Racing

By Kate Wilson, risingT Media It was a real test of patience for the 99 boats that attempted the 92nd Annual Conanicut Yacht Club Around The Island race on Sunday, Septemebr 1. Under a light northerly breeze, the Race Committee, led by Principal Race Officer Mark Grosby, started the first of ten fleets at 1100, but soon after the third fleet started, the wind completely shut off. The plan was to send the sailors counter-clockwise around Jamestown,…

By Barby MacGowan, Media Pro International For a 15th year, the Ida Lewis Distance Race indulged competitive racing sailors in an overnight sprint that proved both challenging and extraordinary. Thirty-one teams, in five classes for boats of 28 feet and longer, set out after noontime on Friday, August 16 to engage in a 110-mile course that took them from the start off Fort Adams in Newport, RI, past Castle Hill to Buzzards Bay Tower, then to a mark southwest of Block…

By Meg Reilly, Co-skipper Ocean Racers On Wednesday, August 28, a group of curious offshore sailors gathered at the Essex Yacht Club in Essex, CT for the second installment of the Essex Ocean Racing Forum. The quarterly meeting fell on a stormy summer night, providing the perfect complement to the event’s subject matter. The crowd was filled with commodores, various club members, Newport Bermuda racers, and seasoned blue-water cruisers. Hundreds of thousands of ocean mile experiences were…

By Rob Penner, 11th Hour Racing Team Communications Director Two-time Volvo Ocean Race participants Charlie Enright (Bristol, RI) and Mark Towill (Honolulu, HI), Co-Founders of 1 Degree, recently announced that they have formally renewed their team’s sponsorship with 11th Hour Racing for a long-term and visionary campaign, with their eyes set on the 2021-22 edition of “The Ocean Race” (formerly the Volvo Ocean Race). The team will be named “11th Hour Racing” after its title sponsor – Rhode…

By David Seabrook   I’ve served on race committee for the Indian Harbor Yacht Club Classic Yacht Regatta on and off since 2012, but this year’s edition, on Saturday, September 14, was the first time I’ve noticed a hipster millennial among the competitors. With a long, square-cut beard and a rail-thin physique, he looked right out of Brooklyn central casting. What was he doing at a classic yacht regatta in Greenwich, CT? Maybe he’d come to celebrate…

By Tom Darling Two classic Herreshoff designs, conceived Thanksgiving 1913 and born July 4, 1914. On August 18, 2019, they met on a racecourse for the first time in their sailing histories. This is the story of “The Herreshoff Twins,” a pair of Newport 29s named Dolphin and Mischief, and of their younger distant cousin, Rogue. The Twins are two of four Newport 29s, 35’ 6” overall, over eight tons displacement, and clouds of sail for inshore…

By Christian E. Hoffman MIDN USN, Varsity Offshore Sailing Team Captain Being the skipper of a service academy racing yacht, particularly on the United States Naval Academy Varsity Offshore Sailing Team (VOST), provides both challenges and hardships, but results in incredible reward. Each summer VOST crews depart from Annapolis, MD in vessels ranging from a Reichel/Pugh 66 to Navy 44s. Whether you are competing in an offshore distance race from Marion to Bermuda or buoy racing in…

By Nick Bowen The Twenty Hundred Club is a vibrant and growing sailboat racing club on Narragansett Bay that has a wide range of races including island circumnavigations, destination races and pure adventure races (spoiler alert – “Twenty Hundred [hours]” refers to the starting time of the club’s first race in 1946). The club is experiencing a growth spurt, with 60 boats participating in the 2018 season.   The season begins with the Around Aquidneck Island [Newport]…

Anderson Reggio, described by our friend and regular contributor Sam Crichton as “Newport’s Go-To Sailing Professional” in an article she wrote for NewportThisWeek.com, checks a lot of boxes for WindCheck Magazine. He could easily be an On Watch candidate as he hails from “The WindCheck Community.” He could write a Sound Environment column drawing on his environmental experiences and as an Ambassador for Newport-based 11th Hour Racing. For this regular feature of our interviews with New York…

By Robyn Earley, J/Fest New England Publicity and Marketing Chair   The third annual New England J/Fest Regatta was hosted by Sail Newport the weekend of August 9-11, 2019 in the beautiful waters of Narragansett Bay. This regatta was open to all J/Boat owners and crews in both racing and cruising classes. The one-design classes included both J/109s and J/80s, with an equally competitive PHRF class. Narragansett Bay is considered a special “home waters” venue for the New…