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2 January 2025


Happy New Year, SOLers all, and, here, without further ado is an early outline for your sailonline.org racing programme 2025, and as always the title of SuperSOLer will be determined by the best 42 results from the usual four annual series: the Sprint Championship, the All-Round Championship, the Ocean Championship, and the TIMED Championship. Click on the buttons to discover more about these always fiercely contested annual contests.

In previous years we have raced circumnavigational series around Australia regularly and North America a few times, and across the many seas of Asia also, but Africa has been less explored. So, this year we will explore ‘Africa by Sea’, finishing with a transit of the Suez Canal, but, as there will be two discards, it can be ‘chickened out of’.

It is arguable that our long-standing Sprint Series, featuring short races of just a few hours, does not give enough ‘bang for our high-resolution bucks’ from our unique wrfems weather, so this year, additionally to the Sprints, we will race a hires series of races of 24 hours duration - the ‘Red Eye’ - which to win may require a certain amount of sleep management.

In 2016 we introduced our version of the DN ice yacht to an unsuspecting online sailing public. On good ice and in good wind it skates at up to 50 knots, tacking and gybing at will without performance loss. Racers loved it, so much so, that every northern hemisphere winter since we have organized a four-race series. In 2025 we will again host an Ice Series, but straddling the entire year, which means trips to the southern Andes and the Himalayas will be required.

Apart and entirely different to the DN, we have one other highly unusual craft in our boathouse. Although it floats in a fluid, it is not a boat either, but a balloon buoyed by the air, and this year, in response to public demand, we will race our SOL Balloon in a proper series. ‘Sinbad by Balloon’ will, like his seven online voyages of three years ago, take you to the four corners of the Indian Ocean.

In recent years, and in years gone by as well, within our Ocean Championships, we have also raced a Round the World (RTW) series, and we will do so again in 2025, but this year it will be a RWW 'Round Our Water World' eight-race series, in other words races that, again responding to demand, will avoid land as much as possible, by going from lonely island to lonely island à la Kevin Costner in the eponymous epic movie, in a mixed bag of ocean greyhounds.

     

The other four ocean races will be: 1/ a race from Cape Horn to Sables d'Olonne in a tuned-up foiling IMOCA 60, which hopefully will be able to match this year's Vendee fleet on their way home up the Atlantic, 2/ a race from Valparaiso to San Francisco inspired by Isabel Allende's terrific read 'Daughter of Fortune' , 3/ a second literature-inspired race from Cape Town to Java (lesser-known 'Mountains More Ancient' by Isna Marifa about the indentured Cape Malays of the 18th C), and of course 4/ our great and festive annual Christmas to Christmas race, back E to W.

There will be one other ocean race, which because of its great length in a comparatively slow yacht, to best match the real-life competitors we will be racing against, will not count towards the Ocean Championships; the Melbourne Osaka Cup .

Finally, as always, we will be partnering with numerous real-life race organizations and many of these partnerships will be in the form of short series. Click on any of the buttons below for further details about any of these.



       

       

Fair winds from SOL to all!

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Races

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Current Races:

West Papua to Oregon 2026

Our next race in our Ocean Championships is the first of a series of great natural migrations we will track in 2026. The leatherback turtle is the most widely distributed marine reptile on planet Earth, and chooses to breed in warm tropical waters, but prefers to forage in more temperate habitats, travelling thousands and thousands of miles effortlessly annually to maintain this way of life. Our race will follow one of the typical trips of this turtle, from breeding grounds in the seas off West Papua to the coast of Oregon. It’s only 5900nm, so to keep up, but in comfort, we’ll follow in our Gunboat 90.
Race #2006
INFO by brainaid.de
GB 90 PARTICULARS
WX Updates:
0430 / 1030 / 1630 / 2230
Ranking: OCQ1 - OCCH - MIG - SYC
Race starts: Feb 02nd 11:00 Registration will open soon
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Race to Up Helly Aa 2026

A-OI!!! The fiery spirit of Shetland’s legendary Up Helly Aa returns, and Sailonline’s annual race to Lerwick is once again upon us. Covering 383 nautical miles from Aberdeen, SOLers will tackle winter waters steeped in Viking tradition. This year, we race the classic Frers 33, a proven cruiser-racer born from the golden era of offshore racing and still a sturdy performer both on the virtual and real water. Can you master the course and reach Lerwick in time for the flames?

SAILING NOTE: Gruney may be approached from any direction but must be passed for rounding purposes as indicated on the chart.
Race #2005
INFO by brainaid.de
Frers 33 PARTICULARS
WX Updates:
0430 / 1030 / 1630 / 2230
Ranking:
SYC
Race starts: Jan 30th 17:00 Registration Open!
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Red Eye - Hobart Convict Run 2026

Back in 2010, one of our SOLers of the first hour, AUS_Scott76, came up with this ‘Convict Run’ out from Hobart, past Cape Raoul and the penal colony of Port Arthur, round Tasman Island, up and back down the east coast of Tasmania, to finish with a tight technical run – so Scott called it – up the picturesque D'entrecasteaux Channel, home to Hobart once again. It’s 250nm, ideal for a bit of ‘Red Eye’ in comfortable Finngulf 43’s, and if the original idea was to pick up some convicts on the way for a bit of R&R and sea air, you may always drop’m back before returning to Hobart!
Race #2002
INFOby brainaid.de
FG 43 PARTICULARS
WX Updates:
0430 / 1030 / 1630 / 2230
Ranking: RED - SYC
Race starts: Jan 27th 12:00 Registration Open!
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New Ice Age 2026 - Longyearbyen to Browerville


Although we have by no means exhausted the possibilities of ice boating on lakes at high latitudes or high altitudes, it was noticeable that as our 2025 Series progressed, there were calls from time to time for longer-distance challenges, and so in response to these calls we will pretend that global warming has reversed and as a result the coastal waters of Antarctica and Russia and Canada have fully (and smoothly!) frozen over offering us the possibility of a 4-race New Ice Age series in our trusted no-PL DN machines. Our first leg takes us 2600nm from Svalbard’s Longyearbyen east to North Alaska’s Browerville. You’ll be a few days on the ice, so dress warmly and take some provisions; go!
Race #1968
INFOby brainaid.de
DN PARTICULARS
WX Updates:
0430 / 1030 / 1630 / 2230
Ranking: NIA - SYC
Race starts: Jan 22nd 07:00 Registration Closed
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Cross the Convergence 2026 - Robinson Crusoe to Galapagos


Welcome to our first race of a new series of ocean voyages across the World’s convergence zones, this first race taking you north from south of the Tropic of Capricorn to the Equator-straddling Galapagos, home of magical iguanas and other exotic fauna (but no mythical kings, Dory) Departing from the island where in 1704 adventurer Alexander Selkirk inspired Daniel Defoe to write the best-seller "The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe", by debarking off the unsound "HMS Cinque Ports", four months before she foundered off the coast of present-day Colombia, we will sail the 2200nm in our decidedly sounder and faster than the " Cinque Ports",
Ocean 50 !
Race #1983
INFOby brainaid.de
Ocean 50 PARTICULARS
WX Updates:
0430 / 1030 / 1630 / 2230
Ranking: CCZ - SYC
RACE CLOSE: Friday,
January 30 at 2300 UTC.
Race starts: Jan 16th 18:00 Registration Closed
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