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.

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“This yacht is going to turn some heads wherever she is, but particularly at the Bucket.”

So says Jim Pugh, co-founder of Reichel/Pugh Yacht Design in San Diego, one of the driving forces behind the 154-foot Nilaya that Royal Huisman built in the Netherlands. The yacht was delivered to its owners in June. It spent the summer in the Mediterranean “tuning up for racing,” according to the shipyard, and has now crossed the Atlantic. Nilaya arrived in Antigua in December—with about three months to prepare for the March 2024 St. Barths Bucket Regatta.

The fast Atlantic crossing, according to Royal Huisman, “gave her owner and pro race team captain Bouwe Bekking and skipper Romke Loopik plenty of all-conditions experience at the helm.” There are already 10,000 nautical miles under the yacht’s keel.

The owner says his previous yacht, a 112-foot Baltic, won many regattas during the 12 years he owned it, but for this Nilaya, he instructed the yard and designers to create “a fast yacht that can win in a superyacht regatta.”

To that end, Royal Huisman says it built Nilaya using European Space Agency methodology. Nilaya is an aluminum-carbon hybrid designed with finite element analysis to direct the right material, or combination of materials, and the right thicknesses of those materials to handle the exact stresses in every part of the hull and deck.

For its part, Reichel/Pugh analyzed 10 years of historical wave data from the Eastern Caribbean and Greece, ultimately testing 12 models before developing the final hull shape.

Royal Huisman’s sister company Rondal was brought in for carbon-fiber expertise. As just one example of Rondal’s contributions, it supplied a runner arrangement that reportedly saves 2,646 pounds of weight, keeping the yacht lighter for racing.

Racing pedigree aside, this yacht also has plenty of luxurious creature comforts, with Italian studio Nauta Design collaborating on the project ( Nilaya is the largest sailing yacht Nauta has completed). And yet, even with the interior, light weight for racing was top of mind. Some of the bulkheads and door frames are carbon. Instead of heavy insulation to reduce noise and vibration, Royal Huisman developed composite panels made of cork, foam, honeycomb and other materials.

According to Royal Huisman, Nilaya is “arguably the most advanced sailing yacht” the shipyard has ever delivered.

“Royal Huisman was not afraid to invest in research to explore and develop all manner of innovative weight-saving possibilities,” said the owners’ project manager, Nigel Ingram of MCM Newport. “They really chased the details.”

And now, we all shall see if Nilaya leaves other yachts chasing its transom on the regatta circuit.

How long did it take to create Nilaya? Three years, including one year of preparation and two years under construction.

Take the next step: go to royalhuisman.com

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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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Back in the day, when I first started covering round-the-world races like the Volvo Ocean Race and the Vendée Globe for yachting magazines and newspapers, the most engrossing stories came from the Southern Ocean legs: the mystical, sometimes mythical waters spinning around the southern extremes of the planet. Known by the legendary nicknames of the bands of latitude they encompass—the roaring forties, furious fifties and screaming sixties—these locations tantalized me with tales of huge seas, big breeze and derring-do. I became personally obsessed with sailing there myself, a goal that was realized about 20 years ago when I joined an expedition to sail from Australia to Antarctica across the wild southern sea. It was a pretty epic trip, and, though we got seriously hammered down and back, I’ve always relished the experience. That said, I’ve never felt a huge need to return.

But I still love following the exploits of those sailors who test themselves in those grand, crazy conditions—which is why I was especially excited for the third leg of the current edition of The Ocean Race, the new title for the round-the-world contest formerly known as the Whitbread and then the Volvo. The roughly 14,000-nautical-mile voyage from Cape Town, South Africa, to Itajaí, Brazil, leaving to port the trio of great southern capes—South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, Australia’s Cape Leeuwin and the formidable Cape Horn off the tip of South America—was expected to take more than a month and represented the longest distance in the event’s combined 50-year history. For the four boats in the race, the expectations of a wild and woolly trip were sky-high. And they were realized.

In the end, there was also an unlikely, come-from-behind winner after five full weeks at sea: German skipper Boris Herrmann’s well-tested foiling 60-footer, Team Malizia.

For Herrmann and his four-person crew, it was a rocky beginning; Team Malizia lost a sail almost at the outset and then soon discovered a nearly foot-long crack near the top of its 90-foot spar. The team considered returning to Cape Town for a repair, but, after co-skipper Rosalin Kuiper was sent aloft to inspect the damage, they instead decided to fix the spar underway. In the meantime, however, on the strength of a record-breaking 24-hour run of 595.26 nautical miles, Team Holcim-PRB stretched out to a nearly 600 nm lead. The chase was on.

One of the most remarkable aspects of following this edition of The Ocean Race is the amazing video footage coming from the racecourse (each boat has a crewmember who supplies the stories and images). The drone shots, especially, in huge seas and with the boats in full foiling mode, are wildly impressive.

And as they sailed into calmer conditions, with the rest of the fleet bringing fresh breeze from astern, Team Holcim-PRB’s lead slowly began to evaporate. By the time the boats approached Cape Horn, Team Malizia had established a tenuous but impressive 30 nm lead.

The leaders clawed their way up the coast of South America to Brazil—almost always in sight of each other—but there was one last obstacle: a 60-knot gale on the leg’s penultimate night at sea. Team Holcim-PRB suffered rig damage in an accidental crash jibe, which gave Team Malizia an 80 nm advantage on the last day of racing to seal the victory.

Back in my cozy armchair, like many fans, I breathed a sigh of relief. Yes, I cherished my own time in the Southern Ocean. This time, I was happy to take it all in from the bleachers.

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One by one, the fleet of a dozen multihulls—11 performance-cruising catamarans and a sole French trimaran—retrieved their anchors and hoisted their mainsails, each with a deep reef in the main. In the anchorage off Anse Marcel on the French side of the Caribbean island of Saint-Martin, in the lee of the isle, the waters were calm and serene. Outside in the nearby Anguilla Channel, however, the easterly trade winds were pumping, and it was a sporty scene indeed, with the roiled seaway flecked with whitecaps.

It was the second day of the fifth-annual running of the Caribbean Multihull Challenge in early February. For the first time, the event was also hosting a rally in conjunction with the usual regatta for racing cats and tris. While the race committee was setting racecourses back in Simpson Bay on the island’s Dutch side, the cruisers were setting sail for an anchorage on the far side of Anguilla, where an evening of music, dancing and merriment awaited.

As anyone who has been to one of the major boat shows in the past decade knows, the multihull segment of the sailboat sector is far and away the fastest growing. And while the CMC rally fleet was well represented by French builders such as Lagoon, Nautitech and Outremer, with a half dozen entries, the South African-built line of Balance Catamarans was easily the most dominant brand. Perhaps not coincidentally, the company’s founder and president, Phil Berman, was in the thick of things aboard his own Balance 482, In Balance, as part of a season of island-hopping.

“You learn so much from the experience of just getting out and sailing your boat, day after day, living aboard and cruising through the islands,” Berman, a former national champion in the Hobie 14 class, told me at the outset of the rally.

Balance is currently building about 25 of its swift, daggerboard-equipped cats a year, and the production run is basically sold out for the next two years. “It’s crazy, but we’re probably the fastest-growing catamaran builder in the world,” he said. “But we’re just doing what we’ve always tried to do, which is build comfortable cruising boats that perform nicely.”

Berman said he’d been looking for ways to link his owners, and the rally was just the ticket. “We’re trying to build a community with Balance,” he said. “And it’s working. The owners all become friends, and they just like hanging out together.”

As the fleet started blasting across the Anguilla Channel, with most of the Balance tribe hoisting spinnakers and seriously trucking, it was clear not only that the boats perform well, but also that their crews were top-notch sailors happy to push the envelope.

Berman said there were several other Balances cruising the islands. Next year, he says, he thinks he’ll have several more cats in the fleet. Steve Burzon, the CMC director of marketing, says he hopes to attract other brands to the rally. “We do all the organizing; they just need to show up, and, for the price of their entry fee, they get the parties, the camaraderie—everything,” he said. Burzon also acknowledged that the rally half of the event may soon overshadow the racing portion, which drew 17 boats this year. “We may have created a monster.”

It’s a good problem to have, and it will be interesting to see what transpires. In that moment off Anse Marcel, however, all those colorful spinnakers soon vanished over the horizon. While the racers back off Simpson Bay were getting ready for a day of bashing their brains out, the rally folks had different priorities. After all, there was a party to attend to.  

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