Contents September 2024 FEATURES
4 This is meant to be easier? FRANÇOIS VAN MALLEGHEM
41 Just thinking ROB WEILAND wonders whether we might have got everything the wrong way around
Balmy evenings And those mid-week beer can races do not get much balmier than when they are being held in Honolulu. And these mid-week race series, which these days have taken hold wherever a reasonable fleet of sailing craft gather together, tell a wider story about the big boat scene. In Europe at least, the weekly fun races most often attract the biggest fleet of any of the regional and more local programmes, typically drawing out many more boats than will these days turn out for a weekend of serious inshore competition. In northern Europe, certainly in the UK and France, all of the serious racing is now done offshore. Whereas once the Solent, for example, was the setting for a very competitive series of weekend inshore racing, counting towards a points trophy that really was worth winning, today, aside from club races out of places like Cowes and the Hamble, it is all small dayboat one-design classes. Bigger rated yachts turn out for offshore races, and they turn out midweek for evening fun; but serious big boat inshore racing now only takes place if there is a good-sized standalone regatta or a unique trophy up for grabs. Evening racing has the advantage of being lock-and-load, or rather lock-up and leave. Turn up, go racing, go ashore, talk a bit of nonsense and go home. Come the weekend and real life often takes over, making that small number of weekends reserved for an ocean race or three feel all the more special. Perhaps with a new generation of faster IRC designs on the way, that enthusiasm for inshore races may return. But, honestly, the faster your boat the more you just want to let it rip on a long leg offshore…
COVER: Phil Uhl INSET: Alamy
48 Stuff of legend Returning Seahorse scribe CRAIG DAVIS talks to eight-time America’s Cup veteran TOM WHIDDEN about a racing life largely spent whispering in DENNIS CONNER’S ear
54 How did we do? Olympic coach of deserved repute JON EMMETT courageously blends preview with review, of the sailing at Paris 2024. Brave fella…
56 The tightrope walking years JOCELYN BLÉRIOT talks to La Trinité fixture MARC GUILLEMOT about pioneering, winning and surviving those frequently dangerous early days of the modern oceanic racing scene
62 Artfully, quietly, radically CAROL CRONIN is surely one of the few people who could sum up eclectic racer, designer and engineer PAUL BIEKER so well in three words
REGULARS
6 Commodore’s letter DEB FISH
11 Editorial ANDREW HURST
14 Update America’s Cup 2024… and its new quite different racing rules, using all of the talent at American
Magic, a sad and sobering safety check from BLUE ROBINSON. Plus there is too much bad stuff happening in offshore racing right now. TERRY HUTCHINSON, DOBBS DAVIS, PATRICE CARPENTIER AND JACK GRIFFIN
24 World news How many more round-the-world races do we need? J/Boats’ Brittany party, come in No40 (with relief), even the Giraglia pros can’t stop the Lann Aël freight train, almost 50 but definitely not out in Lymington, a pragmatic approach to climate improvement, quiet confidence at Luna Rossa and barking your way up to Alaska… CARLOS PICH, IVOR WILKINS, DOBBS DAVIS, MAGNUS WHEATLEY, HORACIO CARABELLI, SILVIA MAS, ROB HUMPHREYS
38 Sam Goodchild
As mid-Atlantic dismastings go this one could have been a great deal worse
44 ORC – More or less? And the great ‘weather routeing scoring’ discussion continues. ANDY CLAUGHTON
66 TechStreet
72 RORC – Prepare to party JEREMY WILTON 76 Seahorse Regatta Calendar
84 Seahorsebuild table – The real deal
110 America’s Cup flashback TIM JEFFERY
111 Sailor of the Month Two champions, both with an eye to the future
We just smashed the sailing Blue Riband! In April 1984 Patrick Morvan (2nd left) and three relatively inexperienced young enthusiasts sailed Morvan’s Gilles Ollier-designed Jet Services II from New York to the Lizard in 8d 16h at an average of 14.3kt. More than any crossing before it, their record opened the floodgates to a new world of offshore multihulls. And those nippers… (left to right) Jean Le Cam (we kid you not), Marc Guillemot (pg56) and Serge Madec, who will go on to become skipper of Jet Services V
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