News, race results plus editorial coverage from the Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, Vendée Globe, The Ocean Race, ARC, Fastnet, Transpac, Ocean Globe Race, Global Solo Challenge and Offshore Yachting from around the world.
Champion helmsman Gary Smith early last evening was driving his Launceston to Hobart Race record-holder, The Fork in the Road, across eastern Bass Strait in a bid to sail through the notorious Banks Strait before nightfall. Line honours favourite for…
Having spent the last three years sailing a Beneteau 40, and enjoying some ocean racing Jason Ward was looking to step up with a new racing yacht. After competing in the Sydney Gold Coast Race in 2014 as a warm…
Andrea Francolini is one of the best yachting photographers and after 15 years of shooting the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, he knows how to get the perfect shot. While everyone is looking at who is going to be the…
Record holding eight time Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race line honours victor, Wild Oats XI, has retired from the race after reporting a torn mainsail. Early reports indicate that the sail tore in half when the yacht was hit by…
Ho ho ho, children, Father Christmas also spent some time on board Spindrift 2. The air temperature is 20 ℃, it is 19 ℃ in the water and the sailors ate a merry Christmas eve dinner off Argentina and Uruguay. Xavier Revil…
As Boxing Day dawns, the mood on the dock at the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia gets seriouser and seriouser – there is only so much time left to check, double check and check again those hundred little bits and…
The latest forecast, issued on Boxing Day morning, has mixed messages for the crews in the 2015 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race. Consistent with earlier forecasts, the start at 1pm will be in a freshening north-easter, meaning the yachts will…
There is always tension on the docks at the CYCA on Boxing Day morning, but today you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. A difficult forecast promising a northerly run down the coast and then howling southerlies had the…
Australian skipper Wendy Tuck led the 12-strong Clipper 2015-16 Round the World Yacht Race fleet in the early stages of the Australian bluewater classic the Rolex Sydney Hobart Race (RSHYR). The first Australian female skipper in the 19-year history of…
When Comanche arrived in Australia for the 2014 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, she was fresh out of the shed and still undergoing work to be able to compete in the race. The team was still building major components to…
While the rest of the western world celebrates with food and booze, spare a thought for the sailors trying to set a new Jules Verne record. Here is how Antoine spent the lead up to Christmas: Delamination on the mast: “Antoine…
Bob & Sandy Oatley’s supermaxi, Wild Oats XI, will go to the start of the 71st Rolex Sydney Hobart race tomorrow with two “special weapons” on board – meat pies and the “voodoo stick”. Both are considered to be a…
Just seven days out from the start of this year's Rolex Sydney to Hobart the media relished in reporting weather conditions for the race to be as bad as the horrendous 1998 race. Conditions have tempered since then but at…
There’s plenty of chatter about weather models and the chances of a rough and uncomfortable Rolex Sydney Hobart starting in less than three days’ time, making the choice to head north to Coffs Harbour one week later even more appealing….
In a light, the like of which you don’t find anywhere else, surrounded by albatrosses, the big, red multihull made her way back into the Atlantic, leaving the desolate Southern Ocean in her wake and in so doing was very…
The glitterati of the sailing world will be in Antigua to compete in the 2016 RORC Caribbean 600. Well over 100 Olympians, World Champions, America's Cup and Volvo Ocean Race sailors will join hundreds of passionate corinthian sailors for the…
Hobart yachtsman Gary Smith is quietly confident he can emulate, or at least again achieve his sailing successes of last summer, by taking line honours for the fourth time in Tasmania’s longest offshore race, the Launceston to Hobart. Over the…
With such a star-studded top end for this year's race to Hobart, it is easy to overlook some boats. But one yacht popped up on everyone's radar at the recent Big Boat Series – Chinese Whisper. Owner Rupert Henry has…
Michael Logan, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s NSW Weather Resources manager, delivered the early race forecast to all the competing skippers this morning at the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, and the overriding message is that this 2015 Rolex Sydney…
For a few sailors the Rolex Sydney Hobart is all about getting there first, but for the bulk of the fleet only one thing will really make it a Christmas to remember – a vaguely baroque silver chalice, bedecked with…
Spindrift 2 passed close to the legendary Cape Horn on Monday morning at 8:09 am UTC before heading up the Atlantic, passing through the Le Maire Strait during the middle of the afternoon. With 18h 11mn up on the split…
They are certainly quick around the buoys; a highly popular one-design choice for the well-heeled racing enthusiast, as often as not crewed by Olympic and America’s Cup professionals in glamorous global regattas stretching from Rhode Island to Mallorca. But that…
It is no secret that Matt Allen has entered both his Carkeek 60 and TP52 in this year's Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race. With the days till the Boxing Day start slowing ticking by, Matt's decision on which boat to…
Michael Logan from the Bureau of Meteorology explained this morning that the Rolex Sydney Hobart fleet is in for a tough first night as a Southerly front is expected to hit the fleet. The fleet will start in a strengthening…
Italian yacht racer Giovanni Soldini will field his largest ever crew on board ‘Maserati’ when it starts this year’s Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race on Boxing Day and the team are spending the final week before the race testing both…
On Boxing Day a bloke by the name of Tony Cable will start his 50th Hobart – nobody has ever done that before. It is a landmark for the Rolex Sydney Hobart; another colour to add to the tapestry of…
This year will see more international boats and crew than ever before. A record 27 foreign entries will cross the Sydney Harbour start line of the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race on Boxing Day. The bar at the Cruising Yacht…
Supermaxi yacht Wild Oats XI, owned by Bob Oatley AO and his son Sandy, is “locked, loaded and ready to go” in the Rolex Sydney Hobart race according to skipper, Mark Richards, following the big boat’s final training session off…
Air and water temperature: four degrees Celsius. 33-knot south-westerlies blowing directly off Antarctica. The Southern Ocean atmosphere is back! In just 36 hours since Saturday morning, Spindrift 2 has closed her 473-mile deficit on the world record pace (her largest…
In less than 24 hours, Francis Joyon and his crew of five turned things around again in terms of the Jules Verne Trophy record time. They have just achieved another success following the one they had off the coast…
Will Matt Allen race his new TP52 Ichi Ban to Hobart or will he opt to stick with his sleek black hulled Carkeek 60 of the same name? The skippers of nine other TP52s entered in the Rolex Sydney Hobart…
A weather forecast for the Rolex Sydney Hobart race issued early today was ringing alarm bells to the point today where Iain Murray, the tactician aboard Bob and Sandy Oatley’s supermaxi Wild Oats XI, suggested the start of the race…
It has been a long time since Robert Hick has designed and built a yacht that has serious contentions for the Rolex Sydney to Hobart. But when you consider Hick's last 'dark horse' was AFR Midnight Rambler that won the…
2015 marks the launch of the inaugural Sydney Race Village at the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, Rushcutters Bay. One of the highlights of the Village is set to be the Sydney Hobart Food and Wine Fair, which kicked off…
She was one of the greatest maxi yachts of her day; winning line honours three times, first as Bumblebee IV in 1979, and then as Ragamuffin in 1988 and 1990 and she last raced to Hobart in 1993. For the…
The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (IOC UNESCO) and IMOCA Ocean Masters World Championship team up to gather climate change data in the remotest parts of the globe, particularly the Southern Ocean. The IMOCA Ocean Masters skippers, such as defending…
Any thoughts of a post-Christmas sleigh ride for the supermaxi yachts contesting the Rolex Sydney Hobart race are decreasing as the Boxing Day start time approaches. A preliminary weather prognosis from acclaimed yachting meteorologist, Roger Badham, indicates that while the…
Organised by the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club in association with Antigua Sailing Week, the inaugural Antigua Bermuda Race will commence after the 50th edition of Antigua Sailing Week in early May 2017. The Antigua Bermuda Race is designed to offer…
Yachting photographer Andrea Francolini has taken two near identical images of Bob and Sandy Oatley’s supermaxi, Wild Oats XI, so the difference between Wild Oats XI pre and post-surgery is apparent. The location of the sailplan, rig, keel, rudder and…
It’s not actually that long a story – though it took longer than expected, when last year, Hugh Ellis asked Gary Caulfield if he would like to do the 2015 Rolex Sydney Hobart on his Beneteau First 44.7 Twitch. Caulfield…
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