Destremau Rounds Cape Horn And Turns North

The last of the 18 Vendee Globe skippers Sebastien Destremau entered Cape Horn on Sunday afternoon to exit the Big South.


The French skipper made a pit stop at Tasmania during his Vendee Globe run to carry out repairs to his TechnoFirst FaceOcean. He was the last skipper to make the safe turn north and head into the Atlantic. He has arrived 37 days after the race leader Armel Le Cleac’h touched on the Tasmanian waters. His closest rival in the 17 places of the Vendee Globe is Dutch skipper Pieter Heerema touched the Cape Hope four days and 16 hours before.

Destremau did not have any regrets about coming to Cape Horn so late and was happy that he had made this far on his 1998 Finot design. The boat completed its first Vendee Globe course in the 2000-2001 season. Continue reading “Destremau Rounds Cape Horn And Turns North”

St Barth Cata Cup

The winter might be fast setting in most parts of the world, but it does not deter many sailing events from still taking place.


For instance, the St Barth Cata Cup was on this weekend and it showcased many sailing masters at their game such as Olivier Gagliani and Patrick Demesmaeker. Indeed, Saturday saw the crew being out on challenging waters. This pair from Belgium however, made it and came out winner to claim the St Barth Assurances Allianz Grand Prize.

The day had been difficult for the team as the wind was shifty which made the start difficult. However the team did manage to go in the right direction and pass across the first mark. Though the crew felt that the day had been grueling physically as well as psychologically it was worth the experience of racing. The first day of the race offered tough competition with the Belgians fighting to stay ahead of their competitors, especially the team that won the Round the Island race. This team was successful in the afternoon round as they had a strategy in place that proved successful. Continue reading “St Barth Cata Cup”

Comanche Yacht Breaks Records

Jim Clark has been racing in the super maxi yacht, Comanche, which is 100 ft. He has been able to break a transatlantic record with this super yacht. Jim and Kristy Clark raced and set a new record in transatlantic waters with the maxi yacht built for races.

With this maxi yacht they were able to cross the Atlantic in a matter of 5 days, 14 hours, which helped the Comanche to knock over the last record that had an additional 24 hours in it. This was a record that had been held by Mari-Cha IV for about 13 years. She had sailed about 2880 nautical miles, clocking an average of 21 knots in speed. Continue reading “Comanche Yacht Breaks Records”

Paralympic Team Decided For Canada

Canadian Paralympic committee and Sail Canada have chosen six athletes for Team Canada who would be appearing at the Rio Paralympic Games that would be held in September.

The team consist of veterans like bronze medallist of Sydney 2000 or Paralympic gold medallist of Beijing 2008, the one and the same Paul Tingley. There are others too who have several record performances like Logan Campbell or Scott Lutes.

There would be others like the husband and wife partnership team of Jackie Gay and John McRoberts who won bronze at a sailing event at international levels in Italy, but has most recently been working on as a skipper for Hamble yacht charters.

McRoberts is already a bronze medal holder of Beijing 2008 while Gay would be competing for the first time in Paralympic Games. Bruce Millar competed in the last Paralympic games, three in a row and will set sail by himself with a 2.4mR boat. Continue reading “Paralympic Team Decided For Canada”

Billionaire’s crew abandons yacht title bid

A sailboat crew guided by Swiss billionaire Dona Bertarelli as well as her partner was forced by bad weather to desolate a bid to get their hands on the Jules Verne trophy for the fastest boat voyage around the world.

On Sunday, the Spindrift 2 trimaran crew stated after forty three days on water that it was no longer mathematically possible to defeat the present record fixed in the year 2012 by a crew captined by French sailor Loick Peyron.

In a message uploaded on the Spindrift Racing site, Bertarelli’s partner and the yacht’s skipper Yann Guichard stated that the weather forecast would not let it, this is a fact. Peyron’s team compassed the world in forty-five days, thirteen hours and forty-two minutes, following a path from Brittany Coast in the northwest of France across the capes of Good Hope, Leeuwin and Horn before cutting through an imaginary line from lighthouses on the Ushant Island in France to Cornwall, in England.

Spindrift 2 had a 13 man crew and they battled to shut down the gap between this and the record holder to twohundred-sixtysix miles. But the weather damned all hopes for more improvement.

Guichard stated that there are some forecast in the region around Ushant, with strong waves and wind over 10 meters high. But the safety of the boat and the crew were they were his priorities. The team moved on without even thinking of getting their hands on the Jules Verne trophy.