It’s not often that a sailboat racing article that’s not the America’s Cup gets into the New York Times, but that’s exactly what happened. We’ve been following Greg Slyngstad’s Bieker-designed Fujin since its launch and through its dramatic capsize, and now that Todd Slyngstad’s HH66 Nemo isn’t hindered by Covid, we’re bound to see some great multihull racing in the Caribbean in the coming months and beyond. See David Schmidt’s article here.
Here’s a taste of the piece to get you started:
Brotherly Love Has Its Limits When Sailing
By David Schmidt
It’s an old sailing joke that whenever two or more sailboats are within sight and on similar courses, they are informally racing.
Now, imagine that you are sailing in a world-class regatta and your brother owns one of the other yachts.
That is facing Greg and Todd Slyngstad, brothers who are scheduled to race their high-performance catamarans in the same multihull class at this year’s Les Voiles de St. Barth Richard Mille.
The brothers grew up in San Jose, Calif., and learned to sail on Monterey Bay as children, but serious racing came later. Greg, 67, and now retired, moved to Seattle almost 40 years ago and spent his career in the tech industry, including at Microsoft, Expedia and Kayak. Todd, 58, and the youngest of the family’s eight siblings, lives in Santa Cruz, Calif., and he owns a grading and paving company.
Kurt grew up racing and cruising in the Midwest, and has raced Lasers since the late 1970s. Currently he is a broker at Swiftsure Yachts. He has been Assistant Editor at Sailing Magazine and a short stint as Editor of Northwest Yachting. Through Meadow Point Publishing he handles various marketing duties for smaller local companies. He currently is partners on a C&C 36 which he cruises throughout the Northwest. He’s married to the amazing Abby and is father to Ian and Gabe.