News Around the World
Perfect match of man and mission. Patrice Carpentier – practising for one of his three Vendée Globes – has been confirmed as race director for the Golden Globe Race which starts in July, appropriately in Les Sables. Between writing beautiful stories for Seahorse, Patrice has won his class in the Figaro Race and Route du Rhum and completed five circumnavigations… plus 35 Atlantic crossings
the attempt. With today’s communication systems and a poet, songster and raconteur to thrill an audience with tales of adventure and derring-do on the high seas, there is surely an angle there for some canny marketeer. Or, for that matter, just somebody who loves the audacity of it… without any commercial motivation at all. After all, Andrew Fagan has form and, in that most Kiwi of ways,
he is willing to give it a crack just for the sheer love of it. ‘Nothing like being afloat,’ he says. ‘It makes living feel more worthwhile.’ Ivor Wilkins
AUSTRALIA Risky business Following a recent Nacra accident Blue Robinson spoke to Alex South about connecting skin and bone with carbon foils, at speed… Seahorse Magazine: Alex, a brief background… Alex South: I started in junior dinghy classes here in Australia then moved to the Laser Radial, competing for the spot for London 2012 but finishing second to Krystal Weir for selection. Then when I went to university I opted for less time on the water but more speed, so moved into 18-foot skiffs, Moths, the Waszp, some AC and Extreme 40 sailing, anything fast really. Then a call came for the 49erFX class, so I raced that, where I picked up an injury. Then I moved into the Nacra... where I just got injured again. SH: How long in multihulls now… AS: I teamed up about three or four months ago with Connor Nicholas; while we waited for our Nacra we started with a Viper 16, which doesn’t foil but still bites you pretty hard if you let it. SH: And the foiling Nacra? AS: It was really cool at first just to see a mixed-gender boat that was so fast and still quite accessible. But then taking an already wild beast and adding the extra element of foils certainly surprised a lot of sailors. I do a lot of coaching, so in terms of youth progression in sailing I am setting kids up to be racing these boats one day… it’s certainly an interesting dynamic to add to the Olympic pathway. SH: First impressions on the foiling Nacra?
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AS: Connor had done a bit of crewing before but he was fresh into the skipper role, so there were a few times when I was checking he was feeling comfortable too. We have both come through a solid high-performance background so we hoped that would go a long way towards making up for our lack of time in foiling multihulls. SH: I suspect that mindset about the progression to foiling is now pretty common? AS:Sure. The multihull sailors on the Olympic circuit have previously been from a catamaran pedigree – Hobie, A-Class and so on, but as the rest of the sport turned ‘professional’, so to speak, other sailors joined in too. Sailors switching from mono to multi, that’s one big change to begin with. The multihull has always been fast, the Tornado was a great example of that, but now the Nacra has moved to a league of its own as a high-performance machine thanks to the extra dynamic of the foils. Now the bar is constantly being reset higher and higher for everyone. SH: Any close calls before your accident? AS: No, not really, just bumps and bruises. SH: So what happened on the day? AS: We were out training by ourselves on the harbour just before Sail Sydney in late 2017, and we were up in the north end near Manly Cove. We went into our last run of the day with the breeze having lifted from quite light to 12-15kt. Connor called the drop, I unhooked off the trapeze and we came off the foils. Somehow Connor managed to get us back up on the foils again, and as that happened I got pulled off and under the boat and managed to impact my left ankle with what we believe was the outboard edge of the rudder T-foil. SH: Your first thoughts as things were going wrong? AS: Please don’t make this like the Franck Cammas injury… SH: What happened then? AS: Fortunately we had a RIB full of Australian Sailing Team members including 2016 silver medallist Lisa Darmanin and Finn sailor Jake Lilley watching us run that last drill and they pulled me out of the water. Obviously it was really painful and certainly there was a bit
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BENOIT STICHELBAUT/DPPI
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