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.

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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.

The post An Ocean Sailor Tries Freshwater Racing appeared first on Yachting.

Sometimes I get the feeling that I’ve spent more time working on boats out of the water, below their waterline, than I’ve spent actually sailing them. That’s because for New England-based sailors like myself, every fall, our yachts get hauled for the winter and then require a fresh coat of bottom paint before returning to the drink the following spring. For me, this seasonal rite of passage has gotten a bit easier since the old days when I spent hours with a longboard sanding the bottom of my J/24 racer to get that smooth-as-silk racing edge. But all the cruising boats I’ve owned since then still require prep and paint, and it’s an annual task I’ve learned to tolerate—barely—in the same way I grit my teeth for my yearly physical with the doctor.

But all that changed when I bought my Pearson 365, August West, on the Gulf Coast of Florida. At first, I was astonished to learn that lots of boats spend multiple seasons without fresh bottom paint, opting instead to hire a diver for regular scrubs to keep marine growth to a minimum. For the first few months last winter, that was my go-to solution. But it was a stopgap measure, to say the least, as my diver, Casey, sent me text messages after every cleaning with an update on his work. After the third time my report card came back “Paint: poor,” I contacted the previous owner, wondering when the boat was last hauled and painted. When he basically couldn’t remember, I knew the time had arrived for the inevitable.

Back home in Rhode Island, the sanding and painting was always a job I’d tackled myself. In Florida, I quickly discovered there wasn’t a boatyard in greater Sarasota, near my boat’s slip on Longboat Key, that permitted owners to wield a sander or roller. On top of that, the closest yard to my boat, in nearby Cortez, didn’t even work on sailboats. But its team was good enough to recommend a neighboring facility, N.E. Taylor Boat Works, that was up for the task.

Related: Selecting Right Bottom Paint for Your Boat

As the pelicans fly, it’s only about 5 nautical miles from my dock to Taylor’s Travelift, mostly along the well-marked stretch of Intracoastal Waterway snaking through Sarasota Bay. However, the last little bit, up a narrow channel outlined with old, painted green markers into Cortez Cove, was a bit of a maze, and of course I ran aground in full view of one of the funky little town’s waterfront restaurants. Though I was ultimately able to extricate myself without assistance, I provided about 45 minutes of free entertainment to the dinner crowd. You’re welcome.

It also turned out that the previous paint job had been commissioned by the staff of Practical Sailor, a popular how-to newsletter about gear and maintenance. I was able to contact the editor, who helpfully told me the brand of ablative paint that had been applied, along with some other useful advice. He was curious to know how it had held up over the years, and I was happy to send him the “before” shot once the boat was hauled and blocked. The answer to his question? Not well.

The crew at N.E. Taylor, however, could not have been more welcoming or professional, and as long as they had the boat, I ended up getting some other work done, particularly the installation of two new deck hatches to replace the pair that had long ago given up the ghost.

So, I’m happy to report that August West returned to its slip with a spanking new paint job that should last me—fingers crossed—at least a couple of years. In the meantime, I’m hoping for high marks from Casey the next time he dons his wetsuit and takes the plunge.  

The post A Sailboat Makeover appeared first on Yachting.

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.

The post Southern Discomfort: The Ocean Race appeared first on Yachting.

The southwesterly breeze had filled in nicely, and perhaps with a tad more punch than I would’ve hoped for; in my slip off Buttonwood Cove on Florida’s Gulf Coast isle of Longboat Key, the prevailing beam-on winds had me pinned tightly against the pilings. As I scratched my chin and contemplated exactly how I might extricate myself from the dock, it occurred to me that this might not be such a great day to go sailing.

It was a fleeting thought. I’d had this February afternoon marked off on the calendar for a couple of weeks, at least. It would be my very first sail, under my own command, since I’d purchased my classic old Pearson 356, August West, the previous spring. I was going sailing.

I’d recruited my old mate Dan Spurr as crew, which was appropriate since I’d bought the boat from his son, Steve. Dan had logged plenty of miles on the vessel, and, for that matter, so had I, but never as its skipper. So, my mouth was a bit dry as we tossed off the dock lines and I backed into the cove. The Pearson is a notoriously poor performer in reverse, and there are many obstacles in my marina, specifically sandbars and tightly spaced vessels. But August West backed out like a champ—a happy omen, I thought.

It’s a fairly long motor out a narrow, winding cut into the deeper sections of Sarasota Bay where we could hoist sail and maneuver freely. That time gave me the opportunity to realize it was a whole lot breezier in the open waters than it had been in my protected slip.

Hmmm. Was this still a good idea? Too late. The die was cast.

I swapped the helm with Dan and went forward to raise the mainsail, which is when I remembered I’d not yet addressed the rather fundamental matter of running the reef lines on the quite powerful, full-battened main. And it certainly wasn’t going to happen now. A full-hoist mainsail it would be.

Sarasota Bay was choppy and flecked with whitecaps—“sporty” and “dramatic” were words that popped to mind—and I guessed it was blowing 16 to 18 knots, with gusts in the low 20s. Well, at least we needn’t worry about being becalmed. And while there wasn’t much I could do about the main, with my furling headsail, at least I could unroll just a scrap of it to keep things tamed and civilized.

We hardened up on the breeze and threw in a series of southbound tacks, which carried us past the mansions and museum of the late John Ringling, the circus entrepreneur who is synonymous with Sarasota, and onward to the city’s skyline. With boat speeds steady in the high-6-knot range—not bad for a beast built in 1977 with a 17,000-pound displacement—it dawned on me that we were having a cracking great sail. The helm was light and easy, the motion downright pleasant. “The boat has no bad habits,” Dan said, and he was right.

Near the city front, we turned and eased sheets for a fast reach back toward Buttonwood, notching a nifty 7 knots at times.

Once the sails were doused and furled, perhaps prophetically, I missed a channel marker on the way back to the marina and squished into a sandbank. Being a good friend, Dan just laughed. “You’re officially a Florida sailor now,” he said. “Everyone goes aground. No worries. It’s just sand.” It took a bit of wrangling to get off, which we accomplished after I unfurled the jib again, and we were able to sail back into deep water. Lucky should be my middle name.

And just like that, we were back in my slip, safe and secure, where we cracked one cold beer and then another. True, August West has no bad habits. But me? That’s another story.

The post First Sail on a New Boat appeared first on Yachting.

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.  

The post Balance Catamarans Dominate Caribbean Multihull Challenge appeared first on Yachting.

The voyage was a ludicrous proposition from the outset, and, in retrospect, there was only one way it could’ve ended: tragically. In July 1991, a well-known and controversial cruising sailor named Peter Tangvald set sail from the Spanish Virgin Island of Culebra southbound for Bonaire, ostensibly to safely negotiate the onset of hurricane season. Joining Tangvald aboard his engineless 50-foot cutter was his 7-year-old daughter, Carmen, but the kooky part of the enterprise was the towline to the leaky 22-foot sailboat trailing astern, commanded by his 14-year-old son, Thomas. The elder Tangvald had decreed that the boy stay aboard the smaller vessel to bail it out along the way so it wouldn’t sink beneath him. Neither boat carried a VHF radio; there was no way to communicate beyond waving and hollering.

Four days into the trip, on a dark night off the windward reefs of Bonaire, Thomas came on deck just in time to watch in horror as his father’s boat careened into the shallows along the surf line. He was barely able to scramble onto his surfboard before his own craft crashed into splinters. Neither his dad nor his sister survived the wreck, but, after six hours, Thomas made it ashore.

All of this is the opening scene in marine journalist Charles J. Doane’s new book, The Boy Who Fell to Shore: The Extraordinary Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Thomas Thor Tangvald. The title is a nod to the 1976 sci-fi movie The Man Who Fell to Earth, which is about an alien who crash-lands in New Mexico and experiences incredible success and debilitating failure. David Bowie was the film’s fall guy, just as Thomas is the protagonist in Doane’s story. Each of them suffers a similar fate.

Tragedy was nothing new to the Tangvald clan. Twice, Peter Tangvald had sailed over the horizon with young wives who never made it back, and, in the cruising community, there were loud whispers that he had plenty to do with their disappearances. Thomas was born and raised at sea, and one of the women who went missing was his mother.

Read More: Silent Running

After falling ashore himself, Thomas was whisked away by old cruising mates of his father’s, who’d been recruited for the task in the event anything happened to the elder Tangvald. Thomas was taken to the mountains of Andorra. For Thomas, who’d lived his entire life in the tropics, it was as incredible and bizarre as anything Bowie’s alien encountered in the desert. Remarkably, at least at first, he thrived. Though he had no true education whatsoever, beyond the books about science and naval architecture aboard his father’s boats that he devoured, he possessed a genius-level IQ. After two years’ worth of studies crammed into one so he could attend college in Great Britain, he enrolled at the University of Leeds to study advanced mathematics and fluid dynamics. He seemed bound for a far-different path from that of his father.

Except that, like his old man, he was always drawn back to the ocean. In the same vein, at this juncture, Doane’s narrative also returns to the sea. Many boats are involved, as are copious helpings of drugs and alcohol. Women come and go; kids are sired. In many unfortunate ways, as far as family men go, Thomas was a chip off the old block.

And yet Thomas is not unsympathetic; he’s even a compassionate character. His core values, his love and respect for nature and the islands, and his hopes and strivings are all solid. He was a hell of a seaman, that’s for sure. Which makes the disappearance that concludes this tale a mystery indeed.  

The post Lost at Sea: Thomas Tangvald’s Story appeared first on Yachting.

If Hollywood made a movie about Ronnie Simpson’s life—and some director with a sense of adventure, empathy and accomplishment should do exactly that—it’s difficult to determine who would play the titular role. A younger Brad Pitt might’ve pulled it off; Ethan Hawke could deliver the necessary intensity; Matt Damon would probably get the nod from today’s ranks of leading men.

But the fact of the matter is that only Ronnie could star in an epic Ronnie biopic. He is nothing less than an American original: a Marine Corps veteran who was nearly blown to smithereens in the first Iraq war and later found solace, healing and purpose in sailing. Now, at 37, he hopes to up the ante and become America’s top single-handed offshore racer. He wants to compete in the sport’s showcase event, the nonstop Vendée Globe solo around-the-world race, which sets forth from France in 2024.

This I learned last fall when he sailed into Newport, Rhode Island, on a well-traveled Open 50 war horse of a yacht called Sparrow. He plans to compete on that boat in another nonstop solo marathon: the Global Solo Challenge, which will start from Spain this fall. But Ronnie is clear that it’s merely a steppingstone, one he hopes will attract a title sponsor for his ultimate goal of competing on a world-class Open 60. “I’m rolling the dice here in a really huge manner,” he told me. “If doing [the GSC] on an Open 50 was the endgame, I probably wouldn’t be here. I consider this my shot for the Vendée. I don’t know why I’m so driven to do that race, but I wake up every day, and I want to do it, and I go to sleep every night, and I want to do it.”

I’ve known Ronnie for several years, in a professional sense, as his former editor at Cruising World magazine. His most remarkable article was called “From Fallujah to Fiji,” a detailed account of a decade-long odyssey that began with his enlistment in the Marines, just days after graduating from high school. Then came the day in Iraq when his Humvee fell under attack and he was seriously injured. While recovering, he learned online about sailing, and he purchased a 41-footer, which he later abandoned at sea in a Pacific hurricane. He then picked up the pieces after his rescue, and he purchased a succession of small boats that he raced alone to Hawaii and rambled across the Pacific to Fiji, becoming a professional sailor, rigger and delivery skipper. Ronnie notched over 130,000 nautical miles and gained the skills necessary for a Vendée campaign.

Ronnie was preparing to return to Fiji on his recently purchased 43-footer to relaunch a charter business that had become a COVID casualty, generating the funds to bankroll his own Vendée project. That’s when his friend Whitall Stokes offered up Sparrow, a two-time veteran of round-the-world races, for the Global Solo Challenge. Ronnie sold his cruiser, set up a GoFundMe page, launched a website (ronniesimpsonracing.com) and sailed to Newport to begin his quest.

That is where I joined him on a breezy afternoon with a pumping southwesterly on Rhode Island Sound for his ongoing shakedown sails. “Learning,” he said, time and again, tack after tack, spray flying, as we put the boat through its paces. “We’re doing a lot of learning here today.” Clearly, he was in his element.

Yet the question remains: Will Ronnie Simpson fulfill his dream of being on the Vendée starting line off Les Sables-d’Olonne, France, on November 10, 2024, to test himself against the planet’s best single-handers? If any story deserves a happy ending, Ronnie’s does.

The post Vendée Globe Aspirant Ronnie Simpson Finds Peace in Sailing appeared first on Yachting.

I’ve sailed my fair share of ocean races over the years, but the most unusual of all was the 2016 running of the Conch Republic Cup, a three-legged affair that began and finished off Key West, Florida, with a couple of 90-mile crossings of the Florida Straits to and from the north shore of Cuba. The CRC, at the time dormant for 13 years, had a colorful history owing largely to its Cuban ports of call, but aboard the 58-foot catamaran I was sailing, Impossible Dream, it wasn’t the venue that made it unique. Rather, it was the dynamic crew I was sailing with, three of whom were straddling wheelchairs. Our crew included two paraplegics and a quadriplegic. I’d never before gone to sea with paralyzed mates, but it was pretty fitting that someone had crossed off the first two letters of the cat’s name on the hull, with the “I” and the “m” scratched over. On Impossible Dream, everything seemed, well, possible.

It was my first sail aboard the one-of-a-kind, fully accessible, “barrier-free” catamaran, but hardly my last. For the yacht has continued its stated mission of creating sailing opportunities for people with disabilities, and, in the years since competing in the CRC, it’s made annual summer voyages from Florida to Maine, introducing thousands of inner-city kids, wounded military veterans and folks in wheelchairs to the joys of sailing. When it cruised into my home waters of Newport, Rhode Island, last summer, I was ecstatic to once again hop aboard.

Some background: Impossible Dream was created by extreme-sports enthusiast Mike Browne, who was paralyzed in a skiing accident and commissioned Nic Bailey to design a boat on which he could still pursue adventures. It was built by Multimarine, an advanced composites outfit, in England in 2002. Among its features are a wraparound deck that allows wheelchairs full access forward and aft, internal lifts for wheelchair boarding, a deckhouse with special seating on tracks, and all sail-handling lines leading inside. For more on the boat and its programs, visit its website: theimpossibledream.org.

The boat found a new home at Shake-a-Leg Miami, a remarkable facility based in Coconut Grove, Florida, for disabled sailors and watersports enthusiasts. The organization was founded by an old Newport pal named Harry Horgan, who was paralyzed in a car accident and saw the opportunity to empower others through firsthand experiences at sea. Horgan teamed up with another paraplegic, businesswoman and Shake-a-Leg Miami volunteer Deborah Mellen, who donated the funds to acquire the boat. The longtime skipper is Capt. Will Rey, ably assisted by first mate Paulina Belsky. Together they all make a highly talented, driven and formidable squad.

I’ll always remember our voyage to Cuba aboard the quick cat back in the day, and the genuinely gnarly conditions we encountered in the Gulf Stream, which Impossible Dream handled with aplomb. It turns out a cat is a pretty great seagoing platform. Our spin on Narragansett Bay last August was a much more mellow outing in a light southerly with a very happy contingent of participants enjoying the sun and breeze. Capt. Will always maintains a safe-and-sound ship, but it’s also pretty clear he wants everyone to have a great time. And they do.

We were tying back up in downtown Newport when, not for the first time, it struck me how special Impossible Dream truly is. Whether upright or in a chair, there’s nothing quite like a great sail, and this really cool cat is an equal-opportunity portal to nautical dreams unlike any other. As Muhammad Ali once said, “Impossible is nothing.”

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