windward passage yacht photos

Yachting World

• Digital Edition

World’s coolest yachts: Windward Passage

• Toby Heppell
• May 10, 2023

We ask top sailors and marine industry gurus to choose the coolest and most innovative yachts of our times. Luca Bassani nominates Windward Passage

“A very modern boat for her times: very large stern (almost like today’s naval architecture) and semi-round bilge hull made her very fast in reaching – and with a flush deck!” says Luca Bassani. “For a long time she was the fastest boat in real time in the SORC regattas – ie the world’s fastest boat – and she can be considered the first modern maxi yacht.”

Windward Passage was designed by the late Alan Gurney as an ocean racing record breaker for lumber tycoon Robert Johnson and built in laminated wood in 1968. The semi-planing hull was radical for the time, particularly beamy with a shallow canoe body, a fin keel and an elegant run aft to a broad transom – a shape described on launching as a ‘73ft dinghy’. Windward Passage won and set a record for the Transpac Race in 1971. Originally designed as a ketch she was later refitted to a sloop rig designed by Doug Peterson.

Photo: Windward Passage/D Ramey Logan/Wikimedia Commons

“A true yet forgotten myth,” concludes Bassani.

Make sure you check out our full list of  Coolest Yachts .

Windward Passage stats rating

Top speed: 25 knots LOA: 73ft/22m Launched: 1968 Berths: 12 Price: €500,000 Adrenalin factor: 50%

Luca Bassani

The visionary founder of Wally Yachts, Luca Bassani created an iconic brand and can be credited with shaping the trend for clean Italian aesthetics in yachting. As well as being ahead of the curve with yacht design, he has won world championships in sailing and industrial design awards for his innovative style.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams. Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

Len Bose is a yachting enthusiast, yacht broker, and harbor columnist for Stu News Newport. Specializing in fitting the proper vessel for your needs. Cruising, Sailboat Racing, or harbor cruising. Please contact me at (714) 931-6710 or [email protected]. I am the Duffy Electric Boats Sales Manager you can reach at [email protected]

Tuesday, December 01, 2020

Notes from my tour of windward passage:.

15 comments:

Len, thank you for this article about one of the most beautiful and timeless yachts of the last 50 years. I was astounded when I (as a 13-year-old boy) first saw the profile drawings of this incredible Alan Gurney design in a boating magazine. I try to walk down the Ardell Marina Dock to view it every time I visit Newport. The boat is maintained in utterly bristol condition. The owners have really done right by her. During her first few years, I enjoyed reading about her many new course records set. Then, one day while laying on the beach at the Balboa Bay Club, the sky went dark. I looked up and saw 7077 on a gigantic sail that was momentarily blocking the Sun. WP was sailing up the bay. I was dumbfounded! I stole a friend's boat and collected another close friend who was also a WP fan. We were so impressed with the boat, and with the 19.5' beam when seen from behind. Great to see interior photos. What a fabulous yacht!

Len--this is an outstanding tour of a dream yacht. I first encountered her in the SORC in 1970. Specifically, the St. Petersburg to Venice Race the last week of January. I was a young chap living in Venice at the time and watched with envy as the "big ones" roared down the coast in front of a blustery norther with Passage leading the pack. And, I waited on the Venice Jetty until the wee hours to see them come beating back up the coast into the 35 knot "breeze". Unfortunately Passage over stood the turning bouy in Boca Grande and let American Eagle slip inside her for the 30-odd mile beat north. Once Eagle started up wind there was no keeping up with her and she was first to finish and first overall. After passage finished in the pre-dawn hours it appeared to me that they mulled coming in the Venice Jetty inlet but misjudged the channel and would up stuck on a sandbar southwest of the inlet. It took a tug to get them off and I seem to recall it bent the keel a bit. Still--she has remained iconic in my mind as I formulated my thoughts of what a great ocean racer should be. She was it and while she may be a bit off the pace now I am glad she is still stout and showing so well. Thank you for this article!

Sailed on many races on Windward Passage..... Notable was the Bermuda Race in 1972 when hurricane Agnes swept through followed by the slow Trans Atlantic Race from Bermuda to Vigo, Spain.... 25+days... ran out of everything but Beck's beer and canned food. She always had a great crew in those days with Don Vaughn, Rex Banks, John Rumsey, Peter Bowker, Kirk Elliott, Dick Haskell and of course chef, Reverand Sandy McKenzie and of course Mark and Fritz Johnson. So great to see her in such beautiful condition.

As a young kid sailing Clearwater Prams and then Opti's, I became aware of the powerhouse WP, no match for the Ondines in the day, well raced for sure.....what a beautiful overlook of how she is today...love this boat, the history....would be happy to test her racing speed today with all the mods....truly an amazing machine, and thankfully the owners get that...a legend, and one of a kind....

Thank you! The Windward Passage just cruised by us over and over at the Huntington Beach Airshow 2017. My family was on deck of the Nordic Blue and we were stunned and mesmerized at the beauty of this amazing boat slowly Navigating between all the anchored boats. So mesmerized I shared about her on FB, and my friend who captains boats got me some info online to learn about her. I love the history and the workmanship keeping her so pristine... Thanks for the pictures!

I had the thrill of watching windward passage come across the finish line at Diamondhead when Mark Johnson was the Skipper, I was on board gary mulls design 33 footer and was racing for the Waikiki yacht club at the time, it was a beautiful site, with the white spinnaker Full, she had a bone in her teeth. Nice to hear she's still alive.

I had the privilege of being aboard the Windward Passage in 1973 (?) Sail checks and such before the Transpac. I’m no sailor, but was so impressed. Lived in Newport for many years and was always so impressed with Windward Passage. A timeless beauty.

Sailed from Ardell's to Honolulu in about 1980 to deliver Passage to the Can Am series of races off Oahu. My close pal was Fritz Johnson back then and he surprised me with the trip of a lifetime. 6 adults and a teenager (Robbie Johnson) Mark's son did the delivery. Dave Birchenough was the boat professional and crew member that moved the boat around for each race at that time. Two other guests were from Flyer, that had won the around the world race the previous year. Scant but dedicated boat pro's and myself and another with no experience outside of a bathtub. What happened in the mid-pacific has been etched in my memory for near 40 yrs. We encountered some wind behind us and had blooper up in front of the mainsail. In no time at all the sea grew to epic conditions with 47 knot winds behind and passage screaming down giant troughs and heeling over trying to mount mountainous waves. The life jackets and lifelines were somewhere under the tomatos in storage. Watched the knot meter bounce off of 20 knots on an upright sprint down a trough. Had a Barient wench in a headlock to survive the crises. Finally the pressure was so great the blooper sail exploded it's frame and the crises of too much sail in too much wind was eased a bit. We were able to reef the mainsail and survived my first time on a sailboat. More adventures were to confront us before we reached Waikiki Yacht club. Don Vaughn met us the next day and laughed about the novices adventure. He was larger than life to be sure. A novices first adventure

I first saw Windward Passage in the water at San Pedro when racing my P-Cat (#465) out of Cabrillo Beach Yacht Club back in the early 1970's. She and several other big yachts were also setting up to race out of the Los Angeles Yacht Club at the time. I was taken by the beautiful lines of this magnificent yacht as I watched her glide by some 10 yards away from me. When she passed by, she left no track or wake... a testament to her smooth hull design. God, what a yacht! One of the few regrets I have is that I never got the chance to sail on her.

I remember this yacht so fondly. It was laid up on a beach. It was originally a ketch. I remember doing a night race once in the late 80’s off Sydney. WP and Apollo were always doing battle. Someone brought a projector on board either WP or Apollo and in light north easterly winds with a huge white spinnaker XXX porn was projected into the kite. Purely to distract the competition. Made the local newspaper as it raised some eyes going past Bondi. It is so glad to hear it is still around and in such great shape. To all involved thanks! Brings back so many fond memories

thank you for posting those pictures as a young guy growing up in sydney australia ,she was a dream boat ,loved seeing her again

I know the Johnson family well and have heard all the accounts of the races. You should see there trophy room!!

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22 December 2022

Windward passage (gurney maxi).

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VIDEO: The Building of Windward Passage

Published on April 15th, 2021 by Editor -->

An interview with Alister McIntosh about when he helped build the legendary Alan Gurney-designed 73-footer Windward Passage on the beaches of Freeport, Grand Bahamas.

Video uploaded Apr 11, 2021.

Tags: Windward Passage

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77 Years Later, Yacht Repeats Win in Trans-Pacific Race

By Chris Museler

• July 25, 2013

It took a thousand or so miles of sailing with the long, powerful waves of the Pacific Ocean for Hannah Jenner, a rising star in ocean racing, to get comfortable in this year’s Transpacific Yacht Race. Jenner, a 31-year-old from Britain, is used to racing ultralight 40-footers across oceans. But in the Transpac this month, Jenner was sailing Dorade, a 52-foot wooden sailboat from 1930 that is trimmed in varnished mahogany and adorned with polished bronze hardware.

“When I first was asked, I said: ‘Really? How old is this boat? Isn’t it going to break?’ ” Jenner said. “I’m used to boats that become more stable the faster they go. This boat rolls like crazy. It’s like learning all over again.”

Dorade , considered the forebear of modern ocean racing yachts, won the 2,225-nautical-mile Transpac race from Los Angeles to Honolulu in 1936. And 77 years later, the slender white hull with tall spruce masts rolled to victory again, beating the most modern carbon-fiber ocean racers to win its division and the overall King Kalakaua Trophy.

Racing classic wooden yachts is not unusual, but the sailing is often restricted to coastal day racing around buoys. Dorade’s owner, Matt Brooks, has a more ambitious goal of racing his yacht in all the great ocean races the boat won in the 1930s and ’40s. He said he was told that the Dorade was a “piece of antique furniture” and that “it couldn’t be done,” but Brooks and his crew received the overall winner’s trophy for the Transpac on Thursday, which should silence skeptics.

“What we found was that the boat loves the ocean,” said Brooks, who bought the boat in 2010 for $880,000. “You can tell she’s doing what she loves to do.”

Dorade was designed in 1929 by Olin Stephens, one of sailing’s most successful designers. The yawl was design No. 7 for the fledgling firm Sparkman and Stephens in Manhattan. Stephens, then 21, and his brother Rod were at the helm when the mahogany-planked, engineless boat made its first mark in the history books, winning the 1931 Transatlantic Race. Small and powerful, Dorade beat the traditional schooners of the time. The designer and his crew received a ticker-tape parade upon their return to New York, and the win set the stage for Stephens’s long career .

Dorade’s finishing time in the Transpac race this year was 12 days 5 hours 23 minutes 18 seconds, knocking more than a day off the boat’s 1936 run. The greatest distance covered in a day, or best 24-hour run, was 224 miles in 1936, but 203 miles this year.

Handicap rules used for offshore racing allow boats of different sizes and types to compete in the same race with time allowances and staggered starts. Figuring in those allowances, Dorade’s adjusted time of 5 days 12 hours 20 minutes 55 seconds beat Roy P. Disney’s modern 70-footer Pyewacket, which had an adjusted time of 5 days 14 hours 51 minutes 21 seconds. Dorade started a week earlier than Pyewacket, which finished the course in 8 days 15 hours 41 minutes 3 seconds.

“The whole idea of a boat like Dorade pulling this off has great benefits,” Disney said, referring to the publicity the win has attracted.

He added that he hoped more classic boats would race in the next Transpac. Disney said he had considered racing the wooden maxi yacht Windward Passage, which broke the course record in 1971, a result often called the Transpac’s greatest performance.

Brooks’s schedule for Dorade is primarily an attempt to recreate history. The list of races includes the Newport Bermuda Race, the Transatlantic Race and the Fastnet Race. Dorade raced in the 2012 Newport Bermuda Race, finishing sixth in its class. Brooks has his sights set on another Newport Bermuda Race in 2014, followed by the 2015 Transatlantic and Fastnet Races.

For this year’s Transpac race, Brooks and his crew spent last winter in San Francisco and Los Angeles testing different sails, navigation equipment and sailing techniques while racking up more than a thousand miles of ocean sailing. Dorade is the oldest boat to race and win the Transpac, but Brooks treated the yacht like any other top racing program in the fleet.

Brooks had new masts designed and built, in spruce, to handle the additional stresses of new laminated, aramid fiber sails. The hull, which was slightly asymmetrical as a result of its age, was faired and re-scanned. Some of the best sailors in the world were brought in to round out the seven-person crew, including an America’s Cup navigator and an around-the-world race skipper.

“The boat was extremely well sailed,” said Robbie Haines, an Olympic gold medalist who was a helmsman aboard Pyewacket. “Though it’s disappointing to us, part of me kind of likes seeing Dorade win.”

What Jenner and the rest of Dorade’s crew learned on their two-week sojourn was that the genius of the boat’s design and how the sailors in the 1930s skillfully sailed her never go out of style.

“It was definitely a new style of steering,” Jenner said. “Everything all of us know we had to forget and go to the old school type of sailing.”

The crew watched old films of Olin Stephens steering a rocking and rolling Dorade in the 1931 Transatlantic and holding the tiller steady in the center of the boat. By the end of this Transpac, Jenner said, they were all steering the same way as Stephens.

Brooks and the navigator Matt Wachowicz added to the historical realism by practicing celestial navigation all the way to Hawaii.

“We wanted to complete the historic circle,” said Brooks, who is a member of the St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco, the same club that had James Flood, the boat’s 1936 owner, as a member. “We were within a mile or so of the GPS course.”

Despite the unruly motion of the narrow hull, Jenner said Dorade offered benefits over boats like Pyewacket.

“On this boat there are actually bunks with cushions as opposed to sleeping on sails,” she said. “It’s also bizarrely silent down below a wooden boat, but you can hear creaking and cracking noises, which was a little unsettling.”

Few boats have as grand a history as Dorade’s, but Brooks hopes to prove a point with the boat.

“I hope this win will make people sit up and take notice that these boats can still do what they were designed to do,” he said. “They shouldn’t be restricted to dockside museum pieces.”

A picture caption last Friday with an article about Dorade’s victory in the Transpacific Yacht Race 77 years after winning it the first time carried an erroneous credit. The photograph, provided by Ultimate Sailing, was taken by Sharon Green, not by Betsy Crowfoot.

How we handle corrections

Professional BoatBuilder Magazine

Windward passage in print.

By Chris Caswell , Dec 12, 2023

M y wife dropped the 7-lb package on my desk, asking, “What the heck is this?” It turned out to be a book from WoodenBoat Publications called  Windward Passage : A Maxi Yacht in Her Sixth Decade . I dove in.

As someone who has raced aboard  Passage , raced against her, and admired her graceful aging for more than half a century, I can say that calling this coffee-table tome spectacular is like calling Niagara a waterfall.

Written by longtime waterman and talented wordmonger Randy Peffer, with a host of superb photos by Steve Jost, my old California friend, this is truly a tribute and something to be treasured by anyone who has ever heard the name  Windward Passage .

Engrossed in the words and images spread across the 335 12 ”  x 12 “  pages, my memory bell clanged at seeing old crewmates from old races, all aboard the legendary  Passage . Intended to finish first and set course records for every race she entered, she was designed by Alan Gurney with nary a look at meeting any handicap rules. (For more on Gurney’s design career, see “Passage Maker”  Professional BoatBuilde r No. 151, page 24.)

The 73′ (22.2m) ketch Windward Passage, built for lumberman Robert Johnson, was a defining early step in the evolution of modern maxi yachts and the most renowned of the designs of naval architect Alan Gurney.

Robert Johnson, of  Ticonderoga  fame, wanted a no-holds-barred ocean racer, had admired Gurney’s  Guinevere , and understood that the new Cal-40 was tearing up the offshore circuit with its shallow body, fin keel, and spade rudder. Gurney—an Englishman who apprenticed with Bill Tripp but was then on his own at just 30—and Johnson had agreed on lines Gurney sketched on a cocktail napkin. Alan then singlehandedly churned out the plans from his basement studio on New York’s East 54th Street. Johnson, a lumberman, sailor, and pilot, built her (out of wood, of course) on a Bahamas beach, and the rest is history.

Windward Passage  set the stage for the newest of maxi yachts, but there’s that twist in the tale: she was wooden. No one had built a really powerful maxi racing yacht from wood in years: the  Kialoa s  and  Ondine s  were aluminum. Gurney’s big surfboard design was as much a surprise as her construction material—layers of cold-molded spruce veneers and aerospace epoxies, and way off the charts in every way. One look told you she was designed to be a surfin’ fool on long Pacific swells.

Windward Passage is a Bluewater Boat

I was a regular aboard  Ragtime , also built of wood, which was sometimes a speed bump in the  Passage  road. We ( Ragtime ) beat  Passage  in the California Cup, where it was clear that  Passage  was designed for races where the finish line was thousands of miles, not three or four marks, away. She was a Peterbilt truck in the Indy 500.

Windward Passage’s cold-molded Sitka spruce hull was built on the beach near Freeport, Grand Bahama, in 1968.

I drove my wife crazy with each page turn, calling out, “Hey, here’s Don Vaughan, who I got ripped with at St. Francis Yacht Club on Ramos Fizzes. Look, that’s powerful Arnie Schmelling, who practically tore my arms off when I was opposite him on a  Passage  coffee-grinder winch in the Big Boat Series. Hey, there’s John Rumsey, who Vaughan towed on water skis as  Passage  reached past longtime rival  Kialoa  just to show who ‘owned’ the Big Boat Series.”

The entire book was a most delightful walk down memory lane. But this lavish hardcover is distinguished by more than just photos of old sailing buddies. It is a fine tribute to a fabled yacht, and Steve Jost photographed it as though he were shooting a Van Cleef & Arpels jewelry catalog. Genoa blocks sparkle like diamonds, the coffee-grinder winches (oh, my aching shoulders!) are like ubercool appliances in Williams-Sonoma, and even the lowly pulpit gleams as though sterling silver and not just steel. A teak table literally glows like the finest Scandinavian furniture.

The book includes photographs and detailed drawings of the yacht’s evolving keel designs.

The layout of the book, by Ronald Geisman, is impeccable, and each turned page brings another delight, another prize, another intake of breath. Carefully curated to match Peffer’s perfectly crafted text, the entire  Windward Passage  saga is laid out, heavy on anecdotes, people, and places from Bahamas beaches to victories in TransPac, from SORC to Sydney-Hobart.  Windward Passage  dominated every race with power, speed, grace, and, most of all, just sheer beauty. The pictures show her majesty, rolling down seas with main, huge spinnaker, mizzen, and oversized mizzen spinnaker—proud and unconquerable.

And this book is a fitting tribute to that beauty, with never-before-seen images and a level of resolution that make you want to cut them out to frame, if only the book itself wasn’t so gorgeous.

It has a lovely dust jacket, but if you remove it, you’ll find embossed the whale that was on the  Windward Passage  transom, now a sad memento of Lahaina Yacht Club, which is still smoldering from the Maui fires as I write.

Unlike Lahaina YC,  Windward Passage  soldiers on, perfectly maintained by new owners with grand adventures in mind. Modern rating rules do not take kindly to wide, shallow yachts designed to surf the Pacific swells, but ratings never mattered to Gurney or Johnson or any of the throngs who sailed aboard her in a relentless quest for first-to-finish and course records. The “Barn Door” trophy for first-to-finish TransPac is, of course, inscribed with the name  Windward Passage .

About the Author:  A former editor of  Sea Magazine  and  Yachting , Chris Caswell has written nine books on boating and has owned many power, sail, and rowboats.

Editor’s Note:   Windward Passage :   A  Maxi Yacht in Her Sixth Decade  is  published by  Professional BoatBuilder ’s parent company, WoodenBoat Publi cations Inc. Copies are available  from The WoodenBoat Store .

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Windward Passage: A Maxi-yacht in Her Sixth Decade

Description.

by Randall Peffer. Photographs by Steve Jost. Design by Ronald Geisman

Conceived by a lumberman-sailor, drawn by a young and then-untested designer, and built of spruce on a Bahamian beach in 1968, the 73’ ocean-racing maxi-yacht WINDWARD PASSAGE had an improbable rise to stardom during her twenty-year racing career. When he first laid eyes on her soon after her completion, the legendary designer Olin Stephens called the yacht “a masterpiece.” In the ensuing years, WINDWARD PASSAGE and her crews roamed the planet, winning the world’s major ocean races and attracting legions of admirers and competitors. She continues today, stronger and swifter than built, as a world-cruiser.

"Publisher Rand Randall Peffer, who profiled WINDWARD PASSAGE for WoodenBoat magazine in 2021, now presents a book-length biography of the storied ocean racer. Randall Peffer, who profiled WINDWARD PASSAGE for WoodenBoat magazine in 2021, now presents a book-length biography of the storied ocean racer."

Published in association with WoodenBoat and printed in Italy on 100-lb stock, Windward Passage: A Maxi-yacht in Her Sixth Decade, is a lavish hardcover presentation, equal to the quality of the yacht itself.

Customer Reviews

The book is so very well done. It's obvious so much love and attention to detail went into making this beautiful account of Passage's story. I remember reading of her and her successes as a young man. This book tells so much more! The words and photos truly pay homage to a one of a kind and iconic vessel. Should be in every sailors library. M.S.Allen s/y Sonata

Windward passage was one of the last big boat constructive wood. It’s a beautiful boat when I was in college I used to sailed my Star by-when it was in Newport Beach California. The book is full of short stories, beautiful pictures and we brought me back 50 years in the past it’s a heavy book so your coffee table better be substantial I also remember the graciousness of the crew and the owners, allowing other sailors, and people to at least go on her decks and look around, especially during fundraisers for events

What an amazing boat, this should be made into a movie. The story about how it was build is fantastic.

Killer book about a legendary yacht.

A wonderful book with great stories

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World’s coolest yachts: Windward Passage

We ask top sailors and marine industry gurus to choose the coolest and most innovative yachts of our times. Luca Bassani nominates Windward Passage

“A very modern boat for her times: very large stern (almost like today’s naval architecture) and semi-round bilge hull made her very fast in reaching – and with a flush deck!” says Luca Bassani. “For a long time she was the fastest boat in real time in the SORC regattas – ie the world’s fastest boat – and she can be considered the first modern maxi yacht.”

Windward Passage was designed by the late Alan Gurney as an ocean racing record breaker for lumber tycoon Robert Johnson and built in laminated wood in 1968. The semi-planing hull was radical for the time, particularly beamy with a shallow canoe body, a fin keel and an elegant run aft to a broad transom – a shape described on launching as a ‘73ft dinghy’. Windward Passage won and set a record for the Transpac Race in 1971. Originally designed as a ketch she was later refitted to a sloop rig designed by Doug Peterson.

Photo: Windward Passage/D Ramey Logan/Wikimedia Commons

“A true yet forgotten myth,” concludes Bassani.

Make sure you check out our full list of Coolest Yachts.

Windward Passage stats rating

Top speed: 25 knots LOA: 73ft/22m Launched: 1968 Berths: 12 Price: €500,000 Adrenalin factor: 50%

Luca Bassani

The visionary founder of Wally Yachts, Luca Bassani created an iconic brand and can be credited with shaping the trend for clean Italian aesthetics in yachting. As well as being ahead of the curve with yacht design, he has won world championships in sailing and industrial design awards for his innovative style.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams. Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

The post World’s coolest yachts: Windward Passage appeared first on Yachting World.

World’s coolest yachts: Windward Passage

We ask top sailors and marine industry gurus to choose the coolest and most innovative yachts of our times. Luca Bassani nominates Windward Passage

“A very modern boat for her times: very large stern (almost like today’s naval architecture) and semi-round bilge hull made her very fast in reaching – and with a flush deck!” says Luca Bassani. “For a long time she was the fastest boat in real time in the SORC regattas – ie the world’s fastest boat – and she can be considered the first modern maxi yacht.”

Windward Passage was designed by the late Alan Gurney as an ocean racing record breaker for lumber tycoon Robert Johnson and built in laminated wood in 1968. The semi-planing hull was radical for the time, particularly beamy with a shallow canoe body, a fin keel and an elegant run aft to a broad transom – a shape described on launching as a ‘73ft dinghy’. Windward Passage won and set a record for the Transpac Race in 1971. Originally designed as a ketch she was later refitted to a sloop rig designed by Doug Peterson.

Photo: Windward Passage/D Ramey Logan/Wikimedia Commons

“A true yet forgotten myth,” concludes Bassani.

Make sure you check out our full list of  Coolest Yachts .

Windward Passage stats rating

Top speed: 25 knots LOA: 73ft/22m Launched: 1968 Berths: 12 Price: €500,000 Adrenalin factor: 50%

Luca Bassani

The visionary founder of Wally Yachts, Luca Bassani created an iconic brand and can be credited with shaping the trend for clean Italian aesthetics in yachting. As well as being ahead of the curve with yacht design, he has won world championships in sailing and industrial design awards for his innovative style.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams. Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

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UFI approval for Moscow Boat Show

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Written by Zuzana Bednarova

September 17 was marked by meeting of the UFI Executive Committee. During the event, the Committe approved the admission of Crocus Expo IEC as a full member of UFI in categories of “Exhibition Organizers” and “Exhibition Centres. Moscow Boat Show has been granted the status of “UFI Approved Event”.

Moscow Boat Show

UFI, The Global Association of the Exhibition Industry is the association of trade show organizers, fairground owners, national and international associations of the exhibition industry, and its partners. As of 2012, it has 608 members in 224 cities from 86 countries covering 6 continents. The association members are responsible for the management and operation of over 4 500 profile events. The association represents more than 1 000 000 of exhibitors and more than 150 000 000 visitors.

The Crocus Expo Exhibition Centre is a listed member of the International Association of Congress Centres (AIPC), the Russian Union of Exhibitions and Fairs, the Guild of Exhibition and Fair Operators by the Moscow Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Donald Tramp fund has awarded Crocus Expo IEC Diamond Excellence Award.

Crocus Expo IEC is an ideal venue for running of large international and national exhibitions of different profile including congress events, conferences and scientific symposiums.About 50% of all exhibition events of Moscow take place in Crocus Expo and average exposition space load comprises 85%.

Moscow Boat Show provides the perfect platform from which to preview new products, evaluate market trends, and establish long-lasting and commercially profitable partnerships. Despite the dynamic changes taking place in Russia and the rapid growth of the yachting sector, the show continues to complement and reflect the industry’s demand and is a promotional opportunity not to be missed!

The exposition space will increase up to 45 000 sq m in 2013. More than 350 Russian and foreign companies will participate in the show. The scale of the project confirms confident positions of its positive development.

Moscow Boat Show is the largest project in Russia presenting all the best in the world of yachting. The exhibition annually shows high level of attendance and has already proved as significant and noteworthy event in the world of yachts and boats.

Please contact CharterWorld - the luxury yacht charter specialist - for more on superyacht news item "UFI approval for Moscow Boat Show".

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