Best Sailor:

To be honest, our top selection has been made for most of the year and while we comfortably prepared for an early release of the awards with the script ready at hand, Mike Golding demonstrated (again) a feat of seamanship that can be transcribed straight into the how-to manuals under “how to pick up a sinking mate by sailing a downwind flyer upwind and bring them all home after breaking your mast (in moderate southern ocean conditions).”  Similar to our originally intended sole winner Dee Caffari, his achievement stems from the school of Challenge Business of racing really big identical boats with lots of nice folks around the planet.  They both made it as skippers of a Challenge boat and pay their regards to the now departed Challenge business of ocean racing for “amateurs.”  And so the two of them share the podium this year.

DeeCaffari accomplished what no woman has done before, albeit not for the lack of trying, by sailing solo the nasty western way without any help.  What’s truly fascinating is that she did it immediately after racing the same distance and direction in the Challenge race as a skipper of the SAME 72 foot steel boat with a crew of 17.  No really, take a sip of the most powerful liquor you have around the house and ask yourself, will you take that same boat right after sailing it for 12 months straight with a crew and with few minor mods, like an autopilot and bowsprit, kiss your boyfriend goodbye, ask him to watch your e-mail and fuck off for another round but now under the rules that have been known to break the likes of Golding himself, Jean Luc Van Den Heede, Philippe Monet, and many others?  Or the same record that has been attempted by Sam Brewster on a Challenge 67 footer, who had to withdraw after the mast winch broke her spreader?  Where VDH almost lost the keel once and lost the mast on the second try?  Where Philippe Monet caught a bout of malaria thousands of miles from land and barely missed a volcano explosion that united with a lightning storm?  Really, would you do that?  She did, and did really really well and now she is doing more again.

Honorable Mention:

Ian Williams and his teammates have been hounding on the top match racing circuit for years on their own wallets and this year they finally broke the ranks by winning the Bermuda Gold Cup.  At the same time they popped the sponsorship cherry by convincing Pindar to put its logos on their uniforms.  Nicely done, lads.

Every one of you jackasses who scream at your crew, file bullshit protests, or in some other way do your best to make the sport suck, this Bud's for you.

Da Big Pimp:

There are many sailors who qualify for this brand new category but what truly prompted us to create this award were the achievements this year of the poster children for this group - this year’s winners.

Paul Cayard and Russell Coutts really know how to act and work harder than 50 Cent and P-Diddy at maintaining and enhancing their personal entities, all the while admiring their jawed facial impressions in the reflections of 20 inch v-dub wheels fitted to red sports cars (or bikes).  The hype they can create is always tremendous and they have the special talent to spread the hype across the disciplines.  This year offered them various opportunities to earn large sums of money while technically hanging out on the sidelines, and in the process get more exposure in the hyperventilating yachting press. 

Cayard’s year was disturbed by a short term commitment to help out the Spanish AC team to reach their nonexistent potential for a sweet reported $250K/mo.  Ka-ching!  Oh, he also finished the VOR in a Farr boat and in second place.  Ka-Ching!  Coutts managed to sell a few of his 44 foot daysailors to some rich folks who took him racing them from an expensive marina with a bunch of paid crew.  While at the marina the teams were accompanied by hot bitches with foreign accents.  Ka-Ka-Ching!

Best Multihull Achievement:

Hunt Stookey spent the year pushing his Lightspeed 32 project forward and managed to get one boat immaculately built and racing.  The boat turned out to be a rocket with park benches.  What’s cool is that he had taken her up and down the coast, often on her own bottom, delivering for instance from Rye, NY to Newport in 11 hours, and entering in as many races as he could find.  We hope he manages to put this boat into a reliable production and make all those so-called sportboat owners feel very uncomfortable in their monosluggish toilet-carriers.

Worst Multihull Effort:

ORMA trimarans circuit is now officially dead.  The circuit formula of inshore GP and offshore solo races truly did not work and the organization became fragmented and lost the wisdom and vision that made these boats some of the most advanced on the planet.  As the boats were growing their cockpits to efficiently accommodate up to 11 crew for bouy racing the skippers were flipping and losing their stiff platforms offshore, living in winged pods surrounded by the electronics and relying on feeble ama foils for stability at speed.  And nobody took real notice.  Groupama’s unlimited effort for their second boat resulted in a dominant platform that sealed the fate of the class.  Hordes of teams transitioned to better-managed IMOCA and the more adventurous took on the G-class Multihulls.  RIP ORMA!

Best OD Performance:

Steve Clark and Duncan McLane in the C-class of catamarans.  It is a fundamental concept of a good OD class that the teams share their knowledge to bring the whole level of the class up and to aid the newcomers.  Steve has always been vocally open about the availability of their Cogito for testing and copying for the willing, all with the intent of resuscitating the class and enhancing the competition.  He is already largely responsible for resurrection of the International Canoe and introduction of skiff sailing in this country.  This year him and Duncan stood up to  the promises and had some honest one-on-one sessions with a new team from Toronto, allowing both boats testing and racing time on the water, a university of efficient yachting, so to speak.  All done, most likely, for the cost of an Americas Cup jib.  Talk about using the dollars efficiently to build a class of hottest boats on the planet.

Worst OD Performance:

Columbia Yachts put forth great effort at shutting down any hope of a viable one-design class of their 30 footers.  Instead of focusing on their rather attractive racing model, they first introduced a wheel steering option for the retards, then chopped one boat and added a few feet to it to let them in good conscious tackle the route to Hawaii, and then, in a spark of brilliance, announced just before the end of the year that they will now also sell the lengthened version of the same boat, but with an aluminum rig. Huh?  We suppose that when you’re selling 3 or 5 boats per year while there is a flood of red hot containers landing from China you gotta do something radical, and so they did.

From worst to first, but then again, this is Sailing Anarchy. Juan K gets it this year for his masterful job drawing the boat that put a beating on the Volvo Ocean race fleet. Or at least what was left of it. Juan anticipated the conditions better, drew the boat for them, and had a stellar team that was able to deliver the goods. Most impressive perhaps is the fact that, unlike many others, the AMRO boats held together through the brutal around the world conditions. Fast and tough, a hell of a combination and deserving of being the top dog. Now he can back to whatever other design weirdness he manages to come up with.

This is not so much an award as a celebration of a very important designer of this century Nigel Irens.  He is a multihull pioneer who also designs very cool boats for more grounded folks.  He designed Ellen’s B&Q tri flawlessly, allowing her to beat the crap out of the boat and herself and take the top solo trophy around the globe in the process from big burly Francis Joyon.  Then he impressed everyone by managing to convert that trophy to two new orders – for Joyon himself and Thomas Coville, in a market hounded by big design firms of VPLP and Multiplast.  We hope the tide stays with Nigel for a long time.

To honor Farr Design in this category yet again for the sunken Movistar would have been akin to beating the proverbial dead horse and besides that tragedy the year has really been an average one for the design community.  It also has been the end of the age of innocence for SA as we ourselves were exploring new grounds of reporting and promotion.  And so it seemed fitting to close the loop and celebrate mediocrity with the one who truly helped us kick start this place – Leif Beiley and whatever it was that he was doing on the design end of the spectrum.  This year Mr. Beiley closed the shop and a collective sigh of relief was heard in the yards where old historical maxis live.  Chances are, they will not meet the fate of Merlin that was unfortunate enough to be “enhanced” under Mr. Beiley’s guidance.  And so we say Adeu to Mr. Beiley the designer.  And thanks!

The marketing effort awards have a common theme this year as they both are about the builders and the way they do things.  The X-Yachts does it right – they develop the specs thoroughly, announce a new model, pre-sell a shitload of boats, and then deliver to the specs, with top quality and well on time.  Sounds boring but we guess that’s just how it works.

Sure it is in complete contrast to the award given below, but perhaps for the first time ever, a boat was almost entirely conceived, developed and marketed on a web site - this one! The Flying Tiger 10M concept was floated out to people, boat design was debated here in our forum (with the very open designer, Robert Perry), and the majority of the first 100 orders were originated from the SA community. An historic effort, one that the majority of the sailing press ignored (jealous, spiteful sons of bitches), and yet in could have been so much better. See below.

As we were in the final stages of contemplation for this trophy we reflected on the exciting events of 2006 – you know, the launching of the most anticipated sportboat destined for the US market to form an affordable class of club racers, the testing of the first six prototypes of these club racers under full tilt racing conditions of the China Cup, the training of Chinese AC team in these boats, the first deliveries to our shores and the first boat show appearances.  We were all giddy not only because our own boats were being built and delivered, but also because it seemed that everything went in line with the builder’s long standing promises of delivering an affordable and, much more importantly, sturdy boat for tough hot racing competition.

Mutliple masts moving in unison, white sails clouding the sky, the yacht graciously leaning into the sea and accelerating down the wave with splendor…not really.  But still, the age of the square riggers is back!  Somewhat.  Thanks to Doyle, Falcon showed some remarkable performance on a rather ancient platform with its unique square rigger package that manages not only to run but also sail at pretty tight angles to the wind.  Perhaps there is no magic to it, perhaps there is.  Either way, Doyle’s team made this unique boat work as intended, for which they get our recognition this year.

May we speak from personal experience? We bought Quantum Sails for our Flying Tiger and love them, plain and simple. They are fast, look good, and a decent value. Plus Q has made major inroads in the TP 52, Farr 40 and other GP arenas, so that tells us that, despite sacking Larry Leonard, they are doing most things right.

This one goes out to all the sailmakers who for whatever reasons, have just not kept up wit the times, either in terms of product, design, marketing, or plain fast sails. Hood, Banks, Sobstad are they three that come to mind. Good job.

Best Sport Boat:

Last year's award went to Open 6.5, which is a very hot carbon rocket
available at an unobtainable price. The year went by and for Jerome
Scaramelli tis was a busy year filling West Coast waters with the
boat's more reasonably priced sistership, Open 5.7, mainly out of his
love for small fast craft that are so sorely lacking in the States.
The boat is hot, and even Sailing World agreed so by giving her that
dreaded BOTY award. Jerome is not worried, however, and continues
shipping the boats to California and now other parts of the country.
At even double the price of this boat, a hotter sportboat package is
simply not available today in our market.

The Esse 850 sure is a sharp little dude. Nice looking, quick and priced in a reasonable way, the boat gained fans right away and has so far proven to be a moderate success. There is a new, bigger Esse coming and we can't wait to see that.

Worst Sport Boat:

The J/92S. Sorry, you don't slap some lipstick on a pig and call it something else. A bit of a clunker when new, it is still the same fat, not very fast hull now, so what's the point?.

Moth defines race like no other boat short of a windsurfer.  What impressed us the most is that they learned to fly on foils en masse, a first class to do so in any sort of a reliable fashion, and then made flying a production purchase option for others by introducing at least three different builder models to the public.  While doing it they seemed to be able to maintain their existing base, no doubt due to quick testing and availability of reliable packages from the builders involved with the class.  They also put forth a well-organized effort to bring the boat into the Olympics, which just might be a success.

Honorable Mention:

Hard not to think the that Farr 40 had a great year. The class continues to thrive, the money players are still there, and despite the boat's age, the class still continues to grow. Pretty impressive actually.

Every one of the modern GP creations with those abrupt cabin house blips looped around the rules to achieve tightest jib sheeting angles possible.  It’s lame, ugly, expensive and a cheap substitute for the skill of efficient rig design.  Some may call it pushing the envelope.  The problem is, the envelope is a brown bag.

The John Podmajersky Douchebag Trophy

One would’ve thought that suing a crew member whose balls are plagued by cancer is a pretty shitty move, but doing it with persistency in the face of raging sailing community is just downright nasty, especially for someone who still comes back to the community for his racing fix.  Thankfully for POD there are many chumps willing to crew for him, most likely for some cash.  So even though he finally dropped the lawsuit this year, we decided to keep alive the memory of what happens when one becomes too full of his or her own shit.

Enough for social courtesies.  The best sailing website in the world is sailinganarchy.com.  We kick ass in every single direction.  Our forums kick ass.  There is yet to be found a sailing vessel that could not be identified by the forum in a matter of days, if not minutes.  This year we introduced audio innerviews, amazing live race coverage, fastest access to race results, interactive race calendar, huge community support for single men, women, gay and fat chicks porn freaks, social miscreants and rodents, multiple fundraisers, probably a first Fatass-type fundraiser on the Internet, and, of course, signed up more advertisers.  We dig it.

Honorable Mention:

It is hard for us to say that it is the Daily Sail, since we've never once looked at it and don't subscribe, but all accounts are that they are good. Oh yeah, BYM News is the absolute best at what they do as well. So there.

Most of the rest out there. You know who you are.  And don't come here for free publicity either, bitches.