I am fascinated by off-shore sailing, competitive and otherwise.
How racers manage to do the vendee globe (solo, from france around-the-world back to france) in just 80 days with just sails and ropes as engines is beyond me.
FYI the fastest solo sail around the world was set in 2017 at 40 days in a Trimaran
I've got a number of YouTube channel recommendations if you weren't aware of them already (https://willj.net/posts/youtube-sailing-channel-recommendati...). A large number of those channels have done a lot of off-shore sailing, and many have done multiple ocean crossings.
Thank you, I will have a look :)
This YT channel is gem I found: https://www.youtube.com/@SailingTipsCa
Doesn't post a lot, not very high production quality but very high quality information.
No, these are all cruisers rather than racers. There's a mix of sailing and lifestyle, but then for a lot of them it's hard to just film the sailing because there's only so much sailing you can actually do when you live on your boat.
Mozzy is by far the best and most detailed channel out there for the AC, 10/10 recommend.
Has the systems understanding, ability (and confidence) to make predictions, while keeping the video's at a length that is still digestible.
Also has a nice speaking voice which brings a level of classiness to it.
One sailor that I enjoy watching is Patrick Laine[1]. The back catalog has a lot of coastal single-handing (coast of France mostly). Then he started circling the Atlantic.
Not to dimish their perfomance, but still worth noting that they are taking the curves as tightly as anyhow possible. Which is okay, I guess, it's a race after all.
edit for those on screen readers: The links show the route of that race, which is from France down to south pole, around it, and back up to France. This race is not "along the equator" as some might read "around the globe".
That's the current course and the subject of the debate. The point is Tierra del Fuego (the southern tip of South America) is very close to Antarctica and so that circumnavigation is very short.
"around the world" is a fairly arbitrary definition using around the rotational axis as the criteria. If pesky antarctica werent there you could sail around the the world in a very small amount of time. The record would be determined by the turning radius of the boat.
This is of course ok, given that any other criteria would be equally subjective.
Good news, the Earth's circumference is around 40,000km, and the actual distances sailed by each of the competitors in the most recent Vendee Globe were all around 50-51,000km. So they all exceed your requirement.
Ok that's complete bullshit, they might as well use the Falklands as a home base so they're "technically" doing a circumnavigation while starting and ending in the UK lmao.
Going through Panama, the Phillipines and back through Suez honestly seems way better. Aside from the part where they get shot and killed off the coast of Somalia of course.
And you could also sail for 30k miles in a 10 mile circle and it wouldn't be called circumnavigating anything. It's not about the distance, it's about the places.
Tides/currents make a huge difference too. There is a right way and a "wrong way round" when sailing the globe. Rather than head south from europe and left towards asia, you turn right towards the south pacific.
> Rather than head south from europe and left towards asia, you turn right towards the south pacific.
Yes, but people have gone the "backwards" way as well:
> The oldest person to sail around the world singlehandedly and non-stop is Bill Hatfield (Australia, b. 14 January 1939), who was aged 81 years 39 days when he sailed into The Spit on Australia's Gold Coast on 22 February 2020. He embarked on his eight-month (295-day) solo circumnavigation – on the more challenging westerly route, against the prevailing winds – on 8 June 2019 in his 11.5-m (38-ft) yacht L'Eau Commotion.
> with just sails and ropes as engines is beyond me
then you should check this amazing sailor named Yann Quenet who built his own 4m sailboat [1] (yes 4m is crazy) on which he did a circumnavigation and once he came back worked at improving his little boat and just left 8 days ago for another circumnavigation.
He has been documenting his journey on youtube[2]:
Yes. He said surfing a weather system, not surfing a wave. Which is exactly what they did. As a person who does surf, his analogy was accurate and meaningful.
Surfing has a specific meaning, where you ride the forward part of a wave and the movement of the wave behind your hull propels the boat forward.
Sailing in front of a weather system to get optimal wind for your sails is not surfing.
Imprecise language is sloppy and problematic for people with a functional vocabulary. Surfing is a technique used in sailing and this isn’t the same thing.
Heh, I was not being sarcastic, I just meant that the article seems to be at least as much about waiting for/predicting the right conditions as it is about the boat. Certainly before this article I understood the concept of not taking off for a sail in the middle of a storm, but it never occurred to me that setting a trans-Atlantic record required finding/predicting a weather system that would: 1. provide just the right conditions for maximum speed sailing 2. itself move across the Atlantic at a pace the boat could match, so as not to fall out of it.
A 22m doc on Comanche and being on board during their record-setting run:
> Even the most daunting world records are meant to be broken… eventually. For elite navigator Stan Honey and a crew of sailing all-stars, beating the prestigious monohull transatlantic sailing record was the ultimate accomplishment. And it was no easy feat. On July 22, 2016, the Comanche—a custom-built, 100-foot racing yacht—set sail from New York to the southern tip of England. Precisely five days, 14 hours, 21 minutes and 25 seconds later, the Comanche’s crew shattered the world record … by more than a day. Brave the high seas as we set sail on one of the most amazing and inspiring journeys ever to take place on film.
I didnt see it noted in the article, but this is specific for the monohull category.
The trimaran Banque Populaire V [1] has the unrestricted record at 3d 15h 25min 48s and 33 knots [2]. This is pretty staggering when you compare it to something like the transatlantic voyage of Christopher Columbus at ~61 days.
Banque Populaire V was more than twice the length and sail area of the Santa Maria, but ~15% the weight.
Modern sailing is an incredible departure from the traditional. The technology has come so far that when I watch an Americas Cup trifoil float above the waves (on two legs), turn on a dime and race away at 90km/h I can’t help but think back to classic science fiction. It’s become real and is beautiful.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 144 ms ] threadHow racers manage to do the vendee globe (solo, from france around-the-world back to france) in just 80 days with just sails and ropes as engines is beyond me.
FYI the fastest solo sail around the world was set in 2017 at 40 days in a Trimaran
https://www.youtube.com/@TheSailingFrenchman
https://www.youtube.com/@mozzysails
[1] http://www.youtube.com/@patricklaine6958
Edit: official channel URL
On hiatus from sailing due to family reasons; most recent video:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZdON6ld6Ks
Not to dimish their perfomance, but still worth noting that they are taking the curves as tightly as anyhow possible. Which is okay, I guess, it's a race after all.
edit for those on screen readers: The links show the route of that race, which is from France down to south pole, around it, and back up to France. This race is not "along the equator" as some might read "around the globe".https://www.google.com/maps/@-31.0010223,-173.4498925,3.01z
This is of course ok, given that any other criteria would be equally subjective.
Going through Panama, the Phillipines and back through Suez honestly seems way better. Aside from the part where they get shot and killed off the coast of Somalia of course.
The route is chosen due to an unobstructed path ‘around the world’ in the Southern Ocean.
https://www.vendeeglobe.org/en/what-vendee-globe
Tides/currents make a huge difference too. There is a right way and a "wrong way round" when sailing the globe. Rather than head south from europe and left towards asia, you turn right towards the south pacific.
Yes, but people have gone the "backwards" way as well:
> The oldest person to sail around the world singlehandedly and non-stop is Bill Hatfield (Australia, b. 14 January 1939), who was aged 81 years 39 days when he sailed into The Spit on Australia's Gold Coast on 22 February 2020. He embarked on his eight-month (295-day) solo circumnavigation – on the more challenging westerly route, against the prevailing winds – on 8 June 2019 in his 11.5-m (38-ft) yacht L'Eau Commotion.
* https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/oldest-pe...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Hatfield
then you should check this amazing sailor named Yann Quenet who built his own 4m sailboat [1] (yes 4m is crazy) on which he did a circumnavigation and once he came back worked at improving his little boat and just left 8 days ago for another circumnavigation.
He has been documenting his journey on youtube[2]:
ref:
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDGR9LtRUBw
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/@quenetyann396
Sailing in front of a weather system to get optimal wind for your sails is not surfing.
Imprecise language is sloppy and problematic for people with a functional vocabulary. Surfing is a technique used in sailing and this isn’t the same thing.
Mindblowing:
https://www.imoca.org/en/news/news/team-malizia-s-boris-herr...
> Even the most daunting world records are meant to be broken… eventually. For elite navigator Stan Honey and a crew of sailing all-stars, beating the prestigious monohull transatlantic sailing record was the ultimate accomplishment. And it was no easy feat. On July 22, 2016, the Comanche—a custom-built, 100-foot racing yacht—set sail from New York to the southern tip of England. Precisely five days, 14 hours, 21 minutes and 25 seconds later, the Comanche’s crew shattered the world record … by more than a day. Brave the high seas as we set sail on one of the most amazing and inspiring journeys ever to take place on film.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDmz9iqyeSU
A few years ago Scorpios was built to be even faster than Comanche:
* https://www.yachtingworld.com/supersail/fastest-yacht-the-gi...
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3tpu7tgVqc
Note: the above are non-foiling designs. If you go with foils then you can go much faster:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_hydrofoil
The trimaran Banque Populaire V [1] has the unrestricted record at 3d 15h 25min 48s and 33 knots [2]. This is pretty staggering when you compare it to something like the transatlantic voyage of Christopher Columbus at ~61 days.
Banque Populaire V was more than twice the length and sail area of the Santa Maria, but ~15% the weight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banque_Populaire_V
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_sailing_record