RORC
Club page Symbol of a new era – RORC Cowes in action
Forty-two boats came to the line for the RORC Easter Challenge whose USP is ‘coaching while racing’, under the guidance of coach- ing guru Jim Saltonstall. This was augmented, for the second year, by North U Regatta Services who supplied the coaching expertise of Americans Andreas Josenhans and Chuck Allen. It was also the first event run by the newly merged RORC organisation at the RORC Cowes clubhouse and proved to be a great success. To add to the coaching efforts and signal the importance of this event in the North Sails calendar, the president of North Sails, multiple world champion and Volvo race and America’s Cup skipper Ken Read, came to watch the action on Friday and was very impressed with what he saw on and off the water. ‘I had heard about this event from the North Sails guys in the UK and had to see it for myself – it’s really impressive what RORC has created. It is bound to have a positive effect upon the performance of the teams
boathandling as the day progressed – only four races were ultimately run to allow the coaching team sufficient time to fully debrief the crews.
Sunday dawned still and calm and according to the forecast. Hundreds turned up for an ad-lib coaching session on rules and boathandling technique as we waited for the wind to arrive. PRO Stuart Childerley called it a day late morning although the sun did grace us with its presence at the prizegiving. Anthony O’Leary was the winner of IRC 1 in his new Antix(Ker 40) with all three of his sons in the crew. Simon Henning in his much modified Mumm 36 won IRC 2, David Franks in his JPK10.10 won IRC 3 and Sam Laidlaw won IRC 4 in his Quarter Tonner Aguila. North Sails gave a prize for the most improved boat of the regatta with Robert Baker in the X-332 Brightworksthe justified winner.
Saved
The tight racing at the Easter Challenge produced some close encounters but a particularly hard port and starboard crunch put a large hole in the side of William McNeil’s newly refurbished Quarter Tonner Illegal Immigrant. The hole extended below the waterline and it was clear to the coach boats that without major help the yacht would sink very fast... so some quick thinking by North U coach Chuck Allen, who jumped on the boat and helped the team stem the flow of water. First he instructed one of the crew to lay a sail across the hole and sit on it. Next they took the no4 jib and wrapped it around the hull and tied it tightly across the hole further reducing the water ingress to a trickle that could be con- trolled by the boat’s pumps. A grateful McNeil said that without Chuck’s quick thinking the boat would definitely have gone down.
The IRC 1 winner at the 2015 Easter Challenge: Anthony O’Leary’s Ker 40 Antix (ex-Catapult) is lighter than the standard Ker 40s and features increased draft. The changes have delivered upwind gains with little change in this design’s renowned offwind pace
especially as the coaches get in the action without feeling they are in the way or upsetting the results. We should do more of this.’ Only one race was held on Friday when a fickle 6-8kt easterly breeze eventually filled in. However, before the first race the fleet had been neatly divided into two starts of around 20 boats to give the competitors some big fleet starting practice; videos of starts and mark roundings were later shown in the RORC Cowes confer- ence room with a few wise words from the coaching team plus some observations from Ken Read.
It was a new experience for the RORC race team to have their own home in Cowes and competitors made full use of the facility, turning up in big numbers to listen to Jim Saltonstall. The club was packed, the bar was busy, the atmosphere convivial… something the RORC race team have only experienced in other yacht clubs with whom we’ve had to organise previous races. ‘This is brilliant,’ said RORC Admiral Andrew McIrvine. ‘It is what I expected but now seeing the club full with enthusiastic sailors confirms that the decision to merge with the Corinthian was absolutely the right thing to do.’ Day 2 brought northerly winds of 14-18kt and a leaden sky. A tactically demanding day as the wind varied in direction up to 40°. Five races were planned with course Echo initiated for the second race which involved a reaching start to bear away to a spinnaker run at a mark only 350m from the startline… It was spectacular to watch and designed to allow the small boats to stay in contention for the early part of the race. A strong ebb tide challenged
52 SEAHORSE
New-look Brewin Dolphin Commodores’ Cup The RORC committee have agreed a number of changes for the 2016 Brewin Dolphin Commodores’ Cup. The first is the require- ment of every team to have a small boat with a rating between 1.000-1.049. Many teams in the last event believed that it was hard to be competitive without having three boats that were close to the top of the rating band as was the case in last year’s winning Irish team. Lowering the rating band to 1.000 will make it easier for J/109s to enter, along with popular designs like the JPK10.10, A35 and the new Sunfast 3200, and so reduce the cost of com- peting. This group of boats will have their own starts but if a team has more than one boat within this rating band, and it is possible to have three ‘small’ boats, it will have to nominate which boat will compete in this division. The maximum rating is still 1.230 and there has been no change to the rule that only allows one boat in each team with a rating between 1.150 and 1.230. The second change is the addition of an extra professional sailor to each team but without stipulation on which boats they sail on. The exact wording is as follows: ‘The crew of each three-boat team shall include no more than six Group 3 Sailors. These Group 3 Sailors may sail on any boat or boats in the three-boat team; however, crew cannot change after the Final Crew List has been submitted except as stated in NOR1.7.2.’
The thought was that many boats who have aspirations to compete in such an event race regularly with people who work in the marine industry and by virtue of their job are regarded under the ISAF eligibility rules as Group 3 professionals. While this rule change should reduce the need for owners to make wholesale changes to their crew just to fit in with the event, it will also give teams the opportunity to use the professional sailors to enhance weaknesses in the team overall. In theory you could load your weak- est boat with six professionals if it was thought that this would strengthen the team as a whole. The other significant change is the removal of crew weight from the rules so that each boat sails with the crew number as shown on its IRC certificate.
www.commodorescup.rorc.org Eddie Warden-Owen, CEO
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PAUL WYETH
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