The week in racing - 19 Oct ’26

A 100-foot maxi has sailed its fastest-ever lap of Sicily, a British debutant has snatched the oldest trophy in match racing in the final metres, and a new cohort of America’s Cup greats have taken their place in the Hall of Fame. Here’s what happened this week…

Nothing in the 47th Rolex Middle Sea Race fleet could match Black Jack 100 for size or pace, but being the clear favourite never makes 606 miles round Sicily a formality. Remon Vos’s 100-footer, skippered by Tristan Le Brun, crossed the line in Malta at 15:51 CEST on Monday to take monohull line honours in 51 hours 51 minutes. That’s three hours faster than the boat’s previous best, and it has had eight goes at this race, going back to its Alfa Romeo days in 2006. It’s still a weapon 20 years on.

The north of Sicily was kinder than expected, but the leg from Lampedusa to the South Comino Channel was a dead beat through a horrible, confused sea.

“Sometimes I ask myself why I do this, and tell myself I’m never going to do it again, but I keep coming back,” said Vos. “You’re completely disconnected, surrounded by the wind and water, the moon and stars, and sharing it all with an extraordinary group of people. That’s what makes it so special.”

Line honours is only half the story, though, and the overall prize on corrected time is wide open. Django 7X and Balthasar were locked together off Comino on Monday evening, Daguet 5 leads IRC 2 on handicap, and Lee Satariano and Christian Ripard’s Maltese HH42 Artie III heads IRC 3 both on the water and on corrected time. Watch out, too, for Jonathan Gambin, who has Ton Ton Laferla tearing up IRC 4 in his 19th Middle Sea Race.

Further down the fleet, Scricca is the pick of a tightly packed IRC 5, though Selma Racing – Noisy Oyster leads on the water and the likes of Karpo and Courrier Pogo are far from done. Colombre is setting the pace in IRC 6 on the water and on handicap, and tops the double-handed standings too. Stella Nova holds a slender lead over Optimus Prime in the Class40 duel, while among the multihulls Calamity leads on the water but Turbolenta, 45 miles back, is ahead on MOCRA handicap.

Track the fleet here.

Four more names joined the America’s Cup Hall of Fame on Friday in the New York Yacht Club’s Model Room, surrounded by the Cup models that make it such a fitting venue. The late sailmaking pioneer Lowell North was honoured alongside the Beken family of Cowes, who have photographed the Cup for more than a century, and Peter Isler, navigator on Dennis Conner’s 1987 and 1988 wins and one of the sport’s great explainers.

The inductee closest to today’s Cup, though, is Glenn Ashby, who accepted via video link after a family mishap kept him in Australia. His three Cup wins from five campaigns speak for themselves, including skippering Emirates Team New Zealand to victory in Bermuda in 2017. But the Hall of Fame honoured him above all as the go-between for sailors and designers as the Cup leapt from wingsails to foiling monohulls. He’s now doing just that as Head of Performance & Design for Team Australia.

“It’s an absolute honour to be recognised alongside so many people I’ve looked up to, and to join a group that includes some of the greatest names in our sport,” said Ashby. “The America’s Cup has always been a team effort, and this belongs as much to the sailors, designers, engineers and boatbuilders I’ve been lucky enough to work with over the years as it does to me. I’m proud to have started out as a kid sailing catamarans on the lake in Bendigo, and to be inducted as we’re building an Australian challenge – my first for my home country – feels like the perfect full circle moment ahead of Naples next year.”

Bill Lynn, America’s Cup Hall of Fame President, added: “Thanks to Glenn Ashby for teaching everyone how to sail multihulls, to Peter Isler for teaching us all what a stadimeter is, to Lowell North for countless innovations to the ‘aero packages’, and to the Beken family for recording it all with an amazing eye for detail and timing!”

Not a bad way to make your Bermuda Gold Cup debut. Christian Hamilton, who only returned to the Tour 18 months ago, and his Khumbu Racing crew of Ian Williams, Richard Sydenham and Jon Gundersen beat world No 1 Chris Poole 3–2 in the final. That won them the 74th edition and the King Edward VII Gold Cup, the oldest trophy in match racing.

They had to come from 2–1 down, and the decider went to the very last metres. Poole was carrying a penalty. He rolled over the top on the final run and set up a mark trap at the committee boat to try to shake it off. Hamilton and Williams fell back on their old team-racing instincts, deliberately slowing the boat with the kite still up to close it out.

“When I was in my early twenties, I really wanted to get to the top in match racing and I had a really great crew that I sailed with for six years,” said Hamilton. “But then people got married, there was a bit of a gap and a couple of years ago I had the chance to pull together a great team and retry. The crew I’ve got now were interested in doing a campaign for two or three years and we’ve been able to crack through the events and go for it.”

Full results here.

The Cape 31 Gold Cup has its first champions, and they had to sweat for it. Ahmet Eker’s Turkish team Eker Süzme won by 17 points in a record 28-boat fleet in Saint-Tropez. But their discard was already used up on a 21st, so every result on the final morning counted. A 9th and a 10th in two sunrise races did the job, sealing the title on 41 points, with Django climbing to second and Hatari third.

“We have been sailing together for two years now without any change in the team, and I think this is what helps,” said Eker. “We have been getting better and better every race, and it paid off at this event. Keeping the crew consistent and working every day made this a really good event for us.”

Ten different winners in ten races tells you how deep this fleet runs. Lennard van Oeveren’s Motions took the Corinthian title, helped by a rather handy guest in Francesco Bruni. “It was his first time on the boat in this fleet, so we all had to get to know each other, but bringing such sailing intelligence and knowledge on to our boat, we learned so much,” said van Oeveren.

Full results here.

La Roche-Posay Racing Team were the first team to launch their AC75 in Naples

Emirates GBR and Team 14 the first to train at SailGP’s Pensacola training base

GB2 and Alinghi Women & Youth name their squads for Naples 2027

We got our first in-person look at Ferrari Hypersail

Hyères, France – 19-23 October

Plenty of sportsboat classes are struggling to fill a start line, but nobody seems to have told the SB20. Nearly 70 boats from 17 nations, from Mozambique to Vietnam, are in Hyères for the biggest Worlds turnout since Cowes in 2017. It’s the payoff for a three-year growth plan, a new builder in Devoti Sailing and serious backing for youth, with a record number of under-25 crews expected.

Seven teams are led by women, including Charlotte Borghesi, the first woman to steer a crew to the world title. Founding figure Jerry Hill is back too, with the ‘Three Sad Old Blokes’ who won it in 2010. Expect anything from a Mistral to a 20-knot easterly across 13 scheduled races.

Davis Island Yacht Club, Tampa, Florida, USA – 24-29 October

The Star class heads to Tampa for the North American Championship, the fourth continental title of the season. It’s also the final tune-up before the Worlds in Miami from 5–14 November, where Paul Cayard and Frithjof Kleen defend their title.