Early on in my offshore sailing career, I discovered something that has been driven home repeatedly in the ensuing years: At sea, many miles and days from the solid comforts of terra firma, a person’s true character is revealed. It’s not always pretty. On a small boat of defined length, the opportunity to take even a short walk to push the reset button is unavailable. It’s definitely rare, but I’ve certainly encountered my fair share of stifling bores, outright slobs and dangerous clowns. (No doubt, of course, that some of them would say the same of me.)

Why bring all this up? Because I was recently reminded that it makes me really appreciate one of my favorite dudes with whom to set sail, a Renaissance man of sorts from Seattle named Dave Logan.

Together, Logan and I have put a lot of water in our collective wake, well over 30,000 nautical miles. One of our earliest adventures was the 2005 Transpac from Los Angeles to Honolulu aboard our mutual friend Mark Schrader’s Cal 40, Dancing Bear. An incident at the very end, screaming past Diamond Head at double-digit boatspeed with the spinnaker up, sort of speaks to our respective temperaments.

As we bore down on the finish line, I started to panic at the tiller when we couldn’t douse the spinnaker. “Cut the sheet!” I screamed. That is when Logan casually climbed the forestay and tripped the sheet with his marlinspike, immediately defusing the situation. No damage, no worries. I could feel my face go red; my heartbeat immediately settled back into its usual rhythm. “Thanks bro,” was about all I could manage.

Read More from Herb McCormick: And The US Sailing Capital Is?

But our major voyage was a 28,000-mile circumnavigation of North and South America via the Northwest Passage and Cape Horn on a 64-foot steel cutter called Ocean Watch. Logan served as the first mate/engineer, and we shared the same watch the entire journey, through calms, gales, ice, snow—the whole shooting match. Logan likes to cast himself as the silent, stoic type, and we were 18,000 miles and seven months into the trip when we rounded the Horn. Suddenly, standing on the foredeck with my pal, we were both overcome with emotion. “I didn’t think I was going to feel this way,” he blubbered.

“Me neither,” I sputtered.

It was my favorite moment of the best sailing day of my life.

This passage down memory river was triggered last March, when Logan showed up for a Florida family vacation, and I invited him for a sail aboard my Pearson 365, August West, on Sarasota Bay. Logan has always raised an eyebrow at my rather liberal-arts approach to mechanics and maintenance, and I could almost hear the gears in his brain grinding as he cast a critical glance around my deck as we were getting underway. “That backstay could really use tightening,” he said, among other observations, and I felt like a kindergartner getting scolded by his teacher. But, of course, he was right.

And then we went sailing. There was zippo breeze at the outset, and I feared we were in for a drifter. But a northerly filled in soon after, and I literally couldn’t get Logan off the wheel. As always, his pure joy being aboard a sailboat gurgling to weather was infectious. We might as well have been back off the coast of South America, cracking jokes, calling puffs, just enjoying the hell out of the entire situation. It was terrific.

It also reminded me, yet again, that when you go to sea, some of the shipmates you encounter may be some of the worst. But also true, and why you keep going back, is this: A few of the souls you meet along the way are some of the best.  

The post Reflections on Offshore Sailing appeared first on Yachting.

It was the opening day of racing last February in the sixth annual Caribbean Multihull Challenge and Rally on the island of St. Maarten, and I was in the thick of the action aboard a 50-foot French catamaran charging upwind. At least I thought I was. A fleet of diminutive but extremely quick trimarans started to pass us, their three-person crews adorned in helmets with the spray flying. It sort of reminded me of the classic Western film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where the protagonists are chased by a relentless posse and Butch asks Sundance, again and again, “Who are those guys?”

At the CMC, it turned out those dudes were sailing the fastest-growing one-design fleet in the islands, a nimble, blazingly quick 24-foot tri called a Diam 24. And man, they were having a blast. In an era when participation in sailboat racing is on the wane in many venues, the Diam 24 class on St. Maarten is an unqualified success story.

Built in France with infused fiberglass and a carbon-fiber core to a design by the VPLP naval architecture group—a consortium known for massive offshore trimarans such as the MOD 70—the Diam 24 is a small wonder that can be dismantled and shipped easily in a specially designed container. But the class owes its resounding popularity in St. Maarten to a singular, speed-obsessed French sailor named Pierre Altier, who skippers his own Diam 24 called Cry Baby.

After his first sail aboard the boat three years ago, Altier says: “I fell in love with this boat. Everyone says multihulls don’t go upwind that well, but the Diam points at a 45-degree angle at a speed of 14 knots, which is crazy for a boat this size.” In late 2021, Altier purchased Cry Baby and persuaded a couple of friends to join the fun, and all three boats were shipped to St. Maarten in a single container. The roots of success were planted.

But Altier, who runs a charter business in the islands, wanted more competition. He began lending the boat to friends and other local businesses to show them what it could do. “That was the key to get more people to join us,” he says. Before long, there were five Diams on the starting line for local events.

But Altier still wasn’t satisfied. He realized the numbers would grow if he owned several boats himself and chartered them out for regattas at reasonable rates, which is how the fleet grew to the 10 Diams racing in the CMC. At $700 a day for racing events, each of Altier’s three Diams is a bargain. Running rigging and a dolly for beach launching is $69,000 for a brand-new Diam with North Sails, which includes shipping to St. Maarten. In small-boat racing, it’s hard to imagine more bounce for the buck.

For Altier, there’s been only one drawback: For the first couple of years, nobody could touch Cry Baby on the racetrack. That’s no longer the case, as his fourth-place finish in the most recent CMC attests. “The competition has definitely ramped up,” he says. “I have a harder time than before to try and win. Better and better sailors were welcomed to come try and beat me, which is what happened.

“The word is getting out about how good the class is,” he adds. “And now we have multihull sailors from other classes coming to try out the Diam. It raises the level for everyone. For example, if you tune the boat better, we’re finding you can be 3 or 4 knots faster. It’s incredible. It’s been a real game-changer. And I’m very happy that the game is changing.”

So, Cry Baby is no longer the undisputed Diam 24 champion. Altier is spilling no tears.  

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It was a sensational day for sailing, with a solid southwesterly breeze pumping over the aft quarter of our 42-footer, just ideal for a downwind romp under a spinnaker. I was even heading north on the Intracoastal Waterway with my sailing mentor, Dan Spurr, who enjoys a good sail as much as I do. But as I wafted on about how perfect it was for a kite, he helpfully pointed out one very important thing: There was no mast on his Grand Banks trawler. I was a sailor without a stick.

I was confronted with what is or isn’t “sailing” years ago while covering a long-distance single handed yacht race. A famous solo sailor had just completed his offshore qualifying sail in impossible fashion, as I was well aware he hadn’t had enough breeze to knock off so many miles in such a quick time. He had to have kicked on the engine. When I confronted him, he quickly pooh-poohed me with a comment that still resonates today: “Well, the Queen Mary ‘sails’ without a mast, doesn’t it?” I failed to come up with a witty retort.

I consider myself an all-around waterman and have always contended that it didn’t matter the conveyance, as long as it got you afloat. My personal fleet these days is certainly eclectic: two surfboards, three kayaks, a good rowboat, an inflatable dinghy and two sailboats—a 23-foot one-design racer and a 36-foot cruising boat. They all get plenty of use. But note what’s missing in my nautical quiver: a powerboat.

Read More from Herb McCormick: And The US Sailing Capital Is?

The sailing-without-a-stick matter came to a head recently on a cruise through the British Virgin Islands. It was December, and the so-called “Christmas trade winds” were roaring on a daily basis, ideal conditions for windy reaches under sail across the Sir Francis Drake Channel. The only problem? I was once again without a rig.

Amazingly enough, I did not have a problem with it. Quite the opposite. It was fantastic.

The humor columnist Dave Barry came up with a pretty good summation of how to operate a sailboat: “1. Figure out which way you want to go. 2. Whichever way it is, do not aim the boat in that direction. 3. Aim the sailboat in some other direction. 4. Trust me, this is the way sailboaters do it. 5. They are heavy drinkers.”

The drinking part is debatable; otherwise, Barry pretty much nailed it. You cannot sail directly into the breeze. You need to tack the boat to make progress to windward. I was reminded of this point on my BVI charter with friends and colleagues on a couple of power cats from The Moorings. Everywhere we wished to go—first to Virgin Gorda, then onward to low-lying Anegada— was directly upwind. That was not the least bit of a problem on the twin-engine cats. We just leaned on the throttles, and away we went. And all I could think was, I could get very used to this.

Ironically, on a couple of days when the trades kicked in at a solid 25-plus knots, there was actually too much wind for comfortable sailing, and the sailboats underway were doing so in the same manner as us: under power. The big difference was in horsepower. With their smaller engines, they struggled to make 8 knots, while we zipped here and there at an easy 15 knots. Guess who got to their respective destinations quicker, thus scoring the better mooring balls in each anchorage?

I’m not quite ready to ditch my sailboats, but I certainly experienced a revelation in the BVI. For charter vacations, power may be the way to go. At the end of the day, you skip all of Barry’s annoying details. But you can still have a drink.

The post The Powerboat Experiment appeared first on Yachting.

The record-setting long-distance sailor Reid Stowe, a self-described “shaman mystic” who once roamed the planet under sail for 1,152 days without stopping or setting foot ashore, is a one-of-a-kind mariner. My first encounter with Reid was some two decades ago, when I was writing a weekly boating column for The New York Times. I was dispatched to Pier 63 in Manhattan to interview the artist, sculptor and voyager. Fit, lean and handsome, he had quite the story to tell.

At the time, Reid was living aboard his 70-foot schooner, Anne, which he’d built in the early 1970s on a North Carolina beach with a crew of like-minded acolytes. He’d named the boat after his mother and had just completed a 200-day trip, which he dubbed “The Voyage of the Sea Turtle” after the image of a giant terrapin he’d carved in the seas with his wake via the trip’s GPS track. Prior to that, he’d sailed Anne to Antarctica, and on that expedition he’d come up with the idea of a 1,000-day marathon at sea. This one also had a handle: “The Mars Ocean Odyssey.” It turned out to be the hook for my Times piece.

Why Mars? Simple. Reid surmised that a three-year, unsupported, nonstop “space analogous” voyage—a marathon sail so unique that the only thing he could compare it to was a passage through the heavens—would take as long as a flight to Mars and pose similar psychological challenges. During the round-the-world passage that he completed between 2007 and 2010, that turned out to be the case.

In the aftermath of the journey, a funny thing happened: Elon Musk launched SpaceX and floated the idea of launching a rocket ship to Mars. That got Reid’s wheels turning once again. Who would be the ideal person to command such a spaceship, to lead such an audacious human undertaking? He believed that he would.

Read More from Herb McCormick: And The US Sailing Capital Is?

I learned this last fall on my most recent visit with Reid, this time in his spacious studio on Manhattan’s West Side. (He still owns Anne, which is currently anchored across the Hudson River in a New Jersey backwater.) Though he’s now 71, still dashing but no longer youthful, he nonetheless made a pretty eloquent case for his “Rocket Man” ambitions: “At sea, you’re constantly looking up at the stars, which are also reflected in the water below. The sensation is almost exactly like a spaceman venturing through the stars. For humanity to evolve off this planet to become a multiplanetary species, this is such an important moment in history. And Musk is developing the rocket that will take humans to Mars. We will be living among the stars. If we’re going to do it, we’ll need the right people.”

Reid reckons that trained astronauts may have certain necessary technical skills, but they would lack the understanding of true isolation that he’s experienced as a sailor.

Reid has been longing to get Musk’s attention, to date to no avail. Before returning to New York, he even sailed Anne across the Gulf of Mexico to the Texas coast with a crew of would-be astronaut trainees to catch a SpaceX satellite launch. He has, however, attracted the interest of the greater Mars space community—and a former NASA engineer has volunteered to build him a Mars-ready spacesuit. He has a life-size rendering of it on a canvas adorning one of his studio walls.

It’s fairly impossible what to make of all of this, but as I bid farewell to Reid, I was reminded never to bet against him, as I might’ve in the past. Yes, he’s a bit spacey (no pun intended) and certainly eccentric. But his track record is a proven one.

The post The Ultimate Sailing Voyage appeared first on Yachting.

It was a breezy fall afternoon on Chesapeake Bay, a perfect day for a sail, and I felt fortunate to have been invited out for a spin on Gary Jobson’s C.W. Hood 32, Whirlwind. Jobson—an America’s Cup winner and a member of the National Sailing Hall of Fame—keeps his boat on a hoist near his backyard in Annapolis, Maryland. As the director of Cruising World magazine’s Boat of the Year contest, I was in town for the annual Annapolis Sailboat Show and a week of boat tests. I’ve spent a lot of time on the bay in recent years and have come to know and appreciate it.

My Annapolis pals, however, never fail to remind me that their waterfront city has been called “the sailing capital of the United States.” Which, not coincidentally, is the exact same moniker that’s been applied to my very own hometown of Newport, Rhode Island. As we raised Whirlwind’s sails, I pondered the question of which town deserved the title. Only one can wear the crown, right?

Both cities began their existence in the 17th century, largely as shipping ports. The US Naval Academy is located in Annapolis, while the Navy’s North Atlantic fleet called Newport home for several decades, and the naval base remains a major local fixture. Historically, you could make the argument either way, so we’ll call that a toss-up.

Geographically, when it comes to the adjacent waters, I have a strong bias toward Newport. The Chesapeake features some excellent nearby cruising grounds, particularly along the Eastern Shore. But for me, it doesn’t match up to the neighboring Elizabeth Islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, with Maine just an overnight sail away. The Chesapeake is shallow and really doesn’t hold a candle to Narragansett Bay and the deep blue Atlantic lapping Newport’s shores. Advantage: Newport.

One thing you don’t get in Newport, however, is the abundance of rivers and creeks that you have in Annapolis to moor a boat, so many of them right along the waterfront. And there are certainly far more options when it comes to marinas and facilities. The nod goes to Annapolis here.

As a destination in and of itself, thanks to that deep water, Newport attracts huge numbers of amazing yachts, from modest cruisers to multimillion-dollar superyachts. The America’s Cup was contested there, and the town remains home to many of the classic old 12 Meters. But Annapolis is every bit as attractive as a tourist spot, and the sailboat show each fall is easily the country’s best. Flip a coin on this one.

As far as actual sailing, the southwesterly sea breeze that fills in off Newport nearly every summer day is steady, wonderful, and hard to beat. There’s plenty of sailboat racing; the New York Yacht Club’s Newport station is an amazing, iconic landmark, and there are plenty of dedicated sailors. But I have to admit, the Annapolis Yacht Club, rebuilt after a devastating fire, is every bit as dynamic as the NYYC. I don’t have hard numbers at my disposal, but my overall take on participation leans toward Annapolis. I see plenty of moored boats in Newport that never seem to go anywhere. The weekly yacht racing out of Annapolis blows Newport away on that front.

So where, exactly, does that leave us? As Jobson and I doused the sails on Whirlwind after a cracking great sail, my fondness for Annapolis was sealed. Sure, for its homegrown passion, let’s call it the sailing capital. But I think that we can still dub Newport the nation’s yachting capital, with the grandness that title suggests. And yes, I’m waffling. What’s that saying about having your cake and eating it too?  

The post And The US Sailing Capital Is? appeared first on Yachting.

On the blacktop of a boatyard adjacent to the bustling harbor of Anacortes, Washington, a warhorse of a 1970s-era racing yacht is stripped down and propped up, and is clearly in the throes of a keel-to-masthead reincarnation. The boat’s name is Improbable, which is fitting, because that also described the chances I’d run into an old sailing friend named Bruce Schwab when I arrived in the Pacific Northwest last summer to hop on a cruising boat headed north. Improbable is Schwab’s boat and the object of his current labor of love, and the entire story borders on the unlikely and implausible—which is why it’s pretty cool.

Schwab, a self-confessed “certified boat bum and sailing nut,” is also an accomplished sailor who has twice raced alone around the world and was the first American to successfully compete in the nonstop Vendée Globe in 2004-05. These days, he runs a business fitting out systems for onboard energy management and charging. It’s called OceanPlanet Energy, and it’s in Maine—which is why it was, well, improbable when I ran into him at a taco joint in Anacortes. After he invited me to come look at his latest project, the tale got stranger still; Improbable was a big reason he fell hard for the sport.

Designed by Gary Mull, the lean 42-footer was built of cold-molded kauri, a New Zealand wood renowned for its lightweight and superior strength. Schwab’s dad bought the boat in 1976, when Schwab was 16 years old, and he spent his teenage years campaigning the boat with his family and friends. Mull was a highly respected naval architect based out of California’s Bay Area, where he had almost a cult following among the local sailors. And Improbable, created and built to excel in long, downwind races like the ones to Hawaii, did extremely well in the old IOR measurement rule, which was the premier rating system of the day. It all laid the groundwork for Schwab’s long and successful career as a professional rigger and sailor.

Read More from Herb McCormick: Cruising Haida Gwaii

Improbable remained in the family all that time, but, when Schwab inherited the boat several years ago, it had largely fallen into a state of disrepair. As he sailed the boat from Northern California to Anacortes, where he had some local connections, the idea was to find it a new home. “I’ve done six races to Hawaii, four trans-Atlantic races, the ’round-the-world stuff, and I was thinking I’ve done enough sailing,” he said. “I thought I was over it. But on that trip north, it all flashed back. I remembered how much I liked the boat. And I wanted to know how it would feel if it was modernized. I have a vision for what it could be. And I just can’t let it go.”

So, he’s bringing Improbable back to fighting trim. He found an excellent carbon-fiber mast from a Farr 40, and he reckons there are some good used sails from that class that will also work well on this project. He’s completely reconfiguring the boat’s rudder, which, he says with a laugh, is a project he started when he was a teenager. The entire deck layout will be transformed with the latest and best go-fast hardware. Lithium batteries and solar panels will completely transform the systems technology. He’s doing it all slowly but surely, making regular commutes from the East Coast to the West Coast, as time allows.

Today, almost five decades after first stepping aboard the boat, Schwab is preparing, once again, to hoist sail, set the kite and haul the mail. Hawaii beckons. Perhaps a new generation will feel the thrill, pass the torch. Improbable? With this boat, it’s safe to say, probably not.  

The post The Family Sailboat appeared first on Yachting.

After a fortnight underway and with 500 rugged nautical miles in our wake, in late June, our Cal 40, Dancing Bear, nudged up to the dock in the little British Columbian burg of Daajing Giids, formerly known as Queen Charlotte City. I tossed our dock lines to a helpful young man named Max, who’d scrambled over from his little cruising sailboat to help us tie up. On the pier, Max was boiling up a potful of crab. He even had some butter, garlic and saffron sauteing alongside. The aroma was mesmerizing.

We’d just completed a winding cruise from Anacortes, Washington, through the remote archipelago of Haida Gwaii (the former Queen Charlotte Islands), the last week of which was in true wilderness, where we’d shared the protected cruising grounds and nature preserve with whales, eagles, bears, sea otters, Sitka deer, elk, racoons and assorted other creatures, none of whom were humans. In fact, we hadn’t encountered a single other soul the entire week. Daajing Giids, the one-time queen of this region, has a population of around a mere 1,000 folks, but it somehow seemed more frantic than Manhattan. I was scheduled to fly out of the nearby airfield in Skidegate the next afternoon, so I would basically be in “the queen” for a day.

During my years of cruising and racing sailboats offshore, I’ve wrapped up many a voyage in countless exotic ports of call, but I’m not sure any were quite as fetching as funky Daajing Giids. It had me from the get-go. Moments after docking, a huge roar emanated from up the hill, where the crowd at a kids baseball game apparently had much to cheer about. I’ve been in Boston’s Fenway Park for a Red Sox game with less-enthusiastic fans.

Haida Gwaii is an overnight hop from the British Columbia coastline, just far enough to deter many cruising boats from visiting, as most opt to continue up the Inside Passage to Alaska. But it’s definitely worth the effort. And the half-dozen yachts in the anchorage were surely a salty mix, consisting of a handful of expedition-style metal boats and a ketch-rigged Amel Super Maramu flying a French flag.

Read More from Herb McCormick: Silent Running

Likewise, in the little yacht basin, there was a mix of well-used fishing craft and an equal number of well-traveled cruising boats, including a couple of full-keeled Bristol Channel Cutters and even a replica of French solo sailor Bernard Moitessier’s famous Joshua. Plenty of folks were living aboard.

Over in the nearby shallows, a tidal grid had been erected so boats could come alongside and complete a quick bottom job on the deep ebb. It had been quite a while since I’d seen one of those. And, I have to say, the fresh salmon and black cod fillets at the little waterfront pub were perhaps the tastiest I’d ever had.

Fortuitously, we’d arrived the day before the national celebration of Canada Day on July 1, and it was a pleasure to be in such a friendly place. As we were walking up the dock, a passing mariner asked how I was doing. “Great,” I said. “I mean, I’m in one of the greatest countries in the world.”

“I agree,” he replied. “And we’re privileged to have you guys as our neighbor.” Heavens, if only the entire world were so pleasant and agreeable.

The next day, I hopped a ferry over to Skidegate and caught my hourlong flight to Vancouver, then my connection home. As we lifted off and wheeled overhead, I got one final glimpse of the old Queen City. It had been a quick visit but a splendid place to wrap up an adventure. I hope to make it back sometime.

The post Cruising Haida Gwaii appeared first on Yachting.

Forty years ago this past September, in the waters of Rhode Island Sound just off the coastal city of Newport, a crew of Aussies shocked the sailing world. The 12 Metre Australia II defeated the American boat Liberty to win the 1983 America’s Cup and bring the New York Yacht Club’s 132-year defense of the Auld Mug to a conclusion. It’s safe to say the Cup, and my hometown of Newport, have never been the same.

I spent a lot of time on the sound that summer taking in the action, so when I signed up to volunteer on a marshal boat for the latest edition of the 12 Metre World Championship regatta in August, I found myself on the very same waters, which turned into a pretty nostalgic voyage down a nautical memory lane. But the graceful Twelve I couldn’t take my eyes off wasn’t the winner of the Modern Division, Challenge XII, or even the victor of the Traditional/Vintage Division, Columbia. Nope, I was more or less transfixed on the runner-up to Challenge XII, a striking-blue yacht called Freedom. Of all the entries in the 10-boat fleet, to me, Freedom was easily the most historic and memorable.

Three years before the Australians absconded with the Cup, in 1980, with the estimable Dennis Conner in command, Freedom won the contest in dominant fashion, and it seemed like the New York Yacht Club’s winning streak would go on forever. It was designed by the legendary naval architecture firm Sparkman & Stephens, which had drawn the lines of every Cup winner but one since 1936. Conner was back on the helm in the losing effort in ’83, but he would find redemption, winning the Cup back for the United States in Western Australia in 1987. But for S&S, Freedom marked the end of an illustrious era. The firm would never again create a Cup winner.

For the 12 Metre Worlds, ironically enough, the navigator aboard Freedom was a lanky old Aussie mate of mine called Grant Simmer, who’d served in the same capacity aboard Australia II for his country’s winning effort way back when. With the exception of the gray hair, he looked exactly the same.

This time, however, Simmer couldn’t work his magic. Unlike the America’s Cup, where boats compete in one-on-one match racing, the World Championship event is fleet racing, with everyone out on the track at the same time. It’s a different game. And Challenge XII had a ringer of its own: the president of North Sails, Ken Read, also a longtime America’s Cup veteran. As far as I was concerned, Freedom was easily the prettiest of all the Modern yachts. When push came to shove, though, it was no longer the fastest.

Today’s America’s Cup competition, conducted on closed-course race tracks in skittish foiling catamarans—about as far removed as possible from a stately 12 Metre racing in the open ocean—bears little resemblance to what the event looked like in the early 1980s. And Newport has undergone a radical makeover as well. The shipyards where the Cup boats used to reside between races have been replaced by condos and hotels, and the only real remaining trace of the America’s Cup is the boulevard of the same name. It’s a reminder that the only true constant in life is change.

But for a few afternoons last August, I could shut my eyes for a moment of reminiscence and open them up to see what I can only describe as a fleeting image of a bygone time. Freedom may be a footnote in the history of yacht racing, but the big, beautiful blue boat still looks powerful and fantastic all the same.

The post Reminiscing “Freedom”: a 12 Metre Classic appeared first on Yachting.

You never forget your best day of sailing. Mine came in the waning miles of the 2005 Transpac Race from Los Angeles to Honolulu, screeching down the Molokai Channel under spinnaker toward Diamond Head in 30 knots of pumping trade-wind breeze, hanging onto the tiller for dear, lovely life while surfing at 14 knots aboard a Cal 40 called Dancing Bear. The sun was searing, the wind was howling, and the deep, blue Pacific Ocean was all the more striking set against the stunning backdrop of the green volcanic islands.

This remembrance, however, is not about me. Instead, it honors the legendary Cal 40, a William Lapworth design originally launched in Southern California in 1963 that has provided scores of fellow offshore sailors with rides they’ll always hold dear. Though I do recall my first thoughts to a fellow shipmate soon after crossing the finish line: “God, I love a boat that’s better than I am.”

All this came back to me last summer, when I joined Dancing Bear’s owner and skipper, accomplished Pacific Northwest sailor Mark Schrader, for a cruise northward from Anacortes, Washington, and up the coast of Vancouver Island. It’s a far different venue and excursion than the Transpac, but one that made me appreciate the Cal 40 in a new light. This is one versatile vessel.

From the outset, the Cal 40 was considered a radical, ultra-light design, displacing just 15,000 pounds with 6,000 pounds of ballast and a flat, canoe-shaped hull that was ideal for prolonged downwind surfs. What really separated it from other boats of its era—hulls with long overhangs and deep, full keels from prominent East Coast yacht designers like Sparkman & Stephens—was the fin keel and detached spade rudder, greatly reducing the boat’s wetted surface. A similar appendage was employed in the winning America’s Cup 12-Metre Intrepid, but that was four years later.

Read Next: An Ocean Sailor Tries Freshwater Racing

The Cal 40’s production run lasted eight years and produced 108 boats, which are still highly sought-after. There’s no question that the boat has reached cult status and that it remains highly competitive. Indeed, the overall winner of the 108-boat fleet in the 2022 Newport Bermuda Race and the recipient of the coveted St. David’s Lighthouse Trophy was Sally and Stan Honey’s Cal 40, Illusion.

Yes, the Honeys are world-class sailors—Stan is a renowned professional offshore racer and navigator, and Sally is a two-time Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year—and they recruited an all-star crew after Illusion had undergone a full refit. Still, Illusion was almost 60 years old. The Honeys purchased the boat in 1988 and spent the ensuing decades racing and cruising it. They decided to campaign it one final time in 2022. Their victorious attempt, covering the 635-nautical-mile voyage in 87 hours, included a textbook crossing of the Gulf Stream and a top-speed burst of 22 knots, both of which were winning highlights.

My own trip last summer on Dancing Bear was a decidedly more mellow affair, but we also scored our own personal highlights. For me, one of those was taking the helm on a cold, funky overnight passage from the coast of British Columbia across the Hecate Strait to the archipelago known as Haida Gwaii, formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands. The sensation of driving a solid craft offshore, nestled deep in the cockpit on a tiller-steered boat, is rare and wonderful. In the wind and waves, everything balanced and in harmony, I fell in love with the Cal 40 all over again.

The post Revisiting the Classic Cal 40 appeared first on Yachting.

Come wintertime, the upper regions of New York state are susceptible to a phenomenon known as lake-effect snow. It happens when cold Canadian air courses over the relatively warm Great Lakes, and the atmospheric merger of the two can produce snowfalls ranging from dustings to blizzards.

Last spring, I experienced a different sort of lake effect, one that afflicts ocean sailors who test their skills on rarely visited inland waters. This happened when I joined my J/24 racing mates from Newport, Rhode Island, for a jaunt northward to New York’s serene and scenic Lake George for the one-design class’s US National Championship regatta.

While doing our homework for the racing, I came across an interview with the event chair, local sailor Alfie Merchant, on Sail-World.com that was somewhat surprising. “Lake George is a special place,” he said. “I do not believe people come here for the great sailing. The wind will probably be from the west straight over the mountains about a quarter mile away and 1,000 vertical feet. It will be very fluky in terms of direction and strength. It is Lake George, so we will be lucky to get three races in over three days, but 10 races are max for the series. Visitors call Lake George Left George. Guess why. Because the local knowledge is to go left no matter where the wind comes from.”

Wait, the event chair says people don’t come for the great sailing? From a guy promoting the allure of his own regatta, that was unexpected.

With that, the racing commenced. And the first day was a shocker from the outset. On J/24s, the major “sails call” is whether to race with the full-size genoa or the smaller jib. It’s usually a no-brainer; the larger genoa is almost always the correct way to go. But with the north wind hovering around 20 knots, there was no clear-cut answer. We started with the genoa, but changed to the jib midway through the first race. And, once again, in the second. And the third. I’ve done ocean races, it seemed, with fewer sail changes.

But Lake George was in a feisty mood: On Day 1 alone, there was an unheard-of six man-overboard situations. While everyone was recovered safely, it was a wild day. And the race committee knocked off four races. So much for the event chair’s three-race prediction.

Aboard our entry, Crack of Noon, it was an uneven series. We started strong, faltered in the middle of the seven-race series and finished right in the middle of the 43-boat fleet. The winner, North Sails pro Mike Marshall, sails in our local Newport fleet, so there was mild vindication there. At least someone from Newport figured out the lake.

Otherwise, it was a tremendous regatta. The competition was tight, and the racing was clean and fun. The host, Lake George Club, was friendly and efficient, and did a great job on the water and with the shore-side parties. The venue was terrific; the lush, green Adirondack Mountains rimming the lake were a beautiful backdrop, so different from our usual racetrack on Narragansett Bay. And while we did indeed take the local knowledge to heart, favoring the left whenever possible, the beneficial wind shifts all seemed to fill in from the right. So much for Left George.

All in all, however, it was a fantastic experience and one we’d return to anytime. As it turned out, we did indeed come for the sailing, which was challenging and exciting. And while we never did effectively figure out Lake George, it was pretty darn good all the same.

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