Contributors EDITOR Andrew Hurst
DESIGNER Stephen Stafford
Luca Devoti has been a great Finn sailor, is a great Finn builder and likely also remains the world’s no1 ranked Finn enthusiast…
SUB-EDITOR Sue Platt EUROPE
Patrice Carpentier Carlos Pich Tim Jeffery
Torbjørn Linderson Andy Rice
Giuliano Luzzatto Jocelyn Blériot Brice Lechevalier
USA & CARIBBEAN Dobbs Davis Peter Holmberg Cam Lewis Dee Smith
JAPAN
Anna Corbella is a 470, Mini 6.50 and Imoca 60 veteran and has now set up a Spanish shorthanded training base in Barcelona
Yoichi Yabe Ken Toyosaki
SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE Ivor Wilkins Blue Robinson Rob Brown Rob Mundle Julian Bethwaite
COLUMNISTS Paul Cayard Rod Davis
Loïck Peyron still can’t get enough of the sea – the Jules Verne winner will be racing the Transat on Eric Tabarly’s Pen Duick II
AC TECHNICAL Terry Hutchinson David Hollom Steve Killing Andy Claughton Jack Griffin
ACCOUNTS AND CIRCULATION Kirstie Jenkins & Wendy Gregory
ADVERTISING MANAGER Graeme Beeson
Email:
graeme@seahorse.co.uk EDITORIAL
Tel: 44 (0) 1590 671899 Fax: 44 (0) 1590 671116 Mobile: 44 (0) 7976 773901 Skype: graemebeeson
Merfyn Owen among many other roles is also the de facto ‘unofficial’ Anglo Saxon marketing officer for the thriving Class40
Web:
www.seahorsemagazine.com ISSN 0143-246X
E-mail:
info@seahorse.co.uk
Tel: 44 (0) 1590 671898 Fax: 44 (0) 1590 671116
Subscribe to Seahorse
www.seahorse.co.uk/shop/subs www.seahorsemagazine.com/subscribe 1yr Print UK£56/$84/€90/ROW£76 1yr Digital £35
Tel: 44 (0) 1590 610691 Fax: 44 (0) 1590 671116
subscriptions@seahorse.co.uk
Andrew McIrvine is still working to ‘negotiate’ a single world rating rule… with an eye on a possible Admiral’s Cup relaunch
6 SEAHORSE
Seahorse International Sailing is published monthly by Fairmead Communications Ltd, 5 Britannia Place, Station Street, Lymington, Hampshire SO41 3BA, UK. USA subscribers: Seahorse International Sailing (USPS 010-341) is distributed in the USA by SPP, 75 Aberdeen Rd, Emigsville, PA 17318. Periodicals’ postage paid at Emigsville PA. POSTMASTER: please send address changes to Seahorse International Sailing c/o PO Box 437, Emigsville, PA 17318. Distribution by Comag Ltd. All rights reserved. Reproduction without prior written permission is prohibited.
This year’s World Match Racing Tour will be a bit different with the move to M32 catamarans in place of ponderous keelboats. It remains to be seen if the switch draws back more America’s Cup sailors – unless they are banned from competing, as is the case with the Extreme Sailing Series…
spectacular cavernous hall that is host to Dippy, the museum’s famous diplodocus. The exceptional location encouraged a number of jokes about our sharing the night with fossils and prehistoric creatures, ‘and if time permitted, the exhibits are also worth seeing…’ Dippy is shortly to go on tour and will be replaced by the skeleton of a blue whale, perhaps a more appropriate companion for an ocean-racing institution. Our special guest, Ian Walker, accepted the Yacht of the Year Trophy for Azzam’s victory in the Volvo Ocean Race and then ‘sang for his supper’ by presenting some 40 other trophies to our worthy season’s winners.
The after-party in our St James’s clubhouse lasted almost as long as the main event; advertising an open bar (capacity 60) to 500 people led to a taxi jam in St James’s Place in the early hours of Sunday morning – an unsurprising outcome. Slightly more formally, we held our AGM on 30 November and were happy to report full calendars of racing, good news from our clubhouses and a satisfactory outcome for the last financial year. As if this wasn’t enough, our 2016 plans are full of new events including the Ouessant Race in August and the inaugural European IRC Championship, to be held in Cork in July. 2016 is not the limit of our horizon – we agreed at the ISAF conference in Sanya to work towards a joint ORC/IRC World Championship, possibly for 2018. We hope that you will all hang on for this particular ride.
Michael Boyd Commodore
q
Commodore’s letter T
here has been little let-up in RORC activity despite our shorter northern days and colder nights. Afloat, we started our second Lanzarote to Grenada Transatlantic Race – a distance of 3,000 miles – at the end of November. After enjoying the gracious hospitality of the Calero family over a few sunny days in Marina Lanzarote, which they created, and a rare enough chance for crews and organisers to get together, a varied fleet of 10 boats headed west through the Canaries in idyllic conditions before choosing their lines of attack. A startling range of courses was plotted, reflecting different weather software. After just one day our multihulls were head- ing either northwest for Madeira or south for Cape Verde! Most of these boats will remain in the West Indies for our RORC Caribbean 600 starting in Antigua on 22 February. The entry list gets more glamorous by the day and we think that we will have another sizzler on our hands. We are delighted that the 600 has achieved its status as a must-do event for some of the world’s fastest and loveliest yachts. Ashore, we celebrated our 90th prizegiving dinner with a stylish event for almost 500 guests at the inspired venue of London’s Natural History Museum. We gathered in the
SANDER VAN DER BORCH
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85