Sailing World March - April 2015

ON THE OFFICIAL NOTICE BOARD, in the space designated for crew-wanted or crew-available notices, there’s a solitary offering: A neatly penned note from someone with experience in all positions. With each passing day of Quantum Key West Race Week, however, its edges curl, the ink fades, and, like an ignored parking ticket under a windshield wiper, the note eventually gets swept away. Sorry, nobody’s looking. In the heydays of Key West Race Week, I’m told, that would’ve never happened. Back when the big boats rolled into town from the feeders, there were plenty of good sailors loitering, most of them looking for a ride. You could yank a guy off his bar stool at Sloppy Joe’s and be fine. Getting on a boat, even for a day, is damn near…

THE WAY IT IS RACING MY Farr 43 Wild Rose in the 70th Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race was extra special this year because my brother, Andrew, and sister, Lisa, joined my extended ‘sailing family,’ which I’ve sailed with for many years. Despite sailing all their lives, the stars finally aligned so that Andrew and Lisa could compete in their first Sydney Hobart, which would see them cross the finish line back home in Tasmania. Sydney turned on all its glamour for the 117-strong fleet in an exhilarating Boxing Day start down the harbor and out of the famous heads. We held a good position down the spectacular east coast of Australia and northeast Tasmania, and were close to the turning mark of Tasman Island with its imposing organ pipe…

BRENDA CHENEY’S slender legs dangle from the rail of the Beneteau Oceanis 43 Jubilee as we race up and down Savannah’s Wilmington River. “When I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease at 34, my perspective on what really mattered changed,” she tells me. “After my treatment, I became a board member of the Texas Gulf Coast Chapter of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and I’ve been doing that for seven years, helping with the Leukemia Cup and a bunch of other events. When you’re trying to raise money for any cause, you have to get creative.” In 2014, 47 chapters hosted 50 events to raise funds for LLS. The Leukemia Cup has joined participants’ passion for sailing with the important task of raising money to fund cancer research. Top fundraising individuals…

THE DECEMBER 2014 announcement by America’s Cup officials that the idyllic island nation of Bermuda will host the 35th Match in June 2017 lacked the suspense organizers might have hoped for. The cat had already been let out of the bag by an official with the city of San Diego, which lost out to Bermuda in the bid to host. The announcement, conducted at the boutique Crosby Street Hotel in New York’s SoHo district did have some panache. In attendance were A-list actors Michael Douglas and wife Catherine Zeta-Jones, who plan to build and open an extravagant hotel in Bermuda before the next Cup. And there was Mr. America’s Cup himself, Dennis Conner, sitting in the second row. But with the announcement came the stark realization that the America’s Cup…

ERIC PERON is Dongfeng’s resident casa nova. Throughout Leg 3, the Frenchman repeatedly asks Jack Boutelle, the Australian rookie, if his sister will be at our arrival in China. “I’ll have to find your dad to introduce myself to my future father-in-law,” he says, daily. Jack takes it in good stride. It’s one of many funny stories to come from a bunch of rookie Chinese sailors, unknown French singlehanded savants, one baby-faced Australian, and an American reporter (that’s me) onboard a Volvo Ocean 65 racing to its homeport in Sanya, China. Pascal Bidegorry, our navigator, and Charles Caudrelier, our skipper, are something akin to a French Starsky and Hutch. Charles calls himself “Cartesian” and is obsessed with the routing screen, whereas Pascal is more of the shoot-first-ask-later type. In one…

THE INTERNATIONAL MOTH is a development class with liberal rules in place since its inception in the 1920s. It’s all about progression, especially of late, so plenty of new kit was on display at the 2015 Moth World Championship in Sorrento, Australia, in January. Peter Burling, of New Zealand, demonstrated impressive form in his win over Nathan Outteridge, of Australia, and both sailors used the latest innovations driving the class. Canting and raking masts: Moths heel to windward, which creates righting moment by projecting the weight of the sailor and boat further to windward. Leaning the rig into the wind, however, effectively creates a header, so in order to point higher, side shrouds connect to a complex system that allows the mast to automatically cant to leeward as the boat…