April 28/2023: It has finally happened! A woman has won a solo round-the-world sailing race. Non-stop no less. South African Kirsten Neuschäfer, age 39, drifted across the Golden Globe finish line yesterday evening in Les Sables D’Olonne, France, after spending 253 days alone at sea, and so has planted an important flag in the annals...
Feb. 10/2023: Got a hot text this morning from an old shipmate of mine, Geoff Hill, tipping me off that he’s been prominently featured in an official Rolex Sydney-Hobart Race viddy as the living incarnation of “the true Corinithian spirit of the race.” I can attest to this. I first met Geoff in 1992, when...
Feb. 2/2023: I’ve been waiting since the 1990s, when I developed a crush of sorts on Isabelle Autissier, for a woman to win an around-the-world solo sailing race. A tantalizing prospect! This is the toughest, most extreme sport there is, but it is also that great rarity—a sport where women and men compete against each...
Feb.28/2021: I sure hope you guys followed my advice from last month, about paying attention to the end of the Vendée Globe. No records were broken in terms of elapsed time over the course. By that simplistic metric, this was a slow race, six days off the last edition’s record 74 days. But in every...
Jan. 15/2021: This has never happened before. Usually at this point in a Vendée Globe, with the lead boats well around Cape Horn and sailing back up the South Atlantic toward home, there is one boat well out in front with another perhaps a few hundred miles behind hoping for a lucky break. But this...
Nov. 28/2020: I was really hoping this was going to happen. That after coming second in the last Vendée Globe, and third in the one before that, that this time Alex Thomson on Hugo Boss would finally finish first and so become the first not-French person to win this singlehanded non-stop race around the world,...
Decent films about ocean sailing are, alas, few and far between, so it’s worth noting there are at least three recent offerings I’ve screened that are truly worth watching. The first, unbelievably, is an A-list flick starring Colin Firth and Rachel Weisz, The Mercy, which recounts the well-worn tale of Donald Crowhurst’s tragic voyage during...
This happened this morning at Les Sables D’Olonne. A really great achievement, to win a non-stop RTW race at age 73. HATS OFF to Jean-Luc!!! If you’ve been following you also know that Mark Slats, on The Ohpen Maverick, isn’t far behind. To avoid a huge winter gale blasting into the Bay of Biscay, Slats...
There’s certainly been no lack of drama in this year’s “remake” of the first non-stop round-the-world Golden Globe Race of 50 years ago. As one would expect the attrition rate has been high, with dismastings, rescues at sea, injuries, including one broken back, and very thankfully (so far) no fatalities. Of the 18 sailors who...
Here we are a shade more than a month into Don McIntyre’s Golden Globe retro tribute race and already the pot is stirring nicely. There are three distinct leaders, Jean-Luc van den Heede (an older but highly experienced solo ocean racer), Philippe Peche, and Mark Slats, all sailing Rustler 36s, with the main peloton not...
