Last week we looked at disabled sailing as a great way for people with disabilities to get afloat and compete on a level playing field with able bodied sportsmen. It is one of the only sports where this happens on a regular basis. On Friday the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) announced that sailing would be […]
FACT: You do not have to be able bodied to beat the fleet in sailing. The sport is one of the most egalitarian of all – as much a game of the mind as the body. Women can out sail men, and the disabled can beat able bodied sailors in most dinghy and yacht races. […]
Looking at a 50ft ‘gin palace’ with huge engines designed to waft the millionaire owner at 30 knots up the Channel and beyond, you’d be surprised to know you don’t actually need any qualifications to skipper it in the UK. Nor do you need to have a license to bomb around on a jet ski. […]
When you see the €10 million team Volvo Ocean Race boats going around the world at speed, or the America’s Cup foiling catamarans screaming around San Francisco Bay, you may be forgiven for assuming that sailing is for rich people with nothing better to do with their time. When you realise that 99% of sailors […]
Lately you’ll have read a lot on this blog about elite racers blasting across the ocean in races such as the Volvo Ocean Race or around the buoys in the America’s Cup. A lot won’t even aspire to sail on one – they just like sailing for sailing’s sake. In general there are two types […]
When you think of sailing as a sport and a hobby, you tend to think of the physical skills learned, whether trimming sails, maintaining an engine or navigation. Research is increasingly showing that there is far more to learning to sail than the physical acts of taking a boat onto the water and sailing it […]
Last week I reported on the Volvo Ocean Team Vestas Wind running aground on shoals 270 miles off Mauritius. The team have admitted human error in the accident, discussing exactly what happened in a press conference you can listen to here. Essentially the navigator didn’t spot the shoal on his electronic charting system so plotted […]
The Danish Volvo Ocean Race competitor Team Vestas Wind hit a reef near Mauritius in the Indian Ocean and has been abandoned. The vessel hit the coral reef at around 15 knots, and the stern was jammed on the reef, the impact having broken off her two rudders. The crew abandoned ship before dawn as […]
In the last week there have been two amazing events in sailing. This weekend a 75 year old Sir Robin Knox Johnston has just come third in class, in the Route du Rhum solo trans Atlantic yacht race. Also, the Volvo Ocean Race started leg 2 out of Cape Town in some of the best […]
Christmas is coming and sailors of the world will splice the mainbrace, feast, and of course buy each other presents! For the landlubber who knows that a friend or loved one is into sailing, it can be very hard to know what gift to buy them because they are generally strange to sailing and haven’t […]