Everyone can see the advantages of a large, stable platform over a smaller heeling one. Still, outside of tropic anchorages, catamarans have spent 30 years in the shade. Now they’re finally coming out to shine. If you have been sailing for a few years, you probably know the almost religious zeal with which sailors...
As in any other sport, spectators watching sailing like to theorize about what they would do if they were in the hot seat themselves. A new buoy positioned on the race course can help by transferring precise wind and current data by WiFi. What determines the outcome of a sailboat race? There are several factors....
Mathieu Bonnier has—among other wild adventures—rowed single-handedly across the Atlantic and the Northwest Passage. This gave him plenty of time and opportunity to ponder how a lightly driven yet stable rowboat should look. Recently he teamed up with one of the leading designers of fast-performance sailboats, Sam...
Fast & foiling, sustainable & recyclable—and a wider array of sizes and designs. Here are our impressions after touring the biggest boat show on the planet. This January, almost 2,000 exhibitors from 68 countries occupied 220,000 square meters of exhibition area in Düsseldorf, Germany. These numbers are huge in the...
German-built Bente 24 is part of a wave of planning, trailerable performance boats that also includes Seascape, Saphire, Focus, Django and Reacher. These boats focus on the fun factor of sailing, and not necessarily in a racing environment. They are fast, but also fairly simple and cruising-oriented. Small, new...
This could constitute the beginning of a new generation of motorboats, initiated by Rand Boats: Lightly driven with lightweight hulls, in this case inspired by sailboats, made for a quiet and relaxed presence on the water, they also have extremely low fuel consumption. Loxo 32 is produced by Pogo, one of world’s...
Imagine a fleet of solar-powered rental boats available to all in major cities throughout the world. It’s already happening in six cities, and 150 others are interested. We spoke to Carl Kai Rand, founder of Denmark’s GoBoat. “You might say that the idea came out of frustration,” said Carl Kai Rand. “I love being...
Abandoned boats are piling up, and the industry has no efficient system for dealing with them. The good news is that fiberglass can be recycled, but the big issue is volume. Two years ago, the industry organized a conference on reuse and recycling at METS. At this year’s show, the subject is drawing renewed...
With more and more boats permanently moored in marinas, space for visiting vessels can be hard to find. The Smart Marina concept facilitates access to marina services and booking available berths through wireless networks and the Internet of Things. The average boat in a marina leaves the dock only three days per...
The seven VO65’s racing 45,000 nautical miles around the globe will be crunching massive amounts of data. That means Big Data is onboard. This concept refers to huge amounts of information being stored, sorted and analyzed by computers. In a race where all the boats are identical, the tiniest detail can mean the...
