2023

Another season and (yet) another TP52 Super Series title for Quantum Racing’s owner and also number one helmsman. For 2023 there will be an opening-up of the Quantum TP52 Super Series programme in order to bring onboard and then get up to speed a new generation of youth and women’s sailing talent to keep the American Magic America’s Cup machine fed – as well as to prepare others to go on and join other elite teams in different areas of the sport

Those looking for crew for the Women’s America’s Cup in Barcelona should take a trip down to Sydney and pay a weekend visit to the Manly 16ft Skiff Sailing Club. Lee has been quietly working up through the ranks the last two seasons and now wins more often than not against a tough, predominantly male, fleet. But it’s not just Lee, in mid-December the club recorded their first ever female trifecta when Lee led home the 16-footers of Zoe Dransfield and Jessica Iles in 2nd and 3rd

We could be accused of catching up this month. John Winning has racked up every title there is to win in the 18-foot skiffs since 1975 and his first campaign with Travelodge. As well as being continuously busy on the water – bar a couple of seasons away to develop a ‘pretty successful’ family business – ‘Woody’ has held numerous roles in the class and is today – again – President of the 18-Footers League. Oh yes, Winning also co-founded today’s captivating Historical 18s series…

When Baranowski’s young crew crossed the finish of the 2023 Transatlantic Race they took both line honours and the IMA Maxi Trophy, the culmination of a proudly all-Polish programme that has been improving with every season. Led by Baranowski and run within the framework of the Polish National Sailing Foundation, the I Love Poland programme is already making a real impact at home, bringing on a new generation of Polish offshore racers

The Ocean Race organisers are making up for the small fleet with punchy investment into onboard stories… and it is paying off. With modern drone skills, transmission bandwidth and improved (coached) comms from those onboard, some real personalities are being created. Will Harris’s composites efforts at the top of the swaying spar of Malizia, closely helped by Rosalin Kuiper, achieved a complex repair that would be hard enough to execute well in the workshop

A good slice of the votes for Will Harris came with a health warning – should we not also similarly acknowledge the big part played in the Malizia dramas by Boris Herrmann’s young Dutch co-skipper. Also quite correctly praising the outstanding media ‘energy’ Rosalin Kuiper brings to the onboard coverage coming off the Monégasque Ocean Race entry. Well, we’re no heroes so we happily bow to the crowd. But keep up the fab comms, Malizia is way ahead in the race for media prizes…

Well, you can’t be surprised. Woman skipper wins open singlehanded round the world race; for the media – sporting and mainstream – it doesn’t get any better. Plus it’s the first time it ever happened. Outside France only a tiny few got sailing into the public imagination, MacArthur, Knox-Johnston, Goss, Tracy Edwards, Conner, Ainslie (just). And no one before in the age of the Premier League and instant gratification. Sailed well too…

A man who prudently keeps himself under the radar as one of the world’s biggest investors in the sailing and superyacht industry, Dubens was forced to break cover in Porto Cervo to step forward and collect the IMA Maxi European Championship trophy for the second time. Dubens’ programme is showing the way forward for these big performance yachts, winning events with a much reduced crew, replacing absentees with water ballast and more power-assist

Could this be the finest of the extraordinarily fine young sailors to emerge from the St Francis YC’s famous junior programme? Greenberg was runner-up at this year’s Optimist Worlds, gaining special praise for his exemplary sportsmanship when racing winner Henric Wigforss in the duo’s one-on-one battle during the final race. Alongside his sailing Greenberg is a brilliant pianist on a fast track with one of the world’s great musical academies. Travis Greenberg is now 13...

College All American, 5-time Rolex Sailor of the Year, US Sailing Hall of Fame 2011, multiple world champion in keelboats and match racing, 25 years as US Paralympic coach. Then in early 2022 doctors found a large tumour on her hip; after 18 months of treatment and accepting it was not the time to return to a performance dinghy, Alison jumped in a Hansas 303 Paralympic keelboat for the 2023 World Championship in Holland. And you probably know how that worked out...

September 2023 was good enough, but there was a common thread running through Bella Mente’s Maxi World’s victory and the first class performance of NYYC American Magic in Spain – Hap Fauth has the top role in both programmes. It was seven years since Fauth’s previous Maxi title but he kept his team plugging away even as the newer designs started to make some of the regattas less than fun. And Magic is looking good too... really, really good, we reckon

After serving her time on the rack with other skippers Emma Rankin had learnt her stuff. In late October the young Ms Rankin started her first 18-foot skiff race in Sydney on the tiller and led her Shaw Financial Services crew to fourth place, finishing just behind John Winning’s Yandoo. Of course Rankin had done a bit before starting in the 18s: two Formula 16 national titles, another in the Hobie 16s and some good results too on the Formula 18 and match-racing circuits