they began the season as the team to beat, poor results in subsequent events bumped them to dark-horse status going into the National Championship in late September. After three days and eight close races, however, the syndicate and their teammates put themselves back atop the class, winning the championship in the final race of the regatta.

“At the beginning of the season, none of the teams had sailed the boats before,” Kinney says. “We were fortunate that we won the first event, but had some missteps; so it was a bit of a redemption to come back and win the big event. It was one of those regattas where we didn’t make it easy on ourselves.”

You won the first race, then followed up with two seconds. That’s a solid start.

Yes, but then we threw up a 13th on the second day. We were winning the regatta comfortably on the last day, and we were punched in the first race of the day—but had a boathandling error that was entirely my fault at the first leeward mark, and that race ended up being a fifth. The next race, we sailed the best beat of our entire regatta to get from midpack to fifth as we rounded the last weather mark, but we missed a course change for the downwind leg and dropped back to 11th. Scratching our heads at our unforced errors, we knew going into the last race that we were down by 1 point. We had to either win the last race to win the tiebreaker or get a boat behind us and the second-place boat. We had a great start, and they were on our hip all the way out to the left side of the course. When we finally tacked, we just crossed, rounded the mark first and just kind of sailed away to win that one. It was the most satisfying regatta win I’ve ever had because of the way we did it as a team.

What made this new team so good?

The three of us that started the team come from small-boat sailing. Jay was an Olympian in the International 470 class for Canada and is a top Etchells sailor today. Hannah did an Olympic [women’s match-racing] campaign, and I’ve sailed small keelboats for a long time. We all brought people from our past sailing experiences to the team. Each of us brought our own core bodies to the team, and everyone meshed well together. Our team’s chemistry was spectacular over the course of the year.

Were you or others on the team involved with the early development of the boat; particularly the ­tuning and boathandling guides?

No. The tuning guide and how to sail the boat was done by Melges and North and that’s one of the nice things about the class. There was a ton of support from North [official sail provider] with regatta coaching. The class is especially restrictive with on-the-water coaching during events, but has instituted things to get everyone up to speed.

How’d you manage to lock in Steve Benjamin as your tactician?

We’ve all known him for a long time through the Etchells, and Jay reached out to him and invited him two months before Nationals. Believe it or not, he wasn’t committed, and said he’d love to. One of the nice things about our program is that we’re all people with day jobs: our bowman Brian Fox is a senior partner at McKinsey & Company; Jay is the president of Hudson Yards, the largest commercial real estate development in the world; and I run a large trading operation, so we’re all people that charge hard during the day—but we also take our sailing seriously. I think that was attractive to Steve in that he was jumping into a program where we at least had a clue on how to get the boat up to speed and around the course.

What did Benjamin bring to the program that was perhaps missing during the midseason slump?

He looks at the racecourse differently than most people do. He does tactics in an incredibly thoughtful way. We all know of rock-star sailors that think three or four steps ahead, but he’s another level higher. For example, there was an instance in one race where we were in third most of the way around the racecourse, and we were coming up the second beat in a crummy lane. We sailed in this lane about a minute longer than I would have. If I were calling the shots, I would have bailed much earlier. The first-place boat was on top of us and the second-place boat was squeezing us from below. The lane collapsed, and we kept sailing in it. We were pretty far toward the starboard-tack layline before he finally bailed out. We tacked up to the last bit of left at the top of the beat and rounded in second by two lengths. In doing so, we jumped the guy in second.

When we were sailing in, I asked him if it was a high-confidence move, and whether he felt strongly that the upper left was going to pay. He said, “Yeah, 100 percent.” So I asked him why we hung in that lane for as long as we did. He explained that, if we had tacked the moment the lane shut down, the second-place boat would have come back with us, preventing us from getting the leverage we needed. Because we tacked when we did, he said, the guy in second probably presumes it’s a lane issue and not a move to get left for the shift. Your average tactician is thinking about what to do when the lane collapses, but Steve’s thinking about how to make sure the other guy doesn’t follow us left. That point ended up meaning a whole heck of a lot in the end.

With everyone’s rig pinned at the same ­settings for the regatta, per class rules, how do you get a better set up?

That part of the class rules is kind of a nice thing. With the Etchells, every morning there’s a debate over tune, sail selection and all of that stuff, but not on this boat. The things that we can tune are the bricks under the rig, our outhaul tension, and our main and jib halyard tensions. We’re constantly playing the things we can. Steve changed how we set up the main and the communications around mainsail trim. The communications were much more structured around where we were with our backstay tension; and that was nonstop. In the midseason, we were primarily focused on targets. With Steve, I was looking around a lot less and much more head-in-the-boat the entire time, looking at the sails, the speedo and the compass. It was clear my job was to keep the boat going as fast as possible. He was really vigilant about communications, exceptional with moding. The second we strayed two-tenths of a knot from the mode we were supposed to be in, he was all over me.

One observation was the remarkable ­differences in sail trim across the fleet. What was working for your team?

I found that we were sailing with looser leech tension than most. When it was windy and wavy, for example, I was trying to give Jay as wide a groove as possible to drive to. Someone watching said they thought our mainsail was working way more than ­everyone else’s.

There’s a tendency to get tight leeched and bound up, and then the only way they could make it work was to pinch really hard. There were a couple of times when Jay would struggle to hang onto his target, so I would just ease the main, find a new baseline and give him a wider groove. For us, the gear shifting was nonstop…in and out, in and out for three straight days.

With the jib, because we can’t cross-sheet, it was harder to be as aggressive with the trim; one thing we’ll try next year is repositioning our runner trimmer to be more dynamic with the runner. That would be the next big step for us.

When you think back on this win, what’s the primary takeaway for the team?

That there were moments in the regatta where everybody on the boat did something that helped us win the event. Everyone had a moment where they either got us points or saved us from disaster. And from our perspective, that’s the cool thing about our program; that everybody brought different people together and it worked. I’d never sailed with Linda Lindquist [pit] before this summer, and she is amazing. She is just an awesome sailor, and incredible on the boat. Brian Fox [bow] might be the best bowman that nobody’s ever heard of—and now, I don’t think Jay wants to get on a boat without him ever again. And it all kind of tied together with Steve. He’s a silver medalist and a rock-star sailor with a Rolex, but he’s insanely collaborative. I think we’ve all sailed with a tactician that comes into a new team and starts barking orders. But Steve integrated everyone, asked us about our roles and our opinions. I didn’t know what to expect, to be honest. I knew he’d be good, but he fit the mold of our program well because we have good sailors that want to be part of the team, and he assimilated ­perfectly in a collaborative way.

The post Winner’s Debrief: IC37 National Champions appeared first on Sailing World.

Word has it that if you bottled the secret sauce of the Knarr, every class would buy some. But there are things that can’t be bottled, can’t be bought. Sailors always tell you, “It’s about the people.” Knarr sailors say it too—except, there’s more: all of it against the odds, much of it unique, with a kernel of anti-Nazi intrigue in the origin story. It’s a pretty boat, and it’s all about the people.

Knarr sailors have their own cheer, their own regalia, their own “circuit” that is unlike any other. The design is seven decades old. The bragging-rights regatta is the International Knarr Championship, born on San Francisco Bay in 1969—and, did we ­mention, against the odds?

Name another class with a 52-year ­tradition of a championship regatta that rotates annually among three countries; where visiting sailors are hosted in private homes; where boats are provided from a local fleet, but none of the locals sail their own boats; where pros pop in, but nobody gets paid; and the parties are as competitive as the sailing—you better believe it.

The IKC is the spice in the sauce. Without it, this would be just another 30-foot one-design class that might or might not be surviving—much less thriving—in the three countries where it thrives in the way of a flower that grows in only a few meadows on only a few mountains, at a certain elevation, where a delicate balance of moisture provides just enough days of summer sun. With an international, multigenerational cult of followers.

To the best of my knowledge, there are no blood rituals, but rituals? Oh, baby. In the early 1960s, Knud Wibroe was developing some unlikely ideas. Of course, there’s a story.

Wibroe is a Dane transplanted to San Francisco Bay, and in these circles, “Knud” is a one-word name on par with Elvis. He never lost touch with his roots, and he spent time back in Denmark, even keeping a Knarr there for racing.

However, our story begins years earlier, when Wibroe took up racing lapstrake-hulled Folkboats on San Francisco Bay. And helped build the fleet to 70 boats. And launched summertime Wednesday-evening races “that became the backbone of our racing,” he says. “When the Knarr appeared, we added starts for the Knarr. I knew the boat. I had seen Knarrs in Denmark, and they look the way a boat ought to look. On San Francisco Bay, because they’re underrigged, they’re a good fit.”

Wibroe soon was sailing a Knarr. However, he had the only Danish‑built hull on the bay. The rest came from Norway; when he won too many races, there was talk that it was something about the boat. “So I said, ‘Let’s switch boats,’” Wibroe says. “We didn’t know it, but that was the beginning.”

Shift scenes now to Denmark, where Wibroe spent a month each summer and preached the virtues of coming to San Francisco Bay to race—but won no converts. “I told them we had 42 Knarrs,” he says. “They thought I was talking Texas numbers.”

So it went, but by-and-by, the calendar came up 1966. Wibroe was the only US skipper on the line for the 100th-anniversary regatta of the Royal Danish Yacht Club, helming a new boat set up by Paul Elvström with a new main: “Paul and I grew up together, so he did that; and he told me, ‘You’re going to win because I tuned the boat.’ Paul was that way.”

Three firsts and a couple of second-place finishes later, Wibroe was in fact the winner.

The way he remembers it: “That boosted my credibility. We had rented a house, and we gave dinner parties and urged our European friends to reciprocate by attending the centennial regattas of the San Francisco Yacht Club. That would be 1969.”

A new boat every day, by draw, was the center of the promise. And the locals would have to qualify by placing at the top of their entire season; all skippers of loaner boats would be required to offer their newest sails—and remember, no local would sail his own boat.

Wibroe recalls: “No one would be handed a clunker, and we’d buy new jibs for the fleet—and every person who came would be put up in a private home. San Francisco is on the other side of the world, OK. But all you need is a round-trip ticket. We’ll take care of ­everything else. That was the pitch.”

And they came.

“I never imagined this would grow into what we have today,” he says, “but that first year set us up. We gave theatricals. We made music. We gave them a psychedelic show because those were the times. Our wives wore hot pants because those really were the times. The Europeans had never seen anything like it. They loved it.”

That is, to this day, the over-the-top template for an International Knarr Championship as it rotates among San Francisco Bay, Hellerup in the Danish suburbs north of Copenhagen and, in Norway, between Bergen and Oslo. If you qualify from your local fleet, you will be met at the airport and whisked away to pampering among people you know—and perhaps have known for a long time—with celebrations daily and sailboat racing as the best-imaginable excuse.

Johan Hvide, a second-generation Knarr sailor and 10-time Norwegian champion, says that arriving at an IKC is “like coming home.” At moderate cost, this is Corinthian yachting at its finest; and yes, “yachting” is the right word, even though the back-of-mind thought as designer Erling Kristofersen began drawing up his Dragon-inspired lines was far from obvious. Under the shadow of World War II, one key to the design brief was the ability to sail away, perhaps as far as England, to escape the Nazis. However, by the time Einer Iversen set about building a boat, the seas were too closely guarded for any hope of escape.

RELATED: Back on the Bay

During the Nazi occupation of Norway, all seagoing yachts were confiscated, their lead keels fated for the Wehrmacht. But the urge to build prevailed, and hull No. 1 emerged plank by plank in a shack in the woods on the shore of the Oslo Fjord. It was built over an inside mold, a “last,” which in the long run would prove amenable to limited-series wood production. Materials were hard to come by, but Iversen as a builder was innovative, persistent, willing to settle for an iron keel and willing to source hardware from an ironmonger who was dealing with Germany—which might have been how the foreign overlords got wind of the project.

However that came about, the occupiers quickly served notice that they would take possession upon its completion. Iversen soldiered on anyway, and eventually completed and launched ON 1. Upon returning from sea trials, a profoundly embarrassed Iversen reported to the authorities that the prototype he had produced was ridden with problems and “unworthy of the master race.” He ­promised to have a seaworthy boat ready by summer ’45.

Berlin fell the following spring.

Given the name of Knarr after a Viking cargo craft—in the Oslo Fjord, they pronounce the “K”—the new boat was presented to the public that fall. Some found the freeboard high and the sheer excessive, but in the stressed postwar environment, the price tag was attractive.

Orders came in. Hull No. 4 is still sailing in 2020.

The 51st IKC came to San Francisco Bay this past fall, landing this time on the 150th anniversary of the San Francisco YC, the oldest yacht club on the West Coast and harbored on the north shore of the bay, opposite the city. Most Knarr racing on the bay these days is staged out of either that club or its 1927 splinter residing on the city front, St. Francis YC, where the Wednesday-night racing tradition continues. Among names you know, Paul Cayard qualifies as what we’ll call an occasional regular. He reports, “It took me 15 years to win a Wednesday-night race.”

The two clubs on opposite shores share DNA and members in common, including the Perkins brothers—Chris, Jon and Phillips—who have their own place in the Knarr story. Between them, Chris and Jon have each won four IKCs, at home or in Europe. Phil is a regular crew, and for the past 10 years, the brothers have teamed up for Wednesday-night races aboard No. 125, which has history in the Perkins family. The boat was built, plank on frame, in 1965, the year Jon was born, and it later became, he says, “the first boat my parents sailed on when they were trying to figure out what to do with us as junior sailors.”

The boat was owned at the time by Grant Settlemier, who would eventually become one of 16 Knarr-owning commodores of St. Francis YC. Soon 125 was providing early sailing experience for the growing Perkins boys.

“We put a lot of hours on that boat,” Jon recalls. As an adult, he bought a late-­edition glass Knarr but spent years “courting” a later owner of 125 until she relented and sold him the boat. The restoration that ensued “was something I probably wouldn’t do again,” he says, “but now I wouldn’t let go of this boat for anything.”

The Knarr class survived by ­introducing fiberglass hulls calibrated for overall weight and weight distribution to match the traditional fleet, with the first glass hulls appearing in 1973. The experiment was a success. There’s not much to choose from between the ­materials, though a rule of thumb suggests that glass boats have minor advantages in wind speeds of less than 15 knots. However, in the case of his wood 125, Jon says, “between 5 and 12 knots, I’ll take my boat over any in the fleet.” Another way to put that is: You can’t buy your way to a championship, and the rest of it will keep people talking at the bar for as long as there are bars and Knarrs.

In 2006, in Hellerup, Denmark’s Soren Pehrsson became the first second-generation IKC champion. He had won 25 years before as crew, pulling strings for his father, Alf, and saw no reason to leave the fleet. He won again in 2013. Of the Perkins brothers, he observes: “It’s not that you can’t beat them. It’s just that they are so terrifyingly good race after race.”

Pehrsson did not compete in the 2019 IKC, when Lars Gottfredsen, of Denmark, became the first five-time champion, rounding out his ambition to win in San Francisco after three wins in Norway and one in Denmark. Jon Perkins was third. Chris was fourth.

And with that, we sink deep into the sauce of the Knarr class, into this tight group of people who have their own thing going.

It is a fact that most of the world’s sailors could not care less who wins the IKC when it moves to Bergen, Norway, this year. It is equally true that Knarr-class sailors could not care less that the world does not care. In a perfect world, we play games with our friends, and this might be as close to perfect as it comes.

Chris Perkins, like his brothers, had the chops to go pro but didn’t. Over the years he focused on J/105s, for example, and treated the Knarr as a second fleet until recently, when family life made demands. His glass boat, he says, “is easy on my time. It takes a few hours of maintenance every year, and you can do that at the ­beginning, the end, or the middle of the season.”

As for a formula for success on the racecourse: “The boat is heavy and not technical. If you lose momentum, it takes a long time to get going, so the pressure is on the helmsman and trimmer to develop a precise feel together and to balance the boat just so. In the past few years, the Knarr has become one of the most competitive classes going. I’m kind of shocked that we’re still doing this, but the Wednesday nights keep me anchored in the class and, honestly, the racing gets better and better.”

There’s that word: anchored. No one ever really leaves the Knarr class. Even if they sell the boats, they show up for the parties, and most just keep on keeping on.

Terry Anderlini is another Knarr-owning St. Francis YC ­commodore, and his history parallels the IKC’s. He arrived in the fleet in 1969 while the inaugural regatta was ramping up. He came in with an offer to buy No. 102, which at one time belonged to Wibroe. That led to a call from the man himself, who was darned well going to give this new guy the third degree before he would bless the sale.

With Wibroe’s blessing in hand, Anderlini was allowed to buy 102; but in his newbie role, he declared that the proposed boat-sharing format for the IKC “was crazy; would never work” and worse, it would be “embarrassing to watch your own boat beat you.”

He now admits he was wrong on the first count. On the other, not so much. ν

The post Knarrs, Legends of the Bay appeared first on Sailing World.

The moon has set, and now it’s really dark. My partner and I have been racing for 46 hours straight. We’re beating against the fabled Mistral wind, toward the coast of France and the final turning mark off Camargue. I’m incredibly tired after two days of relentless ocean racing, with only two of us on board our cramped craft. Competitors from six other countries are in sight. We’ve been dueling with the Australians right next to us for the past six hours. I’m trying to determine how much the current is going to set us and keep thinking, “We really have to nail the layline to the turning mark. Two more tacks would be devastating. Overstanding would open the door to the Brits and Japanese to our west.”

But I am so tired. Only five more hours to go.

I’m trying to keep a light grip on the tiller extension as I feather against the increasing gusts. The jib is too tight now. This Mistral is stronger as we sail closer to the coast. Time to put a reef in the mainsail, which means time to wake my teammate. She’s exhausted after steering all last night, but she wants that gold medal just as much as I do. It’s within our capability. If we can only concentrate.

This is not some far-flung fantasy. This is the 2024 Olympic regatta, which will include for the first time an offshore, mixed-­gender endurance event. This is an entirely new sailing ­discipline for most of us.

The 30-foot keelboats for this discipline will be provided one‑designs, so the racing is guaranteed to be close. The course on the Gulf du Lyon is going to be tactically challenging because weather in August can be anything from a 35-knot Mistral to hours of drifting. The course chosen will have a race length of two to three days. No one can stay awake for that amount of time and perform at their best. Who can manage their sleep? What coed team can utilize their combined skills to maximum effect? Who will crash and burn because they get too tired or push too hard?

Do you think you have the right stuff to make a run at an Olympic sailing marathon? Let’s explore the attributes of a gold medalist.

First, you will need to be a fast sailor. The fleet will be bow‑to‑bow for hundreds of miles, because all the boats are the same, and all the teams will be good. Being a slightly better driver, or being able to tune your boat a little faster could pay huge dividends. Getting a slight lead by being fast allows you to sail using more conservative tactics.

Your tactics and strategy, however, will be extremely ­challenging because the wind in this part of the Mediterranean is dynamic. There will probably be strong wind, sometimes very strong; but there will also likely be periods of light air, and periods of thermal wind, with unpredictable transitions between—and lots of local effects. The winning Olympians will need to have the ability to handle small-scale variations and big-picture tactics that play out over many hours. This is a much different skill set than today’s closed-course Olympians require, and also different from longer ocean races.

Besides being fast and good tacticians, winning sailors will need to be able to manage their sleep and energy for up to three days. This is more difficult than one can imagine. Today’s inshore racers have optimized their performances for a three- to five-hour ­competition period each day. Typical crewed ocean-race teams set up a watch system that allows each sailor a four-hour off-watch shift, when they can sleep, eat and maintain the boat. But what about this new Olympic event? There are only two sailors, so how you collectively manage sleeping, eating and other necessities will be really interesting. If you go too hard at the beginning, you will be burned out later in the race. If you hold back too much, you could be too far behind for it to matter. About 30 percent of the race will be overnight, another Olympic first, so you better be good at ­racing in the dark.

If I’m recruiting sailors for the 2024 Olympic Mixed Offshore Race, I’m looking for a fast helm who will be good at setting up the boat, who is also an excellent offshore tactician and good at night, capable of performing at a high level with limited sleep. This is a pretty tall order, but this could include both current champions and sailors whom we don’t know today.

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Who has all those attributes in the right combination? Or who could learn them in the next four years? There is a small group of current offshore racers who could quickly adapt to this new Olympic event, most of them French. They already possess the skills and personal attributes outlined above. If someone such as Charles Caudrelier or François Gabart chose to pursue this and found the right partner, they would be way ahead of the rest of the world. Are there any Americans in this category? Could sailors such as Ryan Breymaier or Charlie Enright or Mark Towill crack into this, with their offshore and short-handed experience? Or will it be top-level course racers who also happen to have ocean ­experience —Morgan Larson or Bora Gulari or Sally Barkow, for instance?

Is youth and feistiness more important than experience, or will the veterans have too much knowledge to be beat by a younger generation? Maybe some young woman whom we have never heard of will end up being incredibly good. Another Ellen MacArthur? It will be fascinating to see who comes to the fore.

Of course, this class is not singlehanded; it is one man and one woman. How will these two athletes and humans work together to create an effective team? This is one of the essential questions. In most double-handed events—the International 470, for ­example —the individual crews have different and highly specialized skills. In Marseilles 2024, both sailors will need to have the complete package: speed, tactics, boathandling and problem-solving. There will be times when they will be on deck by themselves. The two sailors will have to work together closely as well because they will be making important decisions, at times together, at times alone. This will require a higher level of trust not often seen in our sport, and will be one of the most interesting things about this new event.

I hope there are sailors out there who are motivated by this new opportunity. Do you have the skills and temperament to do this? Does this sound like a potentially rewarding journey to you? If so, how would you go about organizing a winning campaign?

Because this is a new class, nobody really knows the answer, but the fundamentals of preparation are similar to other races. Athletes will need to become experts in four key areas: boatspeed, tactics, boathandling and energy (sleep) management. You will also have to create a team that trusts each other and works together ­exceptionally well. Let’s look at these attributes one at a time.

First, speed. How do you become one of the fastest sailors in the world in this type of small keelboat? It helps if you already possess elite helming skills. But much of the speed will also come from tuning, sail trim, weight placement and stacking. Not only will you need to become a fast driver, you’ll need to learn the other aspects of boatspeed. Some of this will be generic, some will be specific to the class that’s eventually selected. Because this will not be known until about a year before the Games, there will essentially be two phases of speed development: initially focusing on broader speed skills, then focusing on boat-specific speed development in the final year.

The second key attribute is tactical experience. As with speed, an aspiring campaigner will start with a certain level of tactical skill and experience, and will have to learn the rest. How can this be done effectively? How would you teach offshore tactics to top dinghy ­sailors? How would offshore sailors hone their near-term tactics?

The third key skill is boathandling. In some ways this is the ­easiest to develop through methodical training and analysis. Again, there will two phases, initially developing more generic skills at maneuvers and sail changes, and focusing on the specifics of the chosen class in the last year.

Finally, the sailors will have to optimize their bodies and minds for a challenging endurance contest—maximum performance over a two- to three-day period. How do they go about doing this? Energy and sleep management will be one of the critical factors in the end, quite possibly decisive, if there are teams with similar skills.

In the end, the challenge is not unlike the rigors of a modern ­double-handed Olympic campaign in a skiff or a Nacra. You need to find the right partner, find the passion, find the resources, do the hard yards on the water, be smart with how you manage your campaign, and peak at the right time. The unique challenges of this new class will be to figure out a whole new discipline, mixing men and women in a one-design endurance contest over several days, racing day and night on a rough stretch of the Mediterranean.

What can our national authorities here in North America do to ­promote this discipline, and launch this new Olympic class program in the best way? In my view this project should also go way beyond the Olympics, which will inevitably involve only a small group. There is a lot of evidence all around the world that sailors are hungering for alternatives to the traditional inshore windward/leeward race.

Double-handed racing and offshore racing are both trending ­positively, here in North America and worldwide. Can the addition of an Olympic event featuring this discipline reinforce these trends and result in a short-handed blossoming? Imagine going down to the club, and instead of doing a couple of windward leeward races, you sail with your partner overnight to a different port? This type of adventure will appeal to a lot of sailors, current and future, young and old.

The skills needed to be successful at this are not widely held in North America today. Yes, we have some highly skilled offshore sailors but few short-handed experts, and most critically we don’t have a culture of excellence in this field. Compare this with France, where there is a strong culture of racing offshore and short-handed. Kids in France are more familiar with their offshore greats than Olympic sailors. They have established and developed infrastructure which supports this type of sailing, from established races starting at the local level and culminating in the Solitaire du Figaro, the unofficial world championship of singlehanded coastal racing. They have a pipeline of young sailors aspiring to be the next Gabart, the next Michel Desjoyeux. They have fleets of relevant boats, training academies, boatyards familiar with the complexities of offshore boats. For these reasons, France is a good model to aspire to, but in North America we are so far behind that we need to start with smaller steps—including creating some races and relevant boats, and expanding training opportunities. We have a long way to go to ­create the kind of culture needed to support this racing long term.

What should US Sailing and Sail Canada be doing, as well as ­individual clubs? They should be establishing structures that will allow the discipline to grow, both for aspiring Olympians and for the average sailor. For example, let’s start having some real races featuring one-design boats and mixed-gender teams. Yacht clubs can help with this. As we develop resources, we need to add coaching and training opportunities for those without boats. Why not have a mixed double-handed division of the Mac races, for example?

The 2020 Offshore Mixed World Championship will be held in Malta in October in L30 one-designs. World Sailing also announced that the L30 will be the boat for the next three Offshore World Championships. This could be the eventual Olympic boat, and in any case, will be similar to it. So that seems like a good boat to seek out—except there is only one in North America. There are other boats that would have similar sailing characteristics and would be useful in the interim. Existing races can be used, such as the Mac races, in addition to dedicated training camps.

Could we eventually create a true high-level Offshore Academy, like the ones in France? That will take time and money, but it’s a good target for the future. In the near term, we should work to provide some stability of events, focus on building opportunities to train and develop the nucleus of a national squad. Even this will require the help of many local clubs and foundations, a true national effort. This is a moonshot for offshore sailors, but will be a great opportunity to develop the team approach and catch up to the state of the art.

I think this injection of diversity will be good for our sport. The event will be fun to train for, fun to compete in, fun to watch —and will be highly inspirational for sailors and nonsailors alike.

Of all the sailing cultures, France is clearly at the top of this part of our sport. The French have by far the most developed offshore and short-handed facilities, boats and sailors. As North Americans, it’s hard to imagine how popular offshore sailing is in France, and how good the top French sailors are. These guys and a few gals are miles ahead of us in every category, and it will not be easy to catch up, even over many years. Britain has been working hard for some years and has made great progress. Now the Britons are doubling down. There are also excellent programs in other European ­countries, so the competition is going to be stiff. We need to get started yesterday if we are to have any shot at the podium.

It feels a little like 1996, when my brother and I were part of launching the skiff revolution. We felt strongly that skiffs were going to be great for sailors and sailing in the long run, and we wanted to promote that. I think this could be equally great for the grassroots sailing community, and also great for the top of the sport. This is an exciting opportunity to foster a different type of sailing, so we must make the most of it.

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