The Sailing Scene
Are you out there sailing, cruising, and living the sailing life? If you are, we’d love to see it. Send your photos to for a chance to have your sailing memory featured in these pages. Here ia a picture from one reader’s latest cruising adventure.
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After a challenging sail from Fairport Harbor this August, this sunset was captured aboard our Hunter 340, Alti Mare, while docked at Edgewater Yacht Club, just west of downtown Cleveland.
—Rich Bedell, via sailmail@sailmagazine.com
In his piece, “Sailing On Foils: Will The Latest Racing Technology Divide Our Sport?” posted to SAILfeed on June 20, Charles J. Doane wrote: “I think the foiling phenomenon also marks out the beginning of a major divide in the sport of sailing as a whole. Historically, for example, racing technology has often helped transform the way cruisers sail their boats. Construction materials and techniques, sailing hardware, cordage, and sails— all these things have been greatly refined and improved all across the sport due to innovations originally pioneered on racing boats. But like canting keels before them, except to an even greater degree, hydrofoils seem too fiddly, too technical, and especially too prone to failure and damage to ever become very useful on cruising boats.” Here is a bit of what our readers thought of Mr. Doane’s take on foiling technology.
I am 60 and started sailing and then racing at nine. After attending and watching the Americas Cup in 2014 at the age of 58, I bought a Lift Hydro foil to use with my kite. I took some serous licks teaching myself, but did not give up. Now it’s like chewing gum. I have been addicted ever since and hydro foil everyday with my foil kites too. The sensation is amazing—no stress on my knees, and it’s fast, smooth and silent. Literally flying above the water. All my gear is in my van—much cheaper and less maintenance than my boats. No crew, no hassles—just wind, water and flying. @MarkWilliams
Whether foiling will ever reach cruising is anyone’s guess. At 65, having sailed everything from 11ft dinghies to 70ft offshore boats, I believe foiling is just another part of the evolutionary process. @HowardPaul
Where I sail, the demographic of sailors is diminishing and getting older. It’s very likely that foiling will attract current non-sailors and young people generally to first spectate at “main street” races (like those in Chicago and New York), then want to be involved on the water. Eventually much of this new blood will gravitate to monohulls and conventional catamarans and trimarans. @BruceConron
I enjoyed Peter Nielsen’s article “Viking Summer” (Cruising, July) tremendously. What a thrill it would have been to be one of the 30 crew making the transatlantic voyage aboard a traditional Viking sailing ship. One question about the lead photo. The ship appears to be making 3 or 4 knots under sail, but backwards. Is there some reason to sail backwards in open water?