What Was The Most Successful Ocean Race Yacht Ever Made?

As professional composite boat builders with over four decades specialising in Olympic Sailing, one aspect of sailing that we find especially fascinating is just how vastly different many of the most prestigious regattas in the world are.

Because of our ambition, we are also drawn to and inspired by the superlative craft of the past, including one particular yacht that managed to achieve a feat believed to be impossible, one that has never been repeated since.

The Ocean Race, previously known as the Whitbread Round The World Race, is a mammoth test of endurance with almost no precedent in any other discipline. Racing crews of up to ten people will sail for over three weeks at a time non-stop between legs of the race.

Because of the sheer scale of the regatta, it is typically run once every three years, and the 1989-90 edition of the race was perhaps the most fascinating and most influential for racers, 

boat builders and the racing organisation itself.

This fifth edition of the race was run from the port of Southampton to Punta del Este in Uruguay, then to Fremantle in Australia, to Auckland in New Zealand, back to Punta Del Este, then to Fort Lauderdale in the United States and finally to Southampton.

Whilst yacht designer Bruce Farr had competed in the Round The World Race since 1981 and would win four in a row from 1986 until 1998, Steinlager 2 was his crowning achievement.

It was the longest, fastest craft he had developed thus far, designed around many of the crew who would attempt to take it around the world. It used cutting-edge materials for the time, an exacting level of precision and benefited from the expertise of a crew who had seen how every part had been built.

It won every single leg of the trip both with its handicap and in the overall running, something that had not been done before and would never be done again.

Following Steinlager 2’s success, the 1993-4 edition would begin the shift away from more open class-based racing towards a unified design, a format that has remained ever since.