In a windy 340-mile Kobe to Yokohama Race, the Muir 40 TREKKEE won a close race over a Swan 42 in an 11-boat fleet. For those not familiar with Japan’s geography, the course goes northeast basically from Osaka to Tokyo Bay.

More...

By Adam Loory, General Manager of UK Sailmakers International Last Thursday I re-learned the adage that to win sailboat races, you need to make fewer mistakes than your competition. Even though my boat SOULMATES was on the line at the gun, we did not have the best start. After sailing a few boat lengths we got squeezed out the back when the J/130 DRAGONFLY below us came up and the boat above us, the Farr 400 SUNDARI, rolled us. Tacking to clear our air was not an option since there was no wind on the right side of the course; we had to work our way to the left side. In the light air – six knots — two clearing tacks would have been death so we put the bow down and sailed through the lee of three boats. They were higher, but we were faster. It did not take too long to get clear since that group of boats was pinching and going slow as they all tried to sail over each other.

More...

UK Sailmaker’s 2013-2016 Rules Quiz program has been retooled from stem to stern, reflecting the latest techniques in online learning tools. Since UK Sailmakers rolled-out its new Rules Quiz Program in January, over a dozen new quizzes have been added bringing the count to 36 situations presented with more on the drawing board. To help better understand the situations as they unfold and the ultimate answers, UK has added graphic teaching aids including overlap lines, a circle showing the zone, a rotatable grid in one-boatlength increments, the ability to see the past positions of the boats as they advance through the situation, and the ability to see the track lines of the boats. A user-friendly slide bar allows users to easily advance or reverse the animation to a precise position. The new animations are bigger, more colorful, and the boats moving across the screen are more realistic and lifelike, and scrolling across any quiz icon offers a preview of that situation.

More...

PATTAYA, Thailand – Australian Roger Blasse bested the 74-boat fleet that represented nine countries to win the 2013 OK Dinghy World Championship. Blasse dominated the mostly light air regatta and won with a massive 15-point lead over second place after nine races.

More...

The Ker 40, PENINSULA SIGNAL 8, finished third overall and first in IRC Class 1 in the 480-mile San Fernando Race. The race starts in Hong Kong, runs south across the top of the South China Sea to end in the Philippines. Speaking after the race, co-owner Jamie McWilliam described the thrill of sailing the boat on its first offshore race, “We thought we were doing 9 or 10 knots all the way home, then all of a sudden at midnight, the breeze clocked round to the north and built to 17 knots. It was awesome, just brilliant. We had a brilliant full moon, and the wind shift let us point exactly where we were going. 15.7 knots was the top that we hit.”

More...