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.
A maxi yacht usually refers to a racing yacht of at least 21 metres (70 ft) in length.
The Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race is an annual oceanic yacht racing event hosted by the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, starting in Sydney, New South Wales, on Boxing Day and finishing in Hobart, Tasmania. The race distance is approximately 630 nautical miles (1,170 km). The race is run in conjunction with the Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania, and is widely considered to be one of the most difficult yacht races in the world.
The Pacific Cup is a yacht race from San Francisco, California to Kaneohe, Hawaii on the island of Oahu. The enjoyable exercise in yacht racing is run in even-numbered years by the Pacific Cup Yacht Club, while in odd years the Transpacific Yacht Race sails for Hawaii out of Los Angeles. While billed as "The Fun Race to Hawaii," this race take preparation seriously and provides a number of seminars and resources to help sailors and crew find safety and success. The level of competition rises each year as well, with yachts coming in from around the world including Switzerland and Japan.
Sparkman & Stephens is a naval architecture and yacht brokerage firm with offices in Newport, Rhode Island and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA. The firm performs design and engineering of new and existing vessels for pleasure, commercial, and military use. Sparkman & Stephens also acts as a ship and yacht brokerage. The firm offers similar design and engineering services for the performance optimization of existing yachts.
Ronald John Holland is a yacht designer, who came to prominence in the 1970s with his successful racing designs, and is now best known for his superyachts such as Mirabella V and Ethereal. He is now based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Germán Frers Sr. is Argentinian a naval architect known for designing racing yachts. He designed his first yacht in 1958 and has been involved in the design of more than 1000 yachts, including Kialoa V and Hyperion, which, when launched in 1997 was the largest sloop ever made.
Royal Huisman is a Dutch shipbuilding company that specializes in the newbuild construction and refit, rebuild and renewal of sailing and motor yachts.
S&S 34 is a cruising and racing fibreglass monohull sailboat class. It was based on a design by Olin Stephens from Sparkman and Stephens after a commission from British yachtsman Michael Winfield.
Morning Cloud was the name given by the British politician Edward Heath to a series of five yachts which he owned between 1969 and 1983.
Ragamuffin 100 is a 100 ft maxi yacht which was built by TP Cookson for Charles St. Clair Brown; The boat was designed by Greg Elliott and Clay Oliver and launched in Auckland in February 2005.
John B. "Jim" Kilroy owned and raced the record-breaking Kialoa sailboats from the 1950s to the 1980s, helping pioneer the era of maxi yacht racing.
Brindabella is a maxi yacht. It won line honours in the 1997 Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race as well as breaking the race record for a conventionally ballasted yacht in 1999.
The Swan 65 is a large fibreglass fin+keeled masthead ketch- or sloop-rigged sailing yacht design, manufactured by Nautor's Swan. It was introduced as the new flagship of Nautor in 1973. At the time of its launch it was the largest glass reinforced plastic (GRP) constructed yacht in the market and because of its excellent racing history, one of the most famous Swan models ever built. The first 65-footers were delivered to owners in 1973, and the production continued until 1989 with 41 hulls built in total.
Alfa Romeo I is a 27.43-metre (90.0 ft) fixed keel maxi yacht, launched 2002, which placed first in the 2002 Sydney-Hobart race and the 2003 Giraglia Rolex cup regatta.
Alfa Romeo II is a maxi yacht designed in 2005 by Reichel/Pugh for yachtsman Neville Crichton. First-to-finish in the 2009 Transpacific Yacht Race, she also set a new elapsed-time Transpac race record for monohulls.
Greg Elliott is a New Zealand sailing yacht designer. He is most notable for the Elliott 6m, an Olympic-class keelboat selected for the women's match racing event for the 2012 Olympics.
Comanche is a 100 ft maxi yacht. She was designed in France by VPLP and Guillaume Verdier and built in the United States by Hodgdon Yachts for Dr. James H. Clark.
UFO 34 is a cruising and racing fibreglass monohull sailboat class. It is a sloop based on a design by Holman and Pye. The design features a spade rudder and a Bermuda rig with a large, overlapping headsail. Over 150 UFO 34s have been built both in the United Kingdom and Australia.
George Harding Cuthbertson (1929–2017) was a founding partner of Cuthbertson & Cassian yacht designers, one of four companies that in 1969 formed C&C Yachts, a Canadian yacht builder that dominated North American sailing in the 1970s and early ‘80s.
