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Caribbean’s only off­shore race sets sail to its fifth edi­tion with a record num­ber of entries of over 50 yachts rep­re­sent­ing 28 nations: Organ­ised by the Royal Ocean Rac­ing Club and hosted by Antigua Yacht Club, the 2013 RORC Caribbean 600 ocean race starts upcom­ing Mon­day, 18th Feb­ru­ary, set­ting off from Fort Char­lotte, just out­side his­toric Antigua Eng­lish Har­bour. In heav­enly Caribbean sail­ing con­di­tions with warm trade winds, the 600 nau­ti­cal mile course takes the fleet around eleven Caribbean islands includ­ing Nevis, St. Kitts, Saba and Saint Barths before cir­cling St. Mar­tin and head­ing south around Guade­loupe before fin­ish­ing in Antigua.

The off­shore race with the same mileage dis­tance as leg­endary Rolex Fast­net Race, sees the IRC Zero class as the largest one at this year’s RORC Caribbean 600 edi­tion with six­teen con­firmed entries. Includ­ing rac­ing yachts such as Amer­i­can ‘Bella Mente’ Yacht by owner Hap Fauth and 92-foot French ‘Med Spirit’ Super­maxi owned by Didier Lacombe and skip­pered by round the world sailor Vladimir Kulinichenko. This year’s fifth edi­tion has nine yachts over 90ft in lenght and two impres­sive schooners com­pet­ing in the ‘Spirit of Tra­di­tion Class’. 180-ft clas­sic schooner Adela will com­pete against her 203ft arch-rival Athos, the largest yacht this sea­son. Among this year’s impres­sive supery­acht entries as well: Baltic 112 Nilaya Yacht and Ger­man Ker 51 „Varuna’ rac­ing yacht owned by Jens Kellinghusen. Rac­ing in the mul­ti­hull class, Lloyd Thornburg’s Gun­boat 66 ‘Phaedo’! View all 2013 RORC Caribbean 600 Entries and Fol­low the fleet – all com­pet­ing yachts will be fit­ted with the lat­est track­ers from Yellowbrick!

Baltic 112 Nilaya Supery­acht, island Capri reflected on her hull, Crew wear­ing Gaas­tra Pro Gear, Photo By: Kurt Arrigo/Rolex

Gaas­tra pho­tog­ra­pher Kurt Arrigo has been named win­ner of the Yacht Rac­ing Image of the Year Award 2012, pre­sented by Mirabaud, which has been awarded yes­ter­day dur­ing the World Yacht Rac­ing Forum in Gothen­burg, Swe­den. Con­grat­u­la­tions! The inter­na­tional jury made of Ben Ainslie, Shirley Robert­son, Chris­t­ian Février, Will Mor­ris and Anto­nio Palma, made the final choice for this year’s best sail­ing photo fea­tur­ing the 112 ft Baltic Nilaya Yacht, cap­tured dur­ing this year’s Rolex Vol­cano Race edi­tion out of a heli­copter. The amaz­ing yacht rac­ing image shows the Ital­ian island Capri reflect­ing on the superyacht’s hull and Nilaya’s crew geared up in Gaas­tra Pro sail­ing cloth­ing.

Arrigo, soon after being awarded, said: ‘The weather had been bad all day, but the sun sud­denly came out for a short while. We were leav­ing the area but I asked the pilot of the heli­copter to fly back briefly over the lead­ing boat; that’s when I took this pho­to­graph.’ Ian Roman came sec­ond at the Yacht Rac­ing Image of the Year Award 2012, pho­tog­ra­pher Thierry Mar­tinez (last year’s win­ner) third, Tom Gruitt forth and Matias Capiz­zano fifth. In total, pho­tographs by 48 inter­na­tional yacht rac­ing pho­tog­ra­phers from all over the world have been submitted.

Amevi Yacht, Oceanco ship­yard, off Ibiza in July 2012, Cre­ative Com­mons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, User JanManu

Whether in Monaco, Saint-Tropez or Porto Cervo: Lux­ury yachts are famously located at the world’s finest mari­nas. In our new Gaas­tra Blog series, we’re pre­sent­ing spe­cial super-, mega– and sail­ing yachts so you can take a plunge into the world of lux­ury yachts. Today we go on board of the Amevi, an 80m long supery­acht built by the Dutch ship­yard Oceanco and Azure naval archi­tects. She’s offer­ing space for 12 guests in sev­eral supe­rior suites, 22 crew mem­bers and cap­ti­vates by her beau­ti­ful mod­ern lines and strik­ing vol­umes. The exclu­sive Amevi yacht’s exte­rior design is by Nuvolari Lenard, the pompous inte­rior design by Alberto Pinto. On the pri­vate exte­rior deck we find two whirlpools, in the inte­rior a spa and fit­ness cen­ter, a cin­ema area and a pool table on hydraulic sta­bi­lizer. Amevi, cus­tom built in 2007, has a max speed of 20.00 knots equipped with 2 x 4,680hp engines. The supery­acht worth sev­eral mil­lions is also avail­able for yacht char­ter­ing – for a price of 700.000 Euro. So tak­ing many friends is to be recommended!

The lat­est Oceanco yacht from the Y707 line (80m +) is the 88.5m long Sam Sor­gio­vanni designed Nir­vana yacht, which debuted at the Monaco Yacht Show 2012 last Sep­tem­ber. Oceanco ship­yard is based in All­blasser­dam, Nether­lands, cel­e­brat­ing its 25^th jubilee this year. The yacht com­pany with its fine tra­di­tion of yacht build­ing has build 23 yachts since its for­ma­tion. Quite recently, the Oceanco ship­yard report­edly signed a con­tract by buyer Moran Yacht & Ship for a sail­ing supery­acht: It will be the world’s largest sail­ing yacht built in the Nether­lands! Named ‘Solar’, it will mea­sure 108 meters and fea­ture a unique array of Green yacht tech­nolo­gies to be oper­ated entirely on solar power. In addi­tion, ‘Solar’ yacht will be fea­tured by an aero­dy­nam­i­cally effi­cient DynaRig con­cept. Com­ple­tion is planned for 2015.  

Supery­acht Cup Palma 2012, High­land Breeze Yacht spon­sored by Gaastra

Europe’s longest run­ning supery­acht regatta in the Mediter­ranean, the Supery­acht Cup Palma with Gaas­tra as Gold Spon­sor and the Real Club Nau­tico de Palma (RCNP) and the Supery­acht Rac­ing Asso­ci­a­tion amongst oth­ers as part­ners, was held last week run­ning from 20–23 June 2012 at the Bay of Palma. Despite a smaller fleet due to the spe­cial sit­u­a­tion this year, a range of strik­ing supery­achts as the Gaas­tra spon­sored 34m Nautor’s Swan High­land Breeze Yacht entered the Mal­lorca regatta in its 16^th year — the crew came first place in class one. Place two in this class came 35m Hoek Design Fire­fly Yacht, third 45m Trip Design Saudade Yacht. Within the over­all results, the 40m Royal Huis­man Maria Cat­tiva Yacht com­pleted first, sec­ond the Dutch crew on the 27m Claasen Jacht­bouw Ata­lante Yacht and third the Dutch team of High­land Breeze Yacht.

Edi­tor David Glenn of the Yacht­ing World Mag­a­zine met the chal­lenge as well on the This is Us Yacht at the Supery­acht Cup Palma 2012. Next upcom­ing regatta will be the Supery­acht Cup Cowes 2012 from 22–25 July. The UK Supery­acht regatta will be held firstly this year as a spe­cial cel­e­bra­tion of the Lon­don 2012 Sum­mer Olympics. The count­down to the next, pres­ti­gious Palma sail­ing regatta has also started: The Copa del Rey Regatta 2012 from 14–21 July with Gaas­tra as the offi­cial cloth­ing sup­plier. Dis­cover your favourite pieces of the brand-new Gaas­tra Copa del Rey Col­lec­tion 2012 in advance! 

High­land Breeze Yacht spon­sored by Gaas­tra at Supery­acht Cup Palma 2012

Supery­acht Cup Palma 2012, High­land Breeze Yacht Crew

Supery­acht Cup Palma 2012, Gold Spon­sor Gaastra

Dubai Inter­na­tional Boat Show 2012, Gaas­tra Blog con­grat­u­lates to its 20th Anniversary!

Twenty years of glam­our, gloss and inter­na­tional boat celebrity: The Dubai Inter­na­tional Boat Show cel­e­brates in 2012 its 20^th anniver­sary – namely run­ning from 13–17 march at the Dubai Inter­na­tional Marine Club Mina Seyahi. Gaas­tra Blog says ‘Con­grat­u­la­tions!’. The lead­ing boat show and marine event in the Mid­dle East will roll out the red car­pets this year unpreceden-tedly for 750 inter­na­tional and regional exhibitors from over­all forty nations. Amongst them, more than one hun­dred new exhibitors will show­case their lat­est inno­va­tions at the Dubai Exhi­bi­tion Cen­tre in march 2012: Afresh on spot of the lux­ury boat show will be from Ger­many Fehrmann Yacht Engi­neer­ing, Old­en­burger Yacht Inte­rior and Pien­ing Pro­peller, from the Nether­lands the Dutch Truster Group and Mavé boat equip­ment as well as Milano Tele­port and RE-Boat Srl from Italy and many many more.

Open to trade vis­i­tors and gen­eral pub­lic, you can expe­ri­ence at the Dubai Inter­na­tional Boat Show 2012 exclu­sive Supery­achts of 25 metres and above on the ‘Supery­acht Boule­vard’ as well as in the ‘Supery­acht Pavil­lon’ – true cen­tre­pieces of the marine event with lead­ing yacht builders and ship­yards pre­sent­ing their prod­ucts and ser­vices. Due to the strong demand this year, the boat show’s exter­nal area has expanded in addi­tion to 30 % for small and medium lux­ury, leisure, power– and sail­ing boats. Wit­ness the world of glam­our on water at the lux­ury and bur­geon­ing ambi­ence to the 20th anniver­sary: Dubai Inter­na­tional Boat Show Tick­ets 2012 are com­fort­ably avail­able online. You are still look­ing for the per­fect match­ing nau­ti­cal fash­ion? In the offi­cial Gaas­tra Online Shop you will strike it rich with the largest assort­ment of high-value, mar­itime Gaas­tra Sports­wear Fash­ion and Gaas­tra Shoes includ­ing world­wide and fast deliv­ery service!