Learn
Everything we know about sailing and racing, in one place. Follow a guided path in the Academy, get the sport in plain English in the Guides, or go deep in the technical library. Use the menu to jump straight in — or start with the picks below.
A few good places to begin
Hand-picked entry points from across the library — the fundamentals, and the technical pieces we get asked about most.
Carbon Masts and Rigging Explained
Carbon masts and carbon standing rigging give Grand Prix yachts a lighter, stiffer rig that stands up taller sails — here is how they are built and tuned.
Read the guideHow Do Sails Work?
Sails work in two ways: sailing upwind and across the wind they act like wings, generating lift from the pressure difference across the sail; sailing downwind they act more like parachutes, catching the wind's push.
Read the guideHow Does a Sailboat Sail Into the Wind?
A sailboat can't sail straight into the wind, but it can sail at about 45 degrees to it. The sail works like a wing to generate lift, the keel stops the boat slipping sideways, and by zig-zagging (tacking) the boat makes progress upwind.
Read the guideHow a Melges 40 Canting Keel Works
The Melges 40's canting keel trades ballast for lever arm: swing a ~1,100 kg bulb up to 45° to weather and the transverse ballast moment scales with sin(cant), so the boat carries roughly a third more sail area for the same heel. This is the physics, the load path through the keel pin and hydraulic ram, the leeway penalty the centreline canard exists to cover, and the failure modes the maintenance regime is built around.
Read the articleRace Boat Design Philosophy
A race boat is a coupled optimisation problem — power, stability, drag and weight resolved under a rule for one purpose. Design philosophy is the objective function a naval architect commits to before the VPP runs its first sweep.
Read the articleSail Racing vs Zhik vs Musto: Race Sailing Jackets Compared
An engineering comparison of Sail Racing, Zhik and Musto sailing shells — GORE-TEX ePE vs monolithic hydrophilic vs GORE-TEX Pro membranes, published hydrostatic-head and MVP figures, backer construction, DWR chemistry and cut — for inshore Grand Prix racing on a Melges 40.
Read the article