Sailing World Fall 2023

ON the first day of the 2023 J/24 North American Championship on Lake George, New York, whitecaps cover the racecourse frothed by gusting winds tumbling down steep green mountainsides. My mates and I are sailing upwind before the start of the morning’s first race, and the mainsail flogs with each angry gust, the boat heeling and sliding sideways despite our crew being right at maximum weight. We’re at the blurry crossover between using the genoa or the jib, and obviously we’re struggling with the big sail. After we turn downwind and return to the starting area, we agree that we’re big boys and we’ve been sailing the boat for the better part of three decades, so we should be able to handle the genoa. Yet as we reach back and…

IT’S early evening on April 27. The waters are calm off Les Sable d’Olonne, France, and out from the fog emerges the 36-foot cutter Minnehaha. The one soul on board is 40-year-old South African Kirsten Neuschäfer—the Golden Globe Race’s heroine and, at this moment, the first woman to win a solo around-the-world race. Exactly 235 days earlier, as the lone female in a fleet of 16 seasoned singlehanded sailors, she’d set forth from France with a singular objective, and as she crossed the finish line, she may well have been the person least surprised by the outcome. After all, from the moment she’d entered the unique “retro” highseas, high-stakes contest, she was in it to win it—never mind that she’d never raced offshore in her entire life. “When I signed…

AS the high-noon sun blazes the waters of the Long Island Sound, there’s no wind or even a ripple in sight. Dozens of college sailing teams shelter in tents erected on the US Merchant Marine Academy pier. It’s the fourth and final day of the 2023 ICSA Open Dinghy National Championship as racers, PROs and spectators alike wait patiently for the breeze to fill. With a 5 o’clock cutoff time, the postponement flag hangs limp. A palpable tension and anticipation are building. Something incredible is about to happen. A gentle sea breeze finally emerges a few hours later, and the race committee scurries into action to run three races in each division. The winning sailors find a rhythm with the wind and the current, in tune with what is above…

WHEN the Rolex International Women’s Keelboat Championship was the pinnacle regatta for every aspiring female, Betsy Alison and her team were annoyingly unbeatable. They won the inaugural event in 1985, and 12 years later, after winning four in a row, the original trophy was retired in Alison’s name. She is the only five-time winner of the Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year Award, and she is the first woman inducted into the National Sailing Hall of Fame, part of the first class in 2011. After years of racing both with and against her, I can tell you that she practices hard, races even harder, and never, ever gives up. And in an ironic twist of fate, Alison is proving this to be true once again. In 1998, Alison was hired to…

AT a recent coed Grandmasters Team Race Regatta, a teammate told me he didn’t understand why there were women-only sailboat races—as if to say, what’s the point? His comment was a brave one in today’s “woke” world, but it’s something that men and women alike probably think about a lot more than they talk about. Yet it raises a valid conundrum as our predominantly male sport pushes toward wider female inclusion: Why isolate women to their own sideshows when the longterm goal is organic integration across the sport? As I listened to his comments, many of which I’ve heard before, I thought about the fact that several signature women’s events, like the International Women’s Keelboat Regatta and the Santa Maria Cup, are either dead or not as popular as they…

MONICA Morgan has come a long way from working at a Subway in Chicago as a teenager to raise money to join the racing team at the Chicago YC at Belmont Harbor. Now, at age 39, she has become a highly sought-after dinghy and keelboat crew. Her name is on a lengthy and growing list of championships, including four J/24 North American titles, two J/24 National Championships, the J/24 Midwinters, a pair of Lightning Masters Championships, a Lightning North American Championship and the Bacardi Cup in the VX One. And those are only the ones she can remember. When not racing, you can find her deep in fiberglass work at Morgan Marine, a Florida speed shop she runs with her husband, Chris. On any given day, you might find her…