Sail with New Freebooters

Today’s ocean racers, singlehanded or crewed, are not as isolated as they used to  be - except when the electronic kit on board packs up. This means that competitors in the Vendée Globe are far less lonely and isolated than round-the-world yachtsmen were thirty years ago - although it doesn’t necessarily mean there will be [...]

The world of yachting has plenty of icons - men, and a few women - who stand head and shoulders above their peers. Yacht designers and builders like Nat Herreshoff, Charles Nicholson, Will Fife and Olin Stephens in previous generations, as well as Bruce Farr and his contemporaries. Amateur yachtsmen like Paul Elvström, Rodney Pattisson [...]

Yachtpals.com has a running series of posts from Vendée skippers. Here are a few tidbits from the British ones:
We should chat more. Dee Caffari and Brian Thompson both comment on the joy of swapping experiences with nearby skippers. Dee reckons it helps build the British community.
Alex Thomson, no longer physically in the race after Hugo [...]

While the front-runners are creaming south, convinced that they’re going to come to a dead halt at the next high  pressure zone while boats several hundred miles behind catch up, let me pick a few comments out of the messages from the later bunch.
First, while many skippers coasted through the doldrums with nothing more than [...]

Even in light weather, sailing can give you an appetite. During a windy passage, you work hard and need to keep warm. You need tasty food that packs a big calorie punch, but it needs to be easy to prepare or re-heat using the typical two-burners-and-a-small-oven found in a yacht galley.
Kay McMahon’s Goulash Soup recipe [...]