More than a month after his target departure date of 20th December, French solo sailor Thomas Coville has set off from the port of Brest in his 105 ft trimaran Sodeb’O in a bid to break the around-the-world solo sailing record. To achieve this, he will have to round the globe in less than 57 days, 13 hours and 34 minutes and 6 seconds.
This is how long it took his fellow Frenchman Francis Joyon to circle the world three years ago, and THAT was a whopping 14 days faster than British sailor Ellen Macarthur’s record making voyage in 2005.
Two years ago, in the same boat, Coville made an attempt to  … Pictures & More
Sir Russell Coutts felt like Barney Rubble when he climbed on board the wingsail catamaran – the new face of the America’s Cup – on the Hauraki Gulf this week.
After declaring the new style of Cup racing under his watch would meet the expectations of the Facebook generation, not that of the Flintstones, Coutts yesterday admitted feeling a little prehistoric sailing the AC45 built to usher in the new era.
He is, after all, 48, and far from race-fit after  … More
Angela Madsen, the paraplegic American athlete who is currently rowing with her team across the vast Atlantic ocean, is quite a remarkable woman. In her own words she claims that “disability is not a death sentence. It does not reduce or diminish someone’s capacity for anything that life has to offer, it only makes other people think that it doesâ€. And how true that is.Â
Angela is the only disabled (or maybe we should say differently abled?) woman to have rowed across two oceans, collecting a host of   … Pictures & More
USA 17 has only ever competed twice, but she sailed the races of her life to dominate the Swiss defender, Alinghi, off Valencia, Spain, last year and win the 33rd America’s Cup.
The extraordinary carbon-fiber machine is being loaded onto the freighter M.V. Star Isfjord this week for the long delivery trip to San Francisco via the Panama Canal. The freighter carrying both USA 17 and her extraordinary 223ft wingsail is scheduled to leave Valencia on January 29 or 30 for  the 7,900-nautical-mile passage to the Bay Area. The estimated arrival in San Francisco, dependent upon on-time loading, sea conditions en-route and transit time in the Panama Canal, is …  Details