Sailing, Fast

This is a timelapse video aboard Godzilla, a J29 sailing vessel, captured during a Thursday night race.

These races happen almost every week—nothing particularly special about this one. It’s just another evening on the water. But the moment felt worth capturing. Not because it was important, but because it was beautiful. We had a blast.

Originally, this was just a random experiment. We clipped a GoPro to the back railing and hit record.

But later, watching it back, something surprising emerged: patterns. Crew movements, sail trim, course choices—stuff we’d normally forget five minutes later. It turns out that recording (and timelapsing) is actually a pretty valuable tool for improving sailing performance.

That said, we didn’t use it for that.

The process was dead simple:

• One GoPro mounted to the stern rail.
• Continuous recording through the race.
• Sped up in Final Cut Pro to condense a full evening into just a few minutes of fluid motion.

The final result is less about competition and more about motion, rhythm, light. A kind of moving sketch of a night on the water.