Ever since Ingo Buell’s routing system helped Jochen Schümann plot his route to Olympic victory in his Soling at the 1996 Games in Atlanta, Buell Software has been developing tactical technology to help sailors win

As its name implies, SailTokyo is a system aimed at those looking to win gold at the next Olympics in Enoshima less than two years from now. Among its clients Buell Software can count the Olympic sailing teams of Belgium, Germany, Switzerland (and some larger sailing nations who prefer to keep their anonymity) along with the host nation of Japan, whose sailors surely know the venue better than anyone. Yet SailTokyo’s application is much broader than Olympic sailing or the next Olympic venue.

For any race venue in the world, SailTokyo creates the means for sailors, coaches and support staff to build a clearer picture of what the current and the wind are doing, and how the two forces are interacting with each other. The tool can be applied as much to the realms of big boat racing, and even the America’s Cup, as to the high-performance dinghy scene of the Olympic classes. And its scope is not just Tokyo but any racing venue in the world.

Sales manager Yvette von der Burchard explains: ‘We designed SailTokyo as a cloud-based team solution to prepare your sailing team for the Olympic Games – Tokyo 2020, Marseille 2024 – and all the World Sailing events and Olympic class world championships. But we have been delighted to see the software so well adopted and appreciated by other high-level sailors and race campaigns.’

In the Etchells 22 fleet, for example, SailTokyo has established itself as a must-have for the top performers such as Olympic silver medallist and multiple champion Steve Benjamin from the USA: ‘We started working with SailTokyo at the Etchells Worlds in Cowes 2016. The app was crucially important there and since then has continued to get better and better, and easier to use. The app helped us win the Etchells Worlds in San Francisco last year and the beta model in Brisbane worked great, too.’ Indeed, Martin Hill’s winning team at the 2018 Brisbane Worlds also relied on SailTokyo to help plot their way around the racecourse.

Andrew ‘Dog’ Palfrey is one of the most sought-after coaches at the top end of the sport and has been using SailTokyo since the Dragon World Championships in La Rochelle three years ago. For him and his clients, running the routing software helps provide clarity and certainty when planning a strategy for an upcoming race. ‘I guess everyone's brain works in a different way, but for me the routing aspect of the software is very useful,’ he says. ‘We can all look at arrows overlaid on a chart, but can we really pinpoint which side's favoured all the time? I can’t honestly say I could do that. Sometimes it's obvious, you know, it's shallow water over there, but a lot of the time the potential gains or losses across the course are quite subtle, yet they’re still important.

‘When I’m running the software, I’m not too bothered about the result itself, but the result will certainly help quantify how important the current is on that day. When it’s start time and the pressure is on and you need to make clear decisions, just having that quantitative result logged in your mind is a real benefit.’

Grant Spanhake is another coach who numbers the TP52 Alegre amongst his high-profile clients. ‘Last season in the TP52 fleet I got together with a few coaches for other campaigns – people like Tony Rey, Cameron Dunn, Timmy Haynes, John Cutler – and we ended up using the app on our phones and our iPads out on the water. We were all committed to make two, three or four current measurements in different areas across the racecourse and then all the collated data would appear on each of our iPads. It’s a great collaborative tool, because it meant that three or four boats could cover the whole racecourse very quickly. It gave us the ability to generate an accurate current field around the racecourse that we could all share. It gives the tacticians a lot more information to make their calls on which way to go, which is particularly useful in a complex venue like Cascais, which can feature some pretty strange current movements.’

While many racing teams are using SailTokyo as a predictor, others are deploying it as a post-race briefing tool. Data readings (currents, wind speeds and tracks) are logged by a yacht’s instruments or recorded by a coach boat following a dinghy around the course. These are then processed by SailTokyo, enabling coaches and racing crew to overlay their actual tracks and compare them with the theoretical best possible track on that course, in those exact conditions

James Lyne is another TP52 coach, in his case for Quantum Racing, although the new America’s Cup challenge, American Magic, is increasingly taking his attention. SailTokyo is forming an integral part of the Cup campaign, but Lyne is not at liberty to say exactly how. ‘Some of the America's Cup stuff that we’re doing with SailTokyo I’m not really going to talk about, but it has certainly been very useful for the Quantum Racing TP52 campaign over the past season.

‘We’ve been using it as a predictor. Rather than just relying on our own memories and saying, “Oh, remember that Tuesday in 2015 at Palma Vela? Today’s a synoptic day like that.” As well as using our own experiences of a venue, we can now bring in SailTokyo and we can input the different models and run the boat up the course. So it's a whole new way of looking at the day forward. From my perspective, as a coach, we are always looking a day behind us. We're always having a debrief about the day behind us whereas SailTokyo is great because it's like a pre-briefing about the day ahead of us.’ The ability to “crystal ball” the day has started to make SailTokyo a must-have tool for Lyne and his sailing team.

As well as enabling teams to forecast the likely conditions for the day ahead, the latest version of

SailTokyo also includes some very strong debriefing features, to help sailors and coaches see how – with the benefit of hindsight – they might have played the day differently. SailTokyo processes readings of currents, wind and tracks. These data – measured on a sailing boat or by coach boats during the race – provide the backdrop for analyses of the theoretically best course. Tracks can be overlaid with this optimal course to gain a deep insight into where things went right and where they could have gone better.

One of the challenges for new users of SailTokyo is to grasp its full capability, but one of the best ways into the software is to find a particular feature that appeals to you and make it work for you until it becomes part of your routine.

James Lyne can recall his first encounter with SailTokyo during the build-up to the 2015 edition of the Melges 20 World Championships in San Francisco: ‘We built our own polars and inputted those into the system. We were down on the Berkeley Circle where the current was doing two things, flooding in from the west but also making a big bend, out to the north. So it's a big, effectively a right bend of current. This can make it hard to get your head around the whole cross-current aspect of the area. And I suppose that's where we learned more than anything because we sort of didn't believe the output to start with. And obviously with the Samba Pa Ti programme and the Wild Man programme, we had two boats, identical gear, world-class sailors and we spent quite a lot of time each day “ground-truthing” the tidal prediction. In other words, if start time for the championship was at 1pm, then at 1pm each training day we’d have one boat go left up the course, one go right and we tested the course for a hundred days. We felt the need to do this validation, this groundtruthing process, because it was our first time using the software and it was predicting things that, when you look just at the tidal data, you wouldn't think are correct. But the more we sailed there and tested it, the more we realised just how incredibly accurate were the deltas being predicted by SailTokyo.’

John Kilroy’s Samba Pa Ti would go on to win those Worlds comfortably while his 12-year-old son Liam would come third, just a point off second place, skippering Wild Man. There were many good reasons for the success of the programme, but Lyne says SailTokyo played a key role in giving the two crews great confidence in their strategic planning and decision making. Just how Lyne and his cohorts at American Magic will be using SailTokyo to try to win the 2021 America’s Cup, we will perhaps have to wait a few years to see, however Lyne is very excited about the possibilities. ‘Of course we could have developed our own in-house solution, but time is always the most precious resource and SailTokyo gives us a lot of what we need in a package that is very customisable. There was really little point in us spending time trying to do our own thing when we already have a great relationship with Buell. Ingo and Yvette have always been very open to new ideas and we enjoy working with them.’

Dynamic Grid Routing - the best short-course solution
Most routing software is based on isochronic routing. This works well for long-distance offshore racing but for shorter distances a different, more accurate tool is needed. Buell Software’s unique routing algorithm reflects the characteristics of Olympic and inshore races. This enables highly accurate calculation of best courses even over short distances such as we see on windward-leeward courses or any other inshore race course.

Click here for more information on Buell Software »

Here’s a sneak preview of the just-released documentary film about Vendée Globe competitor (and one time Seahorse contributor) Mike Plant. It’s an amazing, probably unrivalled glimpse into the psyche of a solo sailing icon

Mike Plant was one of the most remarkable and fascinating figures ever to compete in solo ocean sailing, widely admired for his prodigious talent, superhuman toughness and single-minded determination. He burst onto the scene out of nowhere in the mid-1980s, built his own Open 50 on a shoestring and won his class in the first race he entered, the 1986- 87 BOC Challenge. In a career that spanned just five years before he was lost at sea while sailing his radical new Open 60 Coyote to the start of the second Vendée Globe, Plant achieved more – against all odds, sailing around the world three times by the seat of his pants – than most professional sailors do in a lifetime.

Plant’s bold exploits and great sportsmanship made him a hero and a source of inspiration to many sailors around the world. The darker shades of his larger-than-life character make his incredible story even more fascinating. All is revealed in a riveting new documentary film, Coyote: The Mike Plant Story, directed by Plant’s nephew, Thomas Simmons. If you’ve ever wondered about the rumours of cocaine smuggling that clashed so strangely with Plant’s clean-cut image, or the real story behind his arrest in the Azores on an Interpol warrant in 1986 and the mystery of his release from a Portuguese jail just in time to start the BOC Challenge, you’ll have to watch the movie.

Coyote is an excellent film by any standards. The wealth of archive footage, covering the first Vendée Globe, two BOCs and more, is reason enough for any sailor to watch it. ‘Mike wasn’t always forthcoming about his time at sea,’ Simmons says. ‘He was fairly private, but there are a few pieces of archival footage of Mike that are incredibly powerful and insightful around the challenges and the freedom of ocean sailing.’

Interviews with Plant’s family and friends – including substantial contributions from Vendée Globe founder Philippe Jeantot, yacht designer Rodger Martin and North Sails president Ken Read – weave together the strands of the story and bring it eloquently to life. ‘The willingness of so many to step forward and appear on camera for the film is a testament to the impact Mike Plant left on people,’ Simmons says. ‘Timing had something to do with it as well… many people close to his story were emotionally impacted by his disappearance, but 25 years had passed, giving these individuals time to process, heal and relive the moments in a very genuine tone. It made the production incredibly special and I think that shows on the screen.’

Above: one of the last pictures of Mike Plant aboard his radical Open 60 Coyote, which capsized after losing its keel bulb in a north Atlantic storm while on passage from New York to Les Sables d’Olonne for the start of the second Vendée Globe Race in 1992. Simmons’s film points to many factors that probably contributed to the tragedy and reminds us of some important lessons in seamanship, but it’s also an inspiring story of a man who achieved so much by following his dreams

It would have been easy, given Plant’s status as America’s greatest solo sailor and Simmons’ own memories – he was only 10 when Plant disappeared – to produce a film that cast its protagonist as a straightforward hero who met a tragic end. ‘I remember feeling like my uncle was a superhero of some kind,’ Simmons recalls. ‘My overarching memory of Mike rests in the energy that he brought into every room. It was a quiet energy – more of an intangible and a look in his eye. He was always up to something and focused solely on that mission, and it usually involved getting back out to sea and chasing adventure.’

The film succeeds in painting a more complete picture of Plant, balancing his achievements with his failings. It points to possible causes of Coyote’s capsize, including time constraints, lack of money, structural shortcomings, Plant’s own alleged recklessness and – highlighted in a candid interview with the photographer Billy Black, who was on the helm at the time – running hard aground in the Chesapeake just before the final, fatal voyage. But it avoids getting bogged down in the aftermath, which resulted in a lawsuit brought by Plant’s fiancée Helen against the boat’s builder, a US Coast Guard investigation and a lot of conjecture. ‘I recognised that highlighting the afterthoughts missed the message of the story I was trying to share,’ Simmons says. ‘It created an investigative and accusatory tone that I wanted to avoid. My goal was to share Mike’s story with authenticity and focus on his spirit alone.’

For all who sail offshore and especially the singlehanders among us, Coyote is a cautionary tale that shines important light on balancing risk-taking and dreams with preparation and reality, Simmons says: ‘Just as the power of the human spirit can propel an individual to defy the odds and conquer, that same grip of passion and determination can create a tunnel that overlooks sensible decision making.’

The film also has an equally powerful positive message. ’I hope people walk away from Coyote inspired to pursue their true aspirations in life,’ Simmons says. ‘Mike’s story speaks to the power of the human spirit when passion meets determination. Our dreams do not need to include life and death situations, as Mike’s aspirations did, but everyone has a heart that is speaking clearly and we need to listen and follow.’

The film is available on major digital platforms in 80+ countries and can be accessed at Coyote: The Mike Plant Story »

There are few areas of raceboat technology harder to keep secret than the latest sail designs and engineering solutions. One of the hottest – and most publicly visible – areas of development right now is perfecting a cable-free headsail that not only goes fast… but that also lasts

There has been a significant amount of hype and hyperbole about the development of headsails without furling torque-cables, and, like most good ideas, this concept has been around for a while. At North Sails their designers began working on this concept with Oracle Team USA and Emirates Team New Zealand during the 34th America’s Cup, when radical boat designs placed extreme loads on the 3Di headsails. The design and engineering challenge was to deliver a solution where headsail loads were redistributed from the torque cable/headstay and shared with the sail. Known within the North offices as Load Sharing Technology this feature, when paired with a 3Di Helix Luff, is North Sails’ answer to what others may call the cable-less headsail concept.

North’s head of engineering and design JB Braun explains, ‘trying to reduce loads on boats and rigs while maintaining headstay tension has begun a trend and has opened up design ideas to rethinking the significance of luff cables, and in the case of Helix sails, to transition load out of a traditional anti-torsion cable and redistribute it into the sail. 3Di technology is better suited to the sharing application because all 3Di sails are engineered with tapes laid in varying orientation and depth to optimise load distribution throughout the sail. 3Di’s intrinsic load sharing properties, coupled with a Helix Luff effectively move load reliance away from a cable/headstay and into the sail structure thus potentially reducing the overall loading.

‘The critical breakthrough with Helix sails is that redistributed loads allow the headsail to project forward the structure on the front of the sail to achieve headstay tension and luff projection, while reducing the load on the boat, mast, and rigging. The engineering emphasis is focused on the innovative, barely visible carbon Helix Luff structure, a 3Di design manipulation which projects the sail forward, punching the luff out in front of the boat. Load Sharing Technology coupled with the Helix Luff is empowering North to reimagine both roller furling downwind (Code Zero and A-3 style sails), reaching sails, and even may translate to some styles of upwind sails. It’s almost like another trim point. The 3Di technology paired with the powerful North Design Suite tools enables mapping and displacing loads to deliver lighter, more efficient, and beautifully smooth sails.’

Above and below: recent feedback from Steve and Heidi Benjamin’s TP52 Spookie makes a compelling case study for this latest advancement of North Sails’ 3Di. Using North Helix sails they have reduced the tack loads by half (compared with a conventional Code Zero) while also achieving more forward drive. This creates a lot of potential for weight reduction throughout the boat

North Helix sails are not aimed at one size or class of boat, but are suitable for most boats from mid-size IRC designs to TP52s, Imocas, Volvo boats, WallyCentos and 100-foot Maxis and even Superyachts. Recent feedback from Steve Benjamin’s TP52 Spookie using North Helix sails was that they were recording about half the tack loads of a conventional Code Zero with similar or even better luff protection. This means less mast tip sag, less sideways sag, significantly less loading on the bowsprit, ropes, winches and deck gear… all with a sail that is projecting better and creating more forward driving force. Many of the loads on an existing boat are reduced – and for a new design, there is significant new potential for weight reduction throughout the entire boat.

North Sails Group president Ken Read expands, ‘Helix sails are the latest advancement of 3Di, a technology where North Sails focuses the majority of our R&D effort. We often move ahead without a great deal of fanfare because making lighter, and faster and more efficient sails is the bedrock of North Sails. The big gains with Helix and Load Sharing Technology, especially on reaching and broad reaching furling sails, is overall weight reduction and the ability to really adjust the leading edge of the membrane’s shape with a very small luff cable or rope. Not the large and heavy Torque cables that have become commonplace. We are very excited as to all of the avenues that this has opened for the use of 3Di in this process’.

Click here for more information on North Sails »

Pragmatic thinking followed through with confident application is paying good dividends in Maxi world. ANDREW MCIRVINE

Broadly speaking there seems to be a general decline in the numbers taking part in competitive sailing, with just a few exceptions. There are of course multiple reasons playing into this and it is true of many other sports in this day and age. In the UK cricket, golf and rowing are all in decline – only cycling is growing. Perhaps the noncompetitive culture in junior schools is having an effect but it seems more likely that the competitive bar has been raised so high that unless you are in an Olympic medal-targeted elite you fall out of any sport quite early.

There are now more Maxi yachts in the world than ever before. Most new builds, however, are multi-purpose yachts and not pure racers. Relatively few are competing or if competing they do so in just a few events per year. Clearly there is a change in focus.

Maxi owners rely on professional help. At the top end – for example, the Maxi72 racers – it is not uncommon that the only amateur/Corinthian sailor onboard is the owner-driver; usually with an Olympic and/or America’s Cup tactician giving him clear, detailed instructions. The owner-driver aspect is very important. Just ‘keeping the cheque book dry’ and sitting on the rail loses its appeal fairly rapidly, and sadly many affluent and successful men have left the sport after such treatment.

Buying a Maxi is expensive, running one even more so. At Maxi level having professionals rather than your friends onboard might be unavoidable because of the size and complexity of the boats. But when the competitive drive leaves no room for friends it must be a disincentive to many, which takes us back to the problem at junior level. A very high-achieving elite group driving out the ‘less keen’ competition who feel they will never have a chance – and do not want to get into an arms race in both crew and equipment.

The sheer number of crew on these large yachts who then have to be housed, fed and watered at expensive venues can be daunting. As nowadays most large yachts have powered systems and are designed to be sailed with fewer crew the extra bodies are mainly ballast on the rail… often expensive ballast at that. We are addressing this as an experiment this year at the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup (MYRC) giving a rating bonus for yachts using less than 66 per cent of the maximum crew number recorded on their IRC certificates.

Beyond that we need to look at getting boats to sail like with like. Traditionally Maxi class divides have been based mainly on hull length (LH). Hence the divisions Mini Maxi 60-80ft, Maxi 80-100ft and Supermaxi 100ft+. Sub-divisions into racer and racer-cruiser work really only in bigger events such as the MYRC itself.

Modern designs can have very different performance characteristics and a racer Mini Maxi will easily outpace some of the older Supermaxis. Ideally we would separate on performance into racer, racer-cruiser and cruiser-racer and we have done this successfully with the Mini Maxis at the MYRC for the past two years.

But making the definition absolute and clear is difficult and carries the real risk that designers will ‘game’ the system. They will always try to produce the ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ – the racer posing as a cruiser.

Our commitment to encouraging the genuine cruiser-racers is evident from our appointment of a new IMA vice-president to represent the older and ‘Spirit of Tradition’ yachts. Marietta Grafin Strasoldo, the owner of the well-campaigned Swan 65 Lunz am Meer, has kindly accepted this role.

Three years ago we created a new series for Maxis, the IMA Mediterranean Maxi Offshore Challenge, with a best three out of five of the well-known offshore races in the Med. In a further initiative to encourage Maxi racing we are now launching its inshore equivalent, the IMA Mediterranean Maxi Inshore Challenge. Again this will encompass a number of events, of which the best three will count – starting from PalmaVela, there are Rolex Capri Sailing Week, the inshore series at the Rolex Giraglia (St Tropez), Copa del Rey, Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup and Les Voiles de St Tropez.

Another new challenge for the IMA this year is to encourage and support the newly formed International Schooner Association. This is to provide specific events for classic Maxi schooners. Their sailing characteristics are of course very different from other classic yachts, so the aim is to devise events where they can race separately and on courses specifically designed for them. A first event is planned in May this year – the Capri Classica – with at least six but maybe more of these magnificent vessels expected.

Finally, it was wonderful to see one of the largest new Maxis stretching her legs in the joint RORC/IMA Transatlantic Race. Pier Luigi Loro Piana’s beautiful Reichel/Pugh-designed Baltic 130 My Song had an almost perfect trip across and his first comment at the end was that Grenada came up far too soon. They were having such fun that they wanted the race to be longer: ‘our voyage was really too short’ (10 days). Against their early expectations, as their imperative was not to break anything before the Caribbean cruising season, they lowered the course record – albeit by just 1h 19m.

My Song has only been sailing seriously for a year. Mainly she has done the major Med inshore events, the MYRC, Les Voiles de Saint Tropez and of course the Loro Piana regatta also in Porto Cervo which the owner sponsors. The IMA and RORC were delighted that they had decided to enter our Transatlantic and are even more delighted that she did so well. My Song is a glowing demonstration that modern Maxis can do so much more than compete inshore.
Andrew McIrvine, IMA secretary general

Click here for more information on the International Maxi Association »