Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2026 i Yachting World

Sailing and innovation have gone hand-in-hand since the first island-dwelling explorers figured out how to weave cloth sails, plait rope and harness the wind to see what was over the horizon. This time of year we celebrate some of the latest innovations that could simplify, improve or make life safer for modern sailors with the best of the DAME awards (see page 78). This issue also looks at innovation at its most cutting edge with the incredible Gitana 18 (page 50). Ultim ocean racers rely on sophisticated technology that’s more akin to space travel than everyday sailing. But sometimes innovation means going back to basics, and for the Gitana team that meant re-imagining what a rudder looked like. Might we see their inventive shape on yachts in a nearby marina…

There was barely time for the dust to settle on the SailGP season finale before the foiling league’s much-touted ‘transfer season’ swung into action. In a light winds last event at Abu Dhabi, Emirates GBR helmed by Dylan Fletcher, with Hannah Mills (strategist), Iain Jensen (wing trimmer) and Luke Parkinson (flight controller) claimed victory for the season points overall as well as the ‘grand final’ in light conditions. They overhauled three-times SailGP winners Australia, and America’s Cup winning skipper Pete Burling and the New Zealand Black Foils team. When Yachting World spoke to GBR helmsman Dylan Fletcher shortly after the win we asked: have the Brits put a target on their backs for having key team members poached? “People have been chasing!” Fletcher admitted. “But Ben [Ainslie]’s done a good…

It’s rare that emails landed in my inbox with a subject like ‘MAIB reports on fatal sailing accident’. But a recent Monday was one of them. In August this year a 74-year-old Kiwi skipper died after getting ‘entangled in a powered winch’ (see page 12) on his 57ft steel monohull Mollie. He was a few miles offshore from the Needles, en-route to Poole, having sailed to Europe from New Zealand. The MAIB report detailed what happened: a 24V electric winch with an intermittently defective control switch started turning unexpectedly as the skipper was removing a rope. His right hand got caught and he was pulled violently against the winch drum. With no emergency switch close by to cut the power to the winches, the crew could not free him in…

It feels like a big deal to finally leave New Zealand’s shores, after all the hard work we’ve put into getting ready for this moment. Two years, including nine months living up a ladder on the hard in a dirty, rain drenched boat yard, spent stripping our 1985 48ft, steel Mason Fortaleza of all her systems and rebuilding her. I’d like to take some credit for this refit but really it was Elliot who did it all – my best friend, captain and YouTube-taught electrician, plumber, rigger, mechanic and carpenter. And here we are, on the most iridescently beautiful New Zealand winter’s day, pulling out of Marsden Cove Marina, waving and yelling to friends and family on shore as we head off to explore the world, very, very slowly. It’s…

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A quiet season has led some buyers to expect bargains. But stock remains tight, paperwork matters more than ever, and the market is proving more active than the mood music suggests. When activity levels drop, assumptions tend to fill the space. A softer economy should mean softer prices; fewer listings but perhaps more negotiating room. But for yachts in the 40-60ft bracket, the reverse is true. Supply is slimmer, values have held and, in many cases, strengthened. Owners are hesitating to sell because replacing what they have is no longer straightforward, and many who might once have traded up or down are choosing instead to sit tight. The result is a quieter market that still behaves as a healthy one. Buyers are looking, brokers are fielding enquiries, but the flow…

Capturing this beautiful orange ‘buck’ moon rising over The Needles, Isle of Wight, was a goal for yachting photographer Rick Tomlinson. He explains: “I’ve been wanting to do this shot for many years but it takes planning and perfect conditions for it to work. From my research I knew the exact time and bearing the moon would rise so I went by RIB especially to The Needles hoping it would all come together. The conditions were perfect and I timed my shot to sync with the flash of the lighthouse.” The image also features in Rick’s famous calendar for 2026. Dreaming of sunshine this winter? This stunning image by photographer Tobias Stoerkle of the 1960s classic Eugenia V racing at Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez was a nominee for the 2025…

‘It felt eerie to know that we were being watched’ “Look, Gerd… what is that? Is it a boat? Is it moving?” Anke Schekahn was on watch with her husband, sailing their Malö 40 Emaloca from Władysławowo in northern Poland, to Klaipėda in Lithuania, on their way to Estonia early in the summer of 2025. In the far distance was the coast of Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave wedged between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea. The German couple were transiting through Russia’s Exclusive Economic Zone, but outside the 12-mile territorial limit, when she saw a strange looking silhouette on the horizon. Neither of them could make sense of the low, dark object until it came closer. As it approached, they realised it was a partially surfaced submarine. The submarine…

TOP SPEED 55 KNOTS AVERAGE SPEED 40 KNOTS Lorient is the Hollywood of ocean racing. Like the movie factory of Los Angeles, the Brittany port is a seemingly single-purpose town that draws dreamers. And just as Hollywood is La La Land, so Lorient attracts some of the most outlandish projects in sailing. The La Ter river is dotted with small yachts bobbing on moorings, awaiting gentle adventures in the tiny creeks and sandy beaches of southern Morbihan. But the estuary’s north shore is different. This is home to the concrete wonderland of La Base, a former U-boat submarine base that is today’s epicentre of ocean racing. A walk around the pontoons here is a chance to window-shop the most extreme offshore technology. Gitana’s team base is in prime position, a…

First 60 LOA 18.95m 62ft 2in • Hull length 17.60m 57ft 9in • LWL 17.00m 55ft 9in • Beam 5.30m 17ft 5in • Draught 2.63m or 2.88m 8ft 8in or 9ft 5in • Displacement 22,280kg 49,105lb • Price To be announced beneteau.com After nearly half a century of First, this performance line of Beneteau continues to gather renewed momentum in its seventh generation with the launch of its largest model to date. Seascape, the Slovenian sportsboat specialists that Beneteau acquired in 2018, has helped to transform the First brand. It took the fun, fast and easy-to-sail qualities found in Seascape’s original 18-27ft Sam Manuard-designed range and applied them to the larger Firsts – readers will know just how impressed we were with the First 30 during our summer 2025 test. Such…

In the age of information overload, how do you find reliable sources to navigate unfamiliar waters? A pilot book author advises When a Volvo Ocean Race yacht famously hit a charted reef at full speed, it wasn’t because the data was wrong. It was because too much trust was placed in it. More than a decade on, in an era of charts, apps and crowd-sourced tips, the real skill lies not in collecting information, but in knowing what to use confidently and how to verify it. On a moonlit night in November 2014, the VO65 Team Vestas Wind was racing through the Indian Ocean at over 15 knots. The navigator had plotted a course across what appeared to be a 40m seamount. In reality, it was the Cargados Carajos Shoals,…

‘The Superfoiler was really ahead of its time’ LUKE PARKINSON NOMINATES THE SUPERFOILER “The Superfoiler was one of the coolest boats of all time,” says Luke Parkinson, who’s sailed everything from F50s to offshore 100-footers. “It was a boat like no other. It always kept you on your toes. It was really hard to sail, but very rewarding when you got it right.” The Superfoiler took elements of Sydney’s 18ft Skiff class and turbo-charged them on foils. An Australian roadshow-style circuit was launched in 2017 with fan zones, drone coverage, and live streaming, and attracted big names like Nathan Outteridge and Glenn Ashby, before the circuit was wound down in 2019. “It was a three-person, fast foiling boat that you could reach pretty much 40 knots, and it had electronic…

The Famous Project CIC, an all-women challenge for the Jules Verne Trophy non-stop around the world, record set off on Saturday 29 November. The team, which is skippered by Alexia Barrier and was set up together with British record-breaking yachtswoman Dee Caffari, is aiming to become the first all-female crew to complete a Jules Verne attempt. The non-stop, no-holds-barred around the world record time currently stands at 40 days and 23 hours. Barrier and Caffari are racing with Annemieke Bes, Rebecca Gmuer, Deb Blair, Molly Lapointe, Xiquita Etchegoyen, and Stacey Jackson aboard Idec Sport, the same maxi-trimaran which set the current Jules Verne record in 2017, skippered by Francis Joyon. At the point the team set off they believed they had an opportunity for a fast Atlantic descent, but were…

Most of us are off the water and counting down the weeks to the start of the new season as the northern hemisphere delivers this season’s offering of short days, long nights and hardcore weather systems that slide across the Atlantic. But for some, the training programme continues as they focus on the road to the next Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 2028. Many have headed to warmer locations to train where they often buddy up with some of their arch rivals to compete as if the Games were on in a few weeks. It’s a mark of just how important the summer of 2028 is. But also the importance of how one specific day could play out. And while the Olympic medal race day is more than two…

We hit the cold front square on. From light and variable in the centre of the low, bottoming out at 973mb, the wind took but an hour to ramp up to a point where we needed three reefs in the fore mainsail and only a staysail up front. Early in the day the Windy app was clear what lay in store: 40-plus knots of southerly while we were still two days out of Port Stanley on the return from South Georgia. When the blizzard set in just before nightfall, off we went on deck fully kitted up. The sail plan pre-emptively set when the wind filled had been optimistic. Soon we were at storm sail configuration – the fourth reef put in was our trysail – and with the staysail…

TOBY HODGES Where: Port Ginesta, Barcelona. Conditions: 16-22 knots, 2m waves. Model: Larger sail plan Pulse line version, plus optional laminate sails, Code 0 and powered winches ‘This Excess offers enjoyable steering and a balanced feel’ We may think we want that performance multihull, a 50ft+ daggerboard catamaran with the legs to average double figures and outrun weather systems. But for cruising and family sailing do we really need all that space, complexity and exorbitant cost that comes with it? In reality, more multihull cruisers who enjoy fast sailing and active helming will settle for a compromise between the pace and price of an Outremer or Balance-type daggerboard cat, with the all-out volume offered in a shorter length package by major production yards such as Lagoon, Leopard and Fountaine-Pajot. Positioned…

The Design Awards METS (DAME) is the world’s largest marine equipment awards and highlights design and innovation. Toby Hodges was at the show to pick out the most relevant award winners E360 ROUND CHARTPLOTTER Circular instruments have long been commonplace on car dashboards and in aircraft, so why not use that format for marine chartplotters? ‘The world’s first round chartplotter’ was seen as a novel and logical enough approach by the jury to scoop the overall DAME award, albeit a surprise to many. Seen up close, the E360 is undoubtedly a neat unit, intuitive to use with a very responsive screen for its 4in size. The touchscreen MFD (multifunction display) has integrated charts and the ability to show most instrument and engine data. Yet, for those who are slightly puzzled…