Olympic Sailing, Sailing World Cup

Russell Coutts the Yachting legend with no remaining ambitions of America’s Cup is engaging himself at the grassroots level, writes to Michael Brown of Yachting New Zealand for the New Zealand Herald.


The Manly Sailing Club (MSC) is like many others in the New Zealand. The club has a small clubhouse made up of wood perched on the edge of the water with a bunker underneath and full of coach boats and a container of the ship out, back to keep a lot of the equipment used for other activities.

However, the Manly Sailing Club (MSC) is like no other, listed as commodore is R. Coutts. That is Sir Russell Coutts, five-times winner of the America’s Cup, two-time World Sailor of the Year, (WSOY) and three-time winner of world match racing champion and also the gold medalist of  1984 Olympic.

He has gone from running into the America’s Cup to running one of the smallest YC the region of Auckland and he loves it. It is one of the numbers of projects he is involved with but does not seem like he will be involved any more event. Continue Reading

Olympic Sailing, Sailing World Cup

The upcoming edition of the 2017-18 Volvo Ocean Race has six teams signed up so far for the possible eight spots.

The latest entry into the Ocean Race mix is the British sailor Dee Caffari. She will be leading the ‘Turn the Tide on Plastic’ team during the race. She will be carrying out a strong sustainability message during the event. She has the backing of the Ocean Family Foundation and the Mirpuri Foundation; both of them are concerned about the health of the ocean.

She is looking to amplify the United Nations fight for cleaner seas and oceans and is a staunch supporter of their ‘Clean Seas: Turn the Tide on Plastic’ campaign. She will be supporting this campaign through the entire 8 months of the ocean race. The 2017-18 Volvo Ocean Race will be covering 45,000 nautical miles all over the world and will have 12 host cities from 6 continents. Continue Reading

Sailing World Cup

An intense fifteen days of contest for an international pack of Paralympic sailors came to an end today with the finish of the Sailing World Cup Melbourne race fixture in light southern winds at the top end of the Port Phillip.

Athletes just had a little break between ending Para World Sailing Championships as well as setting out their World Cup schedule earlier on Wednesday at the same place – the Royal Yacht Club of Victoria.

Celebrations went on for Damien Seguin of France in 2.4mR as well as SKUD18 sailors Liesl Tesch and Dan Fitzgibbon who summed up World Cup Melbourne gold to its medal haul, having secured the world championship honor only over a week back.

In the Sonar, Jonathan Harris, Russell Boaden and Colin Harrison have made up for their letdown of silver at Para Worlds to beat a competitive fleet, taking the gold. In the meantime, on St Kilda side of the bay, the top 20 sailors in apiece Olympic class qualified themselves for Medal Races tomorrow on a chill but magic summer’s day in Melbourne, in contrast to cold and ugly blast of yesterday. The breeze was 10-12 knots on average and remnant confused 1.5m seas made the going jolty.

The officials now have the scope of utilizing 2 courses for tomorrow’s Medal Races, though the 2nd would just come into play if Mother Nature could not offer enough dependable wind to pass through eight class finals in flying succession.