A South African yachtsman who made news around the world yesterday after pictures emerged of his boat being leapt on by a whale has denied claims that he had somehow provoked the cetacean into defending itself.

Ralph Mothes and his sailing companion Paloma Werner were cruising in their 32ft steel yacht, Intrepid, off the coast of south-west South Africa on Sunday when the whale decided it would try and pass over - not under - the boat.

The southern right whale, estimated to be around 33ft long and weighing in at 40 tons, smashed into the yacht's topsides, ripping off the mast and luckily leaving the two on board completely unharmed.

To see the photo after the whale landed on the boat, click here: http://www.mby.com/news/492554/yacht-skipper-we-didn-t-provoke-whale-photos-a...

Day three of the British Classic Yacht Club Panerai Cowes Regatta saw the fleet of classic yachts undertake a long distance race in simply glorious weather conditions. The complex 35 mile course took the competitors to some of the far reaches of the Solent and presented the navigators and tacticians, who had to plot their way through capricious tides and a multitude of hidden sandbanks, with numerous head scratching moments. Today’s race got under way this morning at 1000 with the entire 52 fleet boat setting off together from a long committee boat start line off Cowes. Under clear blue skies and in around ten to 12 knots of breeze, the regatta fleet was a magnificent sight as the yachts initially beat westward for several miles before turning at Lymington for a long run back down the Solent under spinnaker.

Read the full story here: http://www.thedailysail.com/inshore/10/56106/british-classic-yacht-club-paner...

Here’s the video from our boat test on X-Yacht’s new flagship cruising model. The full report is in the YW August issue out from today

The Xc50 is the new flagship of X-Yacht's two-year old cruising range. The first 45ft model was an instant success, scooping the European Yacht of the Year award in the luxury cruiser category last year, since when a 42 launched, and a 38 is due to complete the line this autumn. But was the 45 (and similar 42) a one-hit wonder, or have X-Yachts managed to distill its virtues into a 5ft longer, 3T heavier interpretation - and if so, who's it for and what does it offer over the 45?

YW got onboard for two days of testing on her home waters in Haderslev, Denmark just two weeks after she launched to find out. Here's the video taken by Ocean Images' Richard Langdon, much of it while hanging out the side of a helicopter.

Experiments will be conducted in Valencia this weekend to evaluate monohulls and multihulls and to test innovative media coverage.

With a view towards helping determine if a monohull or multihull is better suited for America's Cup racing, event planners have scheduled four days of trials here to develop methods for making the racing more enthralling for fans, more challenging for crews and better portrayed on television screens around the world.

Concept papers for a new monohull and multihull design were issued on 2 July to independent rule writers in the UK and US. The trials, 22-25 July, will help confirm certain parameters of the new yacht, including reduced crew numbers to place a premium on boathandling. Not only will the format of racing and type of boat come under scrutiny, but also television production.

The America's Cup Media Evaluation Team has solicited opinions from a wide array of broadcasters, digital media and technology companies in Europe and the US on how to make the racing more dramatic on-line, on-screen and on TV. Accepted standards of Cup racing are being challenged in the trials and no thought will be ignored in the quest to create the most compelling television production and delivering it to the widest-ever audience.

Team Origin set out on their third AudiMedCup regatta in Barcelona with hopes of victory higher than ever despite the disruption and distractions that have plagued the British America's Cup contenders in recent weeks.

Two crew changes were unveiled following their domination of the practice race on Tuesday in which they fought off challenges from the ten other teams including 2009 champions Emirates Team New Zealand, who also top the 2010 leaderboard after two events.

The serious business gets underway on Wednesday with Team Origin skipper Ben Ainslie admitting to a new found confidence and direction among his team following some troubled times which led to the sacking of both former director Mike Sanderson and the Argentinian designer of their new TP52, Juan Koumoudjian.

Team Origin lies fifth overall after a mix of results at the first regatta in Cascais and then at Marseilles last month. While producing strong performances on the windward-leeward courses, they have struggled in the long coastal races in which their downwind speeds have proved disappointing.

Five days of racing starts on Wednesday with gentle 10 knot winds forecast each day. A coastal race may be left off the schedule if conditions favour the windward-leeward options.

"Last week I spent sometime sailing the Finn in Lymington, it was hard work and the body suffered a bit, however it has enabled me to get enough training in to be able to confirm I'll be competing at the Skandia Sail for Gold Regatta at the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy (9 - 14 August 2010).

I've not raced a Finn since Beijing 2008 so it's will be almost 2 years to the day, but doing this year's Sail for Gold was on the cards as long as it fitted in with the rest of our TEAMORIGIN schedule. I think Sail for Gold is a really important regatta for me to attend to not only check in with where the rest of the Finn fleet are, and what developments have taken place since I've been away, but also to familiarise myself with the venue and conditions as I've actually not raced an Olympic Class boat at Weymouth and Portland for about five or six years.

I have to accept I'm not going to be 100 percent race ready, 100 percent Finn fit and a t my ideal racing weight, and I'm sure it will be frustrating for me at times not being able to do things I'd normally take for granted, but the benefits of competing far outweigh any frustrations I may experience as long as I'm realistic, and possibly more importantly, other people are realistic about what I can achieve on such limited preparation.

Sailing may not be as popular as football in this country, but hosting the world's premier regatta would pack at least three times the economic punch for San Francisco as a Super Bowl.

That's the assessment of a new economic study obtained by The Chronicle that found that holding the next America's Cup here in either 2013 or 2014 would infuse $1.4 billion into the Bay Area's economy - the vast majority of it in San Francisco - and generate 8,800 jobs, from prep cooks to engineers. Hosting a Super Bowl generates between $300 million and $500 million on average.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/18/MNQD1EFJJ3.DTL#ixzz0uDE2uMns

The Extreme 40 fleet were pushed to their limits in an exhilarating finale to the first ever World Championship. With winds gusting up to 20 knots blowing through the bay at Portoroz, Slovenia, the fleet proved exactly why these boats are called ‘Extreme’.

The final day’s racing saw a change of conditions from the rest of the five-day regatta, with a storm sweeping through Portoroz overnight bringing strong winds and rain showers. However the testing conditions were dealt with expertly by the Extreme 40 crews, made up from sailing talent from across the globe including Olympic gold medallists, world and national champions, top ocean racers and America’s Cup veterans.

Read the full story here: http://www.extreme40worlds.com/news/a-thrilling-finale-to-the-first-ever-extr...

You could feel the tension on the dock, with virtually all the classes still to be decided, as the yachts motored out to the combat zone along the narrow confines of the Owenabue River. The conditions had eased from the previous maelstrom, but this was a day were smart sailing put boats in winning positions.

Watery sunshine, 15 knots from the northwest were to provide some tricky conditions for all classes. Cork Harbour and the surrounding area have huge land effects on the wind, especially today, the gradient made for constant changes.

It proved to be a day for keeping heads out of the boat, looking for changes in the weather. However, that is only one part of the overall puzzle. Boat-on-boat tactics and strong tides are also in the mix. Racing today at Cork Week was like a game of three-dimensional chess.

Read the full story here: http://www.corkweek.ie/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=171:the-final-chapter&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=117

Mother nature played ball for the last day of the Delta Lloyd 470 World Championship taking place in The Hague, with brilliant sunshine and a 12 knot southwesterly breeze for the Men's and Women's medal races, held directly off the beach at the Hague.

In the Men's race Australians Matt Belcher and Malcolm Page had secured gold through their 20 point lead yesterday to claim the Men's World Championship title. 'This is my fifth World Championship win and every one of them has been hard," commented Page. Belcher added: 'This year our goals were to win one event outside of Europe, one grade 1 event and to win the World Cup and to medal at the Worlds. This has been a marathon and by day three it felt like we had run 30km already..." They have more than achieved on their objective for in addition to their latest title, Belcher and Page have also sewn up the 2010 ISAF Sailing World Cup, with an event to spare.

With gold secure, the fight was fully on for the remaining podium positions between six boats. In the end it was France's Beijing bronze medallist Nicolas Charbonnier, sailing with Baptiste Meyer Dieu, who won the men's medal race to take the silver, passing the medal race's early leaders, Croats Sime Fantela and Igor Marenic, who took bronze. Second going into the medal race, Greece's Panagiotis Mantis and Pavlos Kagialis came home ninth, dropping them to fifth overall behind Skandia Team GBR's Nic Asher and Elliot Willis.

Read the full story here: http://www.470worlds2010.com/news.asp?newsid=229