Happy Tuesday everyone...
In today's newsletter:
- PODCAST: SailGP Cádiz Analysis
- How Paradox beat the MOCRA form guide in the 2025 Rolex Fastnet Race
- How Nathan Outteridge's new SailGP role 'shouldn't clash with his America's Cup commitments'
- No hesitation: Dee Caffari prepares to race around the world for a seventh time
- France Triumphs at 2025 Offshore Double Handed World Championship
- Inside the magic of the Wilson Trophy Team Racing
- Quiz Question
PODCAST: SailGP Cádiz Analysis
In the latest episode of the Yacht Racing Life podcast Justin Chisholm is joined by the Rule69Blog’s Magnus Wheatley to unpack a light-air weekend of racing at the SailGP event in Cádiz, Spain.
How Paradox beat the MOCRA form guide in the 2025 Rolex Fastnet Race
Paul Flynn’s 63-foot trimaran Paradox rounded out an idyllic cruising summer with an impressive Fastnet Race triumph, beating the pre-race favourite MOD70s to win the MOCRA class in the 100th edition by way of sharp tactics, smooth teamwork, and a memorable tidal glide into the finish in Cherbourg.
Ask Paul Flynn why he entered his cruising-friendly 63-foot carbon fibre offshore trimaran Paradox in the Rolex Fastnet Race and he barely hesitates. The Fastnet has been lodged in his head since childhood. The 1979 edition cast a long shadow for all the wrong reasons, yet the lore and the lessons stuck. He read the accounts, dreamed about the rock, and filed it under “one day”.
This season the stars aligned. A cruising summer grand tour saw Paradox fly down the Portuguese coast, dip briefly into Spain, before heading off on a blisteringly fast run out to the Azores for some spectacular island hopping. That put the boat in the right place at the right time for Flynn and the crew to sail the delivery trip back to the boat’s home port of Falmouth in race mode as training for the Fastnet Race.
The plan was never to turn Paradox into a strung-out grand-prix animal. Flynn is honest about the programme. Although last year Flynn and his crew took line honours in the Round Ireland Yacht Race, most of the time the boat is set up for fast, comfortable cruising.
But there is pedigree. Under a previous owner the boat won the MOCRA division of the Fastnet back in 2015 when she was fresh out of the wrapper, and she has a history of trading punches with serious multihull protagonists, like the clutch of modified MOD70s that do the rounds of the world’s major offshore races.
The 2025 Fastnet – the 100th edition of the race – attracted a staggering 464-boat entry and saw the fleet race from Cowes on the Isle of Wight, around the Fastnet Rock off the southeast tip of Ireland, and back to a finish in the French port of Cherbourg. The multihull class was made up of a diverse mix of 20 entries, including two well-known MOD 70s – Argo and Zoulou – which were both earmarked as pre-race favourites.
“When we looked at the Fastnet MOCRA fleet, we framed the target as the MOD 70s,” Flynn says. “On paper they are more race boats than we are, but our righting moment and rig proportions let us take reefs later. If it blew dogs off chains we thought we might make life hard for them...
How Nathan Outteridge's new SailGP role 'shouldn't clash with his America's Cup commitments'
Team New Zealand skipper Nathan Outteridge will be steering SailGP’s new boat in a move that shouldn’t clash with his America’s Cup commitments – writes Joseph Pearson for Stuff.
Swedish outfit Artemis Racing, who last competed in the America’s Cup in Bermuda in 2017, has confirmed the launch of a new team in the SailGP series from 2026.
Artemis will have Outteridge as their driver when the decorated Australian sailor makes his comeback to the league.
Conflicting commitments between the America’s Cup and SailGP was one of the main reasons behind Team NZ and Peter Burling’s shock split in April, only six months after he led them to another retention of the Auld Mug in Barcelona.
However, Burling’s position in SailGP with New Zealand’s team, the Black Foils, is more demanding than Outteridge’s sole driving role for the Swedes...
No hesitation: Dee Caffari prepares to race around the world for a seventh time
Dee Caffari is co-skipper of Alexia Barrier’s all-female crew on IDEC Sport as they prepare for a bold shot at the Jules Verne Trophy – non-stop around the world, aiming to set a first-ever women's reference time and inspire the next generation of female ocean racers. Ed Gorman finds out more for Yacht Racing Life.
When you’ve sailed around the world six times and become the only woman to have circumnavigated in both directions solo, and then the only woman to have sailed three times round non-stop, it’s going to take something pretty special to get you to go again.
But when the French Vendée Globe sailor Alexia Barrier picked up the phone to Dee Caffari two years ago and asked her to join what has become The Famous Project CIC as co-skipper, Caffari barely waited until she had stopped speaking to say “yes.”
Having already sailed as a skipper in the Global Challenge Race, completed a solo record-setting round-the-world voyage westabout, a Vendée Globe, the Barcelona World Race and two Volvo Ocean Races – one as skipper – an all-female attempt at the Jules Verne Trophy was the one thing missing.
And when you talk to Caffari about it you can still hear the excitement in her voice at being given the opportunity. “For me,” she said, “if I was going to go for lap No. 7, it needed to be very special.
“I didn't just want to go again and it would be repeating stuff. And then Alexia planted this seed – she rang me and was like ‘what d’you think of this? Would you be interested?’ I didn't have to think for a heartbeat. I was like ‘yep!’”
At that time – early days as they were – Caffari wasn’t sure anything would actually happen. It all sounded too ambitious – get hold of an Ultim and put together the first all-female crew since Tracy Edwards’ team on Royal & SunAlliance in 1998 to take on the Jules Verne Trophy for a crack at the non-stop global sailing record.
But that was to underestimate Barrier who – despite one or two setbacks along the way – has done exactly that. And, from November 15, her seven-strong team are going on standby on board none other than IDEC Sport, the 103-foot trimaran that Frenchman Francis Joyon and his crew used to set the current 40-day record back in 2017.
Hard to believe, but initially Caffari was worried that she might be the weak link in a crew that includes one or two young newcomers to this sort of high-profile sailing, plus established names like Marie Tabarly of France and the Dutch sailor Annemieke Bes. But unsurprisingly Barrier had no such concerns and wanted Caffari’s experience and leadership qualities.
“So I was like ‘OK, I can be your wingman on this – I’ve got this,’” said Caffari, who, in recent years, has developed a busy onshore career alongside her racing commitments in media work, public speaking and supporting a number of sailing-related charities. “And it was really nice because it gave me a goal. This is what I’ve been working towards physically in the gym – I want to be strong, injury-free and I want to contribute...
France Triumphs at 2025 Offshore Double Handed World Championship
After days of high-stakes offshore racing, dramatic twists, and an unforgettable finale, the 2025 Offshore Double Handed World Championship reached its conclusion in Cowes.
🎥 Filmed By Corinna Haines & Paul Wyeth
Across the championship, 21 teams representing 14 nations lined up to compete, with 11 crews from four continents qualifying for the 114nm Final. In light and tactical conditions, France’s Théa Khelif and Thomas André (FRA 1) mastered the shifting breeze to be crowned World Champions.
Taking the runner-up spot after a thrilling finish were Great Britain’s Willow Bland & Zeb Fellows (GBR 2), Zeb was the youngest sailor at the worlds, just 18 years of age. Domi Knuppel & Federico Waksman (URU) proudly securing third place — Uruguay’s first podium at this level.
The Royal Ocean Racing Club (RORC), in collaboration with Cap-Regatta and supported by LGL and Jeanneau, hosted this World Sailing-recognised championship in supplied Sun Fast 30 One Design yachts. The fleet representing nations across five continents showcased the diversity and rising talent of the discipline, with mixed-gender crews ranging from Olympians and offshore veterans to youth sailors making their first impact on the world stage.
Final Results – 2025 Offshore Double Handed World Championship
🥇 FRA 1 – Théa Khelif & Thomas André (France)
🥈 GBR 2 – Zeb Fellows & Willow Bland (Great Britain)
🥉 URU – Dominique Knuppel & Federico Waksman (Uruguay)
Inside the magic of the Wilson Trophy Team Racing
There’s a magic that stirs when like-minded people come together to embrace a common passion—whatever, wherever and whenever that might be. For the disciples of team racing, the wherever is a small suburb of Liverpool, in northwestern England, specifically the West Kirby Sailing Club – write Chris Klevan and Amanda Callahan for Sailing World.
The whenever is that meandering time between the first warning signal and the Sunday-night debrief, with nothing to do but talk, sing, dance and laugh until we cry, before doing it again a bit too early the next day. The whatever, of course, is the Wilson Trophy, justly hailed as “the world’s best team-racing event,” which offers refuge for one long and spectacular weekend where sailing is the most important thing in the world.
In conversing, reminiscing, hypothesizing about this sport we love, we fill the space with past, present and future. Sitting at the West Kirby Sailing Club’s windows as the sun sets over the reservoir, dubbed “The Theatre of Dreams,” we can sit next to Colin Merrick, who has been making the pilgrimage to West Kirby since 2003 and who is perhaps the best to ever do it. In the same space, we can turn around to talk shop and compare the different styles of different teams from different countries with the kids who are absolutely dominating the team-racing scene today, the ones who have yet to graduate from their universities.
I’m talking about the likes of brothers Mitchell and Justin Callahan, Lachlain McGranahan, Sara Schumann, Libby Redmond and Marbella Marlo—representing Biscayne Bay YC this particular weekend, but stateside they are known as “Los Huevos.” Together, they are the best team-race squad on the planet today.
I have been at this team-race thing for more than two decades, counting six Wilson Trophy appearances, a dozen Hinman Trophies, countless Team Race Midwinters and everything between. Or at least what I can remember at this point. I have coached 29 ICSA National Championship events and sailed in a few as well. I’m sure most tenured historians of the sport, such as the late Ken Legler, would find the examples I’m searching for, but here on the shores of West Kirby, I have certainly never seen a team like this year’s champion. The Biscayne powerhouse is all that, and then some...
Quiz Question...
What links SailGP sailors Dylan Fletcher (helmsman for Emirates GBR) and Stuart Bithell (wing trimmer on Germany by Deutsche Bank)?
Answer in the next newsletter...
Yesterday's answer: The crew that holds the Guinness World Record time for circumnavigating Great Britain and Ireland is Ian Walker's British Volvo Ocean Race 2014-15-winning team Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing aboard the VO65 Azzam, who went round in a remarkable four days, 13 hours, 10 minutes, and 28 seconds.
