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...

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,...

Nov. 19/2020:  Hokey smokes! Can this be a coincidence? That the first aligning in 20 years of the planets Saturn and Jupiter, the two biggest in our solar system, and their closest conjunction since the year 1623, will occur next month, just as the two biggest races in sailing, the Vendée Globe and the America’s...

  Seems my old acquaintance Alessandro di Benedetto, the crazy Italian guy sailing non-stop around the world on a 21-foot Mini, has run into a spot of trouble approaching Cape Horn. According to some typically brief reports on his website, Alessandro's boat, Findomestic Banca, was dismasted in "extreme weather conditions" last Tuesday (March 30) off...