In brief Every crossing is a strategic decision first. Decide where you want to go, then choose duck, lee-bow or early tack. Dirty air runs downwind of a boat along the apparent wind. Treat any position near another boat as conditional, not safe. Cover to limit a rival’s chances to gain while…

In brief The ladder explains the geometry of upwind gains. Boat speed, pressure, tide and manoeuvring decide how quickly each boat climbs it. Lateral separation is leverage. A shift turns it into gain or loss: 10 degrees on 200 metres of separation is about 35 metres of upwind height. In steady,…

Since April the FirstShift essays have run to well over 150,000 words. In an archive they sit in the order I wrote them, which is rarely the order a crew needs them in. So I have rebuilt them as books. The first two volumes are finished. Volume 1, The Fast Boat , is about speed you can find…

In brief The start is the first execution of a plan for the first beat. Choose the end for the wind you expect when the boats next cross, not only for the wind at the starting signal. Each degree of bias is worth roughly one sixtieth of the line length in upwind separation. On a short line it…

Sometimes there is simply too much data. Especially when you are trying to helm faster, which you always are. A note before we start : Jock Wishart, offshore racer and adventurer, is a good friend of mine and was a better one still to my father. When Jock offers advice, I take it. His latest is…

There is a boat I’ve owned that has already sailed the race I never have. The rebuilt S&S 34 Morning After, 56 years since her first Sydney Hobart race Morning After is an S&S 34, the sister of the Morning Cloud that Edward Heath took to Sydney in December 1969 and won outright. Morning After…

Morning After - S&S 34 - never took kindly to autopilot - especially downwind! Before I get into the detail of this current issue, here is my true story to position where I start from and yes I’m conflicted and unsure. Muckle Flugga, and four people on a small old boat - who didn’t actually need…

The strait of Messina - Chaotic, changing currents, ferries, gusts and who’s obeying the rule of the road… beware! Part 2: the Nitty Gritty bit…but first a story from closer to home: The anchor at Portland In 2016 I won my class in the Myth of Malham by stopping. Silver Shamrock , a Ron Holland…

A month to go and and in two parts here are some ideas on how to win one of the best late season classic offshore races in the World. Rolex Middle Sea race: Always an exciting start in the Grand Harbour Rationing water, then an almighty bang In October 2015 I was navigator and tactician aboard…

There is a particular danger with the RORC Cherbourg Race and I don’t mean the shipping, the Channel tide or arriving at the French coast in the dark. It simply looks too easy. It is only about 75 miles from Cowes; start off the Royal Yacht Squadron, get yourself out of the Western Solent, cross…

Part two of two. Part one told the story of how sailmaking became an engineering business. This part is about spending your own money TP52 yacht getting ready for a mark rounding. The sails are the key and you want to start with the best you can afford … fast, strong, robust and affordable… a big…

Part one of two. Part two looks at who owns whom today, what a small loft is actually selling, what is genuinely new, why quotations vary so widely, and how to run a sail tender rather than simply collect three numbers. Why I know it’s still complicated to buy a sail In 1999 and 2000 I was buying…

RORC has rebuilt a serious route into offshore racing. The next step is to fund it as part of the sport’s infrastructure, rather than as an annual act of generosity.

A box rule tells a designer the truth up front. Published limits, real freedom inside them, and in its purest form no corrected time at all.

No fully crewed boat has won the RORC Season’s Points Championship since 2021. A modest proposal for the results sheet, and a harder question about the autopilot.

Many offshore crews are routing on numbers computed for a fictitious yacht. Here is where those numbers come from, why they go wrong, and how to replace them with your own.

This weekend’s Round Britain and Ireland Race will be a great adventure, however, technology is unlikely to decide the winner... again!

Shackleton, the 1979 Fastnet, and the management course with no lecture theatre and no dry seats, I look at the evidence.

With the RORC Round Britain and Ireland race just a few weeks away this is a timely overview about food onboard, first published in May 2026.

Twenty-five years after offshore racing’s great handicap split, the real question is no longer which rule is better, but what gives owners the confidence to keep investing. I look at IRC and ORC.