Yacht racing is a sailing sport involving sailing yachts and larger sailboats, as distinguished from dinghy racing, which involves open boats. It is composed of multiple yachts, in direct competition, racing around a course marked by buoys or other fixed navigational devices or racing longer distances across open water from point-to-point. It can involve a series of races with buoy racing or multiple legs when point-to-point racing.
Dame Ellen Patricia MacArthur is a retired English sailor, from Whatstandwell near Matlock in Derbyshire, now based in Cowes, Isle of Wight.
Jolie Brise is a gaff-rigged pilot cutter built and launched by the Albert Paumelle Yard in Le Havre in 1913 to a design by Alexandre Pâris. After a short career as a pilot boat, owing to steam replacing sail, she became a fishing boat, a racing yacht and a sail training vessel.
The Single-handed Trans-Atlantic Race (STAR) is an east-to-west yacht race across the North Atlantic. When inaugurated in 1960, it was the first single-handed ocean yacht race; it is run from Plymouth in England to Newport, Rhode Island in the United States, and has generally been held on a four yearly basis.
Bernard Moitessier was a French sailor, most notable for his participation in the 1968 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, the first non-stop, singlehanded, round the world yacht race. With the fastest circumnavigation time towards the end of the race, Moitessier was the likely winner for the fastest voyage, but he elected to continue on to Tahiti and not return to the start line in England, rejecting the idea of the commercialization of long distance sailing. He was a French national born and raised in Vietnam, then part of French Indochina.
The sport and practice of single-handed sailing or solo sailing is sailing with only one crewmember. The term usually refers to ocean and long-distance sailing and is used in competitive sailing and among cruisers.
Éric Marcel Guy Tabarly was a French naval officer and yachtsman. He developed a passion for offshore racing very early on and won several ocean races such as the Ostar in 1964 and 1976, ending English domination in this specialty. Several of his wins broke long standing records. He owed his successes to his exceptional mastery of sailing and of each one of his boats, to both physical and mental stamina and, in some cases, to technological improvements built into his boats. Through his victories, Tabarly inspired an entire generation of ocean racers and contributed to the development of nautical activities in France.
The clipper route was derived from the Brouwer Route and was sailed by clipper ships between Europe and the Far East, Australia and New Zealand. The route, devised by the Dutch navigator Hendrik Brouwer in 1611, reduced the time of a voyage between The Netherlands and Java, in the Dutch East Indies, from almost 12 months to about six months, compared to the previous Arab and Portuguese monsoon route.
The Contessa 26 is a 7.77 meter (25.6 ft) fiberglass monohull sailboat, brought about when Jeremy Rogers, with a background in traditional wooden boatbuilding along with one of his Folkboat customers, David Sadler, created a modified version of the same boat in glass reinforced plastic (GRP). Rigged as a masthead sloop, with a long keel and a hull-mounted rudder, the Contessa 26 was launched in 1966 and early boats proved to be very successful racers, including long-distance events. Jeremy Rogers Limited went on to produce the Contessa 32.
Michael Perham is an English sailor and adventurer from Potters Bar. In 2007 at the age of 14 he became the youngest person in the world to successfully sail across the Atlantic Ocean single-handedly, beating the record set in 2003 by British sailor Seb Clover. In 2009 at the age of 17 he became the youngest person to sail around the world solo. Perham's second record surpassed that of Zac Sunderland, an older 17-year-old American, set only six weeks earlier. Following this, Perham's adventures included driving around the world and racing in many offshore races, most notably the Sydney to Hobart yacht race in 2011 where his team placed second in class.
Bruce Schwab is an American sailor and ocean racer. He circumnavigated the globe twice on his Open 60 racing yacht OceanPlanet becoming the 240th and then the 254th solo sailor to do so. Schwab is the first American to officially complete the famous Vendée Globe Race (2004–2005).
Bruce Tweeddale Dalling was a Springbok South African yachtsman, also advocate and farmer, best known for taking second place on elapsed time and first on corrected time for the monohull award in the 1968 Observer Single-Handed Trans-Atlantic Race.
Hal Roth was an American sailor and author. In 1971 he was awarded the Blue Water Medal of the Cruising Club of America. He died of lung cancer.
Krzysztof Baranowski – yachtsman, sailing captain, journalist, teacher, member of the Council Board of Polish Maritime Foundation. He is the first Pole to sail twice single-handed around the globe. He is a graduate of the Wroclaw University of Technology and High School of the Journalists in Warsaw.
Pen Duick is the name best known for a series of ocean racing yachts sailed by French yachtsman Eric Tabarly. Meaning coal tit in Breton, it was the name Tabarly's father gave to the 1898 Fife gaff cutter he purchased, and that his son learned to sail. He thereafter used the name for a series of successful racing yachts through the '60s and '70s.
IDEC SPORT is a racing sailing trimaran designed for transoceanic record-setting. She is one of the world's fastest ocean-going sailing vessels and the current holder of the Jules Verne Trophy for circumnavigation of the world. She was originally skippered by French yachtsman Franck Cammas, with a crew of ten and sponsored by the French insurance company Groupama. She is currently skippered by Françis Joyon.
The first around the world sailing record for circumnavigation of the world can be attributed to the surviving crew of Ferdinand Magellan's expedition, including the last captain Juan Sebastián Elcano who completed their journey in 1522.
Manureva was a custom-built racing trimaran famous for being the first oceangoing multihull racing sailboat, opening the path to the supremacy in speed of this kind of boat over monohulls. She won the 1972 Single-Handed Trans-Atlantic Race, skippered by Alain Colas, and was lost at sea with Colas during the first "Route du Rhum" transatlantic solo race in 1978.
Aurelia Margaret Ditton, also known as Lia Ditton, is a British professional sailor, ocean rower, motivational speaker and conceptual artist.
Pip Hare, earlier known as Pip Hildesley, is a British yachtswoman, journalist and sailing coach. She was an entrant in the 2020 Vendée Globe round-the-world yacht race.
