Best Sailor:

We start here, much to our dismay, with a frog - Francois Joyon. We're kidding. The guy flat rocked the house in ’04, setting a new round the world solo record in a trimaran. On top of that he is by all accounts a good dude and a truly likable and worthy sailing hero. Lot's O' great sailors, but we were particularly impressed by this accomplishment. We have more on Joyon later in the article..

Honorable Mention:

Got to go to a couple of OG’s, Paul Forrester and Kevin Burnham for their Gold medal acheivement in the 470's at the Olympics. We don’t usually hang these awards on one effort, but when it is so good (or so dismal – see below) we’ve got to give it up. Good guys who put it all together at precisly the perfect time. Impressive.

For doing nearly the opposite of the above, we give it to Paul Cayard. He got smoked at the Olympics, the one event that was supposed to be His Big Triumph. He started off with a bullet, and then went out with a DFL, looking like like Marvis Frazier against Mike Tyson. All that money spent, all that ego and arrogance displayed, and he got his overly large hat handed right back to him. Word to ya, Paul.

Staying with the Olympic Stars, Iain Percy/Steve Mitchell must get their props too. So much expected, so little delivered. Oh well, at least he signed a fat AC deal. There also won in another category, found lower on the page.

Best Multihull Achievement

Steve Fosett's Cheyenne. Fastest around the world ever? beating the existing record by nearly six days? Are you kidding? It is Impossible to do anything more impressive in this sport.

Honorable Mention:

Francis Joyon for setting a new round the world solo record in a trimaran. The trimaran started its life as the singlehanded boat for Olivier Kersauson in which Olivier set a singlehanded record but with two stopovers. Since then the boat grew in length by approximately 20 feet and became Olivier's weapon to attack the absolute crewed round the world record, which it set at 71 days and 14 hours. Francis took the same boat, put her through a round of very low-key backyard preparations and sailed her balls out alone and without weather routing assistance to a record of 72 days and 22 hours. Let's see you do it.

Worst Multihull Effort

Tracy Edwards, while putting the Oryx Cup in direct competition with the forebearer of the giant multihulls, The Race, she put the course of The Race in the relatively unknown and most treacherous ice fields of the South Atlantic and the majority of the course through the Indian Ocean, so much hated by all ocean racers. All to please an arab country sponsor with no long term vision or convictions. In the process, she failed to timely pay her creditor, one of the greaters supporters of our sport Andrew Pindar, for the purchase of one of the G-cats for her abandoned Maiden II campaign and forced the matter into court and eye of the publicity. She lowered the safety standards for the Oryx Cup by allowing the boats to remove the propellers. The net result is the cancellation of an existing global event, The Race, and its substitution with an event with lower safety standards, no track record, poor and potentially unsafe course selection designed solely to satisfy the sponsor and an assembly of hurried second-hand vessels for a pointless exercise in Indian Ocean bashing. Barring major breakdowns, a victory by Olivier Kersauson is nothing but expected two months before the start of the event.

Best OD Performance

Ben Ainsle, who, after winning Olympic Gold in Laser class, methodically disected the skill of Finn sailing in 4 years while dominating the class from his first entries in the events, and, expectedly, snatching the Gold in Athens. And his Gold was won after overcoming a huge setback right from the beginning. He is what champions are made of. Not that we've ever personally had a sniff of such stuff......

Worst OD Performance

Ian Percy/Steve Mitchell, a team with great ambition and even higher expectations who started their Star Olympic campaign early and peaked early as well. Throngs of coaches, custom made boats on several continents and custom sail designs showed results in the first two years but did nothing to this team's glaring and consistent lack of performance in moderate and shifty conditions. When the rest of the class caught up on the technical developments a sumptious serving of humble pie was promptly delivered in Athens to this heavy weather-dominating duo.

Is there any way that it is not Reichel/Pugh? They are virtually dominating the maxi and super maxi scene, their canters like Wild Oats are superb, and even their performance cruising boats like the Martens are awesome looking and performing things. If we were the bitter and resentful a-holes that many of you think we are, no way would we give it to these guys because the give us here at SA absolutely zero love - I guess we're too low for their high zoot sphere. Reichel and Pugh are truly the Odd Couple, with plenty of good to say about John, but few ever finding much good to say about Jim. Whatever, Reichel draws a mean boat and Pugh must be pretty good at getting the checks. It works.

Jason Kerr, based soley on the IRC 55’ Aera that has dominated the world wherever it has raced. He’s got a good reputation for designing good boats, and it is now that much better with Aera, a true world and IRC rule beater. We’d be shocked if he didn’t get some serious orders in the coming year. You'd have to consider him for an IRC boat, and perhaps more.

For '04, we find Bruce Nelson to have done nothing. As the big boat world was going to the TP 52 class, Nelson designed an IMS 52 (Ptarmigan) for his customer. And given that IMS was clearly fading, that might not have been the best choice. Uh, make that an awful choice. Nelson was a non-factor nearly everywhere else too – maxi’s, canting keels, OD’s, sportboats (he may not know what they are). And this from a guy who once used to be a real presence in almost every arena. Add his sparkling personality and humble outgoingness, and well, there you have it. His website says all you need to know about Nelson.

Dishonorable Mention:

What the hell happened to Laurie Davidson? Did some good AC work, and his 52' Pendragon here in Cali is a great boat. Talented and creative, but he disappeared and was a non-factor for '04.

Sorry, but simply because of the sheer simplicity, consistency, and honesty of their print ads, J/Boats gets it. Madison Avenue no doubt laughs at their Advertising 101 ad copy, presentation and style, but the rest of us would likely cry if we knew how much money the Johnstone’s have made off of their prodigious line of boats. Boats, by the way, that we buy at least because the ads make us go see them for ourselves.

Swedish Match. They were everywhere, had effective well-done ads, and got tons of press. We think match racing is a lame circle jerk, but Swedish Match presented it Like It Really Mattered.

The Columbia 30. So you come out with a hot new 30’ sportboat, reviving a long lost brand identity (Columbia), and the best you can do is a couple of half-assed ads in Sail Magazine? Wow. Completely ignoring the internet, (and apprentlyspecifically and purposely staying away from SA) was also part of your brilliant marketing strategy? Let’s see, we’re only the most popular sailing site in the entire world, have only professed our affinity for sport boats on a near weekly basis, but Columbia completely blew us off. We practically begged them to advertise here, but they obviously are too smart for the room. Even at that, we know that at least two boats were sold due to the coverage here. There will be no more of that. See you around, Columbia. Or maybe not.

North Sails. If they say it enough, are we eventually supposed to believe it? Molded sails. Seamless. Lighter. Stronger. Faster. Hold their shape longer. Jesus, are they relentless! Too bad only about half of it is true. Once again, they lead the way in good sails and great hype.

This is tough becaue the reality is that a whole bunch of sailmakers (many of them found as advertisers here at SA) build superb sails. Truthfully, you almost cannot go wrong if you choose from a top quality local National or International loft. Having said that, we think that Quantum gets the nod in this tough field. They still dominate the Star class, (in shear numbers if nothing else), and their move to the string technology for big boats was swift and relatively painless, even if they had to pay Conrad the Barbarian off in the process. Is their string sail technology on par with North? You’ll have to decide that. They do look good however, and are getting some market share.

Don't call it a comeback, but Did Dave Ullman not make a fairly impressive revival by building assymetrical spinnakers that (certainly on 50’s here on the West Coast) are as fast as anyone’s? Plus their string product looks good in the pictures and if they can get it to market at the price points they are talking, they’ll have something. They’ve done a good job of not only hanging in there, but actually have some advantages.

Doyle. They advertised here, but their failed merger with UK, and selling out their 4D technology certainly were not the strong moves of ’04. In fact they were really bad moves. Sure they make some nice sails, and plenty of people win with and like their product, but they likely fell the farthest from the top in ‘04 with the previously mentioned missteps.

Some of you can keep talking all you want about how you’ve “"seen some nice Genesis sails", but Sobstad remains one marginal operation, with nothing to show for ’04 except bringing up the rear. Some of their sails seem to look like C Cuts from the mid '80's. Speaking of regressing, Peter Conrad, the genius behind Sobstad (or more accurately, what's left of it) bought a 10 year-old IMS boat to showcase his and his company’s talents. Now that's forward thinking!

Best Sport Boat:

Disappointlingly, not as much development here as we'd prefer, but there were some interesting boats, led by the Phuket Sports 8. This Scott Duncanson design has all of the ingredients necessary, and in a budget too. We like what we see and apparently so do others.

Worst Sport Boat:

JS 9000. How the hell you go from having an innovative design and concept, with an incredible market buzz, only to screw it up in every way possible, with the result being a patient that if not DOA, most surely is on life support. Unbelievable.

We’re shooting straight for the moon here: The 140’ Mari Cha IV. An incredibly well planned concept, phenomenal execution, and a final product that delivered exactly as planned. And then some. Remarkable by every applicable standard. And they are now the standard by which every super maxi must be measured - Good luck.

Honorable Mention:

There is simply no disputing the brilliance, in every facet, of the TP 52 class. The boats are phenomenal, the rule is solid and the number of boats is exploding. the TP 52 class is the best example of a proper big boat arena in many years. Take one look at the Farr designed Esmaralda and tell us that isn't nearly big boat perfection. Now let's see a TP 40, and a TP 70......

Lord knows you know how much we have bitched about IMS, and the slow boats it has produced, but ’04 saw some of the slowest and ugliest. Probably not the slowest, but surely the ugliest (and this from a designer who almost always draws handsome boats) is the Farr 54 CAM. Say what you want, but any rule that encourages a designer to use tumble home, blows to the high heavens.RIP IMS.

It has barely turned a hydraulic pump or a canting foil, and certainly not in anger, but for overall tardiness, delays, engineering problems, and complexity, the 115’ Juan K maiden Hong Kong is the odd duck for ’04. Perhaps we’ll be eating crow when it has a spectatcular year for '05, but we bet not.

The Cookson Farr 50. Oh yeah, that is the ultimate SA R/C. The tradionalists and those who fail to understand that a performance cruiser should really be may argue, but we know what the real score is. Make a cruiser sexy, fast, fun to sail with design pedigree, add a clean, modern and austere interior and it's game on, mf'er. When we get our Cookson Farr 50 , we’ll be naming it simply “Pimp Daddy. Word.

The Mark Mills designed DK 46 really does seem to have it all. We like mostly everything about it, particularly that is is a rocket, beautiful and nicely appointed. Hard to see why this boat won't be a success.

Worst Racer Cruiser:

Surely not a bad boat, but the Elan 40 is such a copy of the Beneteau 40.7 that we give them a thumbs down for not coming up with something original. Come on, in this world of design and creativity, you've got to do batter than that.

Best Builder:

Any number of Kiwi/Aussie custom builders could get it, but we like McConaghey. Pyewacket, the Maxz 86 and Genuine Risk, the Dubois 90’ are amazingly well turned out things of carbon fiber technological wonder.

Honorable Mention:

Goetz Custom Boats. The TP 52's they've turned out are beautiful, and they contune to set the bar for the top custom builder here in the states.

Worst Builder:

Is it okay to kick Barry Carrol around, even after he’s down? Too bad. He built a marginal product and seemed like he somehow pulled it off, but then the reality of the market caught up to him. We had the double misfortune of sailing a Carroll-built, Nelson designed CM 1200 for about a year. That'll drive you right out of the sport, trust us. Plus BC was a surly prick to us when we found out that he was going out of business and called him to find out the facts. What a schmo. He’s allegedly still got some fans, we’ve just never been one of them, and certainly he's got no love for us. Whatever.

Tossup between John Kilroy who quit the Farr 40 class and sold his 40’s, all because he got his as kicked in the Farr 40 Worlds (oh yeah, throw in that pesky Sailgate sidebar at the Worlds as well), or Hasso Plattner, who quit and put his 86’ Morning Glory up for sale (albeit temporarily) also because he too got his ass kicked. Waaaa.

The AC earned nary a mention in the SA’s this time, but thanks to the bitter rich guy shenigans of Ernesto Bertareli, the AC lives on in SA infamy. By kicking Russell Coutts out of Alinghi, and then engaging in a court battle to make sure Coutts doesn’t sail for someone else in ’07, Bertrelli comes off looking like a world- class whiner. If the boot fits…..

There are some decent ones, likely The Daily Sail being the best, albeit on a Eurocentric/subscription basis. According to the numbers, Sailing Anarchy is the most visited sailing site in the world. How fucking great is that? What that means is a whole lot of people like what we do, and we’ll simply leave it at that.

A whole slew of them, Yacht Racing, Sailing World, Sailing Scuttlebutt (where mediocrity abounds), blah blah. Really, who cares? Not us.

Yacht Racing
Sailing World
Scuttlebutt