More than four years since work began on the largest-ever creation from Nautor’s Swan, the ClubSwan 125, Skorpios finally launched for its Russian owner, Dmitry Rybolovlev, and by the time you read this, the giant new craft will have competed in its first event, the Rolex Fastnet Race. The Italian-owned Finnish builder claims it to be the fastest monohull ever launched. This was further confirmed when the RORC Rating Office awarded the boat its highest-ever IRC TCC of 2.149.

Seeing the yacht at first glance, aside from the striking yellow scorpion design that extends from its black carbon sails down to the black carbon hull (a trust associated with Rybolovlev owns the Greek island after which the yacht is named), Skorpios resembles an elongated VO70. It feels like one too, from the moment you step on board. It’s lightweight for its size, rocking around in waves unlike a more displaced superyacht. This is less surprising given it was designed by the doyen of the VO70, Juan Kouyoumdjian. However, since then, Juan K. has designed George David’s Rambler 88 and even the ClubSwan 36 one-design, of which both have very different hull forms.

The reason for Skorpios’ ­relatively conservative shape is because it was originally conceived as a more traditional Nautor’s Swan cruiser/racer. However, since commissioning the design, Rybolovlev has come to enjoy his performance sailing and become better at racing on board his ClubSwan 36 and ClubSwan 50, which culminated in his winning the ClubSwan 50 World Championship in 2019. Thus, Skorpios’ design brief evolved. Its Spanish skipper, Fernando Echavarri, the former Volvo Ocean Race skipper and Olympic Tornado gold medalist, explains: “As he’s sailed the ClubSwan 50 more, he was telling us every time to make this boat go faster and faster. So, then we would have to make an investigation—where is the boat right now? How fast is it now? How fast can we make her if we take another step?”

Because of this ­progression, Skorpios’ hull shape has a more modest beam-to-length ratio compared to the aircraft-­carrier-styled Comanche, and far greater internal volume and higher freeboard. As is the trend these days, special focus was put on the foil and movable ballast package. Skorpios is fitted with twin rudders (with whale-flipper tubercles on their leading edges, as Rambler has) and a substantial keel that can be canted to 42 degrees. The keel is operated by one massive titanium ram on the port side, with a smaller secondary backup ram opposite powerful enough to center the 25-ton bulb and keel foil. In addition, in each aft quarter, there are ballast tanks into which 8 tons of water can be pumped to each side.

Two more unusual aspects of Skorpios’ foil package include the trim tab fitted to its canting keel and the single giant asymmetric, retracting C-foil (something with which Echavarri is familiar, albeit at a much smaller scale, on the Nacra 17 he used to campaign).

The latter resides inside a giant hoop of a case spanning the full breadth and height of the watertight keel compartment midship. Lowered to leeward, the foil prevents leeway and, thanks to its curvature, reduces displacement, but not enough to make Skorpios a flying machine. Downwind, the foil can be fully retracted, leaving roughly 3 feet of tip ­protruding on each side.

The trim tab is a flap ­fitted to the back of the keel foil. Conventionally an upwind device, when applied, it gives the foil an asymmetric profile, thereby developing lift and causing the boat to crab to weather. Trim tabs are nothing new, but it’s believed that this is the first time a trim tab has been used on a canting keel, and it remains to be seen if it could reduce righting moment when the keel is canted nearing the horizontal. Given all possible trim variables—plus the additional effect of the water ballast altering heel, and the fore and aft trim of not just the boat but of the foils too —how all of this interacts and can be used to optimal results on different points of sail, boatspeed and wave states will keep Skorpios’ crew and the brain trust behind her occupied for some time.

Echavarri has put together an exceptional crew that includes numerous Volvo Ocean Race and Whitbread heavyweights, such as Kiwi multiple winners Brad Jackson and Tony Mutter, Spanish bowman and Skorpios’ boat captain Pepe Ribes, crew boss Mikey Joubert, navigator Bruno Zirilli, bowman Antonio Cuervas Mons and many others. For the Rolex Fastnet Race, they had 26 on the roster.

On deck, of course, ­everything is huge. There are some cruising features left over, such as a lounge area aft of the forward companionway, and tiny pit areas to port and starboard, but otherwise it is a pure modern-day racing yacht. The sail plan is colossal. Sloop-rigged, its five-spreader Southern Spars mast (complete with Future Fibres’ low-drag carbon-­fiber AeroSix continuous rigging) is 175 feet tall, and its backstays are fitted with substantial deflectors. The boat can carry 11,324 square feet of sail area upwind, and 21,108 square feet downwind. (The mainsail alone is 7,093 square feet, compared to Comanche’s 4,413 square feet.)

Sails are North 3Di, and when we went out in light conditions, given its prodigious speed, the boat seemed to be going faster than the windspeed, even during maneuvers. Its foresails are all on giant furlers, and there are five tack points from the end of the bowsprit for the masthead sails, via the J2 on the forestay, back to the farthest aft for the IRS staysail. Such is the span of the foretriangle that Skorpios might at times fly three headsails simultaneously like the cutters of old.

At the time we were on board in late July, the boat had already undergone sea trials in Finland and been delivered to the UK. The crew was on a steep learning curve trying not to break things, as well as figuring out issues such as how to equate the windspeed and direction at the top of the rig with the significantly different figures at deck level and on the water.

Skorpios’ core area of complexity is its extensive hydraulic systems. This differentiates it from most other Northern Hemisphere offshore maxis, even as recent as Comanche, which were initially launched with manual winch systems (albeit with powered canting keels) to make them eligible for records under World Sailing Speed Record Council rules. However, on Skorpios, everything is hydraulic, with a system designed and built by Cariboni and seeming to comprise almost everything in its catalog. This includes the keel canting system and its many sail and mast/rig controls, all operated by rams or nine hydraulically powered Harken winches. Even for propulsion, the boat has a propeller at the end of a drop-down shaft that is powered by a hydraulic drive.

To make Skorpios more of a racer than superyacht, the boat has been on a huge diet over the course of its build to get it under 66 tons. Its original canting/lifting keel, for example, was dispensed with in favor of its present arrangement, albeit featuring a 24-foot draft.

Ahead of the owner’s ­accommodations in the center of the boat is a smart but minimalist salon, where there are some tastefully designed pipe berths. Many of the panels here are fabric-covered frames rather than cored panels. Going forward into the front half of the boat, there is a sealed compartment for the C-foil and keel, and then the engine compartment to port, while the bow area is an empty cathedral.

Aft of the owner’s quarters is another unpainted crew area accessed by its own companionway. This houses the nav station, more pipe berths, a crew galley, and a carbon-fiber head and shower compartment, along with large-diameter carbon tubes that run laterally for the water-ballast transfer, and fore and aft for the engine exhaust.

Given that Skorpios was built in the middle of a pandemic and is so fiendishly complex, it is a miracle it was launched at all. A tentative program includes the Rolex Middle Sea Race, and then the boat will go transatlantic for the RORC Caribbean 600. Records have also been mentioned, including west-to-east transatlantic. If all goes well—and by design—this big Swan could very well be the first 700‑mile monohull.

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The ClubSwan racing yacht range is well-established and represents some of the finest performance One-Design racing available. The ClubSwan 125 now sets the highest possible benchmark for Nautor and is finally at sea ready to take part in the most iconic events in the sailing calendar with her debut being the Fastnet.

“At Nautor’s Swan we are very proud of having completed the construction of the ClubSwan 125. This is going to be a milestone in the history of yachting. We are grateful to the owner for having entrusted Nautor to build this boat, sharing with us the same values we have of innovation, technology, quality and reliability,” says Leonardo Ferragamo, Nautor Group President. “The project has been amazing and the opportunity to work together with the greatest boat builders, designers and technicians around the globe, was awe-inspiring.”

The yacht, which sees the cooperation of the most brilliant minds in the marine industry hit the water in Pietarsaari, rounding off a complex and challenging project but with the end-result exceeding all expectations.

“The brief was at first for a very fast superyacht for inshore racing, but, as we were developing the project, it changed. We all realized, the owner at first, this yacht was meant to be a record-breaking machine,” said Enrico Chieffi, Nautor Group Vice President and CS125 Project Leader, speaking from the deck of the boat right after the sea trials. “And so here we are, the brief has changed, and the boat has been developed to be successful in offshore racing and intending to beat all the monohull records around the world.”

The ClubSwan 125 is designed with a deep attention to detail, engineered under DNV-GL classification, built by the best boat builders of the industry, and outfitted with the very best equipment from the most experienced suppliers. To achieve its extremely light displacement, the ClubSwan125 is designed with a deep draught canting keel reducing weight and increasing righting moment at the same time, while the hull, deck, and structural parts were all made from state-of-the art carbon-fiber prepreg with Nomex and CoreCell cores.

To create horizontal and vertical forces at the same time, a rotating C-foil with an asymmetric profile, has been developed. This foil provides vertical lift, reducing the boat’s displacement and bringing it into a “skimming” attitude. Equipped with twin rudders, the leeward one is always aligned with water flow and therefore optimizing helmsman control in all conditions, including sailing at very high speeds.

“Sailing on ClubSwan 125 makes me feel very proud of what we’ve been able to design and build,” says Juan Kouyoumdjian, the boat’s naval architect. “Being part of this project, which is meant to write a new page in sailing history is something very rewarding. I’ve been able to work with the most brilliant professionals and we learnt a lot from each other.”

To marry performance and top-class sailing experience in an extreme project like ClubSwan125 is an inspiring challenge that forced the team to think outside the box collecting experience from the past and pushing frontiers.

“The ClubSwan 125 has really been an exciting project here in Finland and for sure it now leaves a void in our lives because we had not one day without excitement dealing with, what we like to call, this beast,” says Giovanni Pomati, Nautor Group CEO. “For a yacht of such technology and performance to have been entirely built here in our facility, the BTC (Boatbuilding Technology Centre), makes us very proud, and allowed us to push our limits to the extreme to create something great.”

Technical Specifications:

Dimensions

LOA   42.620 m

LWL  36.605 m

Beam max 8.75 m

Draught (canting keel) 7,4 m

Displacement (empty) 58 820 kg

Ballast (fin and bulb)    23,230 kg

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As the most aggressive-looking one-design yet from Nautor’s Swan, the strict one-design ClubSwan 50 piles grand-prix concepts into a straightforward boat that will challenge amateur crews but reward them with speed, especially when the breeze turns on.

Heel — 18 degrees of it — is something to get used to with the ClubSwan 50. Flat is not fast. This Juan Kouyoumdjian creation is the first one-design of Nautor’s Swan new direction. Where similarly sized Swans of yore were laden with cruising interiors, this one is not. It’s a furniture-free 50-foot one-design race boat to be sailed hard and put away wet (with a dehumidifier, of course). For an owner looking to get into TP52-style boat-on-boat racing without the new-boat arms race, the ClubSwan 50, the judges say, is one way to go, here and now.

“It’s definitely more of a one-design-class racer than an offshore racer,” says Stewart. “With the big cockpit and the clean Euro styling, it’s a bitchin’ looking boat on and off the dock, and the class racing will be a lot of fun when you get to fleets of 15 or 20 boats.”

Considering two dozen owners ordered boats within the first year of the ClubSwan 50’s launch, and a robust regatta circuit is already underway in the Mediterranean, Nautor’s Swan is delivering to a demand in Europe for big-boat class racing — that’s where the one-design action is at. The challenge for faraway American owners, however, is the designer’s intentional disregard for any and all measurement rules. Handicap racing is not the point of the ClubSwan 50, nor its selling point. “The development of a one-design class in North America will be the ultimate success,” says Nautor’s Swan’s Tom Lihan, who is tasked with recruiting U.S. owners, “and that’s the goal.”

Roughly $1.3 million will put the boat on the racecourse, with 10 to 12 crew members to feed and dress. According to the judges, it’s a boat that demands a professional bowman and two good sail trimmers. The one-design sail inventory is robust — mainsail, four upwind and four downwind sails, as well as two storm sails — will require proper management on the boat and of the morning sail shuffle to and from the container.

As a wide, high-volume planing hull with twin rudders (scalloped trailing edges to make them unique), the ClubSwan 50 is also a yacht that requires the owner’s/driver’s undivided attention directed toward the instruments. With only six winches and the use of constrictors to free up winches at times, there’s a lot of dancing through maneuvers. There’s a lot to get right and a lot that can go wrong, but that’s the appeal of big-boat racing, right? Clean mark roundings and precision boathandling are what get you to the podium.

A year of development with first-generation hulls resulted in a 700-pound diet, which puts the class minimum weight at 18,086 pounds (“or somewhere around there,” says Lihan). The biggest weight savings were accomplished by upgrading to a carbon keel fin and trimming materials where overbuilt. Exploring Hull No. 3’s deepest recesses, Tom Rich found no flaws with the construction, and overall, the judges gave the build high marks. Back at Nautor’s yard in Finland, CNC machines cut pre-preg carbon cloth before vacuum-bagging and pressure-cooking the hull with all the interior components and structural bulkheads in place.

The deck-stepped rig sits atop a solid carbon interior structure (Lihan calls it the “phone booth”), which creates a clear centerline runway for sails going to and fro. The interior finish, while minimalist and easy to strip for regattas, says Stewart, is appropriate for the boat’s purpose while retaining just enough touch of Swan luxury.

There’s modern minimalism with the deck hardware as well, says Rich, pointing out that the boat has fewer winches than he’d expect on a boat this size. Two cabin-top winches are in high demand, especially during jibes. The big challenge is jibing in 20 knots of wind without a pedestal, Lihan admits. Consequently, ClubSwan 50 class management is exploring an electric option for the cabin tops, or a pedestal. “There is an option for a pedestal, but nobody has ordered one yet,” he says. “You can’t do reach-to-reach blow-through jibes, so you just do proper outside jibes, come out low to get that last bit of sheet, and then point it up again. It’s one-design, so as long as everyone is doing the same thing, does it really matter?”

In strong winds, the ClubSwan 50 will be a powered-up machine, says Allen, one that will be fun and forgiving to drive but demand solid crew work. With class rules in place, owners already taking charge, and sanctioned regattas scheduled in the U.S. in 2019, there’s now a turnkey platform into big-boat, big-boy, one-design racing.

At a Glance

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The Rolex Swan Cup has been attracting fleets of Nautor’s Swan boats to the iconic yachting haven of Porto Cervo, Sardinia since 1980. Although the Caribbean version of the event has just reached its third edition, it is already a firm fixture on the Caribbean racing calendar and has been gathering ever-more impressive fleets to the tropical sailing paradise of Virgin Gorda every two years since its institution. Eighteen yachts from around the globe are lined up at YCCS Marina for an event renowned for its unique combination of family atmosphere, thrilling racing and superb social events – a blend that organizers the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda have honed to perfection in over 30 years of collaboration with Nautor’s Swan and title sponsor Rolex.

The variegated fleet bears testament to the Finnish shipyard’s long history and to their commitment to both tradition and innovation. The models entered range from two of the latest Clubswan 50 one-design racer-cruiser models penned by Juan Kouyoumidjian to classic Sparkman and Stephens designs, and from two of the flagship Swan 115 superyachts to the dainty Best Buddies, a classic Swan 44 with a crew of friends and family that have travelled here from German especially for the event.

Each of the boats and crews here have their own story and their own special reason for participating, which is what sets the Rolex Swan Cup events in both Porto Cervo and Virgin Gorda apart from other regattas. Without doubt one of the most fascinating backstories of this particular edition is the participation of the historic Swan 65 Sayula. The surprise winner, in 1974, of the very first edition of the Whitbread Round the World Race – today known as the Volvo Ocean Race and still recognised as the most gruelling sailing challenge in existence – Sayula and her helmsman the late Ramon Carlín were the subject of an award-winning 2016 documentary. Helmed now by Ramon’s son Enrique, who was on board for the extraordinary victory in 1974, the Mexican boat sailed a journey over 3,000 nautical miles specifically to attend the Rolex Swan Cup Caribbean and boasts several generations of the Carlín family among the crew.

“We came from Mexico specially just for the event.” explained Enrique Carlín. “We went from Puerto Vallarta, all the way down to the Panama Canal and we got here in about 20 days. We came to bring Sayula back together with the Swan family, to support this special brand, it’s really a good brand, very strong. My two sons are on board and my grandchildren have already been at the helm of Sayula, so four generations of my family have helmed her.”

Equally excited to participate, but with a decidedly more competitive spirit is Hendrik Brandis, owner of Earlybird, the latest Clubswan 50 hull which was christened at the YCCS Marina in Virgin Gorda just days ago. Together with Leonardo Ferragamo’s Courdileone, these futuristic one-design yachts are sure to provide an electrifying spectacle in the easterly 20 knot breezes that are forecast for the coming days.

Brandis intends to enjoy becoming acquainted with his new yacht during its regatta debut: “We’ll be getting to know the boat and as always with sailing, having a lot of fun. I must say the first days of sailing here in Virgin Gorda were impressive. This is the next generation, it’s a planing boat and the downwind speed is just so much higher, it’s a different kind of sailing. It’s a great racer, it’s one-design and it can even be used with the family for day sailing.”

Racing is scheduled to get underway today, Thursday 2nd March at 11 a.m. with a coastal course planned for the fleet which will be divided into two separate classes.

In addition to exciting action on the water, the Rolex Swan Cup Caribbean also brings a host of happenings ashore. Owners and crews will attend an opening reception on the YCCS lawn this evening while a cocktail competition will have crews battling once again on Thursday evening. The elegant Rolex Dinner for owners at the YCCS Clubhouse and a relaxed Caribbean Barbecue at Bitter End Yacht Club will also take place before the final prize giving on Sunday March 5th.

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Designed by Juan Kouyoumdjian, the ClubSwan 50 is a high-tech, aesthetically captivating one-design yacht, and represents an important milestone for Nautor’s Swan.

Leonardo Ferragamo, Chairman of Nautor’s Swan, commented: “We held a contest among the best designers in the world to create an innovative design that would include new technologies and materials, be stylish and iconic, high performing but easy to sail. The result is the ClubSwan 50, a stunning yacht that will appeal to the young and competitive, while still allowing the pleasure of cruising in the true spirit of Swan.”

“It is an honor for me to design a boat for Swan. The tradition, craftsmanship and sailing ability of Swan boats is second to none and they have been a reference for me since I was young and dreaming of designing sail boats. This boat represents a balanced compilation of everything we have learned from the past. From performance, seaworthiness and the capacity to sail easily with a reduced number of crew. It is a tremendous challenge that Swan has presented us which I believe we have together managed to accomplish,” said Juan Kouyoumidjian, designer of the ClubSwan 50.

While representing a new trend is sailing, the ClubSwan 50 reflects Nautor’s Swan strong brand heritage, based on unmatched build tradition, quality, luxury and excellence in customer care. The ClubSwan 50 project team includes iconic and highly respected names such as North Sails and Poltrona Frau.

With the ClubSwan 50, Nautor’s Swan officially begins the celebrations for its 50th anniversary. It was 1966 when Nautor’s Swan began building cruiser-racers which dominated the inshore and offshore racing scene, having progressed to larger yachts up to 131 feet leading the luxury composite sailing yacht market: fifty years of tradition in building fast and safe yachts of unparalleled quality.

Nautor’s Swan has valuable and unmatched experience in designing and managing one-design fleets, having launched the Swan 45 fifteen years ago, followed by the successful Club Swan 42, Swan 601 and Swan 60.

The ClubSwan 50 will be a professionally managed owner-driver class, with a global racing circuit. The events will run across three continents (Europe, North America & Asia) and four fleets, coupled with exclusive social events. The pinnacle of the circuit will be the Nations Cup, where owners will compete to represent their country.

For more information on the ClubSwan 50, please visit www.clubswan50.com

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Like with any racecourse, there are a lot of ways to skin the cat when it comes to succeeding in Quantum Key West Race Week. But if you could browse the memory files of the top tacticians racing here, I’m betting you’d find at least one common theme: Stay out of the middle.

From an early age, sailors are taught that the corners are the lands of desperation, a place where sailors go when they are out of other options. We are taught that good sailors play the shifts, leave their options open, and generally take a “centrist” approach to upwind tactics.

Key West, however, is a place that seems to reward the inverse. Today, on board Phil Lotz’ Swan 42 Arethusa we re-learned that lesson the hard way. We had good starts in both races, played the shifts up the first beat and rounded the first mark in both races in the cheap seats.

It was a vexing conundrum because the vast majority of the boats that started ahead of us (Mini Maxis, TP 52, HPR, and Farr 40s) all played the hard left. Those boats are staffed by some of the finest sailors in the world. Surely, collectively, they know what they’re doing. We played the middle, but were largely to the left of the rest of the Swan 42 fleet, which favored the right side, especially on the first beat of each race. And we got whipped.

We expended a lot of mental energy trying to figure out what went wrong. One theory was that there was two breezes, one left-shifted breeze coming around the west side of Key West and the other, a right-shifted breeze, coming along the southern edge of the keys. And in the middle there was just a lot of confusion. It seemed to make a lot of sense, especially when you looked at how the breeze set up across the course.

But I also think that, as was the case in so many previous Key West Race Weeks, the middle is a no-mans land of disturbed air and the fresh breeze at the edges pays off even if means you spend a disproportionate amount of time sailing on a header.

Which actually brings up a second common theme you might find if you could browse the brains of the world’s top sailors: avoid learning the same lessons twice (or more). I’ve been here enough to know to avoid the middle. If only I’d remembered that a few hours ago.

Access SW’s complete coverage of Quantum Key West.

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Case in point is yesterday’s second race in the Swan 42 class. We led at every mark rounding, but frittered away half our lead on the final run and then watched as two boats ate us up on the final beat. We were tight, the noise level was up, and we made some uncharacteristic mistakes, culminating in a failed duck of two starboard tack boats on the layline for the finish pin. In the end both boats finished ahead of us and we took third. In most fleets third would be a great finish, but with only seven boats, third is just above mid-fleet.

I brooded down below for a good 10 minutes on the sail in. A key to this regatta is to not let those tough finishes get to you. Our fleet is so tight everyone will have a bad race, and everyone will have good races. Through four, a different boat has won every race, and a different boat has finished last in every race. But another key, as I mentioned above, is that you have to fight for every point. This regatta will be won by one or two or three points. If we find ourselves on the short end of that equation, we’ll relive moments like yesterday’s second race and grit our teeth. It’s a fine line and requires some active mental gymnastics to keep on an even keel.

After 10 minutes of personal darkness, the storm clouds began to break. There were a few reasons for this. Firstly, we found out we’d won the first race. The finish was so close, and, with our boat on the outside, we were sure we’d crossed second. That was a nice surprise. The second thing was that on the day we’d moved from being tied for last to being tied for second, one point out of first. In the hunt after two days of racing, that’s all you can ask for at this event. Finally, I channeled my friend Ian a little bit. No matter how bad the race Ian can always mine some positive nugget to celebrate: a great takedown or start, a moment of great boatspeed, a solid tactical call. And on the rare occasion that doesn’t work, he’ll always toast the experience: on the water, sailing with friends, competing against some great sailors. And that’s really the bottom line question: Win or lose, would you rather be anywhere else?

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Last year, my first attempt at the Lauderdale to Key West Race did not go well. It was memorable, but much in the way a dinner is memorable when the waiter accidentally dumps a plate of marinara in your lap. The race produced a good yarn for the magazine (in our May 2012 issue) and more than a few worthwhile lessons. But I don’t think I can really say I’ve sailed a particular distance race unless I’ve crossed the finish line, which is part of the reason I find myself in Fort Lauderdale again, on the Wednesday before Key West Race Week, getting ready for the 2013 Fort Lauderdale to Key West Race, aka the Key West Feeder Race (which I always like to point out, at 38 years old, is 12 years older than Quantum Key West Race Week.)

There’s also another reason. I’ve always wanted to do the full Key West experience. Doing the Feeder Race and then the buoy racing during Quantum Key West Race Week is about the closest we can come to the old SORC experience, albeit in a much-compressed format. By time I got into big boat sailing, that event, much revered in the sport, had been reduced to 4 days of buoy racing and had little in common with its heydey in the 70s and 80s.

Last year, I spent about 30 hours in Key West before heading out for another assignment elsewhere in the state. This year, I’m in for the full Monty, and on the same boat, Phil Lotz’ Swan 42 Arethusa, which makes the logistics quite manageable.

For the Feeder Race, it’s actually an IRC Swan 42. We’ve added a spinnaker pole, new symmetric and asymmetric kites, and a small prod. The IRC rating drops, approximately, from 1.171 to 1.159. But perhaps the biggest advantage is the ability to pole out the spinnaker and sail low downwind when the breeze is up. Our first real test of this configuration was the Storm Trysail Club’s IRC East Coast Championships in Annapolis, Md., in late October. Though the fleet was small, we had exactly the benchmark we needed, Ken Colburn’s Apparation, the reigning Swan 42 National Champion. The results were impressive. Provided the wind is in the double digits, we were able to sail the same speed and 5 to 15 degrees lower downwind. Upwind, with slightly reduced sail area, we were able to hold our own. We struggled in the distance race, but won all four buoy races, both across the line and on corrected time.

Of course that’s a small sample size. This race, and then a series of Caribbean Regattas—we’ll be racing in one-design trim during Key West Race Week—will provide a much more comprehensive test of the modifications.

The forecast has been quite variable for the race—though it’s remained light no matter the direction until a front pushes through late Thursday or early Friday with some breeze from the north. But even with light breeze, provided it’s steady, we can make some good progress down the track. As I did last year, I’ll try to post a few updates to our Facebook page. We’re rarely out of cell phone range—another quirk of this distance race—so it shouldn’t be hard to get a few videos and pictures uploaded. There’s also the race tracker, the race’s website, and its own social media.

Access_ SW‘s complete coverage of Key West._

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New York Yacht Club 158th Annual Regatta is the oldest in the country

Swan 42s Battle for the Win

Takashi Okura receives Rolex watch

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