A new boat for twenty-three crews
The Virginie Heriot Trophy returns to Monegasque waters from Friday, with twenty-three all-female crews, a change of boat to the RS21, and the defending Royal Thames crew back to be beaten. The first warning signal is scheduled for 1pm.
The fairest regatta on the Monaco calendar has changed its boat. The Virginie Heriot Trophy, organised by the Yacht Club de Monaco in partnership with FxPro and North Sails, is raced from Friday to Sunday in the waters off the principality with twenty-three all-female crews expected, and for the first time the fleet will sail RS21s. Last year's edition used J/70s. As before, the boats are identical one-designs provided and shared by the organisers, so the contest is settled by crews rather than equipment; the club's Notice of Race caps entry at twenty-four teams of four or five sailors, all of them women.
The entry list is properly international. The United States is represented by teams from the Manhattan Yacht Club, the Indian Harbor Yacht Club and the New York Yacht Club, and crews from the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Italy and France are also expected. Monaco fields three teams, among them Pink Wave, a collective of women members of the Yacht Club racing on home water, where local knowledge of the bay is the one advantage the format cannot equalise.
The crew to beat is British. The Royal Thames Yacht Club returns as defending champion, having won all three races on the opening day of the March 2025 edition and taken the title ahead of the Lausanne Sailing Club and a German crew from the Regatta Verein Greifswald. A change of boat is the classic leveller in one-design racing: every crew, champions included, must learn the RS21 from the same starting line, and the Yacht Club's own preview judged that mastering the new boat quickly could decide the weekend from the first races.
Behind the trophy stands the sailor it honours. Virginie Heriot, known as Madame de la Mer, won Olympic gold with the French crew of Aile VI in the 8 Metre class at Amsterdam in 1928, becoming the first woman to win an Olympic sailing title, and a year later the same yacht won the Coupe de France against the English. The Monaco event, launched in 2023 and raced for two editions as Women Leading and Sailing, was renamed for Heriot in 2025, the Yacht Club records. There is a neatness in the arrangement the club itself noted: nearly a century after Heriot beat the English, an English crew arrives in her waters as the team to beat.
Racing begins with a first warning signal scheduled for 1pm on Friday, and continues from 11am on Saturday and Sunday. By Sunday evening, one of the twenty-three crews will have mastered the new boat best. The trophy's young history suggests the lesson of the weekend in advance: in a shared fleet on home water, reputation counts for less than the first afternoon's learning curve.
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