Racing

By David Schwartz The Narragansett Bay Yachting Association held its annual ‘Round The Bay race on Saturday, July 30. NBYA worked with The Nature Conservancy, a global conservation organization dedicated to conserving the lands and waters on which all life depends. Working in this state for fifty years, The Nature Conservancy has helped to conserve 35,000 acres of land in Rhode Island and to protect the quality of the waters we sail in. The seventeen boats racing…

In the spring of 2021, we embarked on a four-episode podcast tracing the development of the International Six Metre Class. The hubs of that furious design and competitive scene were Seawanhaka Corinthian and Larchmont Yacht Clubs in New York. The sailing characters included Briggs Cunningham, Herman Whiton, and many future 12 Metre skippers. We still get podcast listener comments today on those episodes; Sixes stories abound. The drama of the competition played out between designers young and…

By Nick Bowen   The Twenty Hundred Club had their third race of the season on Saturday, July 23. This was also their first of two destination races. The “Cuttyhunk Race” starts just south of Rose Island near the “G3” buoy, takes the sailors about four nautical miles south to buoy “R2” at Brenton Reef. This mark is about two nm south of Castle Hill where the boats turn east for a 19.5 nm run across Rhode…

By Sarah Wilme Last September, I along with the core of Team Bitter End was lining up for the Stamford Vineyard Race aboard two separate boats. For most of my teammates, this was their first offshore race. The experience ignited something in each of us, and nine months later we were hurtling towards Bermuda in the Gibbs Hill Lighthouse Division as one of the youngest teams in the history of the Newport Bermuda Race onboard Oakcliff’s Farr…

By Buttons Padin Vying for the title of ILCA Atlantic Coast Champion, 153 sailors descended on Larchmont Yacht Club in Larchmont, NY July 9 & 10. Competitors came from up and down the Atlantic with many from Long Island Sound clubs, as well as major contingents from Ft. Lauderdale, Miami, and St. Petersburg, FL, Charleston, SC, Annapolis, MD, and more…including Bermudian and European entries. The host club, one of the first to adopt this single-hander in the…

Thirty-two sailors from across North America and the Caribbean, representing ten states and territories and three Canadian provinces, participated in the 20th Anniversary C. Thomas Clagett, Jr. Memorial Clinic and Regatta, hosted by Sail Newport in Newport, RI June 21 – 26. Founded in 2003, the organization recently rebranded as Clagett Sailing honors the memory of Tom Clagett (1916-2001), a U.S. Navy World War II veteran who learned to sail on Chesapeake Bay. As a youngster he suffered temporary…

Photos by Daniel Forster/PPL Media The 52nd running of the Newport Bermuda Race is in the record books. Our friend Daniel Forster took to the air to capture the spectacular photographs presented on these pages.           Daniel Litchfield’s Hound, a vintage K. Aage Nielsen sloop, on her way to victory in Class 15.   © Daniel Forster/PPL    

Olympic hopefuls training at Sail Newport this summer One of the many aspects, of a depth unfathomable, of living in Newport, Rhode Island is the breadth and depth of the sailing that happens here. At the end of the high school sailing season last May, I noticed an assembly of Nacra 17 catamarans, one of the recent additions to the Olympic sailing roster, in the dinghy lot at Sail Newport. The fact there was a RIB whizzing…

By Nick Bowen   The Twenty Hundred Club opened their season on Saturday, May 22 with the third annual “Bridge Fiasco” Race. The rules are simple: Start the race just south of Prudence Island and sail under each of the three Narragansett Bay bridges – the Newport Bridge, the Jamestown Bridge and the Mt. Hope Bridge – in any order The course is 27.8nm long and the format of the race is pursuit style, which means your…

By Phil Dickey, MD, Skipper, Flying Lady Sam Wetherill, a founding member of the Cruising Club of America and early advocate of ocean racing, would have been pleased with the wind and sea conditions that prevailed during Essex Yacht Club’s 70th running of the race created to honor him. Two years ago, the race received a reconfiguration, which provides a longer (140nm) and more challenging open ocean race, which is especially suitable as a warmup to the Newport Bermuda…