25.05.09  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