At MIT, in a single season, two members of the sailing team suffered head injuries so severe, they each had to abandon their studies and leave school for more than a year. As the joke that is not a joke has it, we’re talking about very expensive brains.

Those college sailing ­injuries happened five years ago, prompting a round of soul searching and—hey, it’s MIT—a look at the data. Coach Fran Charles relates: “The data showed us that sailing was almost on par with football for head injuries. We looked at each other. We agreed. This is crazy.” The team took steps and mandated helmets on those heads. As of 2021, helmet wearing remains policy at MIT. Not every sailor is happy with that, but the athletic ­department is.

Beginning last spring, my St. Francis YC added a helmet requirement for junior sailors, so here we are, talking about it. The United States is a long way from helmet use as a snowballing trend, but I expect to see more and more helmets in our sport, as in other sports. With that said, what you will find if you continue reading is not a clarion call for a helmet on every sailor. I’ll try instead to lay out the pros and cons, and why a yacht club would make this decision for our young sailors. Helmets are not a new thing, and the arguments are not new, for or against, but they continue to be rediscovered as if they were new. It’s time to push some buttons.

To begin, let’s acknowledge that a helmet might not prevent a concussion, especially in a severe head strike. If a helmet worked that magic, there would be a different conversation these days in the game of football. Instead, helmet or no, the sudden acceleration or deceleration of skull against brain produces trauma, affecting brain function. The effects can be mild or severe, but they accumulate over multiple incidents. Helmets can absorb some degree of impact and, logic would have it, lessen the trauma of a head strike. By their form, they can turn a boom strike into a glancing blow. Without doubt, they reduce cuts and contusions.

It is also true that a helmet makes a bigger target. And a poorly chosen helmet adds new risks of entanglement, or a risk of whiplash if a sailor hits the water in a fast crash. And somebody is sure to argue that helmets hamper hearing and peripheral vision.

RELATED: Concussion-Free Sailing

About that last bit: While we want our young sailors to purchase their own helmets—and the coaches offer guidance—the 20 that we bought as in-house stock were chosen to not cover the ears or block vision. That’s a compromise in terms of protection, but a necessary compromise. Let’s add that a close fit, clean outline, buoyancy and a quick-release chin strap are core requirements.

Several brands offer helmets claimed to meet ­sailing-specific needs, and we wound up with the same helmets preferred by Nacra 17 Olympic team members Anna Weiss and Riley Gibbs. “Fit is critical,” Gibbs says. “The kids should have their own, and then it’s just like having a pair of shoes. I see this as a progressive direction. Anna and I always train in our helmets, as if we were racing. At the crazy end of things, I once saw an F50 crack a helmet. Better that than crack a skull.” America’s Cup, SailGP—the role models are there.

StFYC’s fleet surgeon, Dr. Deepak Srivastava, has had kids in the program, and he says, “Given what we now know about repeated head injuries, even subtle, I am confident that requiring helmets is the right move.”

There’s another dimension, however. StFYC’s lead coach, Adam Corpuz-Lahne, brought our helmets proposal forward, and the way he sees it: “Helmets should make concussions less severe in most strikes, especially in the smaller ones that we ignore while they add up. They will also greatly reduce the nuisance strikes that interrupt a practice when a kid takes a bump to the head—­probably not a serious injury—and a coach responsible for five boats has to leave four boats uncoached to deal with the situation. Practice comes to a stop. That’s why our sailing director, Brent Harrill, tells the sailors that wearing a helmet is not just about you. You’re wearing your helmet for the team. Then there’s the young kid who gets whacked, and perhaps there are tears, and if the kid is done and demands to go in, that becomes a safety situation of a different order. And that’s a kid who goes home thinking she/he did not have fun. Maybe sailing just lost that kid. And of course, with any kid telling you he’s fine [and] just seeing stars, that’s a ­different protocol.”

Our juniors sail on San Francisco Bay in a big sea breeze, with tidal-driven ­counter current kicking up chop about half the time (go figure). At American Yacht Club on Long Island Sound, the average wind is lower, the sea state is milder, and only younger sailors are required to wear helmets. As coach Kevin Broome tells it: “We have not seen any problems of reduced awareness or entanglement, and helmets have absolutely cut our rate of crying kids on the water and again on the dock. Kids get bumped and banged carrying rigs around. Helmets give them an added sense of security. It’s hard to not draw a connection to skiing. In the 1990s, people snickered at helmets, but when you go to the mountains now, almost everyone on skis or a ­snowboard wears a helmet without a second thought.”

Bicycles, skateboards, lacrosse—helmet sports are the norm for the coming generation. StFYC’s program requires helmets from when arriving at the dock to leaving the dock at the end of the day. A boat on a trailer, rigged and flapping, can do as much damage as your own boat under sail or the boat next door in a rounding. And in both high school sailing and college racing, rotation between heats is a danger point. It’s one thing to be aware of your own boom and quite another when someone flies in behind you, focusing elsewhere and not on you.

Rereading, this feels one-sided. I need to add that Bowdoin College had a helmet requirement for two years, then dropped it. Coach Frank Pizzo says: “We started wearing ­helmets one fall semester after we had a rash of concussions. That season with helmets—no concussions. Then, in the second year with helmets, we had a big bump in concussions in the spring. We weren’t seeing the difference we were looking for, so we made helmets optional.

“No question, they prevent skull fractures, and for athletes who grew up playing helmet sports, they’re no big deal. Other people fidget in them. They also present a challenge in cold weather, when you need warm gear.” (If you don’t know, Bowdoin is on the coast of Maine, where it gets a mite chilly when the sun dips south.)

On San Francisco Bay, the sea breeze often peaks at 18 to 22 knots. That’s our reality, but in other realities, I would be surprised to see anyone wearing a helmet on a lake in Texas on a 97-degree, 6-knot day in July. This is not a simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down conversation. Along with requiring helmets, MIT ­retrofitted carbon booms, dramatically lowering weight and impact, but not every program has that budget. MIT also raised its booms, but they’re back down because you really do have to teach the muscle memory of an adequate duck.

So, at my club, the experiment begins. There’s been some whining, and I can imagine a hint of adolescent-cool tension in the air when we get to that first high school regatta next fall. But this is how we’re going to roll. In 1995, St. Francis YC—spurred by the drowning of a US Yachtsman of the Year in our Big Boat Series—became the first institution in the country to require “adequate flotation” for all participants in all of our races on all boats, keelboats included. There were howls. There was indignation. Looking back, we see that, yes, culture can shift.

Perhaps history is repeating. It may take me a while to get back to you on that.

The post Helmets and Sailing appeared first on Sailing World.

The moment you hear your name called to receive an award is one of satisfaction, excitement and a sort of validation of the effort invested to earn it. The announcement is followed by applause from your competitors as you are handed a keepsake reminder of your success. It’s a euphoric moment, but then, a few days later, you have a quandary. What do I do with the darn thing?

Over the past winter, I decided to take stock of the inventory of awards and trophies I have received over the years. Many were stuffed in boxes and buried in the basement or the garage. Clearly, the euphoria of the moment faded over time. The exercise made me think about trophies and their value, and helped me recall great moments on the racecourse. The extraordinary thing I realized was that for every trophy I had received, there were far more regattas where I did not. Such trophies are reminders of good times, but they are certainly not the most important takeaway from racing a sailboat.

My personal collection includes an eclectic mix of objects: cups, bowls, plates, crystal, ice buckets, binoculars, barometers, flags, certificates, plaques, boxes, a chair, jackets, foul-weather gear, books, framed pictures, decanters, a working canon, knives, ­silverware, bottles of wine, trophies of every shape, an oil lantern, compasses, strange plastic trophies, artwork, and a couple of Rolex timepieces. And yes, there’s even a peace pipe. Awards that seemed insignificant to me ended up back in boxes or sent off to a thrift shop. I just did not need 10 old jackets that I was unlikely to ever wear again. As I went through the collection, I decided to cull it, selecting an award with the most significance for each year of my sailing career.

My next step was to create an appropriate way to display the awards, and what I learned from the experience might be helpful for any yacht club or sailor when the time comes to tackle the trophy haul. Important trophies should be on display where everyone can see them. The trophy can be preserved in a glass case, or out in the open to be handled, shared and admired. If it’s genuinely valuable, say an Olympic medal or an ornate piece that’s irreplaceable, there should be an element of security and protection. Trophies should be spaced apart so they don’t get muddled on a shelf. Good lighting helps viewers to see the engraving. I suggest posting a list of the winners on a wall next to the case because too many trophies end up with the winners listed on the back, and their names get lost.

My favorite trophies include a Windsor chair presented by the United States Merchant Marine Academy to our crew on Courageous for winning the America’s Cup. The chair has a nifty worded plaque on the back and is a comfortable place to sit. It is 44 years old and still looks good. The America’s Cup Hall of Fame presented me with a cool half-model of Reliance, and one of my all-time favorites is a small blue flag with a white rooster on it. I won it in the last race of the season on Barnegat Bay in 1973. In the bottom of one of the boxes, I found an engraved trophy with the name of my great aunt, Frances Wemple. She finished third for the season in 1927 at the now-defunct Polyhue YC. The burgee on the trophy has six colors, hence poly hue (many colors). I decided the small cup should remain on my shelf because I never knew Aunt Frances; she died at a young age in the 1930s.

The most famous trophy in sailing is the America’s Cup, of course. Huge fortunes have been spent on the quest to win it. The Cup itself is kind of a gaudy pear-shaped object. It looks like a pitcher but is actually bottomless. It was one of eight identical trophies manufactured by R & S Garrard in London in 1851. The original Cup was 27 inches high and weighed 134 ounces of silver. Additional extensions to its base have been added over the years. Originally, the Cup was called the 100 Guineas Cup because that was its cost. The name of the trophy was changed in honor of the schooner, America, that won it for defeating 15 British yachts in a race around the Isle of Wight.

The iconic trophy was called ordinary when it was first presented, but today it is revered as the most prestigious prize in sailing. In October 1995, a deranged New Zealand activist took a sledge hammer to the Cup and smashed it. The perpetrator received a stiff prison sentence, and the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron shipped the mangled piece of silver back to Garrard in London for a complete rebuild. White-gloved security for the Cup has been tighter ever since.

Throughout his many years challenging for the America’s Cup, Sir Thomas Lipton traveled around the United States presenting Lipton Cups to different yacht clubs. One of those went to the Grand Lake YC in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Lipton had been invited to visit by a lawyer during cocktails one evening at the New York YC. Several months later, Lipton stopped in Denver for two days while traveling via train from San Francisco to New York City. At an elaborate dinner that was described as “the social event of the year,” Lipton committed to giving the yacht club a Challenge Cup. A few months later, one of Lipton’s trophies arrived at the club, and a regatta has been an important event ever since.

In November 1919, Lipton visited the Southern YC in New Orleans and promised a trophy for the “advancement of sailing in inter-club competition in Fish Class sloops.” The club’s minutes announced the big moment: “Thomas J. Lipton’s gift arrived from England, a magnificent silver trophy handcrafted by silversmiths in England, whereupon a resolution was adopted and Sir Thomas was sent an honorary membership.” Of course, Lipton was using his gifts to promote Lipton tea, but it didn’t matter to the recipients. Lipton was a popular figure thanks to his persistent pursuit of the America’s Cup.

Sometimes the actual trophy is a little different than advertised. For example, the Kaiser of Germany once presented a gold cup called the Kaiser’s Cup for the Transatlantic Race in 1905. Years later, it was discovered that the trophy was actually cheap metal covered with gold plating. Authenticity counts, and the Kaiser fell short with his ploy.

The New York YC has a vast collection of important trophies, and in 2019, the club published a booklet about its collection, authored by curator Alice W. Dickson. “Presentation pieces are compelling because they were often the most ambitious work that a firm would do,” Dickson writes. “These special commissions were opportunities for manufacturers or designers to show off and promote their skills.”

Some of the most interesting trophies in sailing include the Lighthouse Trophy for winning the Newport to Bermuda Race, the Barn Door for the Transpacific Ocean Race, the Toms River YC Challenge Cup that dates back to 1871, the Bilge Puller, presented to the winner of the E Scow National Championship since 1961, the Congressional Cup, deeded to the Long Beach YC by an act of Congress, and the Governor’s Cup youth match race regatta, which received its deed from California’s then-Gov. Ronald Reagan.

There are times when trophies are retired. One example is the Adams Cup for the North American Women’s Sailing Championship dating back to 1924, which was retired in 2011. The America’s Cup Challengers raced for the Louis Vuitton Trophy from 1983 through 2017. The regatta was sponsored by fashion house Prada in 2021, and the company presented the Prada Cup to the winner of the ­challenger trials instead.

Trophies are important reminders of victories and the memories that come with them, and you will appreciate them by displaying trophies that are meaningful, but I suggest not letting volume overwhelm your collection. After one deeper purge, I took away some trophies from years that were not particularly compelling, which made the remaining awards a little more outstanding.

In the summer of 2019, a boat I had been racing on received an award for being the top overall competitor during the previous two years. I sat in the back of the auditorium as our owners got up on stage to accept the trophy. There was no memento for the rest of the crew, but I didn’t mind. I felt great satisfaction for just being a participant, which reminded me that memories of our victories are reward enough.

It doesn’t take much to be acknowledged. Sometimes a simple piece of cloth is all it takes, which is why my rooster flag will always be special and has a permanent place among the more illustrious hardware.

The post The True Value of our Trophies appeared first on Sailing World.

When the race committee hoisted its AP-over-A on the morning of the first day of racing at the Helly Hansen NOOD Regatta in Annapolis, there was a collective sigh across the Annapolis YC’s dry sail lot. Yes, everyone was anxious to go racing after a year of tiptoe racing through the pandemic, but not everyone was keen to scuff off the rust in a 30-knot gale.

So, with coffees in hand, crews tinkered and mingled with friends. A few teams eventually sneaked out to practice in the harbor, but most of Rob Ruhlman’s crew went golfing instead. There was no good reason to go out and practice on their J/111, flogging sails and crew before their big-deal North American Championship. They hadn’t sailed since January, at the class’s winter championship in Key West, but they’d be ready, Ruhlman reasoned. Feeling ready and being ready, however, are two different things.

The one wrinkle they weren’t prepared for was the race committee’s use of a rolling three-minute starting sequence the following morning when starting signals finally got underway. The short countdown caught Ruhlman’s team off guard in the morning’s first race. Twenty-knot gusts only fueled the confusion.

“We had trouble getting used to the three-minute-start thing,” Ruhlman says. “I get it in Lasers, but with 37-footers?”

Without a good start in this class, Ruhlman says, it’s nearly impossible to get to the front. This would, of course, account for his Spaceman Spiff being sixth (of seven boats) in the first race of the regatta. Rust in the boathandling cog of the machine didn’t help.

“These boats are so even, and there are all top-notch guys that travel,” he says, “so there’s no room for mistakes.”

Peter Wagner’s team on Skeleton Key, trained in the big breeze of their ­hometown San Francisco Bay, were ­confident in the day’s chaotic blow and won the first races comfortably. They were able to get off the starting line clean and control their own race, Wagner says.

“That was pretty important because, with the shifts, things were changing quickly, and we had to be able to react to the changes as they happened.”

By the final race of the day, however, Ruhlman’s crew was in its groove. Their score line trended upward, with a second to close the day. Skeleton Key had its first stumble, hung out on the wrong side of a windshift and finishing fourth. “We got stuck a little too far left and couldn’t quite find a shift to come back,” Wagner says. “Our friends on Spaceman Spiff face-planted us at a critical moment, bouncing us back left and sealing our doom. That was a good move by them.”

That fourth also narrowed the series to mere points between the top three boats, with Spaceman Spiff lurking in fourth.

“We went home that day feeling fine,” Ruhlman says, “and not a single person walked out the door in the morning expecting to go out and win the day—or the regatta. We weren’t feeling a lot of pressure.”

Skeleton Key, however, was perhaps feeling the pressure and got caught over early in the morning’s first start.

“An OCS is almost impossible to overcome,” Ruhlman says. “In this fleet, getting back is incredibly difficult.”

Not only did Spiff win that one, but it won the next, inching the crew closer to the top of the mountain. “We always take it one race at a time,” Ruhlman says, “And, in fact, when we crossed the finish line in the last race [a fourth-place finish], my son said, ‘I think we just won the North Americans.’ I know he’s good with math, but I said I’m going to wait and see how the numbers work out.”

The story was similar for J.R. Maxwell and his mates on the J/22 Scooby. Their results after the breezy opening day were what he called “consistent” in the 15-boat fleet, and after winning the next day’s first two races, Scooby was well on its way to winning the regatta. But, like Wagner’s Skeleton Key, the race committee called Maxwell’s number—and it took a while. Looping back to restart, they looked up the course and knew the work ahead.

“We had to grind back from being second to last and finished fifth in that race,” Maxwell says. “It was all about staying in the puffs. It wasn’t always intuitive of where that was going to happen.”

A fifth in that race was good enough for the win. Sailing with Maxwell on Scooby were Jim Schmicker and Matt Spencer (and Bryan Pryor sailing on Saturday only), and as the winner of the J/22 class, they were also selected as the regatta’s overall winners, earning a berth to compete in the Helly Hansen Caribbean NOOD Championship in October in Sunsail-provided bareboats.

The J/35s are a legacy class of the Annapolis NOOD, and while the fleet was smaller in numbers this year with only four to show, the battle at the top of the fleet was a mighty one, with Roger Lant’s Abientot winning the tiebreaker over the perennial champions of James Sagerholm’s Aunt Jean. It took everything they had, Lant says, plus a little luck.

“Aunt Jean is very, very fast upwind, so if you let them get away, it’s a tough battle after that, so we worked on a strategy to deal with them on the starting line,” Lant says. “But we carried out our plan, and it went well.”

What exactly was that plan?

“The boat that won the start won the race,” Lant says. “They were looking for space on the starting line, and we were looking to engage, so [on the first day] we engaged them fairly hard.”

When Aunt Jean won the day’s first two races the following morning, Lant had only one option: to win the final race. He who wins the last race wins it all.

“We knew we had to control him at the start,” Lant says, “but we also had to win the start and get clear.”

They also needed top-shelf crew work.

“I’m the most fortunate skipper on the course,” Lant says. “I have a core crew that has been sailing together for three years, and the skills keep building, and we had some of the most fabulous crew work I’ve ever seen on the boat—exceptional.”

Lant, of course, got his win and local bragging rights—for now.

On the same circle were the J/80s, also an Annapolis NOOD legacy class. Conor Hayes and Jeff Kirchhoff’s J/80, More Gostosa, didn’t have a stellar first day, but on the second, “flawless crew work” saved them.

When it’s said that every point counts, Hayes would agree because one point was ultimately the difference. Having won the penultimate race, Hayes knew the points were extremely close between his team and Daniel Wittig’s Turbo Sloth, but he had no idea how close. All he could do for the last race was keep Sloth in his wake.

“We had a tough start in that last race,” Hayes says. “We wanted to start at the pin but got shut out. We were able to tack out immediately onto port and were in phase. From there, it was a matter of staying in more wind. It helps to have boatspeed and a good crew to be able to get out of bad situations.”

Similar accounts were common across the 153-boat regatta, even over on the 40-boat J/70 line that was so thick with professionals, you could practically see dollar bills streaming behind in their wakes as pro-am teams fought tooth and nail for narrow lanes and clean air.

Travis Odenbach’s Honeybadger was king for a day after the first, but the late assault came from USA 419, with Terry Hutchinson on the tiller. Even he had to pull off a few miracles.

In the start of Sunday’s first race, for example, Hutchinson doubted his GPS starting instrument, hesitated, and was immediately buried after the start. “We didn’t trust the Velocitek,” Hutchinson says. “We were poked, and I didn’t pull the trigger. It was a rookie mistake.”

Hutchison? Rookie? Pshaw.

With the focus of his crew, Scott Nixon, Dan Morris, Gil Hackel and Jennifer Wulf, they clawed their way back to an eighth-place finish—no small feat when the flood tide was running in at full tilt. It was this comeback, Hutchinson says, that ­ultimately won his team the regatta.

“It’s amazing how hard this racecourse is in Annapolis,” Hutchinson says of the home waters he’s supposed to know like the back of his hand. “The course location was hard because the current was good on the right, but there was pressure and shift on the left, so you had to balance the two. You did not want to be in the middle. In the first race, the leader came out of the right, and in the second, the leader came out of the left. Each leg was unique to itself, which kept us on our toes.”

Over on the J/30 line there were 10 boats, but the battle was really between the top three—Bob Rutsch and Mike Costello’s Bebop, Bruce Irvin’s Shamrock, and Tristan Keen’s Infectious Smile. The three of them were passing ones, twos and threes like hot potatoes, but Bebop ultimately snagged the win. “My crew had not raced together since 2019,” Rutsch says, “so to get back together and go out in 20 knots and not break anything was amazing. We had a killer first race—with a monster lead—on the first day, and that really got us going for the weekend.”

Rutsch has lost track of how many times Bebop has won the NOOD since his father bought the boat in 1983—maybe 11 times—but winning it never grows old. “I used to say to my dad, in the ’80s and ’90s, ‘Man, I hope we’re still around after 25 years like the Alberg 30s.’ We’re still out there. They’re still out there. It’s a beautiful thing.”

Speaking of the Alberg 30s, it was Pat Siedel’s Laughing Gull that set one of the regatta’s picket fences, often finishing five minutes ahead of the fleet. “When it was really sporty on Saturday, most of the guys were flying No. 2s and blades,” Siedel says, “but we opted to reef down and go with a No. 1, and that really helped us. Plus, the guys were all over the crew work.”

Flawless boathandling is also what got Jose Fuentes and the Caramba Etchells squad to the top of its fleet. Fuentes, who lives over the border in Washington, D.C., says the NOOD is his No. 1 regatta, and this one felt especially important, sailing in honor of former crewmate and local sailor Geoff Ewenson, who recently passed away. Ewenson, he says, would have been proud. “I don’t think we had a speed edge over the rest of the boats,” Fuentes says. The big difference was the crew work. It was flawless—every tack, every ­rounding, every jibe.

Making easy work of the regatta in the J/24s was Tony Parker’s Bangor Packet. Tyler Moore’s squad prevailed in the Viper 640s, and Bill Zartler’s experienced team owned the 21-boat J/105 fleet from start to finish. In the new North Sails Doublehanded Distance Race, Mike Beasely and Chris Coleman conquered the windy 20-mile racecourse to win on Beasley’s GP26, Rattle N Rum. ν

The post Racing Back to Normal at the Annapolis NOOD appeared first on Sailing World.

Having a modern autopilot—and ­knowing how to use it—can really expand what you can do with your boat. I have a 44-foot racer/cruiser named Dark Star. A few years ago, I did a solo sailing delivery from Desolation Sound in central British Columbia to Seattle, a distance of 200 miles. This would normally be a three-day trip, but with extensive use of my B&G pilot, I was able to make the passage in 24 hours by myself. This kind of trip is not for everyone, but it was a cool experience for me, made possible because I had a good autopilot and I know how to control it reasonably well.

I use the pilot a lot on Dark Star, both for cruising and shorthanded racing. When motoring, I employ the pilot most of the time, only hand-steering in crowded locations. Of course, it is critical to maintain a proper lookout at all times. The boat will go straight, but we’re still responsible for knowing what is in our path, be it land, logs, whales or other boats. I find not having to constantly steer makes the deliveries less tiring and more fun. Plus, it allows me to get some projects done while underway. I still keep a close watch for logs and kelp, two perennial hazards in Puget Sound, typically steering around the hazard using the +10 or -10 course-change keys.

For shorthanded racing, I use the pilot mostly when sailing singlehanded and during maneuvers when I’m racing doublehanded. For example, it is far easier to hoist the main with the pilot on, so you can use all your energy to pull up the sail. The pilot is also helpful for sail changes. Use the pilot to go straight (or maintain a constant wind angle) while you prepare for the maneuver, then use the pilot to assume the correct course during and after the maneuver. Let’s say I’m hoisting the spinnaker with two people aboard. Once I have the kite rigged and ready, I will set the pilot to steer 160 degrees true-wind angle. Then the two of us can pull out the tack at our leisure and hoist the sail carefully, with one person jumping at the mast and the second tailing. Once the new sail is up, one person can go the helm, heading up to the desired angle while the second crew trims the sheet.

The pilot works best in steady conditions, although modern pilots are capable of dealing with shifty wind as well. If I am cruising or racing with a small crew, I will switch on the pilot every time I want to make an adjustment to the sails, check the chart, eat a snack, etc. Normally, I use my remote to control the pilot, which I have on a lanyard around my neck. I can control the boat’s course no matter where I am on the boat while also remembering to keep a good lookout, exercise good seamanship, and not get lazy.

I also use the pilot extensively when racing at night or when I am tired. I find I can still keep a good watch while using less energy than if I was hand-steering. Sometimes I will set an alarm just in case I nod off.

I recently upgraded my autopilot ­system on Dark Star to a B&G H5000, and man, what a difference. The pilot is now much more accurate and responsive, and capable of steering well in a lot more conditions, including under spinnaker and in shifting winds. Lately, I have been racing my boat exclusively doublehanded, so having a modern pilot is a huge benefit, and it makes racing more fun and less work. It would be really hard to race my boat well doublehanded without it. I have used my new system for about a year, so I am no expert with it, but there are a few settings and controls that I currently use. (Remember, these settings are for the B&G H5000, but other brands will offer similar functionality.)

Pilot Mode: Push “Auto” on the controller or remote to engage (pilot steering to course), then push “Mode” to toggle between compass, true-wind angle and apparent-wind angle (pilot steering to wind angle). Push “Standby” to disengage.

Change Course in Compass Mode: From the controller or remote, push +1 for a 1-degree right turn, push +10 for a 10-degree right turn, push -1 for a 1-degree left turn, and push -10 for a 10-degree left turn.

Change Course in AWA or TWA Mode: From the controller or remote, push +1 for a 1-degree bear away, push +10 for a 10-degree bear away, push -1 for a 1-degree head up, and push -10 for a 10-degree head up. For 95 percent of situations, that is all I need, but using the pilot to help with tacking and jibing is incredibly helpful, and there are ­several modes to use.

Tacking in Compass Mode: First prepare the boat to tack. When ready, push +1 and +10 together to turn right, or -1 and -10 together to turn left. The boat will start to tack. The change of course is set in Setup>Sailing>Tack Angle>80 degrees. The rate of turn can be controlled in the “Tack Time” parameter: Setup>Sailing>Tack Time>8 sec.

Tacking in Wind Mode (Either TWA or AWA): Prepare the boat and sails to tack. When everything is ready, push +1d and -1d together for a couple of seconds. When you see the confirmation box, push +1d to confirm. The boat will start to tack. The new final course will mirror the wind angle before the tack.

Jibing: The procedure is the same as tacking. If the TWA is greater than 70 degrees, the boat will jibe instead of tack.

Another important control is the Pilot Response. This is my most often-used ­control. It manages the overall response of the pilot steering. There are five settings between Perf 1 (low response, low power use) and Perf 5 (high response, high power use). The keystrokes from any display are as follows: Main Menu>Response>Perf 3. You want to start with a lower setting, then increase it if the boat can’t keep course, either because of sea state or variable wind. So, use Perf 1 for flat water and steady wind, but Perf 4 for shifty wind or big waves.

Another control that is adjusted less often is Auto Response. This controls the rate the pilot reacts to any environmental influences on the boat’s desired course. For this, go to Menu>Steering>Auto Response>Economy, Normal or Sport. Recovery Function allows the user to set the sensitivity to course errors, and how the pilot reacts to unexpected events. If this is enabled, the pilot will switch to Perf 5 for a short period to correct course. The path here is: Menu>Steering>Recovery>Narrow (most responsive), Medium or Wide.

Heel Compensation applies a preemptive rudder correction in response to heel. The path here is: Sailing>Heel Compensation>Enable, then Sailing>Heel Compensation>1 through 10.

Rudder Gain controls the amount of rudder used for a given course error, especially at low response levels. The path here is: Installation>Commissioning>Sea Trial>Rudder Gain>3.

Cruising Speed sets the baseline speed, usually close to the hull speed of your boat. The path here is: Steering>Limits>Cruising Speed>7 knots.

Auto Trim corrects for persistent course errors by looking at the rudder offset. To set this up, follow: Installation>Commissioning>Sea Trial> Auto Trim>60 seconds.

Adapt is a cool steering algorithm that continues to learn variables that are essential for steering performance. To get to this function: Installation>Commissioning>Sea Trial>Adapt>Enable.

If Wind Mode is enabled, the pilot will automatically switch from apparent-wind angle upwind to true-wind angle downwind (at 70 degrees TWA). I like to enable this because I prefer AWA upwind and TWA downwind. To set this: Sailing>Wind Mode>Auto.

One other tip I’ll share is to wait to engage the pilot until the boat is stable and going straight. Then push the Auto button on either the remote or the controller. Wait a few seconds to make sure the pilot is engaged and doing well before you walk away. I often start out in Compass Mode, then shift to Wind Mode when I am happy with the course. I always carry the remote with me as I move around the boat so I can make course adjustments at any time.

I am most familiar with the B&G ­system, but whatever system you use, make sure your calibrations and setup are done carefully and correctly. Then take the time to really learn how your pilot works, get comfortable with the main controls, and practice using it until it is familiar. For me, effective use of a modern autopilot has made sailing and delivering more fun and allowed me to use my boat in different ways, especially over long distances and shorthanded. By the way, the Vendée Globe first-to-finish skipper Charlie Dalin used the pilot on his foiling IMOCA 60 for every minute of his 80-day trip around the planet, never once hand-steering the boat. I don’t suggest this for the rank-and-file shorthanded sailor, but it sure shows the potential of this great tool.

The post How to Use a B&G Autopilot system appeared first on Sailing World.

The final results of the 2020‑21 Vendée Globe will forever have Yannick Bestaven as champion of the most competitive singlehanded round-the-world race—ever. One position below Bestaven in the rankings sits 36-year-old Charlie Dalin, the first of 33 starters to cross the finish line in Les Sables-d’Olonne, France. He could have won. He should have won. But he didn’t. It was one cruel and unexpected windshift—mere miles from the finish line in Les Sables-d’Olonne—that denied him his holy grail of solo sailing.

Dalin’s ascent to the top ranks is an amazing example of the opportunities available to France’s elite singlehanded sailors. Dalin, as a young and eager sailor long ago, once helped me prepare for my Mini Transat ­campaign in 2003. I had no idea then that he would someday race an IMOCA 60—on foils even—in the Vendée Globe. We hadn’t spoken since the Transat, but when connected by Zoom a few weeks after the finish, he was rested and eager to share his story.

Q: How did this Vendée Globe opportunity come your way?

A: I had been working really hard for some years and having some success. I was involved with Ericsson, the winning Volvo Ocean Race team [in 2009], and that was a really great experience. Then I was in Australia helping to build a 100-foot ­racing trimaran. I raced primarily the Figaro from 2011 to 2018. I got pretty good at that game, and when Apivia decided to mount a Vendée Globe ­campaign, they chose me to skipper.

Q: What an incredible opportunity.

A: Yes, nobody would ever pass up that. They chose me even though I had never been on an IMOCA before last year. They let me be really involved in the design and development of the boat, and they had a lot of faith in me from the very beginning.

Q: I would say their faith was well-justified. I imagine your being a naval architect allowed you to influence and be involved in the design process?

A: I was quite involved in the design of almost every detail of Apivia. With Guillaume Verdier as lead architect, we were one of the first designs of the new-generation larger-foil IMOCAs. It was really exciting, with a lot of unknowns. There were so many decisions to make. Sometimes the VPP would say one thing, but we did not always trust that to be 100 percent true. For example, at the last possible moment, we decided to move the foils farther forward. It turned out to be good, but at the time, we did not know. I was really involved in the cockpit but also the deck plan, the sail plan, and really, everything.

Q: Right out of the box, the boat performed well, and you won the Transat Jacque Vabre.

A: The boat had only been in the water less than three months, so it was a very busy time. I sailed as much as I could, but we also needed some time for the team to really finish the boat. I would sail on the weekend, so the shore team could rest, then turn the boat over. Sometimes I would sail at night so they could work on the boat during the day. But everything went really well. What is the opposite of a viscous cycle?

Q: A virtuous cycle?

A: Yes, that’s it. We never had any major breakages, so we could keep on sailing and improving the boat. We still had a few issues in the TJV, but we had a kind doldrums passage and managed to win the race.

Q: There were two major storms that knocked out a lot of the newer boats early in the race.

A: Yes, it all happened quickly. I had a few issues but nothing major. By the time we got to the equator, there were only three new-generation boats near the top: Hugo Boss, LinkedOut and Apivia. Soon after Seb Simon and Alex Thomson were out, it was Thomas Ruyant and me. I was first into the Indian Ocean, and I started to go into more of a preservation mode, especially after Thomas had a problem with his port foil. Normally it is a big advantage to be first here.

Q: Not this year.

A: No, it was never good to be leading this race.

Q: Where were you when you heard about Kevin Escoffier sinking?

A: I was just about to go on video chat to celebrate being first into the Indian Ocean. Then we heard about Kevin, and nobody wanted to talk about that anymore. I was 350 miles downwind, so I was not in a position to help. But it was a super-stressful time, and finally we got news that Kevin had been rescued from his raft. But that incident really shocked me. I think it shocked the whole fleet.

Q: What an incredible rescue, so well-managed by the race officials and sailors standing by, and especially the actual ­rescue by Jean Le Cam.

A: Yes. Everyone did their job well. It took me a couple of days to really get back to full racing mode after that.

Q: And then disaster struck you.

A: Yes, it did. I started noticing some water leaking into my line tunnel, then I noticed it was coming from where the port foil bearing should be. It was gone. I sent a message to my shore team (legal under race rules for technical issues), and they got to work coming up with possible solutions. I had to slow the boat right down.

Q: Could you have sunk?

A: Yes, that was a possibility, but most likely I was out of the race. It was really devastating. But then my shore team came back with these intricate instructions, like a hundred steps, for a possible repair. I got to work and started building parts. I had to laminate a new bearing, using bits of foam, epoxy and carbon flat stock. I had to cut it with a crappy cordless grinder. It took forever. And I had to custom-fit each piece. When I had the parts made, I tacked onto port (away from the finish), heeled the boat over, and went over the side using a halyard. I had to fit all the parts pretty precisely. I was getting hammered by the waves. I nearly gave up. Finally, just as it was getting dark, I hammered in the last piece. Then I tacked back and rejoined the race.

Q: At this point, you are now behind Bestaven on Maitre Coq and Ruyant on LinkedOut, and your port foil is compromised.

Yes, but I was still racing, and there was 15,000 miles to go. I was not sure if the repair was strong enough, so we tested it hard that next day, and it seemed to hold.

Q: That is an unbelievable bit of seamanship.

A: It took every bit I had. I slept pretty hard for a couple of hours afterward.

Q: What is life like on board Apivia?

A: The biggest challenge when it is windy, or a challenging sea state, is to know how hard to push the boat. There is this constant desire to push harder, to go faster, to put up more sail. But if you break your boat, it is all in vain. So I am constantly asking if I am pushing too hard or too close to the limit. You have to be really disciplined because one mistake can be really costly. The motion of a semifoiling IMOCA 60 is also really hard at times. Because of the foil, the boat does not behave as you are used to with a normal boat. The timing of the hard crashes is really hard to predict, so you are always hanging onto something. Otherwise, you can get hurt really easily. The only safe place is in the bunk.

Q: Tell me about your routing? It looked like you were trying hard to minimize distance and tactical risk.

A: Yes, I spend hours in front of the computer—eight hours a day—running different routes, looking at different weather models, and evaluating the options. I mostly tried to sail my own race and not worry too much about the other boats. I started using a lot of ensemble routing so I could graphically see the range of options and assess the ­probabilities. I really got into it.

Q: What was it like to essentially restart the race with 4,000 miles remaining?

A: The race up the Atlantic had some very unsettled weather. After Cape Horn, Maitre Coq escaped with good wind and built a 450-mile lead off the coast of Brazil. But then he got trapped in light wind, and I was able to catch right up. However, six other boats did the same, so off Cabo Frio there were eight boats very close to each other. It was like a Figaro race. So I told myself to just sail it like a coastal race, and keep on pushing and make the right moves.

Unfortunately, my port foil was not fully working, so I was a lot slower on starboard tack than I should have been. And we had 14 days of starboard up the Atlantic. I had to find a whole new way to sail the boat. I figured out I could sail with a lot more heel, and change the stacking ballast completely. So I was able to find a way to go pretty fast, but I still gave up about 400 miles because of my limitation on starboard. It was frustrating, but I kept telling myself, All the boats have issues. Just keep going as fast as you can.

I had a good doldrums passage and got into the northeast trades, essentially even with Louis Burton on Bureau Vallee. He could not use full main, so he ended up farther north, which turned out to be OK. But I also had five boats right behind me and pushing hard.

Q: What was it like getting past Cape Finisterre?

A: That was probably the most intense 24 hours of sailing I have ever done. I decided on a routing that took me very close to the northeast corner of Spain. As I got closer to the coast, there was a lot of ship traffic and unlit fishing boats. The Bay of Biscay felt really small. My ­collision-avoidance system was not working, and my radar was also down, so I had to be very alert. I had to perform a series of jibes to take advantage of the wind bending around the coast. Each jibe takes about 40 minutes and uses a lot of energy, so I was getting pretty tired. Of course, I was passing through the most crowded part of the course at night. Then it started to get foggy, so that was really stressful as well. I did not sleep at all for 36 hours. I knew if I did this well, I could still win the race.

Once I got onto port tack and I was headed right for the finish at 20 knots, things were looking good, and I thought for few hours that I would win. But partway across Biscay, the wind shifted 10 degrees left, which favored the boats to the north, and meant I would still have to jibe for the finish. That wind shift cost me the race.

Q: How was it to cross the line first, but not win?

A: I said before the start that my goal was to cross the line first, and I achieved that. I know I sailed a good race. But Yannick Bestaven on Maitre Coq also sailed very well, and with the 10-hour time allowance he got for helping to save Kevin Escoffier, he beat me by two and a half hours…after 80 days.

Q: After he got ashore, Yannick came to you, and you had a long embrace. He said, “This year there are two winners of the Vendée Globe.”

A: Yes, those were kind words from him. I know we put together a very good campaign, and I sailed my boat as well as I could. I am happy with my race. But now I really want to go back in four years and win!

Q: And what’s until then?

A: It is a very exciting time to be a sailor. There are so many cool things going on that I really want to be a part of. My focus will continue to be the IMOCA for the next few years. I want to win the Route du Rhum. And I want to build a new IMOCA and come back and win the Vendée in 2024. After that, maybe multi­hulls. But who knows? I am very lucky to have these opportunities. I still love sailing as much as ever.

The post Interview with Around the World Racer Charlie Dalin appeared first on Sailing World.

Wendy Goodwin had been so busy running Cape Cod Shipbuilding, the 122-year-old family business, she didn’t have time to have a family of her own. Then the pandemic hit, the opportunity arose, and she began the process of fostering to adopt an 8-year-old girl.

On a day in early spring, when the sun shines on the Cape and the winter is almost forgotten, Goodwin’s daughter is in her office attending math class remotely. Goodwin is in a spare room, once the domain of the parts manager. Long before that, this space was where her grandfather, Les Goodwin, slept with his ballerina bride, Audrey, in the early days after they purchased the boatyard.

The place today certainly looks its age. Past Cranberry Highway, on the south side of the two-lane Narrows Road, a sign welcomes visitors onto the waterfront property along the swift-running Wareham River, which feeds into Buzzards Bay. A dozen buildings of different sizes and shapes are strewn about the 9.5-acre grounds. Most wear their patina of age with pride. All serve their purpose. No one ever said that a working shipyard had to be fancy, but quite a few boats inside and under Cape Cod’s care certainly are.

The past here is omnipresent. Outdated molds gather moss and have become part of the landscape, proving the longevity of fiberglass. Old-growth wooden floors inside the buildings are worn smooth by generations of boatbuilders. Big machines, lathes, jigs and tools created by dearly departed artisans live on, ready to put in an honest day’s work on designs that may well be immortal.

A nautical archeologist would have a field day here; it seems that bits of the past are behind every open door or cracked windowpane. Beneath these buildings and buried deep in the soil, he or she could very well unearth artifacts from the late 1800s, the time when—according to local historians—brothers Myron and Charles Gurney were manufacturing wagons and carriages on the western bank of the river. The Gurney brothers later got into skiffs and dories, and then ­sailboats—namely the Cape Cod Knockabout, an 18-foot one-design by Charles Gurney, first built in 1925 and still raced in parts of New England.

Upon the passing of Charles Gurney, a fellow by the name of G.S. Williams took ownership in 1935, but according to company legend, Wendy Goodwin’s grandfather Les Goodwin, a dealer from New Jersey, bought the company after visiting to complain about the quality of the builds he was selling. He and Audrey relocated to Wareham and moved into the office to run the new company.

In 1940, so their story goes, Goodwin purchased the Sparkman & Stephens-designed Mercury and built more than 200 of them while also building military tugs and launches for the US Navy. Postwar production then returned to small craft and one-design sailboats. According to the company archives, the Goodwin family enjoyed a rush of fiberglass production: Herreshoff Bull’s Eyes (derived from the Herreshoff 12½) in 1949, followed by Ravens in 1951, the W. Starling Burgess-designed Atlantic in 1956, the Knockabout in 1959, and the Capt. Nathanael Herreshoff-designed Goldeneye in 1960. It was 1962 when now-Hall of Fame inductee Cornelius Shields turned to Goodwin to build his eponymous one-design, drawn by Sparkman & Stephens.

Goodwin’s son, Gordon L. Goodwin, began working full time for the family company in 1969 and led Cape Cod Shipbuilding through its next chapter as a full-service boatyard. As it should come as no surprise, in 1993, Wendy Goodwin joined and brought a generational trifecta to the yard. The following year, E.L. Goodwin passed away at the age of 95, right before the yard was contracted to build new boats for the Day Sailer one-design class, which continues to this day.

Family is the keel of Cape Cod Shipbuilding, and it has kept the business upright and on course for more than 100 years. Goodwin’s first memory of the shipyard is feeding ducks from the dock when she was 4 or 5 years old. When we meet in early April 2021, she was out of breath, having just launched a flotilla of docks, which marks the beginning of another busy season on Massachusetts’ south coast. It’s the ebb and flow of every New England boatyard: Good weather brings customers out of the woodwork, and on this day, Goodwin’s phone and email inbox are blowing up.

One of the many challenges of keeping this boatbuilding business afloat in the United States in general, and on Cape Cod in particular, is balancing repairs with new builds. When people are not commissioning new boats, Goodwin takes on more repairs. Managing customers’ expectations, she says, can be more challenging than managing the workflow. “The hard part is letting customers know that we have an abundance of new boat orders and we can’t get to a repair,” she says, “or vice versa.”

Some in the industry might call that a good problem to have. Diversification is a sound financial practice. It’s also a wise strategy for a boatbuilder.

“The fact that we don’t have all of our eggs in one basket is the reason why we are 122 years old,” Goodwin says. “We don’t do just one thing. Right now in my shop, we have three Day Sailerss, one Heritage, some Bull’s Eyes and Herreshoff 12½s. If I didn’t have the Herreshoff 12½s to varnish every year, we couldn’t keep the payroll going. There’s no one bread-and-butter boat.”

At times, being the president of the operation means difficult decisions must be made, such as retiring boats like the Cape Cod Knockabout, which are no longer financially viable. “Dad didn’t talk to me for a week after I decided that,” Goodwin says, “but it was the right decision for the company.”

Regarding Wendy’s work ethic, the tree isn’t far from the fruit. Gordon could be retired at his age, but instead, you’ll find him at the boatyard every day. “You’ve got to get out and get the men and get them going so they can build the boats so I can go home and put bread on the table,” he says.

Is building antique one-designs romantic? Wendy Goodwin laughs when I ask—it’s something she does quite frequently. “This is not a romantic job,” she says. “That’s how people sell books and ­stories—the romance of boatbuilding. In reality, boatbuilding is dirty and smelly. What I find fantastic are the relationships and connections I make with other people through boatbuilding.”

One of those people is Matt Holt, the new owner of an older boat. Holt lives in the British Virgin Islands, and his boat, Tern, is a Cape Cod Marlin, designed by Herreshoff and built at Cape Cod Shipbuilding in 1961.

Holt describes Tern as “your most comfortable pair of jeans,” and says before he took ownership, Tern was cared for by Englishman Dr. Robin Erskine Tattersall. Tattersall modeled for the famous photographer Richard Avedon, represented the BVI in the Soling class in two Olympic Games, and cared for the medical needs of his community.

For 40 years, Tattersall loved and sailed Tern. Two back-to-back Category 5 hurricanes, Irma and Maria, however, did a number on it. Tern’s dock was ripped out, it was struck by numerous charter yachts, and partially sunk deep in the mangroves. Its spars were broken, but the hull was intact.

Tattersall sold Tern to Holt for $10, with the understanding that he was its new steward. Holt reached out to Goodwin, and a trip to the records room in Building No. 33 revealed that Tern had indeed been built by her grandfather in 1961, and she was able to locate the paperwork, which documented all of its parts.

The historical records collection at Cape Cod Shipbuilding is vast, not so much because grandpa Les Goodwin was trained as an archivist, but because he didn’t throw away anything. The old invoices, Goodwin says, are invaluable when new owners of older boats ­discuss refits. “The fact that these boats are going on three, four generations, it’s pretty awesome.”

Goodwin and her team were able to re-create a spirit of a ­traditional rig for Tern featuring a single extrusion tapered mast, a new boom, standing rigging, running rigging, sails and covers, all shipped to the BVI. “The crate they built for me was two-by-fours ­covered in carpet. The rigging was laced into the crate using the sails as cushion,” Holt says. “The two-by-fours were covered in plywood. They hit a home run with the delivery, which was no small feat getting it down to this little island in the Caribbean.”

This dedication to craftsmanship brings all types of customers back to Cape Cod Shipbuilding. One fan is Olympian, sailmaker and world champion of many classes Steve Benjamin, who once fell in love with Atlantic No. 128, Cassidy. Benjamin was struck by the beauty and sailing capabilities of the W. Starling Burgess design. He also was impressed by the competition, the camaraderie, and the opportunity for mature sailors to remain competitive.

A skipper known to keep his race boats in Bristol condition, Benjamin has refit at least 10 boats over the years. Cassidy needed new deadwood on the keel, which was completely waterlogged, a topsides paint job in Awlgrip, and a bottom job coated with Baltoplate.

Past Olympians are not the only sailors who enjoy boats built by Cape Cod Shipbuilding. Geordie Shaver has sailed in five America’s Cups, and these days he gets his kicks racing in Newport, Rhode Island’s cutthroat Shields fleet. Shaver estimates that 90 percent of the Newport Shields fleet were built by Cape Cod Shipbuilding. And when there is a problem, people are happy to have an active builder nearby.

Like many boatbuilders, Cape Cod Shipbuilding would like to receive group orders for one-design fleets because building one boat at a time is less efficient. In fact, if a group order of six boats arrives for a retired design, Cape Cod Shipbuilding is happy to build the boats.

With the Shields class, Goodwin says, the goal is to always keep things one-design. “We’re walking a fine line keeping the class alive and making sure the competition is fair,” she says. “I don’t want the new boats to be slower or faster than the existing boats. We’re loyal to all of our fleets to make sure things don’t change.”

After listening to all of her customers, Goodwin noticed that many Herreshoff 12½ owners were tired of wrestling with outboards and outboard brackets. Looking to the future, Cape Cod Shipbuilding invested in crafting a redesigned Cape Cod Marlin Heritage. Designed by Herreshoff, the classic combines the best of the Fish and Marlin designs, and offers modern amenities such as inboard power, an iPod-ready sound system, and USB charger ports. A just-built flag-blue example sits on a railway cradle that leads to the water, freshly varnished brightwork shining like a gem.

No amount of cajoling will get Goodwin to name her favorite boat at Cape Cod Shipbuilding, but she will admit that the boat the family owns is a Shields. She was the Shields-class secretary for quite a few years and co-wrote a book about the class turning 50. “I adore the racing and the competition,” she says. “There’s nothing I like better than getting together in the cockpit and working together to make the boat move. It’s about the people in the cockpit and the smarts that’s shared between them.”

Goodwin’s love of sailing would strike a chord with her grandfather Les, who once wrote, “Sailing is a family sport that can be enjoyed by young and old together, so I hope my little girl may learn to sail, race and love small sailboats as real insurance against becoming a ‘sailboat widow.’”

In due time, Goodwin may well say the same thing to her daughter, who, should she keep up with her math homework, could be the next Goodwin to keep Cape Cod Shipbuilding sailing into the future. ν

The post The Kin of Cape Cod Shipbuilding appeared first on Sailing World.

Autopilots aren’t new, but modern technology has made today’s autopilots considerably better than previous-generation offerings. Moreover, the utility that contemporary autopilots offer make them must-have equipment for doublehanded sailors racing aboard 30- to 50-footers. Here’s a look at how they work, the hardware and software involved, and the performance and safety benefits that they deliver, both for ground-up installations and refits.

Autopilots are electro­mechanical systems that—as their name implies—can steer a boat to a specified compass course, wind angle, waypoint or route. Unlike human drivers, autopilots never suffer concentration gaps, or get tired or scared, so long as they’re fed a steady diet of information and DC power.

While each manufacturer has its own approach to hardware and software, autopilot hardware generally consists of a processor (sometimes also called an autopilot computer), a power-supply unit, a control head, a rudder-angle sensor, networked sensors (e.g., wind, speed and depth), a drive system and—optionally—one or more remote controls. Additionally, some autopilots employ advanced sensors that are used to clean or stabilize networked sensor data to give the pilot better, more reliable information. We’ll get to that later.

Most autopilot processors and power-supply units are black boxes. The processors pull information from the system’s networked sensors and rapidly crunch the numbers needed to efficiently drive the boat. They’re networked to the control head(s) and/or the boat’s multifunction display, which serves as the system’s user interface. Power-supply units draw DC power from the boat’s battery banks and send it—as needed and as dictated by the processor—to the system’s hydraulic- or mechanical-drive system (i.e., the system’s muscle; this typically consists of a hydraulic cylinder or mechanical arm that attaches to the hull on one side and the rudder quadrant on its business end, plus a rudder-angle indicator), which actuates the rudder.

Unlike human helmsmen, autopilots can’t see what’s ahead of or behind the boat, so they leverage networked instrument data to keep the boat sailing to its specified course, wind angle or waypoint. Because of this, all autopilot systems require at a minimum a heading sensor, wind sensor and boatspeed sensor. Years ago, autopilots used fluxgate compasses for heading information. While these worked, their analog nature and sluggish reporting rates (ballpark is once per second, or 1 hertz) yielded jumpy numbers when sailing in big seas. Their inherent latency doesn’t mix well with modern processors either. Because of this, most auto­pilot manufacturers switched to employing solid-state, nine-axis compasses for heading sensors several years ago. These compasses provide accurate pitch, yaw and roll information (typically accurate to plus or minus 2 degrees), which they report at a rate of 10 hertz (ballpark).

Wind data is obviously critical to performance sailing, and autopilot driving is no exception. “You need a masthead unit for wind angle and windspeed,” says Mike Vellucci of EuroMarine Trading, which imports and distributes NKE marine electronics. Vellucci says this information comes in the form of apparent wind angle and apparent windspeed data. Most modern systems also use heading data from their networked compass and boatspeed from either a ­networked through-hull transducer to measure speed over water or their networked GPS antenna to measure speed over ground to calculate true-wind data. The autopilot system then uses this data to calculate the true wind angle, true windspeed and true wind direction. Once networked and installed, an autopilot will sail to the [wind] angle you tell it, Vellucci says. “It will do everything in its power to [hold] that [angle].”

Critically, autopilots can steer to AWAs or TWAs, depending on the situation and point of sail. Apparent wind angle is generally used when sailing upwind, when the angle is stable, Garmin’s Jon Josephson says, adding that TWA is generally preferred when autopilots are sailing downwind, both to avoid accidental jibes and to yield better performance should the wind get shifty.

Additionally, autopilots require speed-over-water ­sensors and a networked GPS. “The more data we can feed the pilot, the more it can do for us,” Raymarine’s Jim McGowan says.

Unlike autopilot systems of yore, most contemporary autopilot manufacturers offer high-performance sensors that can be used to remove vessel motion from heading and wind-angle information. “Pitch and roll can induce AWS,” B&G’s Matt Eeles says. “It’s noisy data.” For example, B&G’s H5000 CPU can integrate the boat’s motion and heel angle, and deliver gyro-compensated wind information, yielding stable apparent-wind readings. Likewise, Garmin, NKE and Raymarine autopilots also have the ability to scrub data for vessel movement. “When the masthead [wind] sensor moves, it throws error into the wind calculations,” McGowan says. “[Raymarine’s] EV1 sensor delivers real-time filtering and stabilization so that oscillations are removed and clean information is fed into the autopilot’s processor.”

The other significant advantage of cleaner data is reduced rudder articulation, which reduces electrical consumption and bolsters VMG. “If you put raw sensor data [into the autopilot], it will be all over the place and it will burn lots of power,” Eeles says. “You don’t want the pilot to react to every little puff or change…it risks the pilot being out of control. You also don’t want to dampen the data because this creates a lot of latency.”

Modern autopilots can also employ software to introduce some level of intelligence to automated driving. For example, most contemporary autopilots have the ability to deal with gusts and wind shifts to prevent the boat from accidentally rounding up or jibing.

“If an autopilot is sailing to a wind angle and a 5-knot gust comes, you want it to do what you’d do as a helmsman: Bear away and take the sting out,” Eeles says. While this is a great feature, Josephson reminds users to build a certain amount of margin into their user-selected parameters. “Don’t set the jibe alarm at 178 degrees,” he says. “If the wind gets behind the sail, the boom will go over.”

Josephson recommends setting the alarm at 160 degrees. “Make sure the parameter is set so it’s not on the edge,” he says.

Remote controls are the final important consideration, especially for shorthanded sailors, because they enable course changes or corrections to be made from anywhere on board rather than from a multi­function display or a control head. “It’s [my] primary pilot controller,” Eeles says.

“There are tasks that require all hands on deck,” McGowan says. “It’s not always an option to run back to the cockpit. Plus, there are also some safety considerations.”

These remotes can also provide an additional safety margin for doublehanded sailing, where man-overboard scenarios can be a true ­nightmare. Vellucci explains that NKE autopilots have two modes: solo and fully crewed. Sailors carry remote controls that are electronically linked to the autopilot (think geofencing); should a remote break contact with the autopilot, one of its MOB modes activates, creating an audible alarm and automatically switching the system’s graphic display(s) to a dedicated MOB page. “In solo mode, it puts the boat head-to-wind,” Vellucci says. “In crewed mode, the system displays a bearing and distance to where the MOB event occurred, [and it also] starts a timer.” (Note: The waypoint marks the latitude and longitude of where electronic contact with the remote was lost, not the MOB’s real-time location.)

These advancements offer huge benefits to doublehanded crews, but it’s critical to properly spec the system for the boat. For example, if you’re ­taking a J/105 that’s mostly been used for round-the-buoy racing and are adding a complete autopilot system, Josephson and McGowan both advise using vessel weight as a guide for what system to purchase. “It doesn’t matter if the boat is tiller- or wheel-driven,” McGowan says, adding that Raymarine (and other manufacturers) make autopilots for both.

You need a drive unit that works with your quadrant and the boat’s displacement, McGowan says. He also notes that most boatbuilders list the dry weight of their steeds, which doesn’t account for sails, crew, provisions or additional safety gear. In the case of a J/105, the dry displacement weight is 7,750 pounds. “We always add 20 percent, so 9,300 pounds,” McGowan says.

Josephson agrees, adding that if the boat’s racing weight is close to the maximum a drive can handle, it’s usually ­better to step up to a bigger drive ­system. Another consideration involves the number of rudders. “One drive is enough [to control a boat with two rudders],” Josephson says, adding that these boats—for example, Class 40s—typically have dual rudder quadrants and a connecting tie bar, so the autopilot drive needs to be attached to only one of the quadrants. “But the second rudder might add 50 percent of the load of the first rudder.”

Conversely, if you’re ­refitting a new autopilot into a boat that’s already equipped with an older autopilot system, even if it’s built by a different manufacturer, odds are good that you’ll be able to reuse pumps and drives. This is because most marine-electronics ­companies source their drive units from the same manufacturers, so they’re not typically proprietary. “If there’s a nameplate on the drive, take a photo of it and talk to your dealer,” McGowan says. “This can be a big money saver because drive units can be many thousands of dollars.”

While it’s theoretically ­possible to add—for example—a Raymarine autopilot to a B&G-, Garmin- or NKE-equipped boat, most sailors will find that it’s best to stay within the same electronics manufacturer’s (semi)walled garden because this usually allows the boat’s multifunction display to talk to—and control—the autopilot.

Another important consideration involves where the drive system is physically located. As mentioned, most autopilot drives are situated belowdecks; however, some systems are cockpit-mounted. While these systems work fine, some cockpit-­mounted, tiller-driven systems can present a tripping hazard to a doublehanded team that is constantly scurrying around the boat. Because of this, below-deck drives are considered the optimal installation for doublehanded or ­shorthanded crews.

Irrespective of how or where your autopilot is installed, it’s critical to spend time practicing with your system and dialing in its user-configured parameters prior to hitting the racecourse. “I think the key is using it so that you understand how it works,” Josephson says. “Understanding the [user-selected] inputs can greatly affect the performance of the pilot…. [Sailors] really need to use [their autopilot], understand what it’s doing and how [parameter] changes affect its performance.”

So, if you’re interested in shorthanded racing and considering adding a modern autopilot, not only will it drive your boat with far more precision than an old-school system, but it will also do so while consuming less DC power and exerting less ­rudder as well.

The post Autopilots for Racing Sailors appeared first on Sailing World.

“Why not?” There’s a phrase that leads to trouble. So too does its problematic next of kin: “If not now, when?”

Those were the sorts of thoughts rattling around the mind of Peter Gibbons-Neff last year as he considered his future on the verge of transitioning from active duty after a 10-year stint in the Marine Corps.

A captain and US Naval Academy graduate, he’d survived two deployments to the war-torn Middle East and a divorce, and was back on home waters last year, working at the Pentagon and living in Annapolis, Maryland. With the rest of his life looming large, he wondered, what next?

It turned out the answer lay around the corner from his place in the Eastport section of the quaint old sailing town. It was a boat, of course—a life-altering, slippery little beauty designed to the Mini 6.50 class of tiny, trailerable race boats in which every other year a gaggle of grizzled Frenchmen charge alone into the tempestuous Atlantic on a 4,000-mile sleigh ride to the Caribbean. And, of course, it was for sale.

“I got a test ride,” Gibbons-Neff says, “and I fell in love with the boat. I loved the speed, the size, and what you can do with it. The timing was just right.”

This was 2020, the year of COVID-19, and he figured that by September 2021, if he hurried, he could get ready for the start of the biennial Mini Transat in France, the premier event on the global calendar for the 21-foot sleds. Out there alone on the ocean blue, he wouldn’t have to worry about quarantines, masking or hand-sanitizing. That sounded good. And at 32, in the prime of life, he was fit and ready for anything.

Plus, he had a mission. Gibbons-Neff, who trained local troops and conducted intelligence during his deployments in Afghanistan and the Middle East, did not personally suffer from post-traumatic stress due to combat, but he knew plenty who did. He’d become involved with a stateside organization, US Patriot Sailing, that introduced veterans to racing as a way to help them transition back to civilian life. He figured he could raise awareness for US Patriot Sailing by flying its flag in the race.

The boat was in good shape, he determined. There are two classes in the Mini Transat—fiberglass, fixed-keel production boats that are largely standardized to limit cost but still plenty sporty, and prototypes with lots of carbon fiber, canting keels, foils and other pricey gewgaws. Gibbons-Neff’s boat, which he renamed Terminal Leave in honor of his transition, was a competitive eight-year-old ­production model that a local racer had used for the Bermuda One-Two and other offshore events. Neither of the two masts was class legal, so a new one was in order. All the electric wiring needed replacing, and sails, rudders and brackets, standing rigging and a host of other items begged for refreshing. He was hard at it all winter with his girlfriend, Jane Millman, who runs the Basic Sail Training for Midshipmen at the academy.

Gibbons-Neff has plenty of sailing experience. His late father, Peter Sr., campaigned a Farr 39.5 called Upgrade on the Chesapeake and in offshore races in the early 2000s, and Peter Jr. worked the bow starting in middle school. The family lived outside Philadelphia, but young Peter spent summers in Annapolis with cousins, ­racing dinghies at Severn Sailing Association. At the academy, he was on the offshore sailing team for four years and skippered the TP52 Invictus in the Bermuda Race his final year.

As for singlehanding, he’s done none. He’s banking on his service to help with the challenges of sleep deprivation. “There’s a lot of sleepless nights in a war. You have to keep track of nutrition and concentrate on decision-making. As an officer, you get that experience,” he says.

Gibbons-Neff should have plenty of sea time by the day the race starts in September 2021. He put Terminal Leave on a ship to France in April. Summertime promises a grueling regimen of first finishing up the boat and then training. To qualify, he must complete 1,500 nautical miles of shorthanded racing in Europe and a 1,000-mile solo qualification sail across the English Channel to Ireland and back.

Only 84 racing slots are available, about half set aside for prototypes and half for production boats, and 125 or so entries have preregistered. Much still can go wrong to short-circuit Gibbons-Neff’s bid, but he is upbeat about his prospects.

He has a stable of sponsors led by Fawcett’s Boat Supplies, the venerable Annapolis chandlery, along with Gill, Harken, New England Ropes, Switlik safety gear and others. Jeff Miller, general manager at Fawcett’s, says the company does not generally sponsor racers, but in this case: “We loved his story—a local guy from the Naval Academy, his service in the Marines, and an avid sailor, as was his father. We felt like we could help keep him safe.”

Gibbons-Neff doesn’t expect to win the Mini Transat, but even that is not impossible. “It’s a boat race, after all,” he says, with a twinkle in his eye. Whatever the outcome, it’s one of those events that make you bigger and prouder just to try, and prouder still if you can bash through the breaking waves and make it to the finish.

Peter Gibbons-Neff is now racing offshore in his first European training race. Follow his progress at SoluSport.

The post U.S. Military Veteran Begins Solo Racing Career appeared first on Sailing World.

There is something about the silence of sailing. It’s the movement through water—be it slow and stately, or fast and frenetic—powered solely by the wind. The absence of a noisy engine hammering away is one of the attractions of the sport, or at least in theory it is. The farther we stray from the coast and the bigger the boat, the more reality diverges from the picture; power is essential to any long-distance cruising or racing boat.

These days the source might be solar panels, but the diesel generator or alternator is still a critical piece of equipment for many bluewater sailors. If the boat relies on desalination, there will be no fresh water without power. There will be no instrument or satnav systems, no autopilot, no satellite ­communications for weather forecasts, no radar or even navigation lights. The loss of these things isn’t necessarily a big deal—particularly in daylight, fair weather, and with the security of a harbor or marina just a short sail away—but there are times when it can be very, very serious.

“It was the last day of 2000, and when I started the engine the previous day, I had heard a bad noise, but I didn’t care. The day after, I wanted to start it again to charge the battery, and nothing happened when I switched on the contact and pushed on the start button…. So, my first job was to remove the starter to understand why it didn’t switch on. I removed it from the engine, and then I opened it, and I found out all the brushes are more or less dust, nothing repairable.”

The speaker was Michel Desjoyeaux. And on New Year’s Eve 2000, he was leading the Vendée Globe—the nonstop solo circumnavigation, arguably the planet’s toughest and biggest ocean race. If that weren’t bad enough, Desjoyeaux was deep in the Southern Ocean on his way to Cape Horn. “My press officer told me, ‘But you should have a spare for this, no?’ And I told him: ‘No. If I carry a spare part for this, then I carry two boats, which is not efficient,’” he continued.

The engine had been built by Yanmar, and Desjoyeaux had good contacts there, so his first act was to talk to them. “They told me: ‘Oh, we are very sorry. Something [like this] happens one time in a million maybe, and it’s a very low occurrence issue you have now, and we are very sorry, and we can’t help you because there is no solution.’”

The response must have seemed like the end. The rules are strict for the Vendée Globe race. Once started, there is absolutely no ­physical assistance allowed—so for Desjoyeaux, a stop anywhere to pick up spare parts would mean that he was out of the race. How could he possibly fix the starter without the parts? It would have been a harsh ending to what had been a brilliant performance to that point. However, Desjoyeaux was no ordinary sailor; there’s a reason he’s known as “Le Professeur.”

Desjoyeaux grew up in his parent’s shipyard in Concarneau in Brittany, and sailing was his life from the very beginning. “My home was attached to the yard, and the yard was our recreation when we were young. We didn’t need to go on holidays anywhere because…I mean, we didn’t want to go on holidays anywhere because we had everything we needed. I also did all my school lessons until I was 10 with my mother, who did the teaching at home.” It’s hard to imagine a better background for becoming familiar with boats and marine engineering.

He was just 20 when he competed in his first round-the-world race as crew for the legendary Eric Tabarly, and he’s followed that French icon into sailing history with a series of remarkable achievements. Few would argue against the assertion that Desjoyeaux is the most successful solo racer of all time, having won the Vendée Globe not once but twice. On the second occasion, he overcame a 40-hour deficit to win. (He restarted, after having to return to repair the boat.) He’s also won the less well-known (outside France anyway) but probably more competitive Solitaire du Figaro three times, along with two major trans-Atlantic races.

The man has had a great career, and one of the most extraordinary moments came after his discovery that he couldn’t start his engine in the Southern Ocean. “I switched off all the electronics that were not useful, only the [auto]pilot with the compass left—no displays, no computer, no satellite connection, no weather forecast, nothing. The minimum possible, no navigation lights, I was fully in the Southern Ocean, and I didn’t need lights because there is nobody. And I spent a lot of time at the helm to save energy, preferring to sleep during the day with the solar panel to help me. During those days, I tried to understand what I could do to try to find a good solution.

“I was a bit farther [east] than New Zealand, so it was too late to make a U-turn. This was very lucky for me because I think that if I would have been able to get to Australia or New Zealand, then certainly I would. I think that maybe I would postpone, stop the race…put the traffic indicator light on left and turn.” However, pulling out wasn’t an option, so Desjoyeaux had to find a way to repair the starter motor—or find a way to start the engine without it. It was a very long way to Chile without power, particularly without the desalinator (and no way to reconstitute freeze-dried food), the pilot or communications.

The state of the starter motor and lack of spares forced Desjoyeaux to look at the problem another way. Could he start the engine without it? The boat did have a second alternator. “There was a big additional pulley at the front of the engine, and the two alternators were horizontal, one each side. So my first idea was to remove one belt of one alternator, and drill a hole to be able to put a screw in and attach a padeye to the pulley.” The padeye would allow Desjoyeaux to attach a rope to the pulley. “Then maybe four or five turns [of a rope] around the pulley, then find a second block on the front of the boat, and go out from there to the cockpit and onto a winch.”

The rope (it was red) that Desjoyeaux had attached to the pulley would allow him to turn the engine over—just as a rope starts a lawn-mower engine or an outboard. Once it was led out from the interior of the boat onto the deck, he could try using the mechanical advantage of the boat’s winches to help him pull. “I turned the winch, and I understood directly that the load was not necessarily very big. I had the capacity to pull this load, but for sure, with just a winch, I would not be able to pull long enough and hard enough to make it start. It was cold, the temperature was more or less between zero and 5 degrees Celsius, so it’s not very easy for a diesel engine to start. And I didn’t have enough battery to preheat the engine.”

Still, Desjoyeaux could feel his excitement rising; back at the Yanmar offices, they had been able to start an identical engine manually.

“One of the things we asked them was to understand how much you can unscrew the injector.” Desjoyeaux’s engine didn’t have a decompression lever, fitted to older engines to allow them to be manually started using a hand-crank. They reduce the pressure in the engine so it’s easier to turn it over. Then once the rotation of the engine has begun and it has momentum, the pressure is reapplied, and the diesel explodes.

“I unscrewed each injector. I remembered it’s a three-­quarter turn on each screw to have the minimum pressure to make turning it over easy, but also the minimum pressure to make the explosion possible when the engine compresses the diesel. In the Yanmar factory, they were able to start the engine with three people pulling on the rope. I was confident,” he explained, “because I realized that the load to turn the engine and try to start it was not very big. We didn’t need tons, we just needed maybe 200 or 300 kilograms, but no more.” And Desjoyeaux, a master problem solver, knew exactly where he could find a force that would pull a rope with 200 or 300 kilograms of load.

“I tried to make a system to pull with the jib. It connected directly to the jib sheets.” The idea was that if he released control of the sail, the wind would pull the starter rope. “The problem is that when you ease a sheet, you get a very big load at the beginning, but when you start to ease the sheet, the sail collapses completely and you are not able to maintain power long enough to start the engine.”

Desjoyeaux realized that the jib wasn’t powerful enough. “I didn’t want to use a bigger sail or a sail that could break because I would need to do this operation every day. So my idea was to go to the mainsail.” Desjoyeaux pulled in the main as hard as he could onto the centerline and cleated the sheet. The red rope was then wrapped around the engine pulley at one end, with the other run out to the end of the boom, along it to the mast step and then cleated off on the deck. Once everything was in place, Desjoyeaux released the mainsheet. The load on the oversheeted sail pushed it out, transferring this force to the red rope all the way back to where it was wrapped around the ­pulley and, in his own words:

“So, my red line [attached with the turns around the engine pulley] went to a pulley at the back of the boat, up to the boom, back to the mast foot, the mast base, back to the cockpit. When I needed to start the engine, I prepared my rope in the boat and on the engine with the five turns. Then I trimmed in the mainsail more than needed for the performance, pulled on the red line, pulled on the winch very strong, removed the mainsail sheet from the winch, put the contact on the engine, and burned the diesel arriving at the injector with a small spark to heat it just before the injectors. And then I came to the cockpit, opened the clutch of the mainsail, and then it pushed the main out. The first time I tried this, the engine started. It was incredible because it meant that I was able to continue the race.”

The solution was quite breathtaking for its ingenuity. Desjoyeaux was able to finish the race without stopping for spares or help, and subsequently won his first Vendée Globe. It was an exemplary piece of problem-solving that has joined the canon of MacGyver solutions, being used again by Sébastien Destremau in 2016—and quite probably by others. When I heard the story the first time, I could not help but wonder how I might have fared in the same situation. Desjoyeaux mostly got to his answer via a series of logical steps, but there were two pieces of truly inspired thinking. First, taking the step to look for a way to start the engine without the starter motor, and second, realizing that he could use the sails to provide the force required on the starter rope.

It’s easy to think that only an exceptionally creative mind could have come up with a solution like this, but writers such as Edward de Bono, author of Lateral Thinking, or Michael Michalko, who penned the much more recent Thinkertoys, want us to understand that there are practical methods to improve creative thinking, and they can be learned. An example from Thinkertoys covers exactly the ground that Desjoyeaux traveled to get to the first part of his solution. Imagine, Michalko suggests, that you are in a room with two pieces of rope hanging from the roof. The challenge is to tie the loose ends of the ropes together. Unfortunately, they are sufficiently far apart that when you hold onto one, you cannot reach the dangling end of the other.

“Initially, you might state the problem as: ‘How can I get to the second string?’” Michalko writes. “However, you would then waste your energy trying to get to the second string, which is not possible. If, instead, you state the problem in a different way: ‘In what ways might the string and I get together?’ you will likely come up with a solution.” This is because a different range of solutions opens up with the reframing, like tying a weighty object to the loose end of one rope and setting it off in a pendulum motion that will swing it toward you while still holding the other rope.

What led Desjoyeaux to a solution initially was the way he framed the problem. He was focused on the real goal—­starting the engine—rather than getting distracted by the apparent problem, a broken starter motor. They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and it may well be that Desjoyeaux was able to figure out a way to start his engine simply because he had no other options. The fact that the starter motor was completely beyond repair may have been what saved Desjoyeaux’s race; he had no choice but to look for other ways to start the engine.

A great deal of de Bono’s Lateral Thinking process is about reframing things, or at least escaping the obvious framing, because that’s often the route to an answer. When the problem is structured in the right way, the answer will come. After talking it through with him, I don’t think Desjoyeaux knows how he arrived at his solution. It’s trite to say that it just came to him, but that is the way it works sometimes. What de Bono, Michalko and other thinkers in this area want us to understand is that this moment of it “just coming to us” can be made more likely with the right techniques.

“The aim of lateral thinking is to look at things in different ways, to restructure patterns, to generate alternatives. The mere intention of generating alternatives is sometimes ­sufficient,” as de Bono puts it. For those of us not blessed with Desjoyeaux’s problem-solving superpower, there are well-established techniques to do this. Many are straightforward, for instance what Michalko calls slice and dice. “To stimulate new ideas, identify and list the various attributes of a problem and work on one attribute at a time,” he explains in Thinkertoys.

These are just the components of the problem, things such as materials, structure, the function and processes, cost and value, and so on. If we were to break down the diesel engine in this way, we might get a list something like this:

• Metal
• Precision engineering
• Burns diesel fuel to create mechanical energy
• Efficient method of converting fuel to energy
• Ignites through diesel mixing with highly compressed hot air
• Delivers power when an exploding gas expands and moves a piston to rotate an axle
• Starts when required pressure and temperature are achieved in a pre-combustion chamber so that the diesel will burn
• One of many ways of creating mechanical energy by burning carbon fuel

Everyone’s list will be different, but there’s a good chance that something in there will spark the right line of thought. In this case, it’s probably the notion that the starter motor isn’t doing anything that clever. All that’s required is sufficient force to compress the air and some warmth applied to the fuel. The problem then becomes one of applying the necessary force and warmth. And there’s sufficient force on a sailboat to move it through the ocean, so why can’t that be applied to starting the engine?

Understanding techniques like this—and there are many others—can be a boat saver, or even a lifesaver, when faced with a challenge a long way from help. If we’re going to put ourselves in situations where that’s possible or even likely, then doing the groundwork now and tuning up our problem-­solving skills will, at some point, pay a high rate of return on the investment.

The post How to Use Your Sails to Start Your Engine appeared first on Sailing World.

In more than 60 years of sailboat racing, John Foster has never fallen off a boat, but let’s just say that the 83-year-old Virgin Islander is always willing to try new things.

Foster and I are paired up for the 2021 St. Thomas International Regatta. We’re racing an IC24, the local one-design class, which is essentially a J/24 hull updated with a sportboat cockpit. Normally, you’d race an IC24 with four to five crew, but due to ­social distancing restrictions, we’re racing three-up, using a smaller COVID-19 jib to reduce sail area.

Here in St. Thomas, the IC24 racecourse is wreathed by coral heads and moored boats, which gives the races a kind of college-sailing intensity, where starts are premium and shifts come hard and fast. The course’s right side is favored and the starting line crowded, so we decide to use the old Waikiki special for the starts: Approach late at the race-committee-boat end and tack as soon as possible to get clean air. With a coral reef limiting a more traditional approach from the starboard side of the starting line, however, executing this move means approaching late on port and above the line. This strategy, of course, requires a hairpin jibe within a minute of the start.

It’s all good in theory, but our approach backfires in the fourth race of the regatta, when, 90 seconds before the starting gun, we accidentally spin out of control and into a tack, causing Foster to slip off the low side into the teal-blue water.

“Man overboard!” I yell and grab the helm, putting us straight into a man-overboard drill. Having coached adult sailing for many years, I normally do this exercise by tossing a life jacket in the water as a dummy. With a living person, the maneuver is no different, though the stakes are much higher. We weave a tight figure eight, tacking once on our way back to Foster, where we luff up on port and guide him to the transom swim ladder.

Meanwhile, a dozen IC24s have started the race and are barreling toward us. I wave my arms and yell as loud as possible to make sure they know we are in distress. After getting Foster back into the boat, I think surely we are finished for the race, if not the day. But when I ask my sopping skipper if we are still racing, he replies without hesitation: “Hell yeah, we’re racing. Grab the mainsheet!”

With that, we dip the line and make our way upwind in 25 knots, Foster hooting and hollering as we eventually reel in four boats before the finish.

“I’ve never watched the start from in the water,” he says jokingly. “So, I figured, why the hell not?”

“John is not a normal human being,” says Bobby Weinstein, our third crew and jib trimmer. “He got COVID-19 at 83 years of age and barely had any symptoms. He’s been to the Olympics six times, and when you talk to him, it’s like talking to an 18-year-old. And he knows everyone. You could spin a globe and plant your finger anywhere in the world, and John wouldn’t only have been there, he would have a friend there.”

In many ways, Foster has lived a life of mythic proportions. Born in Wallasey, England, in 1938, he learned to sail on the River Mersey in Liverpool. As a teenager, he sneaked into bars with two young musicians named John Lennon and Paul McCartney—that is, until his parents decided that Lennon was a negative influence and banned them from seeing each other. The son of an RAF pilot, Foster completed his military conscription in the 1950s as a midshipman in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy on an aircraft carrier, HMS Bullwark, testing some of the world’s first nuclear sub­marines in the North Sea.

In 1961, he was commissioned to deliver a ketch to St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands, where he would end up calling home for the rest of his life. “When you’re at sea, you never know what’s going to happen,” Foster says. “You sail into a harbor somewhere, and all hell breaks loose.”

When he got to St. Thomas, he had no plan of staying, but within a few weeks, he says, he was “dating a really nice young woman,” and landed a job at a bed-and-breakfast. Foster would end up marrying that same woman, his late wife Claire, with whom he had two children and six grandchildren. He started a real estate business and bought the bed-and-breakfast, turning the establishment into a thriving hotel that he still owns today. In 1964, he and his buddies founded the St. Thomas YC as charter members, with Foster picking out the property himself. They turned a section of Cowpet Bay, on St. Thomas’ east side, from a tangle of mangroves into one of the Caribbean’s most iconic racing venues. From this little harbor, Foster would eventually make the leap from beach bum to Olympic athlete.

The US Virgin Islands was granted an Olympic berth before the 1968 Games, Foster says. “By the time 1972 rolled around, everyone was just getting into the Tempest class, so I got a boat and got involved.”

In those early Tempest days, Foster competed against the likes of Dennis Connor and Ted Turner, but after the 1976 Olympic regatta, the Star class was where the action was. Foster followed suit. “All the big names went back to the Star class,” he says. “It was some of the most competitive racing I’ve ever done.”

Eventually, Foster’s son, Johnny, became his crew, and the father-son tandem competed in three Olympic cycles together—1984, 1988 and 1992. “Making it a family sport at that level meant the world to me,” Foster says. “Being able to compete with my son against the best sailors in the world—it doesn’t get any better.”

The St. Thomas YC, meanwhile, was fast becoming a hub of international sailing. In 1972, Foster helped promote an annual regatta by going around Cowpet Bay in his dinghy, knocking on boats and handing out fliers. After a few years of growth, the regatta secured sponsorship through eventual Rolex USA CEO Walter Fischer, who at the time was just starting out with a little Rolex shop on the island. Like Foster, Fischer eventually served as commodore of the club, and together they developed their little annual gathering into the St. Thomas Rolex Regatta. It was the first event to pair sailboat racing with the sport’s most enduring sponsors. Rolex’s cache, and the caliber of the sailing venue, drew boats from all over the world, establishing a level of internationalism that fueled its growth. “The camaraderie between nations is really what it’s all about,” Foster says. “At the Olympics in Kiel [Germany], I was able to meet a lot of sailors from behind the Iron Curtain who normally weren’t allowed to meet anyone. But in the Olympic Village, everyone was equal. There were no geopolitical issues at stake. It was all just sailing. The same thing applies for our regatta here in St. Thomas. When you’re down here, we want to make you feel at home.”

Foster has won virtually every regatta on the Caribbean circuit, enjoying a diverse island lifestyle that once included a job as Royal Navy liaison officer. He welcomed British naval ships into the islands, which eventually granted him an audience with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip on the Royal Yacht in St. Kitts. “Prince Phillip had loads of questions about Caribbean sailing,” Foster says. “He was really a great guy, when you got to talking to him.”

Foster also seized an opportunity for another Olympic venture outside of sailing. In 1988, he created the first bobsled team from any Caribbean nation, competing in the Calgary Winter Olympics, an effort that was followed up by a Jamaican team, whose story was captured in the film Cool Runnings.

“Compared with the more-established teams, none of us really knew what we were doing,” Foster says. “The East Germans particularly hated us. They complained that we were messing up the tracks and that they wouldn’t be able to set their world records. They even tried to have us race separately, but the Olympic Committee overruled their motion.”

While in Calgary, Foster visited a trophy shop and bought a silver goblet that he dubbed the Caribbean Cup, to be raced for by the warm-weather nations, which included Jamaica, Mexico, Monaco, the Netherland Antilles and New Zealand. Foster wasn’t upset when the Kiwis eventually won because, for him, winning races comes second to having fun.

“You’ve got only so many years on this Earth,” Foster says, “so how do you want to spend it? Do you want to be sitting at a desk all your life, or do you want to feel the sea on your skin and the wind in your hair?”

There is plenty of Caribbean sea on Foster’s skin following his impromptu prestart dip, and as we return to the club after racing, salt-caked and sunburned, we kick back over a round of beers with our IC24 competitors. After nearly a year away from racecourses, watching sailors use their hands to talk through tactical situations feels normal again. Most of us have been pent up for over a year, so it’s surreal to carouse beneath palm fronds in the late-afternoon trades, with melodic steel drums playing in the background.

Even before the last swill of the first of many rounds trickles down my throat, news of Foster’s dip has made it halfway around the island and back. He brushes off the ribbing like the seasoned vet he is.

“Hey, man,” he tells one competitor, “it’s hot down here in the Caribbean. Sometimes you have to go for a swim.”

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