The week in racing - 21 Sep ‘26

Sam Goodchild has been making Charlie Dalin’s old boat fly in Lorient, 170 Swans have been out celebrating 60 years in Sardinia, and Ferrari have named the first sailors for its flying monohull. Here’s the round-up, plus a packed week ahead from Cowes to Naples.

Six weeks out from the Route du Rhum, the IMOCA fleet gathered in Lorient for its autumn shakedown, and Sam Goodchild went home with pretty much everything. Aboard MACIF Santé Prévoyance – Charlie Dalin’s Vendée Globe winner, and the centrepiece of his tribute in Concarneau days earlier – the Brit clocked 32 knots in the speed runs, the quickest the event has ever seen.

Ambrogio Beccaria (Allagrande Mapei) and Jérémie Beyou (Charal) kept him honest early in the solo 48H Azimut, but Goodchild pulled away over the second half to finish more than two hours clear. Winning the Tour de Groix in sunshine and the lightest of breezes completed the set. On this evidence, the yellow and blue boat is the benchmark everyone else is chasing. Full results here.

Nautor Swan turned 60 in style, with a record 170 yachts – from S&S classics to the 128ft flagship – packed into Porto Cervo for the 23rd Rolex Swan Cup. After two painfully light days, the Mistral sorted out the pecking order.

Freya shrugged off a sixth in the opener with three straight wins in the Swan Maxi class, while Earlybird, owned by Hendrik Brandis with Francesco Bruni on tactics, won five of seven in the ClubSwan 50s. Tightest of all were the ClubSwan 42s, where Nadir and Pez de Abril couldn’t be split on points or countback, so it all hinged on the final race, which Nadir won. Results for group 1 and group 2.

Fifty teams applied for 20 places at the New York Yacht Club’s first Women’s International Championship, a clear sign of the demand for more events at the top level of women’s keelboat racing. Racing the club’s fleet of identical IC37s in Newport, Megan Grapengeter-Rudnick and Team Vigilant set a pace nobody could match, never finishing lower than fourth in the first seven races. A fading easterly on the final day led to their three worst scores, but they still won by 23 points.

“A lot of the women on Team Vigilant I had never sailed with before, and I really, really – obviously – loved sailing with [all] of them,” said Grapengeter-Rudnick. “Hopefully, these are friends for life, teammates for life, and we’ll get other chances to sail together in the future.”

“When we started the project, the goal was to win this event,” added tactician Stephanie Roble. “But there’s so much that goes into it. Over the last few years, we really focused so much on the process of becoming the best version of ourselves in order to show up here and be the best. It’s been a really rewarding process as a team, and there have been a lot of highs and lows throughout two years of training. We’re just really proud that it all came together at the right moment.”

Behind them, the podium battle went to the wire. Michelle Lahrkamp’s all-amateur crew from the American Yacht Club held on to second, while Hannah Swett recovered from deep in the fleet in the last race to pip Canada’s Sarah Douglas to third by one point. The next edition is pencilled in for 2028, and if this first one is anything to go by, it’ll be worth the wait. Full results here.

The 25th Bosphorus Cup couldn’t have been much closer. Five races on the Sea of Marmara left Bulgaria’s Aboat Time and Levent Peynirci’s Miles&Smiles tied at the top, with the Turkish Farr 55 Orient Express VI a point behind despite a disastrous opener.

With Saruhan Cinay helming for owner-skipper Zeynep Atabay Taskent, Orient Express handled the strait’s fierce currents well enough to finish sixth on handicap in Saturday’s Bosphorus Race, one place ahead of Miles&Smiles. That left them level on 17 points, with Orient Express’s two race wins settling it as Aboat Time slipped to third. Fittingly for an anniversary edition, the Orient Express name was also on the trophy when the Bosphorus Cup was first raced in 2002.

“Winning the Bosphorus Cup was our biggest target this year,” said Cinay. “We couldn’t finish the first race, but we never lost our faith. We have a very good team, with experienced sailors and some young sailors, and that gives us the perfect mix.”

Founder Orhan Gorbon believes the Bosphorus Cup has done a lot for the sport locally, getting thousands of people in Istanbul into sailing and turning the city into “the Grand Prix of Eastern Mediterranean sailing”. The course, he says, is what keeps competitors coming back. “There are many great yacht races around the world, but there is only one place where you can race with Europe on one side and Asia on the other, on a course that runs through the centre of a city with so much history and energy. Sailors remember racing here. This is what has allowed the Bosphorus Cup to grow over the past quarter century, and it is what makes this milestone so special.”

Full results here.

Charlie Dalin didn’t want a solemn send-off, and last Tuesday Concarneau gave him a joyful one. More than 150 boats, from giant Ultims to kids’ Optimists, paraded before up to 20,000 people, with MACIF Santé Prévoyance carrying Dalin’s wife Perrine Le Pape-Dalin and their son Oscar up the channel. A ‘minute of noise’ replaced the usual silence, and a local beacon will now bear his name.

“Charlie would have been proud today!” said Perrine. “He’s the one who asked me to do it, and I respected his wish. It’s very emotional, but I’m thoroughly enjoying this day. Oscar and I decided we were going to have a great day and make the most of it.”

A fitting farewell for a sailor who combined elite offshore racing with an unusually direct involvement in the design and development of his boats. He won the IMOCA class of the 2019 Transat Jacques Vabre with Yann Eliès, was first home in the 2020–21 Vendée Globe (only to be placed second after time compensation), then won the 2024–25 edition in 64 days and 19 hours, more than nine days inside Armel Le Cléac’h’s record. He achieved those results aboard a boat he co-designed, while living with cancer diagnosed in autumn 2023, a condition he did not make public until October 2025. Dalin died on 10 June, aged 42.

Perrine left the crowd with Charlie’s own words: “Believe in your dreams, even when they seem impossible.”

Ferrari’s 100ft flying monohull is gearing up for sea trials, and we now know some of the crew who will be sailing it. Project leader Enrico Voltolini – a naval engineer and ex-Luna Rossa sailor who took over from Giovanni Soldini in April – has signed two quite different talents.

Giulia Conti, a four-time Olympian who won the first Women’s America’s Cup as helm in 2024, gets flight control, navigation and automation, plus the simulator and sea-trial schedule. Shannon Falcone brings six America’s Cup campaigns and a clutch of offshore records from his Comanche days, and will run on-water operations and safety.

“Being part of Ferrari Hypersail is an incredible challenge: it means helping chart a new course for sailing,” said Conti. “My goal is to bring my experience to the Team to ensure that technology does not replace human intuition, but rather empowers the sailors to push the boat to its absolute maximum potential in every situation.”

“Ocean sailing requires rigorous organisation, constant preparation and the application of the highest safety standards,” added Falcone. “The synergy between the shore team and the onboard crew is not just operational support, but the fundamental prerequisite that allows the monohull to express its full potential at sea.”

One to make it fly, one to bring it home in one piece.

It’s Worlds week for the RC44s, with the Royal Yacht Squadron hosting the 16th championship on the Solent from 24-27 September, preceded by the King’s Cup charity race on the 23rd.

Calling a winner from nine owner-driver teams is never easy. Markus Törnqvist’s GeMera Racing lead the season, with Francesco Bruni on tactics fresh from his Swan Cup win, while Aleph Racing, now led by Pietro Loro Piana, sit two points back – 15 years in, and still waiting for a world title.

“I’m truly curious and excited to see what Cowes is all about,” said Loro Piana. “All of my crew have all sailed there and tell me the legends about the currents and the sea state. So I’m looking forward to the event, not only because it’s a World Championship, but also because of the location. As always, sailing in this class is something else: Up until the last race, you never know who’s going to be on the podium and it truly shows that the level is the best of the best. And the boats are something else: They’ve stood the test of time for 20 years and they’re still fast and a lot of fun. There’s no other boat I’d prefer to sail than the RC44.”

Team Charisma won the last event in Marstrand, and reigning champions Team Nika – five-time winners, with British tactician Nic Asher on home waters – can never be discounted. Throw in a Törnqvist father-versus-son subplot and the Solent’s tides, and it’s wide open.

Lorient has barely waved off the IMOCAs before the big multihulls take over. The fifth 24H Ultim runs from 23-27 September at Lorient La Base, with speed runs on Thursday before the skippers set off solo at 1pm on Friday for 24 hours on separate courses for each class.

Tom Laperche (SVR-Lazartigue) defends his title against Armel Le Cléac’h (Banque Populaire XI), Thomas Coville (Sodebo Ultim 3) and Anthony Marchand (Actual Ultim 4), while Basile Bourgnon (Edenred) does the same against ten fellow Ocean Fifties. With the Route du Rhum leaving Saint-Malo on 1 November, this is the final proper test before the transatlantic – and we’re already counting down the days.

Marseille hosts the third Offshore Double Handed World Championship from 23 September to 2 October. It’s mixed doubles offshore – one woman and one man per boat – in supplied Sun Fast 30 One Designs, so there’s nowhere to hide behind a bigger budget. Up to two qualifying races feed into a repechage and a winner-takes-all final. Nineteen teams from 15 nations are entered, including France’s defending champion Thomas Andrew, now paired with Julia Colombe, and Ireland for the first time.

The 20th Asian Games run in Aichi–Nagoya, Japan from 19 September to 4 October, with the sailing taking place from 26 September to 3 October out of Kaiyoh Yacht Harbor in Gamagōri. All the Olympic classes – 470, ILCA 7 and 6, 49er and FX, iQFOiL – will be represented alongside youth classes, with China, Japan, India and Malaysia all bringing strong squads. And in a nice twist, some of the competitors are swapping the usual athletes’ village for a cruise liner docked in Nagoya.

The America’s Cup teams head to Naples for the second Louis Vuitton Preliminary Regatta from 24–27 September, for their first racing on the waters that will decide the Cup next year. Nine AC40s from six teams line up, including a debut for the new US challenger, with the Kiwis, GB1 and Luna Rossa each adding a Women & Youth boat.

Nothing counts towards the Cup itself, but after Luna Rossa beat the Kiwis in May’s Cagliari final, local knowledge and bragging rights are up for grabs. The Foil’s Andy Rice, Freddie Carr and new recruit Shona Gibson will be there, so keep an eye on our channels for all the news from Naples.