Best of the best
In a very few years the Star Sailors League is well on its way to being the pre-eminent forum for identifying who is the ‘best’ sailor of them all...
Annually The Star Sailors League seeks to determine who is the most talented sailor in the world. Is it an Olympic legend like Robert Scheidt or Torben Grael? Or a contemporary Olympian like Ben Saxton or Šime Fantela? Is it an America’s Cup legend like Paul Cayard? A Volvo Ocean Race/Route du Rhum winner like Franck Cammas? Or the Moth world champion?
The question has been answered in December each year since 2013 at the Star Sailors League Finals. In 2017 it was turn of British Beijing 2008 Olympic Laser gold medallist and reigning Moth world champion Paul Goodison to come out on top, sailing with German former Olympic Star crew Frithjof ‘Frida’ Kleen. Of course the major hurdle in determining the world’s best sailor is that sailing is one of the most diverse of all sports, requiring a wide array of fundamentally differing skills, whether it’s the Vendée Globe, the America’s Cup or the Laser class at the Olympic Games. For example, it is unlikely Goodison- Kleen would have won last year if the Star Sailors League Finals had been held in 60ft trimarans. Our money would have been on Franck Cammas or Loïck Peyron.
70 SEAHORSE
So in creating a playing field not too slanted towards any specialists’ choice of boat is vital. A fully crewed boat would place too much emphasis on the crew rather than an individual sailor. Equally a singlehander would overly favour the sailors experienced in these kinds of boats. Thus a two-handed boat was felt ideal to test the skills of the helm while creating a level playing field, and a keelboat preferable to a dinghy since it was more representative of the bulk of our sport.
One of the reasons for deciding upon the Star boat as the chosen vessel of the Star Sailors League was due to its refined crew weight optimisation system, catering for helms of different weights. To prevent the inevitable drive towards ever smaller helms and larger crews the Star class has a sliding scale of permitted crew weights: a 64kg 470 helm can sail with a man mountain crew weighing 124kg; a 100kg helm can sail with a 100kg crew; a 140kg man mountain helm can have a tiny 73.3kg crew. You will notice that the heavier the helm, the higher the combined crew weight but the lighter the weight of the hiking crew.
Anyone who thought the Star Sailors League might be more of a ‘Star Sailors’ Tribute Regatta’
could not be more wrong. In its short history the SSL has seen champions from a wide range of
classes at the top of the scoreboard… this year Star newbie Paul Goodison took the top prize with the guidance of experienced Star crew Fritz Kleen (above)
In December’s finals it meant lighter sailors like Franck Cammas and Ben Saxton could team up with the heaviest crew – Mark Strube and Steve Mitchell respectively – and be competitive with the likes of Xavier Rohart, who was heavier than his crew Pierre-Alexis Ponsot. Paul Cayard explains why the former Olympic keelboat is the ideal choice of boat for the Star Sailors League: ‘It is uniquely qualified for this purpose: a Laser sailor at 78kg can compete on an even footing with a Finn or Star sailor at 100kg due to the total crew weight limit. The Star is a very technical boat but still sails like a dinghy. With no rule 42 limits on rocking and pumping of the sails it provides a strenuous workout a 100 per cent of the time.’ One of the lightest at the Star Sailors League recently was Croatia’s Šime Fantela. He competed in the finals in 2016, fresh from winning 470 Olympic gold in Rio. At that point he was a spindly 68kg and was racing with former Star Olympic crew Antonio
Arapovic. As Fantela recalls, ‘He was around 105kg but we needed him to be 130!’
But in the Star boat the crew
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