Ocean Racing #4
Senaste numret av Ocean Racing finns här. Som vanligt fräscha bilder och örnkoll på det mesta.
AMERICA’S CUP: the latest revelations about the power struggle between the Americans and the Swiss and the great debate about the organisation of the next Cup. A major investigation into the Cup War, written by our specialists, Daniel Charles, Dominic Bourgeois and Camille El Beze, can be read in this issue.
VENDEE GLOBE: the ocean race continues to enthral. No fewer than 27 Open 60’ are preparing for this major event of the 2008 Vendée Globe. You will be able to see in this issue the very latest 60-footers to be launched and those that are about to be completed.
MAJOR RECORDS: Two new giant multihulls have been launched (trimarans for the round-the-world yachtsmen, Francis Joyon and Thomas Coville), while others are under construction (the future G.Class trimaran Banque Populaire). The round the world route looks like becoming very busy this winter.
THIRTY YEARS OF THE MINI TRANSAT: a look back at the great idea that a certain Bob Salmon had back in 1977, when he came up with the idea of a transatlantic race for very small boats. Thirty years on, and the Mini Transat has become the most international of ocean races.
Alla nummer hittills:
Fler snabba Novor till salu
Ornö Runt, där Pär för andra året i rad blev bästa enskrovsbåt. Foto: Johan Granath/skota.se.
Nu skall familjen Lindforss också sälja sin Nova. Så den som är på jakt efter en snabb & välvårdad båt och/eller schyssta segel skickar ett mail till Pär Lindforss på info@lindforssegel.nu.
Vi gjorde i alla fall vad vi kunde för att få LYS-talet höjt, men det verkar inte vara så lätt :-)
Ryktet säger att det är en IRC-cruiser/racer på gång. Vad skall han med en sån till? Har inte han heller förstått att IMS är den enda rättvisa handikapp-regeln. Otroligt…
Trippeln för “Shiva”?
The boat to beat! Matt Boyle i “Shiva” var en av de killar som jag träffade i Hamble innan det blev en J/109. Han har i år vunnit Cowes Week och EuroCup och är såklart favorit när sjutton J/109 kommer till start på J-Cup senare idag.
Spana in gennakertrimmet. Sweet!
On Thursday 23rd of August fifty-four J-Boats will commence three days battle at the J-Cup 2007. The regatta will be held in Plymouth.
The J-Cup is a regatta exclusively for racing yachts of the J-Boats brand and all J-Boats models, from the eight metre J/80 Sportsboat up to the twenty metre J/65, are eligible to compete. This year, the smallest boats taking part in the event will indeed be a fleet J/80 Sportsboats, a number of which race regularly in the Port of Plymouth. The largest boat on the water will be the J/133 which measures in at just over thirteen metres. The J-Cup regatta incorporates the 2007 UK National Championship for the fleet of 35 foot J/109s. They will be racing in class, on a boat on boat, first across the line basis.
The event is being hosted by the Royal Western Yacht Club under the watchful eyes of the Club’s Rear ‘Commodore for Sailing’ Chris Arscott (who will be shore-based) and the ‘Principal Race Officer’ Mike Pearson, who manages all of the racing on the water. A team of over forty local volunteers and helpers have also been drafted in to help in order to ensure that the event runs smoothly. Three days of racing are planned, with live music and entertainment every night for competitors. The event culminates in a huge gala dinner and prize-giving ceremony for over 400 people on the final Saturday night. Chris Arscott said ‘This is one of the biggest and most prestigious regattas ever hosted by the Royal Western Yacht Club.’
Yachts will race in five classes and competitors have traveled from all around the UK to attend the event. There are a number of local Plymouth based boats competing, as well as yacht racing experts who have jetted in from foreign climes in order to take part. All but two of the boats which will be racing in Plymouth will be flying the huge asymmetric spinnakers from retractable carbon ‘bowsprits’ (for which the J-Boats are famous) on the downwind legs of the race-track. This makes them a distinctive and exciting fleet for spectators watching from the water, the beaches surrounding the Sound, or from the Hoe. Many of the yachts which will be competing at the J-Cup have also taken part in the recent Fastnet Race and the skippers will no doubt be hoping for some fair weather to add to the enjoyment for competitors and spectators alike.
The largest Class at the event, Class J (with seventeen entries) is the J/109 Class. These one-design racing yachts will be competing for their National Championship title. One of the favourites to win must be the 2007 Cowes Week winner and winner of the 2007 J/109 EuroCup which takes place in Deauville each year. Matt Boyle who helms Shiva said ‘Like Manchester United’s Alex Ferguson, I’m going for the treble this year’.
Boyle won’t have it easy in this Class and the game is certainly not over until the final whistle. Other hot contenders will be the current National Champions, Mike Ewart-Smith and Ben Richards racing Zelda and Jeff Dakin and Bruce Jubb in Johnny Blue II who gave Shiva a good run for her money at Deauville. A number of Westcountry boats including Chris Burrell and Peter Rowe’s Plymouth based Ju Kyu could well be up at the top of the J/109 league.
As with the J/109s, the J/80 Sportsboats in Class 4 are all exactly the same, so the first boat to cross the finish line wins the race. A strong, largely Plymouth based fleet will be racing at the J-Cup. Many of the competing J/80s have also taken part in the J/80 World Championship which was held in France earlier in the year, so the standards will be high. Plymouth’s own Nick Over (the Fleet Captain) must be looking good in Jalapeno, based on his experience and his time spent in the boat. That said, newcomer to the Class Tim Dewing who will be racing Jack in a Box is an entirely unknown quantity. We shall see…
The J/105s in Class 2 are yet another one-design Class. Given any breeze at all these fantastic looking 34 footers will be blasting round the Sound. Kirsty and David Apthorp who race J-Dream are the current J/105 National Champions and also holders of the 2006 J-Cup. They face fierce competition from a number of other skippers including Derek Copeman (a superstar of Devon based television news following his recent Fastnet
Race exploits) who will be racing Bojangles. A late entry in from Mary Sturgess of Teignmouth in her J/105 Jaldi could also potentially upset the Apthorp apple-cart.
The yachts which will be racing in Class 1 and Class 3 will be racing under the IRC handicap system, to allow for hot but fair competition between J-Boats of different waterline lengths and varying sail areas.
All of the boats in Class 1 have a waterline length of 40 feet or more, and there are some astonishing race pedigrees amongst the sailors here. Stewart Hawthorne from the J/133 Jump has won the J-Cup and the overall prize for Class 1 in previous years and has owned numerous J-Boats throughout his racing history. Ian Matthews who races his J/120 Jinja with his red-headed family crewing for him, has been the best performing J/120 at this event for three consecutive years, but this year he lines up on the start alongside Adrian Crook in Mojo, Jonathan Webb (who has sailed all the way from the Medway to be at the J-Cup in his J/120 J’ouvert) and also Plymouth’s very own flying doctor Gareth Thomas in his J/120 Jalfrezi. However, this being a mixed handicap Class anything could happen and some of the hot money says that Stan Fenton could be right up there. He is sailing his J/122 (the newest model from J-Boats) and, as we say in the trade, Jedi Knight is a bit of a weapon. Marie-Claude and Paul Heys who run J-UK (the J-Boats dealership in the UK) will also be pushing for the title in their fast, sleek and beautiful J/124 called Earls Court Boat Show.
It’s anybody’s guess as to who will emerge victorious from Class 3. Another mixed Class and slightly smaller in overall length than the boats in Class 1, once again we will witness some superb racing talent amongst the helms and crews of these little rockets. The J/92s are thirty foot in length, sensitive and fast. Recent form would suggest that Pete and Pip Tyler in Neilson Redeye should be up in the chocolates, but Colin Wall was second at the Nationals earlier this year in True Love. The whole class will be keeping an eye on the performance of Cornish lad Norman Curnow in his ‘classic’ J/36 Jazz because no one else in the fleet has ever raced against him. Equally, Mike Riley who will be racing another slightly older model from J-Boats, his J/110 called Jammin, has proven himself at this event in previous years.
The main sponsor of the event is surveying firm Knight Frank and there are three supporting sponsors from the marine industry, B&G (a marine electronics company), Dubarry of Ireland (who make sailing and outdoor clothing and footwear) and North Sails. In addition to this there are numerous prize sponsors, without whom the event could simply not take place.
The appeal of the J-Cup to sponsors, competitors, spectators and general yacht racing enthusiasts was summed up very simply by the Principal Race Officer Mike Pearson. He said ‘I’m looking forward to the quantity of boats that this regatta brings to the port and the quality of the competition in the fleet. The beauty of the Js is that they a different breed from other racing yachts.’
Racing starts in Plymouth Sound on Thursday 23rd of August and runs through to the afternoon of Saturday 25th of August.
Kappseglingsdeltagare 2007
Jag har ju roat mig med att föra statistik över deltagarantalet på de största kappseglingarna. Antalet är de som de facto kom till start (alltså rensat för DNS och DNC).
På Tjörn Runt fick jag det till 456 startande och 425 som fullföljde (93%). 2006 hade man 497 startande och 475 som fullföljde (96%). Trots något färre båtar tycker jag att StSS har gjort ett mycket bra jobb, både när det gäller att lyssna på seglarna, göra seglingen bättre och i marknadsföringen.
Det finns säkert fler idéer kring hur vi får fler deltagare (så att vi har något att debattera under vinterhalvåret). På något sätt borde man få fatt på de seglare som inte ställer upp för att ta reda på orsakerna.
Fastnet doublehanded
“Juneau”, en J/105 med Mike West/Paul Worswick, var en av bara två båtar som tog sig i mål i shorthandklassen. Vann gjorde en annan J/105 med “Voador” med Simon Curwen/Paul Peggs. Foto: Rolex/Daniel Forster
På Petit Bateau kan man läsa en kort summering av en inte alltför enkel resa.
Having competed double handed in the Fastnet for the first time in 2005 and finishing 7th from 20 racers we were keen to try and improve on that result in 2007. I’ve been sailing with Mike ‘Senior’ West since we sailed together fully crewed in the 2003 race when I was a charter skipper for Alex Thomson’s Formula One company. A fairly inauspicious qualifying campaign saw us starting the race in third overall in the season’s double handing standings, we’d won the most recent channel race in the double handing class though – a good result in the Fastnet was going to be essential to our chances of overall victory in the Psipsina trophy.
The Friday before the race brought lots of storm warnings from the Met office and on Saturday the RORC confirmed that the start was to be postponed for 25 hours to Monday morning – meaning we were going to start 11.40 on Monday. The atmosphere in Hamble that evening was great, all the sailors hyped up for a windy Fastnet were out and drinking in force! There was lots of rumour around further postponements but nothing concrete. As it turned out we started as planned on the Monday.It was a classic South Westerley at the start with the Island side being favoured tidally. We had a fairly average start but managed to work the tide and shifts well being the first double hander in our class and first 105 out of the Solent (there were 6 105’s double handing and 3 fully crewed).
Watski 2 Star Danmark
På fredag startar den Danska shorthandseglingen. 70 båtar är anmälda till drag-racet som går 108 distans Helsingør-Anholt-Helsingør, med ett tretimmars pitstop på Anholt.
Det är också några svenska besättningar med:
SEXAN, OMEGA 42, ULF NILSSON/EMIL NILSSON, LYS 1,25, LBS
JOD 35, OLA BRUNO/?? 1,27, HYC
CARMEN, X 119, GÖRAN WIKING/HANS LUNDSTRÖM, DH 554,00, LBS
NEEDSPEED, HUMPREYS 30, JONAS CLAESSON/JAN OREST, DH 590,50, MSK
Här är hela deltagarlistan (pdf). Ni som brukar klaga på att “min båt passar inte för shorthand” kan ju kolla in listan: allt från X-95, X-99:or och X-35 till X-612. Och X-40 och X-43 som tydligen går att segla med (inte bara ligga vid bryggan).
Tjörn Runt 2007 | ännu fler bilder
Daniel Stenholm på Seglingsbilder.se bjuder på lite fler smakprov. Här har vi topp 5 och en del andra kända profiler.
1:a Göran Haglund, Neptunkryssare, “Sjöfröken”, ÄBK, 4:57:02
2:a Magnus Hansson, 606, STSS, 5:04:13
3:a Johan Davidsson, Smaragd, “Elvan”, LDSS, 5:04:45
4:a Johan Söderberg, Cumulus, “Strecket”, BKSS, 5:05:39
5:a Per-Erik Wall, H-båt, “Goodwill”, MSS, 5:06:46
Collberg kom 8:a med sin Express. Tydligen har han ont i ryggen och skall sälja. Vill du lägga vantarna på en riktigt snabb båt ringer du 0705-814828.
Emil Sandberg hängde inte med Johan Davidsson i år.
Bertil Söderberg kör revat genom kyrkesund. Kom ingen nu killar!
Jacob Vierø med “Signal”, som alltid seglar Tjörn Runt. Är det han som ritat DS-37, HP1020 och Marcus Sylvins GP 33?
Bengt Lindholm med “Essex Girl”.
Hans Johansson med “Blues”. Valde att skippa avslutningen på IMS-VM och segla Tjörn Runt istället.
Det fanns åtta CB-365 på linjen. Inte illa. Kjell Norli hade tagit ner sin båt från Fredrikstad i Norge för att vara med. Lars-Erik Granqvist var snabbast i år.
“Edin Progressiva” med Johnie Berntsson till rors.
Claes Amnäs i “Galax”.
Anders Hansen i “Kracer”