Afresh trade breeze was gusting across Florida’s Biscayne Bay and we unfurled the screecher to make the most of it. The sail filled and the Seawind 1260 picked up the pace as we headed toward Miami.

Just as the Volvo Ocean Race fleet nears the finish line July 1, having zoomed around the world aboard high-tech 65-footers at speeds often exceeding 30 knots, sending high-tech drone video updates of every thrilling moment, 19 solo sailors will leave Les Sables d’Olonne, France, for a nonstop circumnavigation race aboard 30-footers retro-outfitted, meaning no GPS, satellite weather, watermakers, AIS, radars, chartplotters, instruments, autopilots, digital watches or even iPods. These hardy skippers in the Golden Globe Race are going old school on the 50th anniversary of the inaugural race in 1968.

When Terri and Thomas Sand first started dating in 2013, they didn’t know it would lead to a new love, not just for each other but for sailing. Since then, the couple has made a five-year plan that is taking them from learn to sail classes to sailing off on a world cruise on their brand new cruising catamaran. 

You can’t ask for better weather conditions for a boat test. It was 85 degrees with an east-northeast 18-knot wind blowing across Biscayne Bay as I walked out the Key Biscayne Yacht Club docks. All

In gale-force conditions, Team Sun Hung Kai/Scallywag crewmember John Fisher fell overboard in the Southern Ocean approximately 1,400 miles west of Cape Horn on Day 9 of the 7,600-mile Leg 7 from Auckland, New Zealand, to Itajaí, Brazil. According to race officials, the Scallywag crew immediately turned the boat around and began to sail upwind in a search pattern coordinated by the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre. After a 10-hour search, the team was  unable to locate Fisher and with conditions worsening and daylight fading, they stopped the search and turned back downwind toward safe harbor on the Chilean coast, the nearest safe landfall approximately 1,200 nautical miles away.

By all accounts, Michigan’s Gull Lake is a sailor’s lake, often bustling with regattas or packed with weekend daysailers. But there was something special about the 12 Stars that took to the racecourse on a crisp early fall weekend. Sailed by some of the best sailors in the class, the colorful boats were all 50 years old, lovingly restored, some just in time for the Vintage Gold Cup. It was exactly what the regatta’s organizers had in mind.

More than 80,000 people packed downtown Auckland, New Zealand, in July to celebrate the triumphant return of the America’s Cup after a 17-year absence. Thunderstorms didn’t dampen spirits as Emirates Team New Zealand paraded down Queen’s Street, the Auld Mug held high, and onto a boat for a tour of the jam-packed Waitemata Harbour. 

When helmsman Peter Burling buried the hulls of his 50-foot foiling ACC catamaran on the way to the start line, lost control and nosed-dived into Bermuda’s Great Sound, there was a chance that the America’s Cup was over for Emirates Team New Zealand. But like Humpty Dumpty, the shore crew picked up the carbon fiber pieces and put the fragile cat back together again, and the Kiwis went on to dispatch the British Land Rover BAR team in the challenger playoffs semifinals, and the Swiss Artemis team in the finals to win the Louis Vuitton Cup, setting up a rematch against Oracle Team USA for the America’s Cup in June.

Although short in stature, sailing photographer Bob Grieser had a huge presence, one that he was known to announce with his trademark bark, a literal “Woof, Woof!” that could be heard from down the dock or across anchorages. Whether it was the press offices of the America’s Cup or the Los Angeles Times, a Caribbean race’s party tent or local sailors’ watering hole, The Big Dog, as Grieser was known, would bring life to any room. ScheduleScheduleSchedule