Save the Date: Shorthanded Sailing Seminar to be held this November

07 NOVEMBER 2026, 0930-1400, NEWPORT YACHT CLUB - Introduction to shorthanded sailing, including issues surrounding racing short handed

A presentation by Phil Haydon* and Joe Cooper*

Topics to be covered include:

• What does shorthanded really mean?

   

• What is the best boat

   

• The shorthanded mindset

   

• How do the safety issues change from full crew to shorthanded?

   

• What is needed in the sail inventory?

   

• Navigating while on deck

Tips techniques and practical lessons drawing on many years and miles of experiences. The session will be interactive with many opportunities for Q&A

Our goal is to:

• Spread the experience we have accumulated over the years

   

• Encourage more sailors to come and join us in the Shorthanded races

   we know and love

• Give others the knowledge they need so we don’t have to read about

them in Windcheck in December/January…

Dr Phil Haydon, Ph.D. is a Neuroscientist by trade, recently retired from teaching and research. He took up sailing 18 years ago, participating in his first Bermuda 1-2 on his Catalina 350. Quickly falling in love with the short-handed offshore genre of sailing he purchased a Quest 33, did another BDA 1-2 then moved onto a Sun Fast 3300. In 2024 he won the Double handed division of the Newport to Bermuda a Race. He has also skippered a fifty-foot Cat transatlantic from Florida to Spain. This summer he has won the Newport YC’s Offshore 160, a solo race around Block Island Sound. AND most recently he took second with co-skipper Lauren Zike in the New England Solo Ttwin. Due in part to being an epileptic he is very familiar with the nuances of sleep and related issues when sailing offshore shorthanded. He has recently formed Offshore Shorthanded Academy (OSA) as a mechanism to educate others in the art of shorthanded sailing.

Joe “Coop” Cooper comes from the other end of the sailing spectrum. Beginning as a two-year-old sailing with his father in Australia, as a teenager he campaigned in the Finn Class for the 1980 Olympics, has sailed in two America’s Cup’s, sailed Transatlantic and Transpacific passages shorthanded, campaigned a Mini Transat 6.50 for the 1995 Mini Transat race and has won the DH leg of the Bermuda 1-2, class and Fleet. And taken three podium finishes of four participations in the Halifax race Double Handed class. He has won the DH class in the Vineyard Race too. He has been a driving force in the promotion of Shorthanded sailing from New York to Newport over the years including founding the DH class in the Block Island and Vineyard races. Following a 35-year career with Hood sailmakers and lately Quantum Sails, he is settling into Coaching and consulting under the banner of Joe Cooper Sailing. Coop is also the coach of The Prout School Sailing Team.