Archive for May, 2009

Ocean heroes start the 13th edition of the OSTAR

Monday, May 25th, 2009

2009 OSTAR start25.05.09  Today saw the start of the 13th Edition of the OSTAR

Whilst I stood watching from Plymouth Hoe, I wondered what Sir Francis Chichester and Blondie Haslar, who conceived the idea, the ‘grand father of ocean races’ would have made of it. The 31 yachts that departed Plymouth today, bound for Newport Rhode Island are set to compete in arguably the toughest of all single-handed races and yet for these heroic sailors it was sad to see just a few 100’s of people turn out to see them off.

This same weekend in France, the 30 sailors that started the 2008-09 edition of the Vendee Globe race were honoured in front of 120,000 people at a public prize giving event held on the beach in Les Sables D’Olonne.

The OSTAR, which was conceived over a ½ Crown wager first started in 1960 and has been held every four years since that original race. In 1964, the legendary French sailor, Eric Tabarly was awarded the Legion D’Honneur by President Charles De Gaulle after winning the race. Over the years the event has grown in stature on both sides of the Channel until 2003, when the custodians of this remarkable race, the Royal Western Yacht Club (RWYC) took the difficult decision to split the event and sell the professional element to Offshore Challenges (a company jointly owned by Dame Ellen Macarthur and Mark Turner) whilst retaining the right to run the Corinthian element of the race.

I feel that sadly, this decision was ill thought out, as many of today’s young sailors aspire to compete alongside their sailing heroes and without the big name competitors and sponsors, the event now barely gets a mention in the local press and media and a comparison of the images taken on Plymouth Hoe from 2008 and yesterday illustrate the point.  As such, the young heroes that set off today to battle across the harsh north Atlantic will do so with relatively few people following their exploits.

Last year, Plymouth also hosted the professional element of the race, named The Artemis Transat and with a substantial budget in place for marketing and pr, the event delivered extraordinary scenes in Plymouth’s Sutton Harbour, with 120,000 people passing through the race village in the lead up to the race start. Sadly, today’s race start almost went by un-noticed by the public and the media and if this trend continues, and Plymouth does not fight for the right to host the professional race in 2012, I fear that this incredible race, the grand father of all ocean races may become confined to the history books in the near future.  I sincerely hope that this will not be the case.

Conrad Humphreys

F18 Eurocat 2009

Monday, May 4th, 2009

The first big F18 event of the year took place at Carnac over the bank holiday weekend and this year saw over 140 F18’s and many of the world’s top sailors take part.

It has been over ten years or more since I raced in a fleet of this size and we were here to work on boat handling and speed to ensure that we were on the pace come this summer’s Archipelago Raid.

It still surprises me, that the 12 year old design of the Hobie Tiger is still such a competitive design amongst a fleet comprising two brand new designs. This event was the first outing for the much hyped Hobie WildCat and also the new Loday-White Shockwave. Neither boat’s have had much time on the water, but with the star studded team’s sponsored by Hobie, including world and Olympic sailor, Darren Bundock it was tantalising to see the new designs in action for the first time.

First race and we were inside the top ten at the windward mark – unbelievable after a poor start. 
No problem with our pace up wind. The downwind leg saw a number of team’s pass us by, it was just a case of not pushing hard enough but as the confidence grew we started holding our own here as well. We finished 14 in the first race, our best result of the weekend and an opportunity to see that we had good overall speed.

On Saturday, the 300 strong fleet took part in the 30mile offshore race and after a light upwind start we had a 7 mile reaching leg. Tactically the fleet held high and we managed to soak off down this long reaching leg which paid massively as the tide was racing around the Quiberon Penisula. Gybing through the islands was just breath taking with a large swell running and lots of rocks scattered around it felt a bit like the Archipelago. After around 50 gybes, we were around the back of the island and back on the wind for a long fetch home. We were in good company with Andrew Macpherson and Mitch Booth close by. We crossed the line with less than twenty ahead of us, which was fantastic. It was a good chance to see that our tactics were good and so was our speed.

Overall, the weekend was superb, and really impressive to see Carnac with such an active race scene for Catamarans. The event management was superb with over 200 volunteers involved in making the event happen and with the onshore activities, there was certainly a buzz for the whole town. Well done Carnac Yacht Club for a great event.