For the second year in a row we will be running the “Virtual ISAF Youth Sailing World Championships”. After last years' successful collaboration with ISAF and the team in Dublin, this years' virtual event will take place from 20th May – 30th June 2013, to provide a fun and beneficial build-up to the main regatta to be held in Limassol, Cyprus from 13th – 20th July.

Click HERE to register. Or click HERE to go to the Event Page

Results will be categorised by age and the winning individual in the 'Youth' classification will be awarded with the 'ISAF Youth Virtual Sailing World Championships Trophy'.

Current Classifications

About the ISAF Youth Worlds

The ISAF Youth Worlds is the world's leading championship for youth sailing and attracts thousands of young sailors from all over the world. The event was first held in Sweden in 1971 and the 2013 ISAF Youth Sailing World Championship in Limassol, Cyprus will be the 43rd championship.

The event has attracted thousands of young sailors since its introduction from Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania, North, South and Central America. Recently the introduction of the ISAF Athlete Participation Programme has seen the horizons of the Youth Worlds expand even further and attracted many new nations to the championship. To date, 104 different nations have competed in the Youth Worlds.

Past notable winners include American's Cup skippers, Chris Dickson (NZL), Russell Coutts (NZL), Dean Barker (NZL); Olympic medallists, Ben Ainslie (GBR), Robert Scheidt (BRA), Alessandra Sensini (ITA), Iain Percy (GBR) and Elise Rechichi (AUS); Volvo Ocean Race sailors like Stuart Bannatyne (NZL) and Richard Clarke (CAN). The most successful ISAF Youth World Champions are Great Britain's Sally Cuthbert and Poland's Zofia Klepacka having won four successive titles in the Laser II and Mistral respectively.

Great Britain is the current holder of the NationsTrophy, awarded annually to the top performing nation at the Youth Worlds. The Nations Trophy was first introduced in 1991 and in 1999 became the Volvo Trophy until 2010. France is the most success nation through the history of the Championship, winning the Nations Trophy on a record eleven occasions and holding a record 70 medals: 22 gold, 30 silver and 18 bronze.

Click HERE to go to the real event website

One thing that all SailX users experience when they start is the 'strange' way we have to control our boats in this virtual environment.

Unlike other simulators, users are not given direct control of the boat (wheel, rudder). SailX is like you being the coach: you give a command and the skipper obliges.

The commands you give are mapped to the keys, we have a key to TACK, a key to tell the skipper to drive by the telltales....

Steve Hunt has created a couple videos to help newbies to use the keys.

We will provide the links in several places for guests and users who have not finished races yet hoping to shorten the 'learning curve'

SailX Page with the videos with this button:

Direct youtube access to Part 1: http://youtu.be/UhzOeB_SloE

Direct youtube access to Part 2: http://youtu.be/qgwrFnRSGMs

FINISHING THE FIRST-EVER “VIRTUAL SAILING CANADIAN NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS”

EVENT FINISHED !

Sail Canada is proud to join US Sailing and RYA in collaborating with the award-winning inshore sailboat racing and training game SailX.com, and the co-hosting of the first ever “Virtual Sailing Canadian National Championships”. This free-to-play online regatta kicked off on the 18th March 2013 and has continued for a total of six weeks.

The event was FREE for all SailX registered users and races took place everyday at 2100, 0000, 0300 and 0600 GMT.

Click HERE for more information.

If you missed the six previous videos from Steve Hunt, all-round sailboat racing legend and 'S1D Coach of the Year' (congrats Steve), then this video is for you. Alternatively if you, like us, could do with a recap then you will find that this video is a good use of your time! Please share this as widely as you can (we have also announced it on Facebook and Twitter) - Steve put a lot of work into this Series and we would like to return the favour with some profile-building. If we are lucky he might even agree to do a more advanced series. We have discussed it ...

For those of you who don't know Steve, as well as being one of the top ranking sailors on SailX (aka flow) Steve is a professional sailor and coach of the highest calibre: seven-year member of the US Olympic Team in the 470 Class, two-time Etchells World Champion, Congressional Cup Winner and recent tactician to Bill Hardesty, Rolex Yachtsman of the year ... need we say any more?! Not much except that we are super proud that Steve enjoys SailX and that he has got enough from it over the years to feel like 'giving-back' to the SailX community in this way.

The idea came about when Steve gave a coaching seminar at his local yacht club in San Diego using SailX and posted a short video of that session online HERE. The coaching was very well received - including by many who had never seen SailX before. Quite by chance we saw the video and contacted Steve to see if he would be interested in doing some more of the same. The end result is this six-part video coaching series which Steve has loosely based on a popular series of coaching articles he wrote for Sailing World - HERE.

Enjoy,

The SailX Team.