Not being familiar with sailboat racing, just wondering if anyone knows if these boats are strictly for racing? Are they “sailing yachts”, with cabins and creature comforts? they look very expensive. Are they toy for fabulously wealthy yachtsman like Ted Turner? Inquiring and sometimes fuzzy minds want to know.
Two fatalities is pretty tragic in a race like this. Similar circumstances on different boats. Helmets and vests have taken off on super high performance speed boats like the americas cup and other foiling racers, but it’s never been a thing otherwise, and certainly not here.
Generally competitive boats in a race like this will be built for offshore racing. Cabins yes, creature comforts no. Think rows of double stacked pipe berths for bunks, and smelly sailing foul weather gear everywhere.
You’ll find different classes of vessels in races like this, or fastnet, or Bermuda even, from older racers that still considered comfort and wood trim, to maxis, to carbon race horses where the only added weight are electronics for nav and hydraulics. I raced on one where even the toilet was carbon fiber.
Toys yes, to some extent. No one needs a racing yacht. But you can do one of these races without being Ted Turner rich. And you won’t find Ted Turner sleeping on a racing boat after it crosses the finish, there will be a much more comfortable vessel standing by for that purpose.
If you want a real trip check out the solo around the world races.
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One rich man who liked his toys had a off shore racing yacht complete with freeze dried meals, carbon fibre toilet and a wet sail locker containing a few pipe berths enjoyed his racing. When the boat finished the race he retired to his gin palace
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He retired to his gin palace with hot showers, hot tub and every other creature comfort that jolly jack dreams of . The gorillas he sailed with weren’t invited.
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It is pretty hard to explain offshore sailboat racing in a paragraph, but the boats that do that range from purpose-built racers with absolutely minimal creature comforts to luxurious yachts to old boats campaigned by low budget family operations to antiques and everything in between. The Sidney-Hobart is one of the toughest races there is that doesn’t go around Cape Horn, so you won’t see a guy who learned to sail last week in a Cal 25 out there, but they do have some relatively modest and older boats in the fleet.
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One boat that might have taken line honors this year but retired with damage:
Inside the boat is kind of like being in a carbon-fiber airplane wing:
Meanwhile the oldest boat in the fleet at 120 years old has moved on from cotton sails to carbon fiber:
This is the interior of a J-35, this is an older racing boat a middle-class person might sail and also cruise with the family. No idea if any are in the S-H this year.
This is typical of what those of us without paid crew, a launch with spare parts, and another boat to sleep on sail.
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The other replies are generally accurate.
The initial reading I have done suggests that the fatalities were from kinetic energy from the main sail boom (or the lines controlling it) causing fatal head injuries to nearby crew. This is a similar risk to loading stores with a crane, handling mooring lines, or launching/recovering small boats with a davit on a commercial vessel. We all should be aware of the risk, take precautions for the safety of ourselves/crew, and yet there’s an element of risk that’s inescapable.
I will add that although the fatalities on this years race were tragic for those involved this was not a catastrophic race like the 1998 Sydney-Hobart or 1979 Fastnet race which had much worse outcomes that resulted in significant changes to ocean racing in sailboats.
Edit:
There also was a MOB incident where the vessel successfully recovered their crew from the water after forty-five minutes. This is a successful outcome that was likely aided by new equipment and training requirements implemented after analysis of the 1998 race. It’s unclear to me if the electronics on his person that likely aided his in his recovery was AIS based or a SARSAT PLB. He did describe signalling with a light when he could see a boat.
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Here you go if you are curious, this is worth a read.
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I had an AB on watch with me who said his dad always did the NY-Bermuda race. I told him that his Dad is a moron. These people have no business being out on the unforgiving ocean. They have no commercial, military or scientific reason for being there It is strictly ego. Then, when they get their ass in a crack, they call the professionals to save them. And that puts the professions’ ass in a crack.
You’re not big into sports huh? People have been sailing for millennia, and competing for who knows how long.
The Bermuda race (which is from RI not NY) has been going on for over a hundred years, the boats are inspected for safety requirements and there’s a minimum crew safety cert requirement too.
There’s also a Marion, MA to Bermuda race, which has a division navigating solely by celestial navigation. Some of these “morons” may have better navigation skills than the mate on your ship.
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You are onto something. I have noticed many privately owned cars on the road, some of them driven poorly, getting in the way of commercial trucks and busses and causing a lot of work ambulances and tow trucks. They really need to be banned. Even worse, single engine piston airplanes are the majority of the airplanes in the USA, letting people who want to fly because it looks like fun get in the way of the commercial jet airplanes who are the rightful owners of the sky and all airports too. Those need to be banned too!
Meanwhile underwater I have come across SCUBA divers without dive tenders, surface support, or anything else commercial divers should have apparently just looking at fish and coral. Why are these people allowed to do something as dangerous as breath compressed air underwater and require the occasional rescue? Isn’t that the domain of commercial divers? Get rid of them! Don’t get me started on amateur hunters, I need to run out and spraypaint NOT A DEER on my cow.
- meanwhile I skippered my first Bermuda trip before I was old enough to drink and actually was not rescued by anyone and the boat could be sailed again.
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And Annapolis to Bermuda, Charleston to Bermuda, and the Bermuda 1-2.
I know the guy at Comanche’s nav station - he’s been around the Horn more than a few times and has made it safely back to shore so far. He also invented football’s yellow first down line - voted one of the most important innovations in sports broadcasting.
Another friend was on the first-to-finish boat - a 100’ stripped out carbon fiber all out racer. He said it was pretty wild. They live-streamed during daylight hours via Starlink - here’s a section after they’d taken their foot off the gas. Under double-reefed main and a small staysail they were doing 16-25kts.
AFAIK the two fatalities were during gybes. One was hit by the boom, the other was thrown across the cockpit by the mainsheet and his head allided with a winch. The MOB activated his PLB - I believe his had AIS which allowed the crew to find him relatively quickly. Recovering people in rough conditions is quite challenging and I’d like to hear how they did it.
Over the years I’ve raced with lots of people - I try to stay away from the assholes whether rich or poor. You don’t have to be rich to race a boat but it helps - costs go up exponentially with boat size.
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The forces involved in a heavy air gybe are frightening. To paraphrase the IRA, you have to be lucky every time, the boom only has to be lucky once.
- this is a learning curve for dinghy sailors, you have to keep on them that there is nothing they can prevent with their limbs, getting in the way of a mishap with an arm or leg just adds to the problems, now we have a broken or missing body part AND the original problem. You can get a lot of cred if you finish the race with a peg leg, so I guess there is that.
Thanks for the info. From the photo the boat looked like a highly specialized craft. In the past, I’ve read a little about the round the world races. Mostly the article was reporting a “tragedy”. My “yacht” had six Fairbanks-Morse diesels supplying power to two five thousand HP electric motors and couldn’t beat a rowboat. 
Many of them are. The original round-the-world racers were not specialized boats, but they are now with big sponsor money. There is a race called the Golden Globe that mirrors the original races. They use old slow(ish) boats, use celestial instead of GPS, and SSB instead of sat-coms. My old boat is still too new and fast to be allowed in that race.
That speed is interesting. I was talking to a Coast Guard Academy graduate who said until the Coast Guard got the 378’s the fastest ship in the Coast Guard was the Eagle. When conditions with seas and wind were right, she could “surf” at 20 knots.
All the old clipper ship record passages that were assumed to be forever have now fallen. I am not sure I am up for the lack of comfort on these boats, but they are incredibly fast. The lead boats in S-H probably beat the last ones by almost a week!
And then there’s that rare combination of speed AND comfort…with, as the article so amply explains, quite a bit of potential danger of catastrophe if limits are not observed! The America’s Cup boats are now fully on foils at top speeds, accompanied by multi-G forces when accelerating and decelerating. This boat is designed to moderate the G forces but top out at a pretty amazing speed. Article says she’s topped 30 knots already!! NOT a “middle class” boat however!!
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The owner of Raven and I have very different understandings of the term “daysailer”.
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