News Around the World
A very winning boat. Designed by Juan Kouyoumdjian – like every winner in the VO70 Volvo era – with further design development carried out by Franck Cammas’s Groupama Team, the former Groupama 70 – now Wizard – is one of those boats that has rewarded good guardianship by her subsequent owners with a lengthening run of racing successes. In Australian hands under the name of Geronimo the boat won the 2016 Hobart race overall then more recently in the hands of her latest American owners she won the 2019 Caribbean 600 and a few months later pulled off the same result in the Fastnet. Good value for (quite a lot of) money… and hard work
USA Following an overdue US win in the Fastnet, a letter appeared in a popular online newsletter claiming, ‘1989 is about when the [USA] decided that they would isolate themselves from the world of off- shore handicap racing’; when a victory in the 1997 Admiral’s Cup and 1997 Whitbread lie nearly a decade ahead. Why is there this per- ception that Americans are incapable of excellence in offshore sailing? Dave and Peter Askew’s Fastnet victory was no oddity, these
guys are the real deal: they have been campaigning their VO70 Wizard and before that their Reichel/Pugh 74-footer by the same name to national and international successes for years. Their roots in the sport go deep, with numerous boats: Dave mentioned in his Fastnet interview being on the Frers 53 Jubilation in the mid-1980s, but he didn’t mention a beautiful refit and optimisation of the family’s Cal 40, nor time spent racing TP52s. And while Dave and Pete are more singularly focused on offshore adventures, Dave’s wife Sandy is busy racing inshore on her C&C 30 and now on her new IC37, with her next stop the Big Boat Series in San Francisco. In any case, the Askews approach the sport in a sensible and
organic way: they sail with a team of amateurs and pros they like, and invest in the right hardware to succeed. They have no commer- cial agenda, no sponsors to cater to, no high-profile name-brand celebrities they hire to get the job done. They’re immersed in a way that has led to solid, consistent results, something we should admire and celebrate and not find remarkable because they’re American!
Passing us by? All that said… there is one area of offshore racing the US has yet to do more than dabble in: double-handed racing. Certainly in French culture this is becoming the default style of racing and boatbuilders are finding new ways to meet escalating demand among keen amateurs – supporting the success of events like the Transquadra and impressive 60-plus two-handed entries in the recent Fastnet. Yet we are not seeing this tsunami of interest in the US. The
Transpac with 90 fully crewed entries had only three double-handed entries originally, then one dropped out and the other went fully crewed so this fell to one… Lonely in every sense. The latest Bermuda One-Two had an anaemic 11 entries in two
divisions, with many scored DNF or DNC. The Port Huron-Mackinac Race had only five entries this year, and none recognised in their own division in the larger and longer Chicago to Mackinac Race. And even though Laurent Givry’s two-handed entry in the Anna - polis-Newport Race on his Figaro 3 caught people’s eye by crushing
28 SEAHORSE
the crewed entries – helped by clever navigation – this was not a very organic effort. He and co-skipper Sydney Gavignet are French! So what’s different about the US? First, geography: the US and
Canada have plenty of coastline, but not all of it is as hospitable to shorthanded sailing as parts of Europe. Mostly, however, there are just not that many owners with the athleticism, interest and, yes, skill to take on shorthanded racing. Charles Devanneaux raced the Transpac on his Figaro 3 with
Fred Courable as the only surviving two-handed entry... two more transplanted French sailors. ‘Most owners here are just not at the level to take this on safely,’ said Devanneaux, who is based in California. ‘The Pacific Cup [from San Francisco] allows boats as small as Moore 24s to race double-handed to Hawaii, but even I think this is crazy. As a sailboat dealer we have some occasional enquiries but it takes someone special to have the temperament, confidence and skills to race in this way.’ Ken Comerford is a successful J/Boats dealer in Anna polis and,
even though the J/121 and shorthanded-oriented J/99 are new in the product line, he has not seen strong interest either. ‘Racing around here on big boats is a social activity,’ he says. ‘People want to sail with their friends, and they don’t want it to be too hard. This is why the J/105 fleet is so large here.’ And this is where politics comes in: World Sailing board member
Gary Jobson is helping to plan a new two-handed race to be held in J/105s and other monohulls between 25ft and 36ft, organised by Annapolis YC at the end of September. No one is under any illusion that this is a training session for Olympic-level competition but, just as Dawn Riley did in the spring at Oakcliff in Melges 24s, it is a proof of concept to help World Sailing better understand the ‘new’ genre. ‘We hope we learn a lot from this, maybe even how to conduct trials when it comes to 2024,’ said Jobson. Even now all is not ‘lost’ in the US: the Sloop Tavern YC in Seattle
organises a popular 22nm (sic) Down the [Puget] Sound Race to scenic Gig Harbor with a race back the following day and party in between. This year 47 boats entered the 10th edition, with two solo entries and the rest two-handed, split further between flying sail and non-flying sail divisions. They raced a wide variety of boat types, from a 40-year-old trailer-sailer to an Andrews 53, in a pursuit-start format and with a time limit to ensure no one misses the party. Budding François Gabarts they are not, but they might just have
had more fun than some of the double-handed crews slogging their way to and from the Fastnet Rock… Dobbs Davis
q
KURT ARRIGO
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 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104
