2020 Pittman Innovation Awards

One of the neat things about sailing is the incredible variety of equipment that sailors use while doing it, whether crossing oceans or just out for a daysail—one of the many reasons why even after all these years SAIL magazine’s annual Pittman Innovation Awards remain as fresh and as fascinating as ever.

Consider some of this year’s winners.

On the one hand, you have products as complicated as the overall winner, Vesper Marine with its new AIS/VHF system, or Maretron’s N2KView Anchoring Module, which among other things can warn you if you are going to hit bottom in a particular spot at low tide.

On the other, you have something as simple as a better way of securing the yarns racers like to use when packing away their spinnakers, that and a better way of stowing away a water bottle aboard a racing dinghy. Amazing!

As always, SAIL’s late products editor Freeman K. Pittman, for whom these annual innovation awards are named, would have been impressed. For the full report, click here.