a (Sail 062)
GENNAKERS, CODES ZERO, ASYMMETRIC SPINNAKERS & STAY
Southampton Boat Show (Eurospars - J243) Cannes Yachting festival
YSAILS
Left: wet ride home on Offshore Team Germany’s Owen Clarke Imoca Einstein (the former Acciona) which was racing in the IRC fleet; the Fastnet Imoca division was for two-handed crews only but Team Germany is targeting the 2021-2022 Ocean Race and the Fastnet was a first trial of racing one of these short-handed designs with a full (five-person) crew. Her elapsed time would have put her mid-fleet in the Imoca division. So far so cramped. Above: classic ocean racing as the Manuard Class40 Eärendil – third in the 2019 Fastnet – starts the beat home (soon a reach) having rounded the Rock at sunrise. The top four Class40s were covered by less than two hours. You can almost feel the damp…
In hindsight not a bad idea to participate in a 600-mile offshore with a boat designed for offshore racing. For the Imoca sailors it is foremost testing and training but once you are racing you might as well push for a classic win. Incorporating the Imoca boats in the Ocean Race is increasingly looking like a good move too, for both institutions, but a lifesaver for The Race. Rather obvious, at least to me, but still a long road to go before we will see the real optimum dual-purpose concept.
With more and more offshore-oriented designs and design evolution turning up in corrected time racing we see rating systems trying to adapt to this, changing the rating as well as the sailing landscape with their choices.
The marketeers of the ‘scientific’ VPP rating systems already claim that their system will cope with this task and see no problem to fairly rate the ever-growing variety in development coming their way. However, history tells us they struggle – and so far have not coped any better (nor worse for that matter), when compared with single multiplier ‘semi-scientific systems’ with the much easier task of fairly rating boats that just differ marginally in hull design, weight and sail area.
Of course everybody is entitled to their own dream and I admire the effort going into optimising rating systems. I even recognise progress has been made. Just be very careful where you lay the pain as the existing fleet is vulnerable.
Inshore and certainly windward-leeward racing, no matter how refined the boat, will always struggle to find the same powerful emotional motivations. Here you will continue to find it harder to attract new participation interest and certainly much harder to find the required audience to attract sponsor interest. Current attempts to promote windward-leeward racing are mostly based on making the yacht owner part of an exclusive family. Exclu- sivity and large numbers of competitors at first sight bite each other but of course there are examples of the opposite. If everybody wear- ing a Rolex owned a racing yacht we would need more marina space. Still inshore racing needs a (bigger) dream. This can be sought partially in ‘more rewarding’ trophies, like trophies attached to national honour. But if we think back all the high-reward trophies we had in the 1970s and 80s, bar the America’s Cup, were based on a mix of inshore and offshore racing and the introduction of the wind- ward-leeward element is often seen as part cause of their downfall. Am I stating the obvious?
Rob Weiland, TP52 and Maxi72 class manager SEAHORSE 33 30 years of race*
exper ience in Top-Down & Code Zero fur l ing
Special De Cable Less New!
signed Thimble
>
RATCHET FacnorPatent LIGHT
EASY CONNECTION
EASY FURLING NG
KURT ARRIGO/ROLEX
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