Yacht Racing Life Podcast

British sailing writer and America's Cup aficionado Magnus Wheatley has been obsessed with yacht racing's oldest and most prestigious competition since he was in his mid-teens...

Justin Chisholm catches up with fellow British sailing journalist Andy Rice, who as well as being a regular contributor to all the major sailing publications, also hosts the Sailjuice Podcast as well as running the Road to Gold 12 step coaching programme that helps sailors of all abilities improve their racing performance.

Justin Chisholm is joined by friend and colleague David Fuller – host of the Yacht Business podcast which examines new innovative technologies, trends and business models that are having an impact on the global marine industry.  On this crossover episode – which will be jointly published on The Yacht Business Podcast, (available on all major podcasting platforms) – the pair discuss how various tec...

Justin Chisholm’s guest this time is British Olympic medallist and SailGP competitor, Hannah Mills. Hannah won silver in the women’s 470 class at the London 2012 Olympics and followed that victory up with back to back gold medals at the Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 making her the most successful female Olympic sailor of all time. She called time on her Olympic campaigning after the last Games, but was...

Justin Chisholm’s guest is Dutch offshore sailor Rosalin Kuiper who has just been announced as a member of Boris Herrmann’s Team Malizia  IMOCA 60 crew for the upcoming edition of The Ocean Race which sets off around the world in January 2023.  As you will hear in the interview, the young Dutch sailor has a fantastic back story. Whereas lots of people just dream of being a professional sailor and...

Justin Chisholm’s guest is British yachtsman Freddie Carr, a five time veteran of the America’s Cup who has recently signed on for his sixth campaign to win yachting’s oldest and most prestigious trophy. Aside from his racing skills Freddie has also carved out a sailing media career for himself and is well known to high-performance sailing fans for his role as a mainstay of the SailGP commentary t...

Justin Chisholm’s guest is American Olympic silver medalist and renowned performance coach Morgan Reeser.  Reeser won a silver medal in the 470 class at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona sailing with the legendary Kevin Burnham and has since coached the Greek women’s and British men’s pairings to Olympic gold and silver respectively and established himself as a sought after performance coach across a...

When it comes to ocean racing achievements Damian Foxall sets the bar pretty high. He has six editions of the The Ocean Race under his belt, as well as wins in the double handed Barcelona Race, and record setting non-stop runs aboard monster sized maxi catamarans like Steve Fosset’s PlayStation and Cheyenne. Damian grew up on a farm in Ireland close to the water and spent his childhood and teenage...

The latest episode of The Yacht Racing Podcast was recorded in San Francisco, Ca, where eight international professional sailing teams have been practising out on the bay ahead of the million dollar grand finale of the second season of SailGP. Justin Chisholm’s guest this time is the prolific Australian skipper Tom Slingsby who as well as leading the SailGP rankings with his Australia SailGP team,...

Justin Chisholm speaks to British America’s Cup sailor and Olympic gold medalist rower Matt Gotrel, who has just re-signed as a member of the powerhouse grinding team for the British Challenger of Record at AC37 – Ben Ainslie’s Ineos Britannia. Gotrel comes from a sailing family and began his career crewing in dinghies on lakes in the south of England. He quickly progressed through the 29er class...

Justin Chisholm’s guest is British sailor Laurence Mead, the regatta director at the world’s oldest and largest regatta week: the annual UK spectacular that is Cowes Week. The first Cowes Week regatta was back in 1826 and it now takes place every year on The Solent – that narrow tidal waterway between the English south coast and the nearby Isle of Wight. Laurence – who took over at Cowes Week in 2...

Justin Chisholm’s guest this time is the New Zealand high performance foiling supremo Phil Robertson. Robertson made his name as a professional sailor on the international match racing circuit where he twice won the World Match Racing Tour World Championship. Now though he is fully fledged disciple of the high performance foiling revolution and best known for his role as a helmsman and skipper on...

Pip Hare is the British solo sailor who set the social media world alight during her single handed circumnavigation of the world in the last Vendee Globe. She was sailing on one of the oldest and least technologically advanced boats in the fleet and faced a raft of issues along the way. But she made it around and finished in 19th place – the first British skipper home. As you will hear in the inte...

Justin Chisholm chats with British Olympic campaigner John Gimson whose 16-year Olympic career culminated last year in he and his sailing partner Anna Burnett winning the Silver medal in the Nara 17 class at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. Justin caught up with John just before Christmas and shortly after he and Anna had returned from kicking off their Paris 2024 Olympic campaign by defending their...

Justin Chisholm’s guest is British solo racing skipper Alex Thomson – a veteran of no less than five editions of the Vendée Globe solo around the world race.  He made his first attempt in 2004 but damage to his boat put him out of that race and the following edition in 2008-09, but he went on to finish third in the 2012-13 edition and second in the 2016-17.  Despite starting the 2020-21 edition as...

Justin Chisholm’s guest is Ed Gorman - a veteran British journalist who during a 25 year career with the British Times newspaper was deputy foreign editor, deputy news editor and a war correspondent – before switching gears to cover Formula 1 and sailing. Ed was instrumental in introducing two British sailing legends – Dame Ellen MacArthur and Sir Ben Ainslie – to the mainstream public and has rep...

Justin Chisholm's guest is fellow-Brit Sam Holliday - co-founder of the Race Around: a single and double-handed multi-stage around the world race in Class 40 yachts, scheduled to take place in 2023.  Sam is no stranger to the professional yacht racing scene having been involved in Vendee Globe campaigns for British skippers Mike Golding and Mirranda Merron, as well as helping to run successful Cla...

Justin Chisholm's guest is British yacht racing journalist Andy Rice, who had just returned from Enoshima, Japan where he had been reporting on the Tokyo 2020 Olympic regatta for World Sailing. Andy is a veteran Olympic sailing correspondent so well positioned to comment on just how different things were for the sailors in Japan as they coped not only with the pressure of Olympic competition out o...

It was back in 2012 that Paul piloted the revolutionary Vestas Sailrocket 2 to a new outright world record speed of 65.54 knots to become the fastest man on the water. That record still stands and in our interview Paul mulls over the idea of dusting off Sailrocket 2 to try to defend his record against two new projects: one French and one Swiss aimed at reaching 80 knots. We also find out how Paul...

Justin Chisholm speaks to Leon Sefton, who as Head of TV Production for America’s Cup 36 ran the team responsible for the amazing TV coverage that was beamed around the world from Auckland, New Zealand. Leon headed up a production team of almost 80 people during the Cup down in New Zealand, but as we learn in the interview his work to make the TV coverage of AC36 the best ever actually began sever...

Justin Chisholm’s guest on the latest episode of The Yacht Racing Podcast is British professional sailor Hannah Diamond. As well as spending many years with the British Sailing Team on the Olympic campaign trail in a range of classes Hannah also raced the 2017-18 edition of The Ocean Race as part of the Vestas 11th Hour Racing crew. Having set her Olympic aspirations aside – at least for now – Han...

The renowned British yachtsman Neal McDonald is Justin Chisholm’s guest on the latest episode of The Yacht Racing Podcast EXTRA. McDonald is perhaps best known for his ocean racing achievements in the Whitbread and Volvo Ocean Race, but he is also an Olympic campaigner and won world and European dinghy titles in his time – as well as spending eight years campaigning on the Australian 18-foot skiff...

Justin Chisholm’s guest on the latest episode of The Yacht Racing Podcast is the French solo offshore racing skipper Charlie Dalin. Dalin hit the headlines earlier this year after he claimed the line honours victory in the Vendee Globe 2020-21 singlehanded non-stop around-the-world race. Despite being first home Charlie was not the overall winner. The time allowance awarded to fellow Frenchman Yan...

Justin Chisholm's guest is New Zealand sailor Ray Davies – a key member of the Emirates Team New Zealand syndicate that recently successfully defended the America’s Cup on their home waters off Auckland, New Zealand. As well as having been instrumental in introducing the original concept of a foiling monohull that so successfully evolved into the astonishing AC75s that the teams raced in the 36th...

Justin Chisholm’s guest this time is Australian professional yachtsman Kyle Langford. Kyle won the 34th America’s Cup as wing trimmer for Jimmy Spithill with Oracle Team UK and also won the first season of the SailGP international series as wing trimmer for Tom Slingsby’s Australian SailGP Team. He is now based in Gothenburg, Sweden but the conversation takes him all the way back to his first expe...