Left: the TP52 Quest and the Pac52 Warrior Won (above). Together these two have won more ocean racing silverware than is right. The TP52, with its close derivatives the Pac52s and offshore-modified TPs (that win more Hobart races than they lose), has been a phenomenal success. It’s often forgotten that the class began as the ‘Transpac 52’ ocean racing class, so perhaps we should be less surprised that these well-optimised mid-sized designs clean up as often as they do in open racing under IRC and ORC. Plus the ultra refined Super Series 52s are so well built that even recent boats can make the transition to offshore racing without going nuts with modifications; watertightness being the first thing to address. Modern offshore 52s like Matt Allen’s Ichi Ban are not so different from their inshore counterparts. Three new 52s are currently in build and the supply of good used boats remains healthy; it will be a brave Admiral’s Cup A Class hopeful that does not check the TP52 market before trying to reinvent the wheel with that elusive magic bullet
Apart from the cost, the idea that every boat has a top-notch pro
crew is simply not feasible, certainly not with a diverse mix of boats and budgets – as is the case with handicap fleets of boats that in age span nearly the entire life of the TP52 class itself. Spending ⇔1,000,000 each year on crew to race a ⇔3,000,000
boat will be perceived differently by most owners compared with spending ⇔1,000,000 on crew to race a ⇔500,000 boat. And it does not stop with the ⇔1,000,000 crew. Your ⇔1,000,000 crew will soon be pushing for ⇔300,000-400,000 spend on sails and ⇔150,000-250,000 on boat optimisation. Which is quickly out of all proportion with owning a 20-year-old TP52 for which you paid about ⇔300,000. Then again, when you phone a plumber to fix a leak, his hourly
rate won’t vary much whether the leak is in a derelict one-room apartment or in a multimillion dollar mansion. And so it will be with most things you need for your boat… No matter where the budget is pinned there will be differences
between crews, as well as equipment. The question then is whether this needs to be controlled or rated or both? If the answer is yes, then the next question is how? And that one is not that easy to answer. In Australia an idea being trialled on the issue of crew costs is
to add rating clicks for professional crew, as well as promoting young crew (under-25) using rating credits. Undoubtedly this is subjective, so for some like cursing in the rating church. But that does not mean it should be ridiculed or won’t work. Certainly when handled in consultation with the teams and with
rating tweaks tested in small steps there is every reason to give this a try. Ratings are then further adjusted based on performance differences as observed on the water, which are obviously caused by a mix of crew skill and equipment quality. Let’s see, shall we? Obviously there is another relationship too, that between per-
formance and budget, but not one that is so linear that, say, a rating click per $100,000 spent would accurately compensate for! There are many variables in our sport that cannot be measured
with a tape measure, nor expressed in money. Once it is felt that these should also somehow be rated you soon end up with
performance monitoring and subjective corrections – often labelled as ‘observed performance handicapping’. Undertaken well, this can without doubt deliver racing that is as fair as VPP handicapping, certainly in the case of a small group of boats of similar design. Seeking the solution in a mix of both, mixing observed perfor-
mance with VPP handicapping, is certainly not a bad choice. But it is still subjective to some extent, maybe too much for some? As always, the devil will be in the detail: who runs the observed
component and how is the observed component worked into a boat’s rating? Keeping science and observation separate is not a bad idea, so the effect of both is perfectly clear and the one cannot be mistaken for the other.
Budget, what budget? On quite a different note, the TP52 class is a member of US Sailing and it is with considerable concern that I read about the US Sailing-AmericaOne lawsuit. The complaint, running to 75 pages, filed against Paul Cayard,
William Ruh and Jose Spina (a former officer, director and employee respectively of US Sailing) and AmericaOne (one of the main financial contributors to US Sailing) for having ‘conspired in a variety of wrong- ful, tortious, and duplicitous conducts, intentionally and maliciously designed and undertaken to harm, if not destroy, US Sailing’s busi- ness and reputation with its donors and financial sponsors, with competitive sailors, and within the larger sailing community and the Olympic movement, and position AmericaOne misleadingly as the de facto – and then eventual successor to US Sailing as the – National Governing Body for the sport of sailing in the United States’. A long sentence that reads like a bad case of frustration and
ego run wild and completely out of control. The result… US Sailing spending (wasting) money on lawyers to piece together a case mainly built on ‘circumstantial fabrication’. US sailors and sailing will suffer from this, no matter what the outcome of one or more court cases. Damage control should be the top priority here! But I am afraid US Sailing will stay on this tack for a while, hoping
for some miraculous shift in its favour. A bad example to us all. Rob Weiland, TP52 Class Manager
q SEAHORSE 35
CARLO BORLENGHI/ROLEX
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