The Magellan Cup

The Magellan Cup is not your standard round-the-cans race — it’s a 12-hour sailing adventure where strategy matters just as much as speed.

Here’s the format in a nutshell:

You get 12 hours to sail the greatest possible distance, measured as a straight-line course between the waypoints you choose yourself. Each boat can nominate 1 to 3 waypoints, in any order, and you must round all of them. That means every entry gets to build its own challenge based on the conditions, the forecast, and your boat’s strengths.

To make things even more interesting, Landfall is your Joker mark — you can use it as many times as you like without nominating it. So there’s huge room for tactical thinking: go long, go clever, play the shifts, and design the course that gives your team the best shot at maximum miles.

The start and finish are both virtual lines at Landfall, so this is a race that rewards independence, navigation, and smart decision-making. You record your own start, rounding, and finish times with GPS evidence, which adds to the challenge and makes it a true sailor’s event.

A few things make it especially exciting:

• You only need 2 hours of sailing to be scored
• You nominate your waypoints by WhatsApp before you start
• You can shape your race around weather, tactics, endurance, and ambition
• No two boats need to sail the same course

It’s part endurance challenge, part navigation puzzle, part tactical battle — and that’s what makes The Magellan Cup so addictive.

If you enjoy offshore thinking, making your own calls, and squeezing every mile out of the day, this is one you’ll want to enter.

Further details can be found on https://www.sssa.africa/magellan-2026/